Brag blog

OK, every parent thinks that their kids are so smart and brilliant, but I know Colin and Nathan are absolutely exceptional!! Of course, I'm not biased at all!

So Colin was watching Bob downloading music from the computer to the cell phone. He looks at the computer which is playing the music and asks "What's that?" Bob says it's the computer playing a song. Colin notices the cord going from the computer to the cell phone and says "Are you transferring the music to the phone?" WOW, I told you, he is brilliant!

Now for Nathan's story, but first a little background. One of Colin's show is "Dora the Explorer". In this show, Dora has a backpack and in the backpack she has a map that tells her which way to go. One night Bob and I were talking about the map that Colin painted while Bob was feeding Nathan a Dora yogurt. So Nathan starts saying "Backpack backpack" just like they do in the show, then points to Dora on the yogurt! I'm so happy that both of the boys are so intelligent!

Airport trip

Last week, my Aunt Deedy came to visit from Omaha. We had a great time! She went to Colin's swim lesson with us and saw Colin put his head under the water! She also went to the Centennial Olympic Fountains and watched Colin and Nathan running around in the fountains with me chasing after them!

When it was time for her to go back to Omaha, I made the mistake of telling Colin that we would be going into the airport. As it was, we ran out of time and ended up just dropping Aunt Deedy off at the curb and not going in the airport. This was a major disappointment for Colin, and he let me know for the next 20 minutes, crying and whining "I want to go into the airport, I want to go into the airport, ..." over and over again.

So my compromise to him was the next day after his swim lesson, we would go to the airport and have lunch! Colin and Nathan loved watching all the people rushing around. But after we finished eating, Colin wanted to watch the airplanes. Ummm ... we couldn't get to any place in the airport without going through security where you can see the airplanes. Something I didn't take into consideration when I came up with the idea! So instead of watching the airplanes inside, we went to the top of the parking deck and watched a couple of planes out there. People must have thought we were crazy! It was very hot that day, so Colin wasn't interested in watching too many airplanes and wanted to go back to the car.

All in all, I thought it was an interesting lunch date for the kids and me!

Maps

Colin is really into maps, just like his dad. Bob could spend hours studying a map, any map, doesn't matter what it is a map of. So now Colin is following in his dad's footsteps! The picture above is a painting that Colin did. Doesn't look like much to the casual observer, but it was really neat the way he was describing it to me as he was painting ... "this is where our house is, and this is the way to go to Grace's house, ..."

Also when Grandma and Grandpa GG were here, they watched a lot more TV than we have ever let him watch, including the weather channel! Colin loved the weather channel and all of those maps!

The first recollection I have of Colin and maps is the time that Bob went to Taiwan. We have a big World map hanging on his wall, down at Colin's height so he can reach it. So Bob showed Colin Taiwan. A couple weeks later, the topic of Taiwan came up again and Colin went over to the map and pointed right at Taiwan. We were so proud! This was quite a while ago, I think around the time that Colin started school so last fall maybe, so he was just under 3 years old. I think he still remembers where Taiwan is. I'll have to quiz him tonight, just to be sure!

Colin's favorite color

At first Colin's favorite color was pink -- specifically dark pink. Well, I'm not one to say "pink is a girl's color, not a boy's color", so dark pink it was. Actually, at a Mom's Night Out, I found out that almost all the boys' favorite colors were pink. So it's not like Colin is alone.

Anyway, the other day Colin informed us that his favorite color is now blue. I asked why and he said something about the babysitter suggesting a new favorite color. I can't remember exactly what Colin said, but definitely got the impression that the babysitter didn't think his favorite color should be pink. I guess if the babysitter didn't say it then eventually someone at school would've.

Along the lines of gender discussions, much like my take on telling Colin what color is a girl's color and boy's color, I really try to leave gender out of all discussions, like when he wants to wear my makeup or shave his legs or put toe nail polish on. So a couple of weeks ago I was totally unprepared when Colin told me that he wanted to have a baby when he grew up. I told him that only girls can have babies, he looked a little disappointed but he didn't pursue the topic further. I feel like I missed the boat on something deeper, and I may have squashed his paternal instincts or something. Probably not, he is only 3 1/2 and the topic may come up again!

So more of Colin's favorites: his favorite car is a motorcycle (oh, help me!), and his favorite food is grilled cheese. Whenever he talks about his favorites, it's "my favorite ---- in the whole world!"

Mueling

Nathan has this whimper that sounds like a kitten "mewing" but more intense, so it's mueling (like a mule, add 'ing'). He really does it a lot when I'm around and he wants my attention. You know how kids treat their mom's different than others.

Well, we just took a trip sans-kids to Jamaica, and Grandma & Grandpa GG watched the kids (which should be a whole blog in itself!) My mom, aka Grandma GG said that the first day Nathan was mueling a lot, but she just ignored it. So he stopped. Now all I have to do is work on ignoring it. Easier said than done!

Nathan & books

Nathan has finally started to let us read to him ... kinda. At least he doesn't close the book everytime we open it in front of him. I know at this point that we were reading a lot of books to Colin, and I know I shouldn't compare. But it's so much harder to read to the second child, especially when he is so stubborn like Nathan is sometimes. I mean Nathan has liked books for a long time, but only in the sense that he carries them around and look at them on his own. He never let us read to him until recently.

The books that Nathan is most interested in are the ones with real pictures in them, not cartoon pictures. Also books about trucks are his favorite. He will even go to bed with it and read it before going to sleep.

Books are really important to us and I really want to give Nathan everything that we gave Colin, which is impossible I know. So I am very excited that we are making some progress with the book thing!

New car

Colin says that when we get the next new car, he wants a convertable Lexus with special wheels so we can go on the train tracks.