Hallie and Travis

Oh, the crosses our young Hallie has to bear!

Travis has always, but even more so in recent months, been a bit of a verbal percussion section. You couldn’t call what he does beat-boxing but it’s close. He’s frequently chanting a beat or improvising songs. I’m kind of used to it, and sometimes I tune it out. (And occasionally I just beg for silence.) Hallie, however, was really noticing it while in the car this afternoon. She wasn’t annoyed by it so much as resigned to it. Read the rest of this entry »

We’re pretty diligent about recycling our cardboard boxes. The problem is that lately I’ve been having trouble actually getting them out of the house.

Travis will see a box in the garage, waiting to be broken down. “Oh, can I have that? That’s a perfect house for Bingo!” He even covets boxes that are still in use for their original purpose. He’s been eyeing my 1-gallon Ziplock bag box for weeks. I’ll catch him peeking in the cabinet to make sure it’s still there and that the bags are getting used. If he were a sneaky kid (which fortunately he’s not) he’d be siphoning off plastic bags to empty the box sooner.

Travis has built multi-room (i.e. multi-box) homes for several of his stuffed friends. They are held together by paper, tape, vast quantities of glue, and even wood scraps. Some of the rooms are decorated and even have photos hanging on the walls. He has a great time building and playing with all these creations. I have a slightly less great time tripping over them every time I turn around. But it’s all in the name of creativity, right? And part of the recycling triangle is “reuse.” Travis is reusing at a furious pace!

During one of Hallie’s Camp Ranoca weeks, the kids were treated to a magic show and taught some basic magic tricks. Hallie was quite impressed by this and is eager to learn more tricks. I mentioned to H & T that I wished the city offered a magic camp. They thought that was a great idea. Then Travis launched into a list of all the camps he’d like the city to offer. The list won’t surprise anyone who knows Travis. Read the rest of this entry »

“Snort” has become Travis’s current all-purpose word. Sometimes he uses it if he’s been reprimanded and is embarrassed. Other times he turns it into a song. And other times he just uses it when he feels the need to fill empty air-time. I suppose as far as unpleasant words it’s not all that bad. And I prefer the word to the sound.

On the positive side, the potty talk has pretty much disappeared. Hurray! Though every once in a while Travis gets a mischievous grin and announces, “potty talk.” I pick my battles, and that one’s too amusing to bother fighting.

Travis had his first soccer practice on Saturday morning. He was super-excited, wearing his “Goal” shirt and putting on his shin-guards way in advance. Travis is convinced he’s a great soccer player and was eager to tell his coach how good he is at guarding the goal. This is, so far, solely Travis’s opinion of his performance. But I suppose a little confidence is a good thing.

There are 16 four-year-olds on his team. Even with only about 10 kids at his practice, it looked likely to be chaos. But his coaches did a remarkable job of keeping all the kids engaged and (somewhat) attentive. I think his games will be pretty crazy, but so far it looks like they’ll all have a great time.

We had Hallie’s meet the teacher for 2nd grade last night. I had a good feeling when, before we even made it to the classroom, we’d had 2 or 3 families congratulate us on getting Miss Lloyd or express envy that that was who Hallie would have. Miss Lloyd didn’t disappoint. And we already know and love Mrs. Turner, the assistant teacher, from her afternoons as the crossing guard. It’s shaping up to be a good year for our Buggle!

We had a delightful time at Lake Gaston last weekend! The Naylors were kind enough to offer us their lake house while they weren’t using it. (Thanks, Ralph and Suzzanne!) We headed up after Travis’s soccer practice and got in a good 24 hours there before heading home. Even Rocket was invited, and he proved himself a true lake house dog. Read the rest of this entry »

Travis asked me yesterday what a biologist does. After I explained it to him, he declared “I’m going to be an evercabiologist.” Of course I had to ask what an evercabiologist does.

“An evercabiologist does every job with an “ist” on the end of it,” he explained.

“So, you’re going to be a scientIST and a chemIST and a paleontologIST and all those others, too?” I asked.

“Exactly!”

I hope he gets some scholarships for all that schooling!

Travis has been arguing with us for the last couple of days that “couple” doesn’t mean “two.” Today he was convinced enough of his position that he asked me to go look it up on the Internet. I was folding laundry and told him I would when I was through. Before I could get to it, he announced proudly:

“Actually, I already know I’m right because I already looked it up myself!”

“You did?” I asked. “Where?”

“On the baby Internet. I looked it up on the baby Internet while I was still in your tummy.”

Knowing that Travis had access to his own Internet in utero explains so much!

While Kelly took Hallie to Hadley’s birthday party, I racked my brain for things to do with Travis. While I cleaned up the kitchen after lunch he spent some time alone in the playroom playing by himself. I didn’t know what would engage him, so I appealed to his curiosity.

“Travis,” I announced casually. “I think its time I showed you something so cool it will be the coolest thing you’ll see today.”

I saw the wheels start to turn in Travis’s head.

“What is it?” he said with his serious, frowny face on.

“Well, its something really cool. Something you haven’t seen before.”

This began ten minutes of cat-and-mouse, with me reeling him slowly in. He would come up with a potential cool thing and I would casually say it was cooler than that. Wrong guesses from Travis included “filling up the kitchen soap dispenser,” among other things. For some of them I had to stop and tease him, “now what could be so cool about that?”

The kicker, so to speak, was when I asked him to put his shoes on.

“A hike?” he asked hopefully. I shook my head.

After the last dish was washed, I took him up into the attic and picked up three items: an audio cable with phono plugs on each end, a red cardboard box, and a canvas guitar-shaped bag. It was my el-cheapo Gibson Epiphone electric guitar: one that I hadn’t played in probably ten years. Surprisingly it was still mostly in tune.

Upon unpacking it all, Travis agreed that this was the coolest thing he’d seen all day. We spent the next 30 minutes strumming the guitar and singing, after which he insisted on calling Mommy and proudly announcing what we had been doing.

I think it made an impression!