Noah? Perhaps Huck Finn?

The following is a conversation Joshua and I had right before he went to bed the other night.

One day, when I'm older, when I'm probably 6 years old, can we build a boat together?
A boat?
Yea.
What are we going to make the boat out of?
Wood.
I don't think I know how to make a boat.
That's ok, I know how.
You do? How do you know how to make a boat?
I just know how. I was just born that way.
Sure. We'll make a boat one day.

Then, he went to bed. After he went to bed, I started thinking about this...is he thinking a big boat we can ride on? a raft? a toy boat out of a chunk of wood to play in the creek with? I haven't asked yet but can't wait to hear the answer!

It's official. I'm the parent of a Kindergartener.

Thursday was Joshua's first day of Kindergarten. I don't know how it's done throughout the country, but here, Kindergarteners have staggered entry days. The Kindergarteners are broken down into three groups with one group going Tuesday, one going Wednesday and one going Thursday. Thursday was Joshua's assigned day. Tuesday, he cried because he couldn't go on the first day. He didn't understand why he had to wait until Thursday. I didn't dare tell him that his best bud Ben went on Wednesday. I guess staggered entry is a good thing. The teachers only have 6 or 7 kids for the day instead of 20. The kids have less competition for attention.

We all gathered outside the cafeteria and waited for the teachers to come meet us. There were lots of picture taking and video taping going on. I took Joshua's picture before we left home and I didn't even take my camera to school with me. I'm not sure if he is still too young to be embarassed by all the picture taking that moms tend to do but I didn't want to press my luck. And, I didn't even cry!

Amazingly, Joshua was most forthcoming with information about his day. After preschool, I could get nothing from him unless I asked direct pointed questions and then it he gave very little info. But yesterday afternoon, wow! They did a shortened version of the daily routine. First, they had circle time and the teacher read a book...but he couldn't remember what the book was about. Next, they did an activity...he drew a picture of an apple tree. Then, they went outside where he mostly climbed on some red thing and hung upside down. He bought his lunch, chicken nuggets, tater tots and peaches, and carried the tray by himself. After lunch is a little sketchy...they did another activity, he chose pattern blocks and chose a hard one, a pineapple. They also went outside a second time. They did an abbreviated rest time but didn't get out their towels. And, they had snack time. We were able to pick him up a few minutes early that day.

Friday afternoon was no class for kindergarteners but we did have meet the teacher that afternoon. I met the teacher, the teacher assistant and the student teacher that will be helping on Wednesdays. They all seemed super nice. Matthew from soccer and t-ball is in his class. Ben is in the class next door...they share a hallway and a bathroom so they could potentially throw things at each other if they wanted to (Joshua overheard me tell someone this and he said matter of factly, The teacher isn't going to let us throw things at each other). Oh, and he is very excited about having a "sports" teacher (PE teacher) and can't wait until the school's fall carnival thing.

Monday is his first "real" day. I hope I get as much detail in the coming days as I got on Thursday.

The smell of money

Today, we said good-bye to a dear old friend, my 1990 Toyota Tercel. Hard to believe I've had her for 18 years. She was a terrific little car, haven't had to do anything to her except regular car stuff, oil changes, tires, brakes, struts, a few thermostats. She currently needs new shocks but the buyer took her as is.

Anyway, I got her while I was in college. I was visiting my dad, we went shopping and found her. The 1991 models were already on the lot, she was the last 1990 model they had and she was kept in the showroom. I don't know how much she cost, my dad did the haggling, I just remember him saying "How much do I need to put down so that she can have payments around $X.XX for 3 years?" and I drove her away.

I've put many a mile on her cruising the roads, going nowhere, listening to music, first with my best friend/roommate from college, then with my best dog, lastly with my best husband.

She was replaced in 1999 by a Camry. I've only driven her a few times since then. Scott, however, drove her to and from work all the time. I guess he adopted her as his car and she served him as well as she served me.

Now, 18 years later, she belongs to Zack, a 16 year old who was just so excited to buy his first car. His dad said we made Zacks day. I gave her a little pat on the hood, told Zack that Lynyrd Skynyrd was her favorite tunes...luckily he said he likes Skynyrd so it won't be a problem playing them for her. He was going to take her home, clean her up, he has plans to replace the stereo, which will probably happen before he replaces the shocks, he is a 16 year old boy you know.

So, Joshua got to see and hold a $100 bill for the first time. He was somewhat disappointed that he couldn't have it and somewhat disappointed he couldn't have half of all the money but felt a little better when I told him that most likely, some of it would be spent on him. I mean, most of my money is spent on him in one way or the other. I let him hold the $100 while we were in the car going to the bank. He held onto it tightly, looked at the front and back closely, then stuck it up to his nose and said "Mmmmm, it smells good!"

Let's Get This Party Started!

This is Joshua's current favorite phrase. Like all his phrases, I'm not sure where it came from but I have to laugh when he says it. He gets dressed in the morning and runs out into the living room "Alright! Let's get this party started!" "Come on Joshua, we've got to go to the store"..."Alright! Let's get this party started!" "Let's brush teeth"..."Alright! Let's get this party started!"

And speaking of parties, we went to a birthday party yesterday evening. I' had wondered about kids with summer birthdays before. When you are 4, 5, or so, most of your friends are your preschool friends. If you have a birthday in the summer, many families are on vacation, you haven't seen the preschool kids in a month or two, will they remember you? Will they come?

The party we went to had a really good turnout of preschool kids and friends of the family kids. Joshua, Ben, Caitlin and Daphne were all there...During preschool, Joshua, Ben, Caitlin and Daphne went to just about every birthday party there was. Other kids were hit and miss but you could always count on those 4 to be there. And there were some kids that didn't attend any of the birthday parties.

I think people are either party attenders or not party attenders. We just happen to be among the party attending group.

The Dog Days of Summer are upon us

Everyone knows that the “dog days of summer” occur during the hottest and muggiest part of the season. Webster defines “dog days” as...

1 : the period between early July and early September when the hot sultry weather of summer usually occurs in the northern hemisphere2 : a period of stagnation or inactivity
But where does the term come from? Why do we call the hot, sultry days of summer “dog days?”
In ancient times, when the night sky was unobscured by artificial lights and smog, different groups of peoples in different parts of the world drew images in the sky by “connecting the dots” of stars. The images drawn were dependent upon the culture: The Chinese saw different images than the Native Americans, who saw different pictures than the Europeans. These star pictures are now called constellations, and the constellations that are now mapped out in the sky come from our European ancestors.

They saw images of bears, (Ursa Major and Ursa Minor), twins, (Gemini), a bull, (Taurus), and others, including dogs, (Canis Major and Canis Minor).

The brightest of the stars in Canis Major (the big dog) is Sirius, which also happens to be the brightest star in the night sky. In fact, it is so bright that the ancient Romans thought that the earth received heat from it. Look for it in the southern sky (viewed from northern latitudes) during January.

In the summer, however, Sirius, the “dog star,” rises and sets with the sun. During late July Sirius is in conjunction with the sun, and the ancients believed that its heat added to the heat of the sun, creating a stretch of hot and sultry weather. They named this period of time, from 20 days before the conjunction to 20 days after, “dog days” after the dog star.

The conjunction of Sirius with the sun varies somewhat with latitude. And the “precession of the equinoxes” (a gradual drifting of the constellations over time) means that the constellations today are not in exactly the same place in the sky as they were in ancient Rome. Today, dog days occur during the period between July 3 and August 11. Although it is certainly the warmest period of the summer, the heat is not due to the added radiation from a far-away star, regardless of its brightness. No, the heat of summer is a direct result of the earth's tilt.

Copyright © 1999, 2000 by Jerry Wilson

Thanks to http://www.wilstar.com/dogdays.htm

ok...so do you have to go somewhere EVERY day????

Joshua and I met Kelly, Sydney and Mollie for dinner at Chick-Fil-A last night. Chick-Fil-A is a great place to go with kids because they have a great play area. After eating, the kids can go play while the adults sit and talk to each other. After our friends left, Joshua and I stayed a little longer, he was playing with some boy in the play area, they seemed to be having a good time, I thought we could stay until 8:00 or until the other kid left, whichever came first.

I didn't have a book to read, any one to talk to, no food to eat, so I got out my phone to see what all my Facebook friends were doing. I updated my status saying I was at Chick-Fil-A watching Joshua play. Then, a friend makes a comment asking if I have to go somewhere EVERY day.

I guess it may seem like we go somewhere every day. We do go a lot. I work from home and have to keep regular 8:30 to 5:30 hours. Some days we do play or go outside with me coming in every 15 minutes or so to check my phone, fax and email. Some days I'm too busy to play and Joshua has to play alone or watch tv. Some days, I can only play Legos, superheroes. hide and seek or talk about bugs for so long before I go bonkers. Some days I take an actual lunch hour to go eat or to go to the store, but most days I don't take a lunch hour and I don't leave home . We live, some might say, "in the country" and there are no neighborhood children for Joshua to play with. Scott works a noon until midnight shift so we only see and talk to him for 2 1/2 hours between the time he gets up and the time he leaves for work.

When I'm finished work for the day, I like to take Joshua somewhere where he can play with other kids, run around, yell, scream, have fun, talk to someone other than me. I also like to take Joshua somewhere where I can sit, read a book, talk to someone other than him. Actually, I think our going somewhere may be more for me than for him.

Stay at home moms probably have some of the same problems as they are at home with the kids all day and no adults to talk to, but they can go to the park, go to the playground, go on a picnic, attend a playgroup, all designed so kids can play and adults can talk. Work outside of home moms have kids in daycare, designed so kids can play and adults can talk (while at work). Working from home with a kid in the home can be hard to do....But worth every bit of frustration.

Joshua starting kindergarten is going to be such a bittersweet moment.

T-ball

I'm sad to say that T-ball is over, Saturday was Joshua's last game. I think he really enjoyed playing. I know I really enjoyed watching. I've always liked watching live baseball. Maybe because it reminds me of when I was a kid walking home from elementary school and passing by the highschool baseball field. Lots of times when they were practicing or playing, I would stop and watch. Pre-Joshua, Scott and I attended numerous Durham Bulls games, Joshua has been several times, but only once since he is actually old enough to know he is at a baseball game. And I've just recently discovered college baseball on TV.

Joshua played T-ball for the first time this year for the Chatham County YMCA. I wish I had known Chatham County had a YMCA before this year as T-ball starts at age 3, but, better late than never. The Chatham County Parks and Rec also offers T-ball but I've heard from other moms that they are very competitive, have multiple practices and multiple games during the week, not something we were looking for with our first experience.

YMCA T-ball was perfect. All the games/practices were held on Saturday morning at 9am. The kids did some warm up exericises, then played a game. Their version of playing a game was one team in the outfield in a semi-circle from the 3rd baseline to the 1st baseline and a kid on first while the other team batted. The batter would hit the ball, run to first base. In the outfield, every single kid ran for the ball no matter where it was hit. When someone caught it, they were so excited to get it that they would hold it way up in the air, look around and smile so everyone could see they caught it, then they would throw it to first base. Every kid got to bat. After the last kid on the team batted, the inning was over and the teams switched sides. Then every kid on the other team got to bat. Depending on how long an inning took, the game was either over, or they kept switching back and forth until it was 10:00 and time to stop. The parents then had to go into the field and make a "spirit tunnel", holding hands forming a tunnel for the kids to run through while we whooped it up for them. Finally, snack and then home.

I'm hoping Joshua grows to like baseball as much as Scott and I do.

Franklin's Fossil

I love watching the kids cartoon Franklin. In case you don't know Franklin, he is a turtle, his best friend is Bear and his other friends are Snail, Rabbit, Beaver, Goose and Fox. Franklin seems to be about Kindergarten age, his teacher is Mr. Owl. There are a lot of good stories on Franklin and I often find myself explaining things to Joshua by saying "Remember on Franklin when ..." And while it has no relation to this blog entry, it something I often ponder, how Franklin can have a friend Goose but when he finds a baby duckling, it's a pet?

Anyway, one day Franklin and Bear are working in the garden digging potatoes and they find a fossil. They decide to open a museum, charge their friends cookies to come see the fossil. Their friends get upset when Franklin and Bear know nothing about the fossil and demand their cookies back, but, of course, Bear has already eaten the cookies. Franklin and Bear decide to give the fossil to Mr. Mole who knows a lot about fossils and has his own fossil collection.

Because of Franklin's Fossil, Joshua now thinks we can go out into the yard, dig a hole, find a fossil. We go for walks and he picks up every other rock he finds and asks me if it is a fossil. When digging post holes, he had to go through the dirt to look for fossils. He gets my little garden spade (aka his shovel), digs his own holes and looks for fossils. I'm sure fossil hunting is a lot of fun but he just doesn't understand that we are not going to dig a hole in our back yard and find a dinosaur bone or trilobite.

When we went to Mimi's house for Spring Break back in April, we did go to the Fossil Museum in Gray. Yes, Gray Tennessee has a fossil museum. If you are a blog reader and live in East Tennessee and have never been to the fossil museum, I suggest you take a trip there. Who woulda thought that saber-toothed cat, short-faced bear, ground sloth, rhino, alligator, camel, shovel-tusked elephant, Eurasian badger, the world’s largest collection of fossil tapirs, and the world’s only near-complete fossil red panda would be found Gray Tennessee! We toured the fossil dig site and even sifted for our own fossils but it was cold and rainy that day so we didn't sift long. Joshua has plans to attend a summer camp there when he is 7 years old and talks about it often.

We are also members of the Museum of Life and Science in Durham. They have recently reopened their Dinosaur Trail Exhibit - some of you NC readers may remember from school field trips They have a fossil dig site there but sand was brought in from the coast and you are supposed to be able to find shark teeth. Joshua has numerous shark teeth we collected from beach trips but to him, shark teeth are not the same as fossils.

Joshua does have a couple of fossils from Dinosaurs Rock school assemblies at his former preschools. I guess it just isn't the same as if you found them yourself.

So, after watching Franklin and Indiana Jones, Joshua thinks he now wants to be a fossil digger/dinosaur bone digger/treasure hunter when he grows up. I guess it is a little more exciting than my wanting to be an architect after watching Brady Bunch and an advertising exec after watching Bewitched.