Grades! Can you believe it?

I can't believe I haven't posted since June. Well, OK, I can totally believe that since we've been so very busy! Jake started Pre-First at Brookfield School in August. He's doing really really well. Out of 80 spelling words (8 weeks of tests) he maintains a 100% average! He's reading well and doing addition and subtraction in Math. October 26th was the end of the first quarter and we got his first report car don Halloween. As in PE, Health, Computers, and Music (the only ones that gave letter grades). He got "Satisfactory" in everything else, other than his "Very Satisfactory" (highest mark) in Attitude and Effort for Spelling. There was an "S-" in penmanship, which didn't surprise me at all. He's struggling with it, not because he can't do it but because he simply won't take the time. It was a wonderful report card and we're very proud of him!!

The picture is of Jake having his first horseback riding lesson (a 5th birthday present from Memaw). He loved it and didn't want to get off of the horse. Oh, no.

Mommy Jake Week - Day 5

Today wasn't really eventful.We went to breakfast and lunch with Daddy, played tennis in Glenbrook park (he wants tennis lessons now), went to see Madagascar 3 (hilarious), and ran some errands. One of those errands was to find an object that I had no idea was going to require a tresure map and a lot of luck - A Twilight Turtle. This little object is a stuffed turtle that projects stars around the room. It's supposed to help babies/kids who are afraid of the dark. In the past, Jake wouldn't let me leave the room until he had fallen asleep. I was informed yesterday, completely out of the blue, that if one of these turtles was purchased, that I would be allowed to leave and he would fall asleep without me. For this I would drive all over town. Target was sold out. Brainy Zoo was sold out. Babies R Us had ONE. The guy in line behind me asked how much they were. Dude, I got the last one and I don't care if you were going to use it to save kittens, it's MINE.

So, I've been replaced by a $35 plastic turtle. Fitting end to a wonderful week of bonding with my baby because, really, being a Mommy is half cuddles and half letting him go and watching him grow up. I'm sure glad I had this week while he's still letting me cuddle him half the time, the growing up is happening way too fast.

Mommy Jake Week - Days 3 and 4

Day 3: Today was our slug day. We watched movies and made suncatchers. Jake needed a rest and it wasn't hard for me to rest too! In the afternoon we went to the Folsom Aquatic Center and swam for 3 HOURS! Jake made a new friend (of course) and spent the whole time jumping into the water with him. He really seemed to be over his fear of getting his face in the water. He even spent a lot of time jumping off of a deck that was about 18" above the water! And even though we weren't "practicing" his swimming got a lot better just trying to keep up with the other boy. We had snack with the boy and his mom, who was really nice, and Jake insisted I give them a card. He got a little sun on his face and fell asleep on the way home. I got burned to a crisp. Like "can't sleep at night" burned. Really should have done something to stop that. DoH.

Day 4: After 4 days of playing Wii, Jake and I decided to try some actual sports. So, after taking Daddy his meds AGAIN, we went to Big 5 and bought cheap tennis racquets, new goggles (though Jake swam all day the day before without goggles), and a cheap putter for me. We went home for a bit and played tennis (tip: never play tennis with two Shiba Inus, see picture) in the yard for a bit. Then we went to Sonic for lunch and spent 3 hours at Wacky Tacky, 2 of them with Cassie and Alicia. While Jake was super exited to see Cassie, they have an interesting relationship and he got tired of her bossing him around to play with her. Between that and being tired, it was time to go. Guitar class came next, then dinner at our least favorite place (Jake's favorite), Lumberjack's. Ick.

Honestly, at this point in the week I was expecting to understand why some animals eat their young. I thought I would be begging to go back to work. Alas, no. While Jake misses his friends, I will be crying on Monday when I have to go back to work and spend the day apart from my guy. He amazes me and cracks me up. His stories and jokes are darling. I love watching his mind work and watching him learn new things. Mommy Jake week will definately have to become an annual tradition!

Mommy Jake Week - Day 2

First, let me start with all the videos I promised:

Guitar recital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=om7CFDMJFrg

Hip Hop recital: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zgK7hVHe7J4

Graduation: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=coU4sFYMYkY, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SB6-vKWTocs, and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iUgLLe0f-vU.

I'm glad Jake has discovered the Wii, but man am I SORE! Boxing, bowling, tennis, golf, baseball... it was all a little too much for me. We also went to the Sacramento Children's Museum, which lasted about an hour (maybe a little less) before Jake was bored. Note to self: don't bother unless he has friends with him. After lunch we went to Monster Mini Golf, which was really fun. No counting, not really playing by the rules, but he was starting to get the idea. It's really cool and has great party rooms. If you are in his playgroup, expect to be going there in September (hint, hint). Pretty mellow day, all in all. It was his 5th day without a nap and he was asleep by 8:20 so we may need to build in a little nap time today, but it was a good indication of how he will be when Pre-1st starts in a few months.

It's hard to tell, but the picture is Jake getting his arm eaten by a shark in blacklight. :-P

Mommy Jake Week - Day 1

Jake and I are spending this week together. We both took the week off and I wanted to recrd how well, or not, I do as a stay-at-home mom for the week. First of all, let me say that I am terrified. I do not expect to be able to maintain my patience for the week. I expect that by week's end we will both want to go back to our regular lives. But for today, it was awesome.

Tilden Park Little Farm
I had heard a lot about this place reading the Chron over the years (it's one of the many awesome free things to do in the Bay Area) and really wanted to go. Can't say I was really impressed. While Jake always loves animals, it's tiny and nothing we haven't seen a billion times. I guess if you've never seen a cow it's cool, but we live in Sacramento, home of the State Fair and (just this weekend) the Horse Expo. It was a little, "this is it?" But a pretty drive up there. My lesson: have a paper map. There is NO iPhone service up there.  Seriously.

Lawrence Hall of Science
I just noticed that the last time I blogged was the first time we went to the Lawrence. Clearly we like it there. Jake really wanted this to be the kick start to the week so we went and spent about 3.5 hours there. We got to pet a bunny and a dove, but he was a little disappointed that they weren't taking the tarantula out today. He spent a lot of time outside, and just generally kicking around. My goal this week is to let him spend as much time doing stuff as he wants. It should improve his experience and my patience. He really could have spent an hour just at the wall where you create a ping pong ball drop. We left so late that we ended up having to stop at Fenton's for dinner on the way home. Bummer. :-)


The gem phrases for this week are:

Learning is more important than winning (I felt like a success as a parent for about an hour after that one!).
After reading Solla Sollew: Troubles aren't bad, that's how you learn!
50 feet from the Walgreens parking lot in Berkeley: I can't help but notice that it appears that Jake does not have his snack...
Mommy, you always know what to say!
Me: Oh, I give up (trying to navigate and find a parking spot on Shadduck in Berkeley). Mommy, don't give up!

I love that kid.

The Graduate

 

Friday, June 8, 2012, Jacob Stanton Everett (as he insisted he be announced) grafuated frm pre-school. All of the preschool classes sang "Time of My Life" from Dirty Dancing. His class sang Dynamite and then all the classes returned to the stage to sing "Good Life" before getting their diplomas. It was seriously darling. Hot as the underside of a scorpion, but darling.  Video will be uploaded to You Tube as soon as I can figure out how to get it off of the camera. Duh.

The next day Memaw and Daddy took him to the Horse Expo. He was enamoured with the lasso. And his new hat (thanks, Memaw!!).

The Minister’s Cat goes to Berkley

Sunday we took Jake to the Lawrence Hall of Science and had a great and geeky day!

The Minister’s Cat is a preoccupied cat.
The trip down there was a somewhat unpleasant peek into my life when Jake is a teenager. An hour and a half with Steve playing on his phone and Jake playing on his iPod. Was anyone talking to me? Heck no, I’m just the chauffeur. Once we got to the Hall, however, it was game on!

The Minister’s Cat is an experimental cat.
Jake got to be in an experiment on the development of logical reasoning in kids for some Cal grad students. He was his usual charming self, but we had to tell them that the results were probably skewed. They put 4 blue, 4 red, and 14 green bricks in a bag and asked Jake what color one pulled at random would be. Of course Jake said “green.” However, we had to tell them that, in all honesty, green is his favorite color and he probably would have said green in any scenario. Still, it was fun being part of science!

The Minister’s Cat is a fossilized cat.
We also got to see a REAL triceratops fossil. Not the plaster cast, but the real deal. Mommy was really probably more excited than anyone.

The Minister’s Cat is a memorable cat.
Jake’s favorite things were the pin wall, the paper airplanes, and the rocks outside that let you experience an “earthquake.”

Steve liked the paper airplanes best.

I liked playing Minister’s Cat on the car ride home, but I’m geeky that way (obviously). It’s really no wonder that Jake’s vocabulary scores for school were at the top of the chart.

The Minister’s Cat is a clever cat.
The child is clever but entirely random. One of the things we’re working on is getting him to give us context before asking a question: “In Kung Fu Panda 2, why does…” and so on. Sometimes he still leaves it out and the questions can get tricky. On the way to Berkley we got this stumper: “Why is there so much water in trash cans?” WHUCK? When we got it narrowed down to MegaMind, the question became a little more understandable. If you haven’t seen the movie, after MegaMind takes over Metro City/San Francisco he falls for the intrepid reporter, Roxanne Richey. When she laments how full of garbage the city has become, MegaMind takes he dehydration gun around the city and zaps all the garbage into tiny blue cubes to clean up. So, what Jake wanted to know is why, when you take the water out of a garbage can, is it only a tiny cube. Think about that for a second: to ask this question you have to know what dehydration is, that hard things like garbage cans don’t have that much water in them (unlike soft things like, say, a person), and you have to have a basic grasp of the conservation of mass. Wow. Awesome question, Dude. I’m totally putting my money on you for a future Nobel Prize.

The Minister’s Cat is a tired cat.
After a long and super fun day, Jake was asleep early. So was I, but nothing could possibly be more fun or awesome than a day in a science museum with my favorite guys!