In my last post i mentioned not having schedules, and for the most part that’s true. The exception is of course in meeting others for play or organised activities such as the many sports Alex does (swimming, karate, ju-jitsu, gymnastics and football). So we often find ourselves the last ones at the park in the evening or just choosing to do something because we can.
The other day on our way home from swimming I noticed a stationary freight train so we pulled over hoping to see it leave. We wanted to count the carriages. After an hour in the car, and lots of chatting it seemed we could wait no longer so we drove alongside. this was not as easy as it sounds as the road did not lay alongside the train line, only in patches. And we couldn’t walk along because of the lack of fencing (I was concerned for daniel mostly) and being in an industrial area. Anyway, we counted 41 carriages to Alex’s semi-satisfaction – he was hoping for 100!
Another random day that we all enjoyed was a rainy Tuesday. After a no-so-successful playdate took the kids to Kidz city – a playcentre. I don’t often go because of the cost but felt going home was a bad idea and we needed to release energy! The last time we’d been was when I was heavily pregnant with Daniel. It had changed heaps, and i must say for the better. We had so much fun chasing each other. Alex waited for Daniel and i, even though other children were enticing him to play. he kept saying he was ‘waiting for his family’. He was very helpful to Daniel, it was beautiful to see i love the way Daniel looks at Alex.
We’ve had a few issues with being social this past week or so. Alex is finding his place amongst his peers and learning that others won’t put up with being treated in certain ways (such as low level hitting and pushing). He’s also seemingly ‘left out’ where there are stronger friendships, such as his old school friends that are classmates. They play on a different level to him, and that’s not a compliment to them! Alex also appreciated his friends for different qualities – he can play for hours with some of them as they share interests with toys, but in a park they are not matched physically for instance and so he will seek more appropriate play. I think this is a wonderful quality as he is being true to himself without being hurtful to others. I observed Alex being very kind to some younger friends at the park too, he can be quite the ‘older brother’ figure when he chooses.
I’ve obtained a few more snake books, and we looked up some pink hybrid images on google. Alex loves pink! He also painted a lava snake, and made up some details about it’s life. It went something like this:
‘Lava snakes live in volcanoes. They go into the ocean to cool down. they eat people and they’re long, but not as long as reticulated pythons’.
I also tried a little activity, which in hindsight I had high expectations for Alex to love and tick some learning boxes that may be a little to schooly… Anyway… Alex loves long things so I went through one of the new books I have and wrote the names of various snakes on a piece of paper with it’s associated length. I set up a tape measure and rope and we placed each snake name at the appropriate length. I did the first few and Alex did some too. He could read the numbers (decimals) and often find them on the tape measure, though some were tricky to interpret. But he could generally work out the relativity of snake lengths. It was quite nice to see how long a reticulated python would look!
