What We're Up To

We went to the Natural History museum yesterday to see the new dinosaur exhibit. For once, I realized I actually have children in two different age groups. Felicity's basic reaction was fear. She burrowed her head in my neck, wanted out, and pretty much wanted nothing to do with them. Kwamai on the other hand probably could have stayed in the exhibit twice as long as we did, wanting to have me read him all the exhibit display signs and interact with the models, etc.

Most of the time lately Kwamai and Felicity are like two peas in a pod. Today they spent the better part of the afternoon playing together. Felicity played "cooking show" and Kwamai was her opening dancing act. Kwamai played tent-dweller and Felicity was his visitor. They like to play games where they sing songs back and forth, one starting and the other finishing a line or a sound or whatever.

Felicity looks more and more like a giantess to me. When I tell her she is a big girl she always insists "No, I'm little." We've had a few warm days when she's worn lighter dresses that she wore last summer. One in particular that was nearly touching the floor in the summer now hits well above her ankle. Of course I especially notice her size when I hold her, all 30 pounds of her!

Kwamai's reading has taken off to soaring in the last two weeks. He isn't always willing to try to read something on his own, but more and more he can decode words, and more and more I have to figure out how to explain why English is such a weird language where we have know, now and mow, knight, night, enough and all those other nonsensical spellings and pronunciations.

Felicity can read letters nearly without fail. She is like a little preschool text book poster girl and is very into shapes, colors, numbers and letters these days. I'm getting the idea that actually teaching her may work much more simply than with Kwamai, who is adamant about figuring everything out himself. But, so far, so good.

Oh, then of course there is the election coming up. Kwamai is in lock-step with Papa in keeping up with the news on his favorite candidate. And since Mama has a different favorite candidate, we've had some talks about how to hold different opinions than others without feeling the need to resort to name-calling and sign stealing. At least it looks like neither of us will have our favorite candidate running in the general election, which might just break Kwamai's heart.