Happy #6, Charlie!

Time to catch up a little with October's birthday boy. 

Charlie has grown up so much, in so many significant and obvious ways, during the last few months. It's definitely been a dynamic time for him, starting kindergarten, turning six, having a new sister.. and lots of other big changes.  Please excuse this post if it sounds a little braggy, but Charlie just "has a lot going for him," as Will says it. I'll try and mention some of his more frustrating characteristics, lest he seem too good to be true :) 

First, kindergarten: Will and I were not sure how Charlie would handle kindergarten. If you know him very well, you know that one aspect of his personality is quite a paradox; in some situations he is exceptionally confident and outgoing, and in other--even similar--situations, he's VERY shy and reserved. So we weren't sure how he would handle being in a new classroom with kids and teachers he didn't know. Fortunately he has been thriving, a fact which I deduced only from clues, because when prodded for any information whatsoever about school, he will shrug and say "I don't know."  

For example, I noticed that, with one exception (we'll get to that later) he has been going to school willingly every day, and even seems excited to go. And he's attended about 39 birthday parties at "the bounce house" so far this year, where we've observed him having a good time with friends from school, so I concluded he must be doing well socially. And the homework he brings home is way too easy for him, so I assumed he's not struggling academically. (He can count to 100, WITHOUT using the old 1,2..skip-a-few,..99,100 trick!) 

All my suspicions were confirmed at parent-teacher conferences when his teacher told me that "He's pretty much a perfect kid." If you're interested, she also told me that he has amazing leadership abilities, is well ahead of the game on his kindergarten benchmarks and is in the 98th percentile of something or other. (I hope it wasn't the 98th percentile of nose-picking or glue-eating or something) The teacher, in turn, was pleased to hear that Charlie is learning Spanish well enough to correct my accent when I try to hablo a little espanol with him. (Charlie is in an all-day Spanish-immersion kindergarten program)

As for extracurricular activities, Charlie is still doing piano and is almost through the second set of books. Which means he can play with both hands at the same time, and even three or four notes at the same time. Unfortunately there is no evidence to support my claim that he's quite talented because the only people who have ever witnessed him playing are myself, Will, Antonia and the baby, and she can't even talk, so she's not much of a witness. I can't even get him to play while I record it on the phone. Maybe someday...  

In the meantime, it's pleasure enough to teach such a willing, capable kid. And he's really cute when he bends aaaaalllllll they way down to the keys to play softly, or sticks out his tongue when he concentrates. We also recently acquired a drum set, which you can probably imagine is jolly good fun for a six-year-old boy. Fortunately it is an electric drum set so it can be miked into the earphones, for the sake of mom's sanity. He hasn't started any formal training yet, and it will be secondary to the piano, but Will fancies that Charlie could someday be the drummer for his jazz band, or the drummer for something equally rad, like a ska band. (What ever happened to ska? Is it still around? Mighty Mighty Bosstones?)

Charlie also started taking gymnastics in the fall, which he has taken to with zeal. It's another thing that he has a natural talent for, and another thing I really enjoy watching him do. After a couple of months, he can already do headstands, cartwheels, bridges/back bends, flips on the trampoline and any number of cool things he learned on the pomel horse, rings and parallel bars which he tries to demonstrate for me on his bunk bed.  Will and I have both taught music students who also did gymnastics, and we came to the conclusion based on our experiences that kids who do gymnastics have acquired a little something extra: they're more focused, motivated and hard-working than other kids seem to be. That could be a fallacious assumption, there was a REALLY small sample in this ad hoc study we conducted, but we're willing to give it a shot. 

And based on what I've seen so far, I think there might be something to our theory. Last week I saw an eight-year-old gymnast with more arm muscle definition than I could ever hope to have...and she was doing one-armed push-ups! OK, kidding about the push-ups. But still, having Charlie spend some time each week with these really determined kids and coaches can't be a bad thing. Plus, he loves the trampoline :)  

Who was more thrilled opening a box of Star Wars toys
from Will's childhood: Will or Charlie?
Actually, it might have been me

On top of all of his other activities, Charlie still manages to find time for his most recent preoccupation: anything related to Star Wars. Interestingly, he hadn't actually seen the movie until long after he developed his passion for all things Star Wars, so he was perpetually asking me questions about his Lego Star Wars or his Star Wars action figures which I am not nerdy, er, I mean cool enough to answer. One magical day a huge package arrived from Will's mom, and it might as well have been Christmas right then and there for all the oooh-ing and ahhh-ing and exclamations of wonderment. Because the box contained all of Will's Star Wars action figures from when HE was an eager, young Star Wars fan, in fantastic condition, no less. (Really, Will must have played quite delicately with his toys as a child. I'm so jealous. I wish I still had my Popples...) So Charlie's been enjoying Will's x-wings and y-wings and imperial fighters and droids and Luke Skywalker in various outfits, and Darth Vader and Yoda (actually he gave Yoda to Antonia, deceived by Yoda's tiny-ness and unaware of his true value :) Of course it was quite exciting when he actually watched the movie and he figured out good guys vs. bad guys, and who pilots which ship, etc. 

Note the "gun" in his "holster." I guess when you don't let your six-year-old
have a toy gun, you shouldn't be surprised when he makes one
out of legos and holsters it in a belt-clip case for an old-school mp3 player

As I mentioned in the previous post, we went to Utah for my brother's wedding, and then some of my family came back to Las Vegas with us for a visit. Charlie had lots of time to hang out with his best buddy, his cousin Cameron. I'm sure he'll remember the day of the wedding as one long Star Wars Lego adventure which periodically changed location and was interrupted only for pictures and refreshments. And running around, but ONLY in places where running around was prohibited.

Cam, Charlie and one of the Star Wars legos

At Lake Mead for a picnic

What's a trip to Lake Mead without playing by the dumpsters?

Throwing BIG rocks in the lake. Seriously, I was worried someone was going to get walloped.  It's hard to come to an agreement with six-year-olds about what constitutes a "big" rock 

feeding the ducks 

For Charlie's birthday, he wanted a Lego cake. I consented to try to finagle some cake components into a lego-like structure, and I think I accomplished that much. I did not promise that it would taste good, and I'm glad. Because it didn't. Everyone present at the celebration consumed a polite amount, and then no one ate any more of it for a week until I threw it away. I think Charlie was impressed anyway, he gave me a big grin when he saw the cake.

Charlie also wanted to go to the "bounce house" (the previously-mentioned hot spot for kindergarten birthdays) but instead of inviting every kid in his kindergarten class, it was a family-only affair. We have a lot of opinions about things that more relaxed people probably don't stew over like we do (see above about toy guns), and one of those opinions is that our kids will only have birthday parties with friends on certain years (we haven't decided which years yet.) If you'd like to hear more about why, just let me know and I'll dust off my soapbox. Oh, who am I kidding. My soapbox never has a chance to get dusty.

****The birthday pictures were too yellow, so I tried messing around with the tint and this is what I came up with. I promise, this is an improvement.

Birthday dinner of choice: french toast.  And Charlie had asked
to have hot lunch on his birthday, which also turned out to be french toast. 

The Lego cake

Toolbox and tools from Baca. Actually the toolbox was a kit,
and he made it with his tools.  No daughter-in-law of mine
will complain that her son doesn't know how to fix things around the house!

Bounce house fun

When it was time to get out the Halloween costumes, we discovered that Charlie's ninja costume still fit him, a fact that speaks more to the style and fit of the costume itself, and not to any deficiency in Charlie's ability to grow.  Lucky for me, he had no objection to being a Ninja costume for the third year in a row. That's really the kind of kid Charlie is. He doesn't get hung up on having a certain, very specific costume, or toy, etc. If he liked it once, he'll like it again. And even if he didn't, sometimes you can talk him into it, like when Will and I talked him into giving us a whole bunch of his Halloween candy...

I like how he kept his mask on during all the Trunk or Treat festivities.
 You have to look fierce when you're doing the ring toss

This is just an adorable little Dutch girl.
(You might know her as Charlie's cousin  Dorothea)

Family punkin.
And yep, wearing shorts and t-shirts, at night, in October

Charlie made this jack-o-lantern (minus the lantern) at school.
This is absolutely my favorite pumpkin face ever.

So Charlie's a great kid. In fact, he's downright wonderful and we're so lucky to be his parents. I hope maybe he can stop growing up so quickly so we can have a little more time to enjoy his next six years. Maybe the next six after that, too, but by then he'll be a teenager, sooooo, we might want to breeze through those years kind of quickly. In the next post I'll write about the day when Charlie refused to go to school. Now THAT is a great story.