Josey

In order for me to actually blog I've taken to writing a little bit at a time elsewhere so I can copy, paste, and post it when it's done that way I don't feel pressured to write something amazing and cool while frantically trying to stay within my dialup limits. Not that this is amazing and cool. Anyway, this is the latest on Josey:

Josey is two weeks away from starting his 7 week, thrice-weekly, 3-1/2 hr a day preschool class. This has turned from a super exciting thing to a minor annoyance thanks to the gas prices, which so far are turning "free" playgroup into a ten-bucks-a- day deal, and will add an extra $30 a week to preschool. Dropping him off and driving home again is now completely out of the question so I'm going to have to find something to do in town after playgroup and on the days when there is no playgroup. Hopefully the weather will improve to the point where I can go for walks with the other two boys, but I think that's going to get old after a while. That being said, I still think Josey is really going to benefit from some structure and social interaction without me around. His behaviour lately (ok, not just lately) is pretty bad and he wanders around the house like he's bored. Good thing he got a gazillion dollars worth of toys for Christmas. The past week or so he's been colouring and making crafts a lot more and that seems to occupy him for longer periods. He's figured out that he can draw things other than people (although people are still his favourite thing to draw) and he's been drawing a lot of pictures of dragons with lots of fire and people with swords "killing" the dragon. He also likes copying pictures from books, like cars and random things like fruit and houses. He likes asking me how to write words and will copy things like "TO GRAMMIE" onto pictures. He also loves doing pre-K activity books and can now recognize letters of the alphabet in both uppercase and lowercase, as well as tell me the sounds of quite a few letters. He doesn't really like being taught these things as such, but he will listen to me a little then pretty much figure it out on his own time. I keep getting surprised when he all of a sudden easily knows something that he struggled with a couple of days earlier, like identifying and writing numbers. It's hard to believe that just over a month ago I overheard Josey "reading" to Tristan like this:
"TRISTAN! We're going to read this book. It's about FOOD. Now THIS is an APPLE. M-L-H-P. That's how it's spelled. Apples are CRUNCHY and JUICY. And THIS is a BANANA. Um...Y-O-S-G-A. Banana's have peels and they're yummy. This is an ORANGE. O-S-B-B-A. Oranges have lots of JUICE in them and sometimes it's yech but they're very JUICY."
And so on...

Anyway, we went to the preschool meeting last week and the teachers were telling us that they hoped to teach the kids to recognize their names and write the first letter. Meanwhile, Josey was at the blackboard writing all the numbers from one to ten, drawing a picture of himself and signing his name. Genius.

Once again we're having pee issues. I can't even believe I'm having to say that about my 4 YEAR OLD. When he started his mini preschool programs he immediately stopped having accidents and I figured we were finally done with pee pants. That lasted for quite a while, but in the last couple of weeks he's been "forgetting" again when he's outside playing or busy doing something. The punishment this time around is losing his Vtech video game for 2 days every time he's wet. It sucks that this is happening. Seriously. He's not even remotely close to staying dry at night either, but that's really the least of my concerns right now. They make pull-ups for kids that weigh over 100 lbs so we're still safe at least for a couple more years.

The End.