Baby Bear

This is outside the science museum: Connor posing as a bear cub.

This photo harkens back to "Connor at the park" near Osako-jo about a year and a half ago.

Dinosaurs!

On a recent stay in Jackson, Connor visited the dinosaurs exhibit at the museum of natural science. His favorite part was the "excavating" -- is that what I call it? (Kids used brushes to "uncover" the dino fossils beneath.)

Connor was fairly enthusiastic.

Memorial Day

Apart from assorted shopping trips (mainly to the grocery store and home improvement center), we stayed around the house this holiday weekend. Connor is fortunate to have several little boys nearby who come over to play with him. I have to say it's great. They are good models for Connor, and it limits the demands on mom and dad to be full-time activity directors.

P.S. Check out the new shoes. Cars! Also, these pictures were taken on the same day, morning and afternoon. Connor goes through three or four outfits in the course of a day.

Traveling the Country

Connor's fascination with American geography dovetails perfectly with the start of the summer traveling season. He is so excited that in only three days, he will begin a trip that will take him "Mississippi-Alabama-Georgia-South Carolina." Every few hours he asks, "Can we go now?" It's going to be very exciting.
Uncle Hubbard has also helped the geography come to life. A couple of weeks ago he was in Boston, Massachusetts (a capital), and on Friday evening he called to say he was in Wyoming (Connor's favorite state, you may recall). He sent text message updates as he hit various states: Utah, Idaho, and finally his destination, Oregon. Connor knows that he left his truck in Little Rock (another capital).
You may think this ambitious for a two-year old, but the truth is: I find it a whole lot more interesting than playing with cars, trains, or Legos. Luckily for me, sometimes Connor does too.

Isla - every time Rhode Island is mentioned, Connor says your name. I think he associates "island" and "Isla." That makes sense, because he doesn't know what an island is ...

United States

Wow....I don't know exactly when or how it began, but Connor started learning the American states. When he was an infant, I bought a placemat featuring a map of the U.S., thinking he might one day like it. (In Japan I used it almost daily to show how large the U.S. actually is and where Joe and I were from.)
After we got back, it went back to life as an actual placemat, used to make clean-up after mealtime quick and easy. I probably made small talk with Connor about the various states where people he knows reside. Connor's little brain sucked it up like a vacuum cleaner; he was so interested. He knew Danielle is from Minnesota; Maria lives in New York State; Miss Laura lives in California; Grandpa and Monnie stopped by Ohio on their way back to Michigan, where Alex and Grandma Sweeney live; Mary lives in Florida; Uncle Wally lives in South Carolina, Carlos and Sofia live in Texas; and so on.
A couple of weeks ago we happened upon a giant children's atlas -- perfect for him.

I wondered how he would handle a different map of the same thing. He got it. Since then, almost every night before bed, we study the United States. I estimate he can locate and identify about 2/3 of them now. Since he can't read, it's kind of freaky sometimes.

Yesterday after school we stopped by the library, and he found a DVD featuring the book The Scrambled States of America. It's a story of what happens when the states all decide to switch places in order to see other parts of the country (Mississippi and Nevada even fall in love). Connor loves it, and it is uncanny how he recognizes the states out of their context -- New Mexico will be dancing across the screen, and he knows it. I guess his little brain stores the shapes and associates the name with the shape.
This past week, just for fun, we started talking about the state capitals. He knows a few (Jackson, MS; Austin, TX; Atlanta, Georgia; Tallahassee, FL; and sometimes Lansing, MI).

Since we got the atlas, he says his favorite state is Wyoming. ??? He's sticking with that.

Playmates

This week Connor gained two new after-school playmates, Lane and Eli, who live on our street. Both are kindergartners at Overpark. Here they are driving matchbox cars along a track they designed using sidewalk chalk.
Lane and Eli show up first, after they get off the school bus, and Gavin usually joins them later. They're all pretty good kids, and Connor does well with them despite the age difference. While the cars and chalk are fun, I think Connor's Lego collection is the real draw.

Connor Likes to Climb

Overpark

Last Saturday we found the school Connor will attend when he is five. This is the side of it, featuring the playground.

Here's the boy, yesterday afternoon, being silly, lying in the under-bed storage. We had been looking at all his warm-weather, short-sleeved shirts. He is very independent these days and has been doing a great job dressing himself, so I wanted him to see all of his options. He has tons of clothes for summer thanks to Aunt Shannon (and Alex).

Petting Zoo

Saturday's Double Decker Festival in Oxford featured a mini-petting zoo.

Please Look After This Bear

Maria brought a couple of gifts from her recent trip to England, and Connor now has a special bear to take care of. Connor likes to take his bears for walks, so Paddington enjoyed his first walk yesterday afternoon. He's very color-coordinated with the stroller, don't you think? :)

Connor 2.8

Connor is two years and eight months old today! Sometimes I forget that he is still two. "How old are you?" I catch myself asking him scoldingly from time to time, when he does certain things I consider immature or foolish. Then I remember, oh yeah, he is only two. Closer to the three side, but still two. Give him a break. But not too much of one, right? He still should know better.

All in all, he is a great kid. This week he's been very whiny and prone to tantrums; I think it's because he's very tired. He's had some timeouts and has learned that it hurts when you hit something hard in a fit of anger. I planned to let him "sleep in" this morning, but don't you know he was up before six, on his "day off."

So what is he doing these days? "What is Connor up to today?" my mother always asks.

I think his joining the older kids at school has reinforced some of his skills. He's become more independent and very diligent about personal hygiene and cleanliness. He is good about cleaning up after himself and can be very thoughtful at times. He is still frighteningly observant. "He got a haircut!" he exclaimed last week about a clerk at the post office who had gotten a crew cut (to the surprise, I think, of the clerk). A few weeks ago he noticed that the American flag in front of his school was gone, and where was it?

Connor can now identify the lowercase letters of the alphabet, which I think is amazing for his age. He gets the difference between a capital I and a lowercase L and also has a grasp of "p" versus "q" (which I think I was still ironing out at age 5 or so). So he is spelling words and saying them (on paper, not aloud from memory). "Let me count them," he says, so if I tell him the word is "Canada," he will point to each letter as he spells "C-A-N-A-D-A" and then finish up with "Canada!"

We have a placemat featuring a map of North America that we look at from time to time, and he's been learning the 50 states. Yesterday, since it had been a week or so, I gave it to him. Usually I ask him to locate a state - he's learned maybe half of them -- i.e. "Where is Georgia?" But yesterday I asked him to tell me the ones he knew: point and name them himself. He started with Washington State, then moved on to South Carolina/North Carolina, then North and South Dakota. Random, right? Somewhere in there was Florida ("That's where Mary lives!" -- my cousin Mary, who's a teacher in FL. I found that it really helps to identify the state with someone he knows who lives there, which all you teachers recognize as a golden tenet of instruction: make the lesson relevant/relate it to the student's own experience. ) He also identified Michigan and Mississippi, or course. He got Texas when I asked, "Where do Carlos and Sofia [his second cousins] live?" Then he inquired about Canada, Mexico, and Oregon, and the conversation shifted to the blue on the map, which is water.

This afternoon Connor will have a visitor - my friend Maria in town from New York for Greek Orthodox Easter - and tomorrow we hope to go to the Double Decker Festival in Oxford. Look for pictures later on this weekend. Below are photos from last weekend's trip to the zoo.

Monkeys at the Zoo

Above: pictures of Jake and Connor at the zoo last Saturday, and in May 2006 at our graduation from the university

In our modern, technological world, it's funny - at two years old, both boys love to see pictures of the other on their respective blogs, but nearly freeze with curious amazement when they meet in real time!

Jake!

This past Saturday we made a spur-of-the-moment trip to the zoo, and amazingly bumped into some friends from Tupelo who we had not seen since returning from Japan. Their son and Connor are contemporaries (8/25 and 11/25 birthdates). Jake's mom is way more on top of things than I am at the moment, so you can check out the Connor-Jake encounter here: http://islanne.blogspot.com/2008/04/jake-and-conner-together-again.html

Tic Tac Toe

Best Closet of All

He's grown up, but he still enjoys playing in closets.

Playdate

Yesterday Connor had his first playmate over since we moved into our new house. Lots of trains, cars, and blocks ....

This is Connor's desk, where he keeps most of his craft supplies and, of course, his phone.

I think they had a nice time.

New Friend

Connor has a new friend. He is in prekindergarten at Connor's preschool. He is also our neighbor and just turned five. As you can see, he is educating Connor in the ways of boys, teaching him how to play in water and examine fascinating pieces of trash.

I Love It!

Monnie and Jack- Connor says: Thanks for the jam!

Do You Know Scooby Doo?

a new chair for Connor, just in time for spring! (Now, if only the sun would come out...)

Connor keeps calling him "Snoopy" -- wrong cartoon dog. But he has difficulty pronouncing the /sc/ sound.