Tidbits from the world of Nicholas

Last night Stuart and I were discussing the presidential candidates. Nicholas chimed in and said, "I think George Washington should be president." We haven't talked about the presidents in quite a while but he still connects George Washington as a president. I love how awesome his memory is.

As I looked at Nicholas playing today and saw just how much he has grown. I said, rhetorically, something to the extent of "When did you get to be such a big boy?" Nicholas shrugged his shoulders and said, "I just growed!"

Nicholas is getting good at spelling out simple words by using phonics. He often asks how to spell something and together we work on sounding out the word to determine the spelling and writing out the letters. He seems to enjoy this auditory task. However, he hasn't translated phonics into reading yet. If I show him a written word, he doesn't show much interest in trying to sound it out to "read" the word. I guess that may say something about his learning style - more auditory than visual?

Nicholas usually gets two books read to him at bedtime. But sometimes that just isn't enough storytime. So, if it isn't too late, when we finish with our books, Nicholas gets into bed and I sit on the floor next to his bed and we make up our own stories. When we first started our storytelling, I would make up the entire story. It was usually about a fireman or super hero named Nicholas but sometimes it was about random animals in the forest or other adventure-type stories. After a while, Nicholas started helping me make up the stories. I would make up a sentence or two and then I'd ask him to tell me the next thing that happens in the story. That's a lot of fun. Now, he's gotten to the point that he wants to make up the entire story himself. What fun to just sit there and have a story told to me for a change! They are really neat stories and I'm amazed at how creative he gets. He's always been good at directing us along a story line as we pretend play a game of super heros or Star Wars with him. But this is different. This is real storytelling with character development and a plot from beginning to end. I'll have to record him telling one next time. It's fun to listen to.

Each night at bedtime, Nicholas continues to add a request for snow in his bedtime prayers.

I haven't been feeling well this week and Nicholas is having trouble adjusting his sleep schedule to the Daylight Savings time change. So when Daddy came home from work tonight, this is what he found in our bed.


What can I say? Nicholas is nice to cuddle with!