A way to document

I realize that I need a means by which to record the amazingness of my children's ideas. They say and do the most wonderful, surprising, awe-inspiring things - and I'm a much better typer then I am a note-taker. So this is it. A less obligatory and more journalish blog about them and the evolution of their parenting. This year's for me.

SCENE: today, Friday, 12:45 PM, dining table. Aemon and I sit down to do some workbook. A brand new 1st grade math workbook, the first pages of which are a bit rudimentary. 

First exercise: there are ten rows of ten jelly beans pictured. To the left of each row is a number, 1-10, in sequence. The assignment it so color in the same number of jelly beans as the number printed beside each row.

Aemon does fine for numbers 1-3, then he starts messing around and coloring rainbow stripes on the beans, or fussing over the crayons. I am getting anxious for this page to be done, so I tell him to just get on with it. 

"But mom, there are a hundred jelly beans!"

Silence for a five-count. Then I just have to laugh. "Aemon, how do you know that?"

He says, with the lispy 4-year-old I'm-dealing-with-a-dummy inflection,  "Because there are ten rows of ten jelly beans."

I say, "We can skip the rest of the jelly beans. Let's move on."  

He did well with the rest of the pages we worked on today. I'm starting to become slightly concerned about my abilities as a homework coach come 4th grade calculus.

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In older news, his first stint with Maple, our Elf on the Shelf, went quite well. Some gems from December 2011:

6:30 AM, bedside, Aemon's face and an excited whisper: "MOM! I know the elf's name! She has a name tag! Her name's "Made"!"

A couple days later at dinner, as I'm enjoying some wine out of a small glass with a short stem, "Mama, I think the elf shrunk your wine."

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More to come as my shoddy memory banks bubble up the good ones.