Turning six, the recital edition.
Coincidentally, today was recital day for Jon's students. It marks another year of practice and learning, the same way that yesterday's birthday marked another year passing. The two don't usually fall on the same weekend, but it worked out nicely this way since we had loved ones visiting from out of town for the latter. And aaaah, recital success. Calvin performed very well. On our way home we asked him what he thought, but I think he takes it all in stride. He was so busy reading that he just mumbled something like "oh, it was great."
Turning six, the party edition
I mentioned a month or so ago, in the wake of our first child's birthday party, that Calvin had already worked out his birthday party guest list, including such family members as his grandparents and aunts and uncles. He also planned out the menu, which started with havarti and dill cheese, crackers, guacamole, and salsa, continued with grilled salmon, fresh green beans, and potato salad for dinner, and finished with carrot cupcakes decorated in the colors of Oz.
He also designed his own invitation (the penguin on the left is Calvin, with blue eyes, and that's green-eyed me on the right, lighting the last candle on the cake with the electric lighter).
And he helped bake and decorate the carrot cupcakes.
One of his birthday requests had been for more of the delightful and unique Oz characters we'd given him last year, and the artist who'd made the first set happily obliged with some beautiful additions. It was his first present of the day.
Everyone who was in town came to the party and made it a wonderful afternoon, with presents and game play and munching and laughing and loving.
And now it's official. He's six.
To Calvin, on your sixth birthday,
Good or bad, happy or sad, no matter the day it is not hard for me to remember why being your mom is the best job I’ve ever had. Learning with you, guiding you, and especially stepping back to give you room to grow, more often the older you get, add a continuous novelty to my life that I could not possibly have found in any other vocation. Our every day is full and we squeeze activities into the tiniest of moments, so that your fifth birthday does not feel like yesterday, but instead like a lifetime ago, though in reality it has been just exactly one very full year. Your sixth year saw you learn to swim, to multiply, to draw, and to ride a bike. It scared your parents with a series of nighttime seizures that exposed us to the world of neurology, its frightening tests and its wonderful doctors, its uncertainty and frustrations, before slipping as memory into a hopefully soon to be forgotten corner of the mind. It took you on a not soon to be forgotten trip to Disney World (planting a seed of general longing to return to that happiest of places on earth). Yes, it has been a very full year.
So what are you like now, a year older and wiser? You are still the little boy whose trusty blanket is always by his side. You are still one to watch carefully, hanging back before deciding to join in, or not, and just as content playing alone as playing with others, if not more so. You are still deeply curious and eager to learn. You are still a very happy child, and gentle, considerate, and kind. You are still very much yourself only more so, for we are past the years of the personality emerging and into the time of its growing and maturing. This means that you have begun to approach things with a confidence of spirit. You know what you want, and what you don’t want, and you are neither hesitant about expressing your opinions, nor easily swayed from them. And though this has meant an increase in arguments over the past year, solidarity between generations is often an elusive goal, and watching you stretch your wings is worth the occasional head butting. And occasional it is, for as a general rule you assist with chores willingly, are flexible and open to changes, and usually approach must-dos with little reluctance.
This year we have continued our journey of learning together at home, and you have shown yourself to be a dedicated, eager, adept, and independent learner and are very advanced for your age. We spend our days learning by reading, trying, and doing. I have always wanted our home learning process to be dictated entirely by your interests and desires, but you are interested in anything and everything, so we started following some curricula as a guide this year and you have responded with enthusiasm. You have completed three grade levels in math and are more than half way through memorizing your multiplication tables; this week we are taking turns reading chapters in The Hobbit out loud and you are reading Tik-Tok of Oz to yourself; you memorize poems and write in your journal with ease and regularity; we have just finished learning about the ancient civilizations of the Indus Valley and are embarking on a study of ancient China, having already tackled Egypt and Mesopotamia; we are learning about energy, life cycles, and evolution; you continue to advance in piano.We joined a local homeschooling group this year and through them you have taken art (emulating great artists) and theater classes (you just performed in a stage production of The Wizard of Oz). You truly love learning, especially when it occurs on your own terms, and pursuing a home education with you has turned out to be a wonderfully rewarding decision.
Our days often take us out of the house as well, for hiking, biking, swimming, exploring museums, and more. Physical activities, like biking and swimming, provide a challenge for you that subject learning never has, but you are steady in your practice of them, and unconcerned and happy as you go about it, so that you continue to become more comfortable. You love being outside and being physically active. We work in the garden often, hike in nearby preserves, play at the park, and go birding in the nearby field, but your favorite outdoor activity might simply be drawing with chalk, or running in the sprinkler.
It is this kind of variety, from book reading to bird watching, multiplication tables to chalk drawing to giggling in the sprinkler, that makes life interesting and keeps me constantly guessing. Truly I could ask for no better vocation. And since every year has been even better than the last, every moment more full of wonder, I expect the same from the coming seventh year and look forward to the challenges I’m sure it will bring.
To Calvin... Caterpillar update
All they do is eat, sleep, and poop. We're cleaning their houses at least twice a day now, and they are going through leaves at an incredible rate. Their gluttony has lead to a major size increase, and we have actually watched a few of them molt. I think the pupating stage draws nigh.
I am concerned that some of them are not as "normal" as they should be. In particular their feelers seem to lack symmetry, and I've read both that this could be due to injury from a crowded environment (as they've gotten bigger we have separated them into more tubs), and that it is a sign of OE, the infection that ultimately kills, often during eclosing. If it's OE we are in for a really heartbreaking end, but I keep telling myself it's possible I'm just over-worrying. We are keeping our fingers crossed.
(Here you see them still four to a tub, but we now have them as two to a tub)
Remember when they were oh so tiny???
raising butterflies