Letters from Torii

Last Saturday as I was trying to get ready before we headed out for awhile, I let the Torii and Cordelia watch some TV so I could get done faster. Little Bill was on and that is one of Torii's favorite shows. I heard the beginning of the episode so I kind of got the gist of what it was about. Little Bill wanted to receive mail like all the other members of his family. His dad suggested that Little Bill write a letter to someone and then they would write him back. Torii that this was an excellent idea so I told him he should write a letter to grandpa and grandma. No, he wanted to write a letter to someone in school. Then I suggested that one of his aunties would love to receive a letter from him. Still, he insisted on writing letters to two girls in school. Twin girls. I couldn't talk him out of it so he wrote a letter to both girls. He got the letter to one of the girls, but the other isn't in his class and he hasn't had any luck getting his letter to her. He told me as he handed the letter to the girl in his class another girl asked him if he had a letter for her. He told her maybe next time. So now he wants to write a letter to her as well. Five years old and already passing notes to girls at school.

Games Torii plays

With Rion gone all weekend, it was funny how the household dynamics changed. It some ways life was a lot easier with only two kids. In other ways, not so much. It was incredibly nice not to have to break up any fights between the boys all weekend. On the other hand, Torii was left without a playmate so I became the substitute. Rion is perfectly content to play by himself, but that's not the case with Torii. He needs someone to play with. Since Rion was gone, I kind of let Torii make the rules for the weekend and what he wanted to do was play games. One of the first games we played was Hullabaloo. I never win at that game, but for some reason I was on a big win streak that day. By the third straight time I won, Torii was starting to meltdown. My streak went to six. I kept wishing he would win, but I kept winning. I started to laugh because it was somewhat comical. Finally he won. Then he began to cheat to win. And that's what Torii does. He's not really big on rules. With games or generally in life. When he's not outright cheating, he's making up new rules or bending the rules to fit his needs. I quit a couple of games before completely them, hoping he would learn to be a good sport and play by the rules. Today we played his Ladybug Game twice and he didn't pout once. He played by the rules and we had fun. Maybe it finally sunk in. By Sunday afternoon, I was pretty sick of games and really wanted to just veg out on the couch and watch football. But Torii is a sweet talker and there we were in front of the TV, playing a board game. It was a win-win situation.

Movie night

This weekend Rion and daddy went up north to the farm for the early deer hunting season there. Torii was a little bummed that he wasn't going so I let him in on something special I had planned for Friday night. He was so excited that he told everyone at school about it on Friday and wouldn't stop talking about it all evening. When he got home from school he was ready for Cordelia to go to bed so we could have our special movie night. It must have seemed like an eternity for him, but Cordelia finally went to bed at her regular time. Then we turned out all the lights, popped some popcorn, got out some movie sized boxes of candy, cold bottles of Coke and stayed up late and watched a movie. For our movie we watched Coraline. I liked it, but was afraid Torii would have nightmares from it when he became concerned about the "other mother" in it. After we talked about it, he realized it was just a movie and hasn't had any nightmares. Now he just has an obsession with poison oak and likes to pretend he is rubbing it on my arms. It was a fun night and I'll have to do it again with both boys. I think it made Torii feel really special getting to stay up late with mom. Sometimes the most simple things are the best things.

Knowledge is power

I'm beginning to rethink the idea of sending Torii to school. The kid is already pretty smart. And by smart I mean smart ass. He finds loopholes in everything and is sharp as a whip. School is only empowering him more and pretty soon he'll be smarter than me and then what do I do? Each week in school they learn an important characteristic such as being a good sport or being the best you can be at whatever you're doing. This week they are learning about being kind to others and not putting others down. The other day after school, Torii was taking his sweet old time getting into the house and I called him a slow poke. "No put downs! No put downs!" he shouted. I really couldn't argue about it even though I really wanted to yell at him to get his butt in the house that instant, but I let him be. He comes home everyday with new vocabulary and new ways out of whatever he is in trouble for. School is just teaching him how to irritate me more. I really don't know what I'm going to do when he is teenager. By then my brain will be on the downslide while he'll be on the top of his game. As Fred said the other day, "it'll be nice when he has a driver's license. Then after an argument, we'll be happy he can leave."

Pumpkin Patch

After having a long week at work, I really wanted to do something fun this afternoon so at the last minute I decided we were going to the Pumpkin Patch. It was so nice there right after school. There was only about 10 cars there when we arrived. It almost felt like having the place to ourselves. It did start to get busier as the afternoon went on, but it was still a light crowd compared to the weekends. I think we will have to do this after school again. Rion is going on a field trip there next week and I believe Torii gets to go the next week.

The lady at the gate asked me how I knew they were open and I told her I was a Facebook friend. She said she is having a lot of fun on Facebook and is enjoying seeing the pictures posted by their fans. She told me to post some pictures, which I did. They have been updating their page quite regularly and it had been killing me that we hadn't been out there yet. We had a really good time, but when haven't we had a good time at the pumpkin patch?

I always love the first trip of the fall to the pumpkin patch. Rion always reacts the same way when we make that first turn and we see the sea of orange pumpkins. "Oh my goodness!," he says, "Look at all the pumpkins!"

Cordelia on one of the hay bale mazes. She had fun in the tunnels and for awhile I lost her in one. She just didn't want to come out! The building in the background is the new entrance into the pumpkin patch. It's really nice.
All aboard! I tried to get a picture with all three kids hanging their heads out the side of the train, but it was an impossible task. I tried multiple times at multiple locations to get a nice pictures of all the kids together, but it didn't work out.

On the wilderness trail, which is a favorite of the boys. Their imagination runs wild in that place. We were running from bad guys and some animals were there to help us. I'm not really sure what else they were talking about, but they sure had some stories while we hiked through there.

Another attempt at a nice group picture.

We had hay everywhere after our trip, but nobody complained about it.

Money lessons

On Saturday the whole family headed out early to try and find some deals at the many rummage sales taking place over the weekend. The boys have some money saved up so they each brought along five dollars to spend however they wanted. It took a few rummage sales, but they finally found some toys they liked. Torii is really into Bakugan and a young boy was selling some of his Bakugan. He had a small Ziploc bag with the smaller Bakugan which the boys had none of. They could have bought the whole bag for $5.00 or else each one was fifty cents. I thought one of them would blow all their money and buy the whole bag, but they each spent one dollar and picked out two. Later in the day Torii regretted the decision and wanted to go back and buy the rest. I figured these toys would be lost and forgotten soon after we got home, but they have been playing with them a lot and have taken good care of them. They are pretty small and they haven't lost them yet. Maybe they are more mindful of them because they bought it with their own money.

By lunch time we had to take a break, but later in the afternoon Torii and I went back out. Torii still had four dollars with and found some more toys at one sale. It was getting late so the lady gave him a break and let him have it all for 75 cents. He gave her a dollar and got a quarter back, which just thrilled him. I think we talked about that quarter and money in general the rest of the afternoon. It was a good lesson because he will be learning about money later in kindergarten.

Gymnastics

A few weeks ago I signed the boys up for gymnastics. Torii really likes tumbling, standing on his head and even watching gymnastics on TV. I thought it would be something he would enjoy so I signed him up. Of course, Rion wanted to join too. I wasn't sure if he would like it, but he really is. I'm glad he is liking it because I think it will be really good for him. Poor Rion, has no coordination so hopefully this will help with that. I hope it helps his confidence as well because he gets so frustrated so easily. They both seem to be doing really well. Each week they get to try another skill. I've been impressed that they've already been up on the horse, parallel bars, and rings. Of course their favorite thing to do is to jump into the big foam block pit. (Really I want to run up to the spring board and jump into it too). The gymnastics world is completely new to me so I'm not really sure what we're getting into with this. This is not something I imagined I'd be doing with my boys. The boys are liking it and it will be nice to have some kind of physical activity to do over the winter. I will also be signing Cordelia up for the preschool kids class in the next session. She is just too much to handle for an hour and I think she will enjoy the things they do with the younger kids.