Silas in the Fall

Sometimes it's still been hard for me to walk Si to school, give him a kiss, and watch him walk into line with the rest of the kids and be ready to stay at school and have his mom go home.  He is maturing in many ways. 

Silas' Days:

• Clocks and Time.  If you ever want to know what time it is, ask Silas, because he ALWAYS wants to know what time it is.  It's a treat to him to be able to hold Dad's watch and watch the hands spin around and say how close it is to the hour.  He spends many minutes announcing, "It's five minutes after the hour.  It's a new hour!  Thirty-seven minutes ago was the hour."  He's starting to get the hang of telling time on an analog clock with some scaffolding. And when he is getting ready to go somewhere, he will ask every five minutes how much longer, or he'll just go sit on our bed and watch the minutes change on the alarm clock (for the whole hour before it's time to leave for a party!)
• Primary.  It's still kind of rough on Si to have Mom and Dad in primary, he seems to have some dramatic thing happen every primary morning that makes him in a bad mood.  But one thing he does love about primary is singing, "Nephi's Courage".  He knows every word to every verse of that song and sings it with such vigor!  Even when I'm asking him what song we should listen to (like a song from the radio) he always wants "Nephi's Courage".
• Doing Homework.  As a kindergartener, he has gotten into the routine of having homework that we wok on each week night.  I'm impressed with his sticking with it, especially because he doesn't get a prize for turning it in like he did in preschool.  He is working on things like writing his name, writing letters and numbers, helping around the house, sight words, and even writing short sentences and illustrating them.
• Earning Fit Feet.  As an incentive to stay active, the recess duties offer a foot charm for their necklace for every two laps that the kids run around the track during recess.  Two times around a 1/4 mile track in 15 minutes is a long way for his short little legs.  But almost every day he comes home proudly with another fit foot that he earned while running with his friend AJ. 
• Writing Notes.  Si's tender heart often sends him to write notes.  If he gets sent to his room for time out, many times he will come out with a note he wrote to me.  It usually says something like, "I hv a tndr hrt.  Mom, I lv y.  I am tkfl famie."  He's in the inventive spelling stage, and I just love the little notes he writes!
• Getting ready for baby sister.  He has created his own countdown in his room where he marks off the days until she comes.  December is very important to him because he knows it means that she will be here.  He often asks me how she is doing and will touch my belly every time he walks by me and say, "Yeah I felt her kicking Mom."
• Si and Mommy and Daddy.  We certainly have our ups-and-downs each day and are trying to learn about respect towards Mom and Dad.  Sometimes Si just wants to be a grown-up and thinks it such an injustice that grown-ups have more money than him and get to make the rules.  But I just love my little Si-bug, I especially love to sit down and do homework with him or hear him tell me about his day.  And I love his curiosity and understanding of the gospel, he has such a sweet little Spirit. 

 Before the weather turned cold, Si spent a few afternoons with his Daddy learning to ride a two-wheel bike.  The best place to do this was at the church parking lot.  He had some success but gets quite nervous about falling.  I think in the Spring he will be a 100% 2-wheel bike rider.  But the sweet moments he had with his Daddy were priceless.

His school had a walk-a-thon fundraiser and Si walked/ran 7 times around the track to earn money for his school.  He made it one more lap than his goal and was even fighting a bad cough at the time.  He was so proud to earn money for his school and he had lots of family to help him out!