"Blubby Ell"

Hi All,
I need to get back into the habit of the more frequent, *shorter* updates. So I will try.
Yesterday was the boys' TKD belt graduation, they are now senior yellow belts. Next up, green belt! Green belt is when they start sparring, memorizing patterns, and all the real fun stuff. I didn't take any pictures. Tried, and then when I turned on my camera realized I didn't have a memory card in it. Oops. But they were cute. Joseph still got all wide-eyed and distracted with all the big kids around, but at least he wasn't doing his hook kicks across his leg! And he answered a couple of questions correctly, too. Afterwards we went to Piccolomo, an Italian gelato place which was very good, although expensive. $2.50 for a small cup. Once in a while is ok, though, and I've always wanted to try gelato.
Today was a clean-the-house and run-errands day. Typical Saturday. Our van needed new front tires. The tires were only maybe a year and a half old, but the alignment was off on the front tires and they both were pretty bald on the outside edges. Makes me nervous driving on bad tires. I was once on the freeway, back in Simi Valley, with all 3 kids in the back seat, and a car in the lane *right* next to me had a blow out, and it was so scary. The guy was thankfully able to regain control of his car very quickly, and everything was fine, but it sure scared the dickens out of me. A week or so ago I was driving around town, just doing typical stuff, and during the course of that day I saw 4 serious car wrecks, including one that I'm pretty sure must have been a fatality. Did I already mention that? I can't remember. That last one really, really shook me up. It was really terrible. One of the other ones was pretty bad, too, and we saw a guy being carried away on a stretcher. Pretty weird, all that in one day. Anyway, it got me thinking about my van, how we need new tires, how I skipped the 30,000 mile tune-up, and I decided we better do something about it. We're going to drive out to Phoenix for Thanksgiving in a couple of months as well, so we may as well get the maintenance stuff taken care of before then.
Tonight Mosey was in fine form. I love the things 3 year olds say. We were working on some letter flash cards, and then later I was quizzing him, saying a word and then asking him what letter it starts with. He kept saying, "Mmm, ahhh," (he always says "mmm, ahhh... mmm, ahhh" when he's thinking about something, it's really cute), "I *fink* that's a weird letter A!" It was always, a "weird letter" something or other. "That letter makes a weird sound like aaaaa." Everything was weird to him I guess! Then I was putting him in bed, and he was wiggling around like usual. I kept telling him to lie still, but he just cant. He turned over on his back and stuck his arms and legs up into the air and said, "Mom, what shape am I curled up into?" I said, "That looks kind of like the letter U." I thought he was still thinking about letters. Then he said, "No, this is not the letter U. I'm curled up into the shape of a dead cockroach!" Ha ha ha ha ha!!!! He's seen too many of those in his short little life. But he wasn't done yet. He kept wiggling around and talking, and I finally said to him, "Mosey, you need to lie still and close your eyes so that sleep can come to you." A few seconds later a car passed by on the road outside our house, sending a flash of headlights through the window. Mosey excitedly said, "Mom, I just saw the shadow of sleep go out of my bedroom door!" I think he thought some mysterious object "sleep" was literally going to come to him if he lay still and quiet. Funny kid.

I had a parent-teacher conference with Brigham's teacher on Thursday afternoon. That week she was doing evaluations of each student to sort of see where they are academically. He's doing fine socially (she told me that day the boys in the class were having some sort of discussion about who was Brigham's friend-- they were all vying for the honor I guess), he has good phonemic awareness, his math skills are good, his writing and art work are very good. Except she said he was behind in reading. It is true he is not as excited about reading as Joseph is, but still it bothered me a lot to hear that. So we're practicing very diligently. But then Friday afternoon he brought a book home from school (Fridays are their library day), and he sat down on the couch and read the whole thing quite easily, no help from me at all. So I don't really think he's that far behind, if at all. I'll make a video of it tomorrow to post here and you can tell me if you think he's behind. Brigham is just so single-minded, if he was thinking about anything else at all during the time the teacher was evaluating, she could easily think he's behind, when really he was just distracted thinking of something else. But still, reading is so important, and being a good reader is so vital to everything else they will do in school, I have recommitted myself to working with both boys much more than I have been doing.

Joseph has been watching Harry Potter, the Goblet of Fire. There is one scene in which Ron Weasley opens a package from his mom containing his dress robes which are really awful. He is horrified and says, (excuse my french, I'm just quoting), "Bloody hell!" Joseph, not having any idea what this means, has started using the phrase now and then, sort of as an exclamation mark to what he said before (although he pronounces it "Blubby-ell"). So I had to have a talk with him yesterday before school about not saying that around other people because those aren't such nice words. I'm not sure exactly why "bloody" is vulgar in Britain, but I understand that it is, and certainly "hell" isn't a nice word for a 6 year old to be saying. I told him that when people say "hell" in that way, it comes from the phrase "go to hell," which is a *really* mean thing to say. We should never wish that someone goes to hell. He seemed to understand that. I never know what is best to do in this situation. Do I ignore it, trusting that he'll soon enough get tired of it and stop on his own, or do I say something about it and bring it to his attention that it isn't a nice word, running the risk of him saying it even more to get attention or to shock people? A couple of years ago he and Brigham were really into the potty talk, and the more I told them not to say potty words, the more they seemed to delight in saying them as often as possible! I finally told Joseph I didn't mind if he said "blubby-ell" around the house since I knew he wasn't *really* saying bad words (once I told him those were bad words, he emphatically told me he wasn't saying "bloody hell," but actually "blubby-ell"), but he shouldn't say it at school or around other people since it sounded a lot like those bad words, and they might get their feelings hurt if they thought he was saying bad words to them. Hopefully that will be the end of "blubby-ell."
Well, this wasn't much shorter than my normal updates. Oh well. Sorry about that. I'll be shorter tomorrow! (Maybe).