Circus!

 Just resolving to catch up on my summer blogging, starting with Declan's end of the school year program. The three-year-old class put on a circus and it was just about the sweetest thing I've ever seen. There was a tightrope walker, an acrobat, a strongman, a daredevil, a lion tamer, a trained seal, a bear-on-a-bicycle and a posse of clowns. And of course the magician. Declan's teachers told me that they cast him as the magician because his developmental progress over the past two years suggests that he has some tricks up his sleeve! On the video, you can hear me quietly crying through the whole thing. I just thought it was so darn adorable.  Declan was the first out of the circus performers and he was quite a bit more nervous than he had been in rehearsals. Still adorable.

 

 

Now if you want to relive that performance through sequential stills, I can't say as I blame you. 

First Day of School

First time in man-made fabrics

New backpack

That's right- time to throw out the crayons and start cramming for the SATs.

There was a moment this morning when Declan asked to just go back to his old school, but on the whole he is very excited about starting preK at PA.  We had a class mingle sesion on Monday, where he got to meet the other 17 kids in his class.  Declan went around introducing himself "Hi, I'm your new friend Declan."  To one kid, he said "I'm Declan.  Do you want to play with me?  I'm REALLY nice."  He has inherited his mother's gift for shameless self-promotion, and I couldn't be more proud. 

Our Increasingly Plant-based Diet.

So like everybody else, we are trying to eat more healthily these days, and are transitioning to a more plant-based diet, blah blah blah, won't bore you with the details, not getting too militant about anything, going for more of an 80% is perfection kind of happy medium, but here was Declan last night making a request for his favourite vegan dish:

Baby's first air quotes.  Made me laugh.

Pool time!

Tonight...

Dog in people bed.

 

People in Dog Bed.

 

Business as usual chez Whitlock.

Camping at Petit Jean

I took Declan camping to Petit Jean State Park last weekend with friends, Ariel and Brooke and their respective children.  It was a dad-free trip, just moms and kids, and we had a grand old time.




 These are a few of the activities we enjoyed:

Roasted S'mores

Went geocaching

Read stories

Painted pet rocks

Played in tents

Played at the playground

Played in the car

Slept in tents

Stargazed

Chased fireflies

Dined al fresco

Played Flashlight Treasure Hunt

Went spelunking

Went hiking

Went Swimming

Went Bug Hunting

Had a waterballoon fight

Went bike riding

Took in the Baby Animal Show at the Petit Jean Amphitheatre

Raved with Glowsticks in the forest,

and did our first Cannonball, ever.

Photographic evidence follows.

Question: What Do You Get When You Put a Chimpanzee with Anger Management Issues on Display at the Zoo?

A: The best field trip ever!

Note my awesome maternal skills kicking in:  Hang on, my injured child.  I will comfort  you as soon as I finish being doubled over with laughter.

The rest of the zoo field trip was uneventful and pleasantly free from further poo-flinging incidents. 

Feeding the Lorikeets

Hangin with the Elephant

Riding the gorilla with his buddies Gavin and Sheriff.

Recently some research was done research came out  suggesting that children stop being irrestibly adorable at age four-and-a-half, but it looks to me like this lot still has a few good months left in them: 

What a bunch of cutie-pies!

The Marshmallow Test

Now from time to time, one might get an inclination to perform random psychological tests on one's child, and why not, I say. All in the name of science. We were recently inspired to perform the so-called "Marshmallow Test" on Declan. It is an experiment developed at Stanford in the early 70's to test a child's executive function, the degree of self-control he has, which as it turned out, is a strong predictor of later life outcomes.  The test put 4 to 6 year olds in an empty room, with only a marshmallow to keep them company.  They are allowed to eat the marshmallow if they want, but they are told if they don't eat the marshmallow, they will get two marshmallows in 15 minutes.  In the original experiment, a third of the kids ate the marshmallow right away, another third delayed for some time, but ate the marshmallow before the 15 minutes were up, and the final third were able to hold off for the 15 minutes and earn the second marshmallow.  Then they followed the kids for the next 40 years (!) and were able to determine that those kids who ate the marshmallow right away were more likely to suffer from addiction, and the kids that were able to delay the gratificaiton had more social and academic success in their lives.  So since Declan was the right age, although at the very bottom of the range in the original experiment, we figured we would replicate it at home and see whether I was going to be interviewed on an episode of Intervention 20 years from now.  

We were pretty sure that Declan would be an immediate marshmallow eater.

To verify our hypothesis, we put Declan in our guest bedroom, and luckily we had already intalled a hidden video camera in there, so we could just use that.  Oh what, guests, you didn't know we were watching you?  Just kidding.  I put a Flip cam on the bureau across from the bed.   

This video is extraordinarily long (spoiler alert!) so dont feel compelled to watch it, but for Nicole there is a part about 5 minutes in that will amuse.