Logan Update

So I haven't forgotten about blogging. Life is good. Life is great, in fact. I am writing my millionth historical romance without a contract, except for the one in my head that contains the clause "publisher agrees to kow-tow endlessly to author, to inundate her with massive advances and royalties and marketing campaigns" -- but all is very, very good.

Logan has just completed his first year in the Preschool of the Arts Copper Room, which started out a little rocky considering the transition from the utterly fabulous and aptly named Rainbow Room. The Copper Room is a mixed-age room of 3 and 4 year olds who stay for two years. Logan ended up being the only 3 year old boy and therefore the youngest amidst older boys who had also been together the previous year. So it took him time to assimilate, not being naturally gregarious and extroverted, which I actually think will serve him well -- but he made especially good friends with an older boy named Micah whom he still plays with every day, according to his after-school recap.

The Copper Room teachers, Paula and Joyce, are natural teachers, and Logan has responded well to them, and gets along well with the other kids. They've done a ton of horse-related projects this year stemming from their classroom "museum" constructed in a corner of the room -- which formerly was the Copper Room Art Museum and this year has become the Copper Room Greatest Horse Museum. They've visited Madison's Museum of Modern Art to look at temporary exhibitions and a horse sculpture, they've seen shows at the Overture Center and gone to a farm for pumpkin-picking. They've celebrated birthdays, started personal journals, had sing-alongs with other classrooms, worked on art projects, learned new games and studied letters and numbers. Despite the shaky start, it's been good for all of us -- for all of us to learn to deal with a new situation and forge new relationships.

So he'll be there again next year -- his FINAL year of preschool before kindergarten. The question of exactly where he will attend kindergarten (ie, if we stay in the same apartment or move) is still up in the air, but I'm trying not to worry too much about it. So far he's done well in every new situation he's encountered, and kindergarten should be no exception.

Logan is growing up. He's learning about peer pressure and making friends (for the past nine months he has been obsessed with Thomas the Tank Engine and everything related to the Island of Sodor, but suddenly within the last week he has stopped playing with his trains, no longer wants to watch Thomas videos on YouTube - which we allowed every so often - and won't wear his new Thomas t-shirt to the Copper Room. He also doesn't want to bring his Thomas swimming trunks to the Copper Room for the summer slip-and-slides and sprinkler play. Although I suspect an older boy said something about Thomas being for babies, Logan hasn't yet divulged exactly what was said or by whom.

Funny how by age four all the 'kiddy' things have already become passe - like Thomas and Sesame Street. Now the boys all seem to be into Spiderman, Batman, Star Wars and the Transformers, while the girls can't get enough of every single princess in the entire kingdom.

Because I am oddly neurotic about letting my children watch television (I have no idea why, really, I was allowed to watch reasonable amounts of TV and to this day have a rather embarrassing fondess for reality shows -- uh, that might be the source of my neurosis right there).

Anyway, so Logan has never watched much Sesame Street and certainly no Spiderman (even though I can still sing the ENTIRE Spiderman theme song by heart -- Spiderman, Spiderman does whatever a spider can. Spins a web any size, catches thieves just like flies. LOOK OUT! Here comes the Spiderman....)

As I was saying, Logan is rather clueless about all that, through no fault of his own. So I started him in a kid's Spanish class to get him started with another language, and now I let him watch learning Spanish videos or things like Clifford dubbed in Spanish. At first, he was all into it, but now he's realizing that these videos actually have English versions that he can fully UNDERSTAND, so now he's resisting the Spanish -- "But Mommy, English is the best language EVER. I don't need to learn anymore Spanish."

Uh huh. I'm standing firm. We're continuing Spanish classes and his video choices will be heavily leaning towards Spanish. Logan, you will thank me for this one day. I promise. Maybe not today, maybe not tommorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life. (Okay, by the time you're old enough to watch Casablanca, you can pick the language of your choice).

Speaking of languages, Logan has lost virtually all of his toddler-isms -- he no longer says "cuzzin" for "because", which he was doing up until last fall. I don't even remember when he stopped saying that, it just sort of faded into "because." Kind of bittersweet, I always thought that was so endearing.

And overall (with an occasional misstep) he is a great big brother to Shay. He still calls her "my baby" or says beyond adorable things like "Mommy, Shay is the cutest baby ever." He squeaks at her a lot (his version of "cootchie cootchie coo"), sometimes to her yelp of protest and is starting to understand that he can teach her things. He says words to her in Spanish and tells her to repeat them ("Shay, say agua. Say queso. Say leche" -- and when she repeats them in her sweet little voice, he gives her an encouraging, "Good, Shay!")

He reads her books when he's in the mood, though still gets irritated when she plays with his toys, and often whatever SHE'S playing with becomes the most fascinating thing in the world to him. And while he still has the (increasingly rare) unpleasant habit of knocking her over when he wants to establish his authority, he also sometimes tells her outright what he thinks of her. When she was trying to push him off his stepstool one afternoon (because she wanted "a turn") and was screeching and grabbing his legs, he responded with a calm, "You're not a very good baby anymore, Shay." Of course, they both forget the conflict within seconds.

He's good. He whines and fusses and wants his way like any four-year-old the world over, but he also listens and generally does what we ask, especially if the warning "Uh Oh" is employed with a stern look. That little phrase has been known to work when nothing else has.

Logan continues to love books -- Richard Scarry, Dr. Seuss, Thomas books, a very wide-range of classics and new books I've gotten at the CCBC sale. He's never really been much into drawing or coloring, although he does enjoy it when I bring out the art box and he does a lot of art in the Copper Room, but his biggest joy is still the athletic stuff -- running, climbing, doing the monkey bars (which he worked incredibly hard at for WEEKS before he could finally get all the way across, and now he wants to do nothing else at the park). He loves swimming, though even after five sessions of lessons he still can't get very far unless he's got his floatie-thing on. But he's fearless when it comes to learning different strokes, jumping into the water, and doing sit-dives. He's fearless when it comes to anything athletic.

Rather sadly, his interest in music has waned considerably, though I'm not sure what to attribute this to except that his interests are changing and evolving all the time, just like he is. I do hope his love of music will return and am considering ways we can better encourage it.

Likewise, he's become a bit of a picky eater, but I can't complain -- he eats virtually any fruit I put in front of him, chicken salad, ham or turkey sandwiches, broccoli, avocados, carrot sticks, hummus, cottage cheese, applesauce, nuts, green beans (that last one is with encouragement). He'd eat strawberries every day if he could and while he usually exhibits an extreme lack of interest in whatever we're having for dinner ("Mommy, this isn't the kind of supper I want") , his complaints are short-lived and he eats what he wants and then is done.

And every day, he amazes me. Every day I remind myself how fortunate we are to have been entrusted with his care and hope that we are proving ourselves worthy of him.