Jack's Letter

Earlier today I heard Jack up in his room really working on something. This is not that rare of instance so I just enjoyed the peace and went about my business downstairs. A few minutes later Jack came down and asked me if we had any envelopes. I told him yes and where to find them. A few minutes later still and I heard Jack go out the front door and then heard the noise of some post slipping through our door slot. I went to the door and collected the envelope (which had obviously been posted through by Jack). This is what I saw, an envelope addressed to 'Erin' with the following letter inside:

Basically Jack had acted as though he was my mom Julie or 'Jooly' and had written me a letter (if you double click the picture you can see the lettering more clearly).

He then asked me how the spelling was. I told him I thought it was very good, but there were a few places that he had misspelled a word. I pointed those out and then he proceeded to go upstairs and rewrite a new letter doing his best to correct the misspellings on the second one. This perfectionist tendency is a trait he definitely gets from Charles - I don't have itt (but I do have a sense of humor)!

He then brought the new version down and asked which one I liked better. I told him that I liked the first one best because it was the first one I had received and I really enjoyed the creativity he had put into it, but I then praised him for wanting to get better and try to improve his spelling. He seemed content with that answer.

From a mother's perspective, I will never throw away the first letter - it is now in my keepsake box with others of my favourite letters.

Jack, the dropout

Today we were reading Ramona the Brave and got to the part where Ramona becomes a kindergarten dropout. The boys didn't know what the word 'dropout' meant  so I gave them a quick definition 'it is someone who use to go to school and doesn't anymore'.

At this moment, Theo quickly piped up and said, 'Jack is a dropout. He use to go to my pre-school and he doesn't anymore.'  Before I get cross-examined by the Department of Family Services or the Homeschooling authorities, I should point out that Jack still goes to school it just isn't at the church pre-school anymore - it looks like my brief definition of dropout was a bit too basic to capture the true meaning for Theo!

Theo, potatoes, and pain

We had a student and his son over to dinner tonight as his wife is out of town. I cooked some sausages and roasted some potatoes. The potatoes were incredibly hot and Theo didn't plan for this when he bit into his. He quickly spit it out and started crying.

We were all very sympathetic and tried to comfort him. Charles asked him, 'Oh Theo are you in pain? That must have really hurt.' To which Theo replied, 'yes my nipples hurt.'

WHAT? We all looked around, including our friend and Jack (who mind you is six) and burst out laughing. I am just glad that our dinner guest was a good friend and not someone we were trying to impress!  Never a dull moment at the Anderson dinner table!

Jinx

For a few months now the boys have been calling our baby Jinx. This is largely due to two reasons.

First, they love to play the jinx game where you yell jinx after you say the exact same thing as someone else and can then only be unfreezed (and allowed to talk again) when someone says your full name.

And second and slightly more important - Charles often reads the Freddy books to them (a series of like 20 books he remembers reading as a young boy). The boys have been amused because two of the main characters in these books are Jack (a dog) and Charles (a rooster). Then out of the blue a character name Theodore (a frog)  has arrived which has gotten everyone in our family very excited. [Ed note: We are still waiting for an Adelaide - we may be waiting a while!] So at dinner a couple months back we decided that the baby should have a name of one of the characters from these books as well. We contemplated Freddy (a big pig), Henrietta (Charles's wife, a hen), Simon (a rat - but he is kind of rotten). But none of these compared to Jinx (a cat). The boys were then set that the baby should definitely be called Jinx. We have indulged them to this point. I hope they aren't disappointed on the actual day when the real name is revealed!

It is not unusual for Theo especially to say things about our baby, but he always says 'Jinx', not 'our baby'. For example, 'this will be Jinx's room' or 'this will be where Jinx sits'. Today he even told me that Jinx means 'gift from God'. I think he got this confused with Theodore! 

It has just dawned on me that this has taken off so much that this baby may have a nickname the day he is born! I guess that is one of the privileges of being a fourth child. There are worst things . . .

More Theo Quotables

Often on Sunday morning we let the kids have a 'fun treat' for breakfast. Today they asked if they could have cinnamon toast. I told them yes they could have cinnamon and sugar on their second piece of toast but their first piece of toast would be a normal piece. Very optimistically, Theo then said 'okay can I have my second piece of toast first?'

Oh the logic of a three year old!  Love it.