Quick update

Things have been busy around here so I'm way behind on blogging. Right now Dax is begging me to carry him, carry him, CARRY HIM so I need to make this quick.

Karate - still doing it. Loving it. Hilarious. I do have video but need time to post it to Vimeo so I can link to it here.

School - I have to pick up the paperwork to register him for Kindergarten on December 3rd. WHAT???

Hilarity - Oh, so many stories to tell you but here are just a few.

If you ask Dax who our new president is going to be he will tell you it is John McCain and he will not be dissuaded. He also says that the man in the moon is John McCain and that John McCain is the president of Arizona. (And, just so you know, he CAN be both man in the moon AND president of Arizona because, simpleton, the moon LIVES in Arizona.)

He loves the movie Toy Story and has been watching it every chance he gets. Tonight he decided to watch it in french. I should say he insisted. He then spoke to us in a "french accent" for much of the night.

He makes us spell everything. All the time. "Mommy, spell 'Devin is a baby'. Spell 'amazed'. Spell 'there is a blue car in front of us'. Spell 'exasperated'!" And he is learning sight words at school so he will randomly yell out the words when he sees them. This is especially funny at the grocery store where, I'm pretty sure, people might think he has Tourette's. Fortunately, all the words he knows are suitable for public consumption.

If he doesn't want to do something he will tell you that activity is "for little boys" and then assure you that he is a HUMUNGOUS boy (and he says it like Donald Trump might: you-mun-gus). At the same time he will often insist that he is Baby Devin and then proceed to imitate his brother with an uncanny accuracy.

I read to him every night and then we snuggle together for awhile until he is immobile and drowsy. Every night he says to me, "Mommy, I like you. I like you AND I love you. I like you all the time." I can't hear it enough and I love inhale his scent and kiss him as I assure him that I like and love him too.

All the time.

Smarty Pants

As I've mentioned before, Dax is really into geography right now. Really, REALLY into it. The boy sleeps with an Atlas and insists that we take his United States of America puzzle and his map with us everywhere.

He likes to put the puzzle pieces on the appropriate state on his map before piecing the puzzle back together again. He also enjoys identifying the states for us and telling us a little anecdote about each one (like that his cousins live in Virginia or that Mt. Rushmore is in South Dakota or that the Sears Tower is in Illinois or that Sarah Palin lives in Alaska and she can see Russia from her house).

There's a huge sculpture of earth that hangs above the international foods section of our grocery store. Whenever Dax goes shopping with me he insists that we go "see planet Earth" and we circle around the salsas and marmite biscuits and Japanese Pocky while he points out Antarctica and Australia and Madagascar and Africa.

I love this. I love to see him get so excited about something and I love that he soaks up information like a little sponge. But I'm also thinking I had better start studying up a bit because when your four year old can identify states and countries better than you can it can be embarrassing.

His favorite things

For as long as I can remember, Dax's favorite number has been four and his favorite color has been red. Well, no more. Once he turned four he decided he needed new favorites. Tonight his favorite number is 100 and his favorite color is grey. Tomorrow it will be 10 and green or 245 and burnt sienna. Nobody knows!

Some things he has consistently been into (where "consistently" means "for more than 5 minutes") are robots, geography, and astronomy. He's obsessed with maps right now. For his birthday I bought him a little puzzle of the United States and he can identify them by sight which is mighty impressive to me since I can't do that myself. Cat bought him a book the other day about the solar system and it came with a little mobile that the two of them put together. He loves it. And we're about to decorate his room in a combination of robots and outer space themed items so let's hope this phase lasts for at least a short while.

Here he is singing about his favorite country: Madagascar. He decided long ago that he works there (???) and you can tell how fond he is of it by the lovely lyrics of his song. (He is far better at geography than he is at singing but there's plenty of time to prepare him for his American Idol audition when he's older.)

Madagascar from Michelle Madayag on Vimeo.