“Then felt I like some watcher of the skies / When a new planet swims into his ken”

[larryhammer]

TBD turns six years old at the end of the month, and given how long it’s been since my last development report, it’s time to officially declare these an irregular feature. Achievements and notes have grown enough in complexity they are hard to jot down, just as Talking, Talking is more whole conversations instead of quick exchanges.

To mark this transition, I’m changing their nom de internet to Eaglet.

(I will continue to use gender-neutral pronouns, and ask that those who know their real-life gender identity do the same.)

But to report what I have jotted down:

Achievements unlocked these past handful of months: consistent single-digit subtraction, word find puzzles, holding playing cards in hands, dominoes, slicing bread, reading early readers, carrying cats.

Achievements leveled up: basic paper airplanes, grooming own hair, reading phonetic-spelling words, social assurance, awesomeness, mimetic drawing, the losing of milk-teeth, naming cats, soccer.

That last is the easiest to expand on: we marked growing from baby!jock into jock-in-training by joining a U6 soccer club. The joy on Eaglet’s face at the end of first practice proved the decision. We’re already on break for the summer (we get hot early, here in the desert) but summer day camps will be sports camps.

Current games include Uno, Crazy Eights, Go Fish (sometimes played in Chinese), Sorry!, Race for the Treasure, Outfoxed, Scrabble Junior, dominos, and kicking around a soccer ball. Recent media consumed include Wild Kratts, various Power Rangers series, Octonauts, My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic, and Captain Underpants (tra-la-LA!). Current books are all over the map, but include a special concern for medieval knights and castles, racing cars, and eagles. When being read to, they almost have enough attention span to get through an early chapter book without an illustration every page.

And in the end, I did capture a couple talking, talking bon mots:

(singing)
“Uh oh, Power Rangers!
Didn’t I tell you never stop?”

“I like itchy spots because you can scratch them as much as you like.”

“John Philip Sousa ... I like his music because they’re like marches. It sounds like Star Wars.”

(on a road trip, parents are jamming out to My Little Pony’s “Time To Be Awesome”)
(slightly whiny) “When can we hear John Philip Sousa?”

“I have a crush on muffins.”

“Why does [the Statue of] Liberty have a torch in one hand and a tablet in the other?”

Good question, Eaglet -- it does look like one, doesn’t it.

---L.

Subject quote from On First Looking into Chapman’s Homer, John Keats.

Comments

[gwynnega]

I have a crush on muffins, too.

[larryhammer]

You are not alone.

[swan_tower]

“John Philip Sousa ... I like his music because they’re like marches.”

Her opinion will change Real Fast if she takes up French horn or tuba. #stillbitter

[larryhammer]

snrk

[cmcmck]

I love these reports of yours! :o)

A crush on muffins sounds good to me!

[oracne]

When I was a kid, I was in love with this album of (British) marches by the Coldstream Guards.

[larryhammer]

We'll see if this becomes one of those longstanding desires or remains a transient crush.

[larryhammer]

Heh. I can see why.

[thistleingrey]

Eaglet is cool.

There was a certain amount of "Tra-la-LA!" around here for a while, too. I am glad it has faded.

[larryhammer]

That obsession was replaced with are return to My Little Pony. Interests, they are multifarious.

[thistleingrey]

The book(lets) as well, or primarily tv?

[larryhammer]

A return to TV, with interest bridged by the comic books and a few book(let)s.

BTW, the new season of She Ra drops on the 26th.

[thistleingrey]

Nice on both fronts. Reason has never gotten into She-Ra--I hope that Eaglet enjoys it! (Not sure why, given the Teen Titans and other comics that Reason's been reading. But perhaps the pivot is reading, specifically, in her case: static, not moving with sound.)

[larryhammer]

There was a period of frequent raising up something (lightsaber, spoon, whatever) and calling out "For the honor of Greyskull!" before performing an action.

[movingfinger]

Is the Sousa march thing because of "Be kind to your (small feathered,web-footed,et al.) friends"?

[larryhammer]

Eaglet was introduced to Sousa at school -- I assume because the thumping beat of a march is easy for kinders to relate to.

(More amusing, the art teacher introduced the class to Kandinsky and abstract art, which they then imitated. As a friend with a kinder in another school in the same district said, "Ooo, how swank.")