The Sundays

If you hang on each Senyor Madre post, I apologize--I was finishing some freelance work the past couple days. I will however stop doing such things if you'd be willing to send $100 each month (times 13 followers, even my wife) to the address I will provide when you agree and contact me.

Otherwise, I need to contribute something more than keeping the kids alive, the house and furniture intact and spreading domestic tales of joy with this here blog.

Back to business, then.

I have confidence that Darcy will be smart, and I'll tell you why. The other day at a park, I asked her if she wanted to play catch with me. I bring along a football to park outings involving Connor in case the ConMan wants to chuck it around. She is very game, and put her arms in the basket position we have drilled each morning at 4:30.

I tossed it and hit her in the face. After I comforted her--hug, some words--she went to play with the equipment and her siblings. Later, I asked her if she wanted to play catch. She said "No."

So, she's all set for a life of enlightenment, trial and error, risk and reward, living and learning. Her twin, um........I believe that if Gavin touched an oven in use that he would not repeat it...once he let it go. He has a high pain thresh-hold is the point I'm trying to make. He's my Goon-in-training.

I'll leave fourth-grade Connor out of this, restricting it to the toddlers. The ConMan gets good grades and is sociable and sensitive and funny--a completed work if you will. Maggie, though, not sure what to do.

She's reading already, has been since she turned 3, though a lot better as she nears 4. She has since about then been doing things on her own on the PC as well--finding her sites, clicking on them, playing games, etc.

I'll type this once--this is not bragging on my kid. I know plenty of kids can read at this age, and use a PC, but I have only one of them, and we have to worry about how to handle precociousness. Add fertilizer or let it grow organically?

No, I haven't researched anything. I'm afraid because child development is the kind of field with five different theories. I'm sure I will push--maybe find a group her age that also reads, maybe start one (yeah, right). I'm trying to get her to work on writing now, but she's resisting, and that'll be cute for another day or so, then the food-rationing will begin.

She starts preschool again next Monday, and it is a good one, focused on education, not just play and crafts. We've been messing around with Spanish since she was walking--"Cuidado!"--but not in a get-after-it way. She gave my heart a skip today though when she said "Fresa."

It's fun just letting her be a 3-year-old girl, so that is the other part of the tug-of-war. Just would hate to let a good thing fade away.

Her progress is no mystery--we had time and space to focus on her before the twinny twin twins, and like most folks, we prioritized book time. I am sure that the time spent on Starfall.com made the key difference (besides the genetic aspect of superior intellect of course), however. Sounding out letters in words is real.

Excuse me if I'm stating the obvious, but I don't remember doing this with Connor, so this seems like my first toddler educational venture. He fooled me one time, when he was 3 or 4. We were playing Cariboo, and he pointed at the word "airplane" and said "airplane." I screamed, "Carrie, he just read a word!" Then I noticed that a picture of an airplane was right under the word.

So, I don't think we'll turn into the Rick Moranis character from "Parenthood"--I so much enjoy a child who beats his bucket-covered head against the wall that I could not in good conscience over-manage any of them. We'll see.

As for the twins, they have had less attention paid to their phonetics and such, but they'll have each other to cheat off. Not playing favorites, you understand, just trying to keep all my shit in one sock, as my old friends used to say.