Love Letters and Learning Letters

Chase's teacher informed me when I went to pick him up from school this afternoon that he is now engaged. You may remember from my "1st Day of Kindergarten" post that Antoinette came home and told her mom that Chase had agreed to marry her as long as she didn't tell anyone about it. Chase never mentioned this to us. I tried to be sneaky and start conversations about Antoinette, but he didn't take the bait. Last week when he came to my office after school, he colored her a picture and put it in a sealed envelope with her name on it and brought it to her the next day. Well, apparently now they are announcing their engagement to the rest of their kindergarten class.

His dad says he's a pretty smart kid:
Chase does not have a swimming pool, but guess who does? Yep, Antoinette.
Chase doesn't have a swingset, either. Antoinette? You betcha.
X-Box? Antoinette.
Aquadots? Check.
I think we're in trouble...

Anyway, today he comes home and says that he has "mail" in his lunchbox from Antoinette. He takes out the envelope, opens it, and then quickly goes and hides the whole thing in his closet. Being a good mother, I waited until he was in bed to go dig it out and take pictures to post on the blog.
Here's the envelope:

And here's the "letter":

Turning to a different kind of letters, Cole is still working on his alphabet and is making rapid progress. He only makes the sounds of a few of his letters, but he can identify almost all of them now. He's been watching the Letter Factory dvd the last couple of days, and just like Chase did, he's learning his letters really quickly. I can't recommend those dvd's enough.

Here he is working his phonics machine:

And finally, here's my big boy. The one who's too "big" to kiss me anymore. The one who's too "big" to even tell me bye when I drop him off at school. And the one who still sleeps in my bed with his teddy bear every single night. I hope Antoinette's mom and dad have a king-size bed.

STOP. Letter Time.

Cole got a Leap Frog Fridge Phonics set on Sunday. He LOVES it. He has learned quite a few letters (he can't do their sounds yet), but my favorite part is that he presses the button to start the letter song and then he does a little MC Hammer-type dance from side to side while it plays. I didn't get any pictures of the dance in progress, but I did get a few of him working with his letters. He also likes to take them to the table and match them up with the letters on his placemat.

Chase's 1st Day of Kindergarten

Chase was pretty excited about starting Kindergarten today. He was a little ticked that he has a bedtime now, and he fought it for a while last night, so he was a little grumpy when I had to wake him up at 7:15 this morning.
I have taken his picture on the front porch every year on the first day of school sinced he started preschool, and I was so excited to be doing it at our new house this year, but I didn't have much success because it was really hot and the sun was right in his eyes. But anyway, here's the squinting kindergartener:

Cole giving his brother a first day of school hug:

Getting buckled in:

Then of course, once I start the car and get the AC going, Chase remembers that he forgot to brush his teeth, so he has to go back in.

Here he is posing in front of the fireplace on his way back out to the car:

Finally, we make it to school and I take a few more while waiting in the drop off line:

He had a good day by all accounts. His teacher said he worked on subtraction today. Chase said he got to play with playdough. Antoinette, his 6 year old friend, told her mother he agreed to marry her. We'll see how tomorrow goes...

Superhero Week Gone Awry

Not sure what went wrong, but we went from Superman, to Spiderman, to Buzz Lightyear, to...

Supermom???



Cole thought he was pretty funny, but Chase was not impressed and the heels were returned to mom pretty quickly.

Superhero week continues

Thanks to Cole's big cousin Jack, he now has a pair of Buzz Lightyear PJ's just like Chase's. He is SO proud!

Here they are shooting me with their lasers.

Superhero Week

This week was superhero week at our house. One day they were both spiderman, and another they were superman. Poor Cole kept tripping over his cape.

The Fort

Chase & Cole have built a fort in Chase's room and spend pretty much all their time there now. They said they wanted to sleep in it last night, but they both abandoned ship about 1am.