family of four: March 2019

When Aviva gets hurt, she wants us to check in with her. This means saying "Are you ok? What can I do to make it better?" Sometimes the answer she gives is "a hug." And this does seem to make it better for her. So if Noah hurts her, either accidentally or on purpose, and he checks in with her, she'll usually want a hug from him and then she's happy again.

At Aviva's school, they regularly do yoga. The yoga poses are mostly things like "frog," "candle," and "fish." But sometimes she adds an interpretive one, like "whipped cream." She said when it gets sprayed out of the bottle, it goes like this: "shhhhhtp" and she did some motions that went with it. (They had waffles one day at her school and they put whipped cream on them, and the whipped cream came in a can. When we make whipped cream at home, we use a mixer. So this was totally new and exciting.) They also do a yoga pose where they lay still on their backs, and in (adult) yoga classes, it's called "shavasana," meaning corpse pose. In Aviva's classroom, though, it's called "left out doll pose" or "do nothing doll pose." That's much more kid-friendly than "dead body."

Both kids are doing more independently and they're proud of that. They can get into pajamas themselves and get dressed in the morning themselves, and sometimes they do it to surprise us. (We would love to be surprised every morning and every night...)

Story w/Bubbe

Puzzle w/Grandma

Camouflaged Noah

Aviva said when she grows up, she wants to be a teacher like her teacher Sarah. She wondered if her body already knows that, or does her brain know that? And brains are in our stomach, right? How do you know what you're going to be? Is the brain going to tell you what it decided?

Noah's been telling Aviva that he has secret eyes and he can see secret things with his secret eyes. So when Aviva says, "guess which hand is holding the button," Noah already knows. And he can see through our skin. And he knows many other useful things with his secret eyes but he can't say what they are right now. Partially because they're secret, and also because he doesn't want to right now. And Aviva completely believes this. And sometimes when he guesses wrong, it's because he knows, but he just wanted to say the wrong answer. We should stop this, right? But it's cute and interesting so I haven't

When Aviva is surprised about something or she's not sure if we're kidding, she says, "actually?" This happens a few times a day.