Mr. Mitch

Here's a picture-filled look at what's been going on with our resident 5 year old.

He's been doing really well with homeschooling. I'm glad that we started in kindergarten, when things are fairly simple, because it's been a learning process for both of us. It's fun to be able to help him learn new things, and we like having him around a lot more than he'd be here if he were in school all day. Not surprisingly, math seems to be his favorite subject. He thinks he's pretty tricky when he can solve addition problems without using any 'counters'. We've done some tug of war in the reading department, but he's much more comfortable with it now. He's kind of a perfectionist, and he didn't like to read if he was going to make mistakes. He's getting much more confident in his ability to figure things out.

We're involved in a homeschool group and twice a month they get together for a park day and PE classes for the kids. Mitchell has a lot of fun in his PE class. It's funny to watch him do all those goofy things PE teachers make you do.

He recently graduated to a bigger bike and he's taking to life with out training wheels.

This obnoxious pink thing is named Kirby. He's from a video game. And that is where my knowledge of him stops. Despite the fact that Mitchell talks about him a good portion of the day, I know nothing about him. Not going to lie, I tune out all Kirby conversations. Mitchell has always been the kind of kid that gets kind of fixated on something, and for a while that's all he's into. When he was little it was space, for a time it was Mario. It goes it phases, which gives me hope that soon the Kirby phase will be over. He doesn't get a whole lot of video game time in a day, so he looks forward to it all day. To tide himself over until the few minutes of the real thing he draws Kirby, makes Kirby out of Legos, creates Kirbyness out of playdough, I'm so sick of Kirby.

Lately if you ask him what he wants to be he says a 'builder man'. As near as I can tell he doesn't actually want to build buildings, he wants to design them. He also has aspirations to be a chef. I intend to encourage that as much as I can, anything that gets me out of making dinner.

He's a great, slightly bossy, older brother. He and Sam are always off on some adventure. He's Luke's hero, has been since Luke was tiny. He loves Mitchell, and loves to copy him and do goofy things to make him laugh. It entertains me that Luke will get in scuffles with Sam, they take stuff from each other, scream at each other, hit each other, but he won't do that with Mitchell, he's off limits. Mitchell is good at making him laugh and trying to keep him out of trouble, which is a full time job. And, finally, his piano career is on hiatus, for an undetermined amount of time. I get to nag a lot less now.