Bedtime conversation with Oliver tonight:
“Did you know that Spinosauruses are real?”
“Um, maybe…”
“Well, they were. And they were really big. Do you know how big?”
“No… really big?”
“Yes. They were huge. They were 100 times bigger than a teacher!“
After reading a bedtime book about the Mars rover, Sarah asked Oliver if he would ever want to be an astronaut:
Oliver: No! No. No. Not even one tiny teeny bit.
Sarah: Oh. That sounds like a pretty strong “no.” Why not?
Oliver numbers his reasons:
Oliver’s wonderful Kindergarten teacher, Molly, sent us this picture and quote. The “bead bars” represent numbers (by the number of color-coded beads on each bar) and can be used to explore a lot of mathematical operations (including addition and multiplication). It’s amazing to see how these manipulatives give kids real confidence around number manipulation. Oliver regularly stops me from solving math problems so that he can do them himself.
“Griffin, that happies me up!”
— Oliver
This morning Oliver came to me in the kitchen for his morning snuggle, and we were walking past the string of paper bags we have up for masks for everyone in our family who goes to school everyday (see the picture below). I walked past while holding him and he said, “Wait! Go back!”, and looked at the bags. He said, “Sunday starts with, S, right?” I said yes, and he stared and stared at the bag with my name on it, slowly whisper-sounding out the letters, with a confused look on his face (I believe expecting the letters would sound out to Sunday). And he repeated the sounds and finally his face brightened up and he exclaimed: “Sarah! That says Sarah! That’s your name!”
Oliver showed me some scratches on his leg. I responded, logically, with, “Were you bitten by a basilisk?”
Oliver responds, “No! They’re not real.”
“Oh, how do you know?”
Oliver rolls his eyes and says, “Daddy, I know a LOT about the world.”
Oliver, how’d you make Maggie so mad?
No! Maggie made me mad! … then I made her mad.
Tonight during Oliver’s bath…
Sarah: Did you know some people take baths EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT?!?
Oliver: What?!?
Sarah: Yeah, isn’t that crazy?
Oliver: NO! That’s OUTRAGEOUS!!
Oliver: “Mama, can I have my vitamins that are made of owls?”
“They’re not made of owls, honey.”
“Yeah, of course. They’re made BY owls.”