Hopper's Last Day of Voor (Pre) School

School finishes less a week after we get back from Japan, so we decided, along with his teachers, that Hopper's last day would be just before we left at the end of March. So he had a Last-Day-Almost-4-Years-Old party and said good bye. I think it was more emotional for me than for him. He had such a lovely time there and made a couple of great friends. Thanks Dikkie Dik, Judith, Ursula, Denise, and Zainib. And a special shout out to Viggo who left a few months ago, and to Nizar his current bestie.

I know, I know, I'm getting to all things Japanese. I just had to get this out there first.

making brownies, mama bought a Betty Crocker brownies in a box. can't beat it. not when you need to stealth pack

aw, Nizar. we worried when Viggo left, but all for naught

besties

they would share toys, and Hopper would sometimes insist that i kiss both of them goodbye when i dropped him off

not always happy being center of attention

birthdays mean counting pieces of cake according to age. so 4 pieces please!

like father like son

the teachers present a folder with photos from the years and art work and such. Hopper's was quite empty as he often refuses to do a lot of art work. guess he gets enough at home. ^_^

oooooh, ahhhhhh

handing them out

blowing kisses

The Reluctant Art Project

Every 5 or 6 weeks there is a different theme at Hopper's Montessori preschool. Since the beginning of the year it's been art. So they've been talking about different artists and playing with varying sorts of arts supplies. 

Since Nik is an artist they asked if he would have time to come in and talk to the kids. Of course he was happy to oblige and brought his recent article in an interiors magazine (Eigen Huis & Interieur) and some of his inks and brushes. Hopper was noticeably excited beforehand (which we suspect was more the idea that daddy was going to stay at school with him) but was a bit of a stinker during the whole thing when he got a little possessive and wanted to do the painting himself. But all in all, it was great fun. The kids got to try their hand at sumi ink, and some of Nik's little animal paintings have decorated the classroom ever since.

The icing on the ole cake was that the Montessori peeps got together with the school and planned a little exhibition at the neighborhood's community center. Kids ages 3-6 made work and there was an opening this past Friday. Of course Hopper was only interested in the plates of snacks. I could barely get a photo of him with his painting, which we tricked him into by saying we were all going to get drinks then Oh hey here's your painting. <snap> Dude wouldn't even look at the camera.

(The behind the scenes story is that Hopper, one stubborn little nugget, had been refusing for weeks to make a painting. FInally one of the teachers made a deal with him that he had to do it after the weekend or he wouldn't have anything to hang for the exhibition. He finally acquiesced, because he's into the "deals", and voila his one painting made it onto the wall.)

Hopper's at center- greens, red, black squiggles

proud mama, indifferent nugget, yummy kaas stengel

Words of the Week

Hopper's language skills have taken on new highs in the last couple of months. Nearly every day we are blessed to hear him experiment with new words and phrases. Some of which are quite surprising and others directly from our own mouths.

Gone are the days of baby talk and missing articles and prepositions. It's full on paragraphs with adjectives and adverbs and all of the reflexive pronouns. It's astonishing how quickly kids learn, imagine if that scale never ebbed and we were all just walking encyclopediae?

This week his favorite new word, blurted out of the blue, is figurehead... Wha?! He found a yellow bike light, a small LED encased in a rubbery yellow loop that wraps around the handlebars. He announced to me during a play session "Here comes the figurehead mama!" At the end of the day, after hearing him happily belting it out at least 50 times, I started asking him where he heard it and he knew exactly. Thank you Octonauts cartoon.

Sunday, on the bike ride home from dinner with friends, we were all 3 talking about our days. I was talking about my Pilates course and asking him if he had fun with daddy. His reply, oh nevermind. 

He's also totally gotten a handle on otherwise and instead and although he hasn't quite mastered the meanings of yesterday and tommorow (when talking about something last week he says yesterday which is somehow freakin cute), he totally has a well of memories he likes to recall and is starting to grasp the days of the week.

One of his favorite things to talk about in the last months is meteorites and he'll ask me if in fact it's a comet instead. He enjoys space talk and loves photos of anything to do with space. Just before Christmas, he had pepernoten cookies in his hand. They're small round brown half spheres. He put 2 together to make a ball, and said, "Mama, look, this is the earth and the earth is our planet and it floats in space." He announced it to me, a statement without any query, as if he had no doubt but was sheerly by way of information. He got super smooched for that one.

I've been kicking myself for not writing down all the lovely things he's said over the last year or so. I was pretty good about it in the beginning but totally lost steam. So I've decided that i will try to just blog it from time to time if not just to have a record of it to look back on...

Sorry no photos, I have about 7 months of photos on my camera and no space on my hard drive. Something that has taken 8th seat in the list of priorities at this moment. But I promise sometime soon, I will get to it.