March

March started with a LOT of snow. This took the Netherlands entirely by surprise as it was not rain and had not been ordered and planned. For the children it was of course great fun, but it was actually deep enough to make car driving interesting and Falco actually missed a day of playschool because Marjolein needed to dig the car out. People who had fitted winter tires to go skiing where laughing of course and you did see the occasional sturdy individual langlaufing past the windows. Marjo had the presence of mind to buy a simple sledge and it proved a life-saver: it was impossible to go anywhere with the buggy and Falco loved being towed around in it.

Daniel is a sharp observer of his environment, something that is easy to miss because he does not always express what he sees in words. When he does it is often surprising, he noticed that Marjolein’s mother had been to the hairdresser and he notices when Mamma has new jewellery or makeup: a very useful skill for later I would say…

Typical of this was "Mama, what is that red stuff in your hair?". Marjolein spent a while anxiously checking her head before she realised that he meant the "chestnut highlights" she had used to eliminate some grey hairs. Follow up was "Mama, <beat> do you know why all Mamas have that stuff in their hair?<pause> Because all Mamas want to be the prettiest!" Yes, definitely a useful skill.

Falco has reached the "puppeteer" stage and creates elaborate dialogues between his stuffed animals. They play, fight and generally behave like daytime television. He ALWAYS gets tucked up a night with Tiny Bear, Cow and Monkey and tucks them up himself, carefully giving them good night kisses: too cute for words. He is good a colours and shapes by now and is very fond of his big picture books with lots of animals and things to point at and name. He even counts them (pretty accurately).

School reports came in this month. Daniel got his first CITO test and did ok overall but consistently mixed up more/less, most/least so school asked us to practice that with him a bit. The biggest problem is that he is enormously slow and deliberate in everything he does. Things start going on in that little round head of his and the real world just falls away. That, combined with his legendary stubbornness (where CAN he have got that from I asked Marjo…) makes him a handful in class. When he wanders in to class late with his head in the clouds he hates having to sit in the last free chair: that was not what he had planned. Naturally he does not immediately conclude that he should move faster next time, that would be much too obvious.

It also does not help that the words that do come out of him are widely spaced fence-posts on this train of thought. Better yet they are generally word-pictures: not everybody can follow the track and make sense of him. While we were eating outside on a balmy May evening he said it was still a bit "winterish", meaning "parky" as far as he was concerned.

Matthijs report was great on maths, ok on language (which means he was NOT trying) and totally dreadful on "work attitude". It is a tough one: he gets bored and switches off, but that also means that he does not cover enough ground to get onto the fun stuff and extended material he should be doing. The school is going to have a psychologist come in and observe him in class: they are hoping she can give them some tools to help him. Remember of course that he has already been tested up to the end of group 3: he already knows everything that he should learn this year. All he needs to do now is find a way to apply himself.

The teacher has been reading up on smart children and is doing her best to accommodate him. Because he has difficulty with automating tasks she found a special computer program that rewards him for doing a whole set of sums inside a strict time-limit. He also got to stand up and explain some sums to the rest of the class: that is intended to help him think through the different ways you can solve something.

He also reached another milestone: he can go for his A-certificate at swimming. The test is on April 2nd. He is of course enormously proud.

Early Easter this year and we celebrated it at our house with Marjoleins mother and sister and nephew. We made a nice Easter brunch and Mr Bunny scampered out and hid huge numbers of eggs around our square. A good time was had by all.

School chipped in with a special Easter breakfast in pyjamas and a "fox hunt". That meant that the kids had to dash round the neighbourhood looking for the teachers, who were all disguised: tremendous fun.

Playground
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Snow fun in March
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Falco is put to bed
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