Trent Goes To School

With Tina's imminent return to work, Trent has begun going to preschool. Here are some pictures from his first day. He's going through an adjustment period. The reports from the teachers are relatively good. Once he gets past being left there in the morning he apparently does reasonably well. Since his birthday is in September, he's one of the oldest children in his class. This will be the case for his whole life given the way that school entry ages are structured. Trent is in the same class as one of my work colleague's son who was also born in September. So, there's at least one friend there for him who is his age.

The Shop

My first responsibility in move preparation was to get the shop ship shape. I began by building a lumber rack. It was based on plans from Wood Magazine It has two unconnected parts. Long narrow pieces of wood span the two pieces by lying across the arms. Large pieces of sheet stock slip into the large slot in the middle. Here are a couple of pictures of the rack installed in the shed with the wood from the shop stored in it [1][2]. Here's the shop all cleaned up.

The Eastern Shore

I haven't posted in a while. That's mostly because I've spent all of my discretionary time preparing to move the household to the Eastern Shore. Tina has successfully located a new job as a hospitalist working at Memorial Hospital at Easton and Dorchester General. Since the commute from Columbia to these locations is over an hour and my commute is also in the same direction, it makes a lot of sense to move. This Wednesday we're going house hunting. I've use Google's my maps application to create a map of our hunt. The green markers are the critical commute locations. The blue dots are potential houses. The red dots are houses that were originally part of our Internet search but which have subsequently been disqualified due to commute times. If you click on the markers you can see a thumbnail of the house and a quick summary of the commute times.

Simponize me!

This website allows you to take a picture of yourself and make yourself into a Simpsons character. Here's me:

Binky

One of Trent's new favorite books is Leslie Patricelli's Binky. Some of existing favorites include Sandra Boynton's titles including But Not the Hippopotamus, Barnyard Dance, and The Going-To-Bed Book. Binky, however, is the first book where I've gotten the sense that Trent understands the plot. It is the 12 page sage a baby questing for a lost binky. I think Trent understands the elements of the story. Perhaps because he can identify with the main character, the motivation, the narrative line, and the cathartic nature of the resolution. I won't spoil it for you by telling whether or not the baby finds the binky.

O, Green and Nine

Trent can identify several letters. His favorite is the letter 'O'. He can pick it out of words. He was, for a while, confused about the difference between the letter 'O' and holes. He seems to have worked that out though.

His favorite color is green. Anytime we let him pick out a shirt to wear from his drawer, he chooses a green shirt. Sometimes, when the green shirts are dirty, he gets upset. He likes to pick books off of bookshelves both at our house at his grandparents. He has favorites that he always chooses first. He likes The Northern Lights: The True Story of the Man Who Unlocked the Secrets of the Aurora Borealis and a book about hiking the Appalachian Trail. Both have a greenish turquoise color. His favorite Little People animal is the iguana, which is also a turquoise color.

Trent seems to be able to distinguish numbers from letters. But, all the numbers are nine. I've been trying to teach him to count. I count things for him. Then I ask him to count them too. He can't count things yet. But, he can point to things each in turn and say "Nine!".

Little Boys and the Truck Gene

I have made no conscious effort to place gender stereo types on Trent. OK, that's not entirely true. We do buy him boy-oriented toys. But, certainly of all the toys that we've bought him, I'm certain I've done nothing to create within him a specific love of trucks. I've discussed this phenomena with colleagues at work who have had a similar experience. We agree that we may have seen the joy that trucks bring to our sons and reinforced it by buying them truck toys and truck books. But where that original obsession with trucks comes from and why little girls don't seem to have any similar interest in trucks remains one of those mysteries of life.

One of the joys of parenting in the modern age is the amazing amount of freely available highly specific source material available for entertaining, er instructing, the young ones. Some of Trent's favorite youtube videos feature garbage trucks,strip mining, and excavators. One of the other joys is that while I was searching for videos for Trent, I came across this gem for myself.