July 16, 2009

ALEX TURNS 3

Alex turned 3 yesterday and had a nice party at school that Ellie was allowed to go upstairs to join. He has come a long way in 3 years. At Burger King for ice cream the day before his birthday he showed how he has grown into his role as a big brother. There was a large poster with all the Transformer toys available in kids meals. Ellie kept pointing to the pink motorcycle she had gotten last week and saying "my bike, my bike" as she believes most of what she sees is hers. (I think this comes from us always calling her a princess.) Some of Alex's classmates from school were there and also starting pointing to the bike saying "my bike, my bike". Alex quickly jumped in and starting defending his sister by saying "no, Ellie's bike" and stood in front of the picture so the other boys could not point at it anymore. He stayed in front of the picture for quite a while refusing to allow anyone else to claim the bike as theirs. As a send off to his 2's he threw his biggest tantrum to date while we were in Burger King for ice cream. He got upset it was time to go and ended up on the floor screaming and crying and clinging to my leg as I tried to walk across the floor. I think he has done a good hand-off to Ellie as she jumped right into the role of cheeky, naughty 2 year old. On the way home from ice cream Alex was screaming for fun in the car and I reminded him they were not allowed to scream in the car. His reply was "Can we scream at home?" Perhaps the lawyer in his mummy is rubbing off on him. He loves to remind mum when he finds her shoes around the house that she needs to put them in the shoe rack by the front door.


By coincidence constitution day here is just a couple days after July 4 so we get a bank holiday weekend on the 4th of July. Alex and Ellie wore their special outfits to school the day before to show they are all-American kids. The next weekend Ellie actually got to have a play date when her friend Amelia from school came over on Sunday morning with her family for breakfast and a busy morning in the pool. Ellie loves to paddle around the pool with her float belt on and Alex is getting good at swimming around completely on his own with no floats and can even swim to the bottom to pick up his little seals.


For his birthday he got a train, an airplane and a "Cars" umbrella. (Ellie also had to have an umbrella as she believes she is the same age and for a month-and-a-half she is technically correct!) Later that afternoon they were playing outside with the umbrellas even though there was no hint of rain. it still amazes me what kids find so entertaining.

After much hassle, effort and frustration, mostly at the British, Latha finally arrived this afternoon. It finally took getting a transit visa for a 3 hour layover in Heathrow. It took 5 days, several sets of photos, money, lots of paperwork and numerous trips to a variety of British Embassy sites in Muscat so she could change planes in London. The kids are so excited to see her and I think she had one whole suitcase of presents for them.

We are off to Minnesota to visit the family on Aug 7. It will be great to see the American clan again. In preparation for starting work the end of August I have started a website that is a little bit about maths. Even if you are not one of my students you should check it out. I also have another blog which is devoted to maths and school. Mr Block's maths home

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