Losing my humanity

Last night was the first day of competition of So You Think You Can Dance, my favorite summer show. Bohdin usually starts dancing when he sees them and this time Nyla did also. Buddy taped it. I spent all day cleaning yesterday and that bedroom is the one room I didn't get to. I'll see if I can make her dance today in a clean room.

Bohdin feel asleep while I was still watching the show but Nyla couldn't. She got out of bed and went through the nightstand drawers. She was quite excited to see a picture of herself. She also found paper so went in the dark to the other room to retrieve the box of crayons. She colored for a little while then put the crayons back. She came in ready for sleep. I checked her diaper and felt that it was wet. I took her old diaper off and was getting ready to put a new one on her when she walked off. I asked where she was going and she said pee. She came back from the potty, had her diaper put on, and went to sleep. She seemed so much calmer than usual. It was nice. In fact she just had a pretty good day overall. When she's not crying or grumpy, she can be funny and very charming.

Nyla did learn two new words yesterday. No and now. It's kind of hard to believe that she just first used them yesterday because it seems like she has been saying that since birth.

Bohdin and I have been working our way through a kitchen science experiment book. We've done bathtub science also. I don't think he's learned anything but he has fun doing it. We failed at making invisible ink but he enjoyed the pH indicator. It's really hard to explain pH.

That reminds me of an article I read last week written in the 30s. An educator did an experiment with the students. One group was taught the regular way. Other classes were not introduced to math until middle school. The students who did not have math were much better communicators. He asked both groups to explain how you can tell which of two fractions is bigger when the numerator is the same. The kids in the regular class knew the answer but they sounded like bumbling idiots because they had never learned to communicate clearly. The second group was able to give clear concise answer that actually made sense. By this time both groups were in 9th grade I think and the non math group had easily caught up on math skills. Buddy and I definitely fall into the bumbling idiot group. It's quite clear when we try to explain things like pH or what a ceremony is to Bohdin. I want Bohdin to be able to express himself better than we can. I think the kids in the study were able to focus more school time on English since they weren't learning math. We're not going to delay math but will focus some time on Bohdin learning to express himself. He already seems to do pretty well verbally.

We started the spelling program. The first step is learning the sounds letters make. He knew about half of the initial set. He knew every letter that just had one phonogram. It will take at least one day for him to learn one new letter. Some of them, like the letter y, have a lot to remember.

At the library last week there was a display of summer reading for kids in different grades. Nyla fell in love with a 7th grade book titled Eggs. There is a picture of 6 eggs on the front. She carries the book around with her and flips through the pages.

I've been living in Maryland too long. The people are starting to rub off on me. I heard about the shooting at the Holocaust Museum in DC yesterday shortly after it happened. My first thought was that it was really going to mess up traffic. My second thought was that it's been a while since we've been down there and I should take the train down soon. Maryland is sucking the humanity out of me like it does everybody else.