mastery

Anders has mastered going down the stairs now. We only have the stairs outside of our front door, but he's fallen a few times. The most recent fall resulted in another huge forehead bruise. But since then, he's finally realized how to back down, and be cautious about it. It's so cute to see him drop down and creep backwards to the stair. He also figured out how to go down hills the same way.

I'm tired tonight... there were several other things I thought of today that I wanted to write down, but I can't think of them now.

Oh, we've ventured into imaginary friends... Erik first mentioned a few to me on Sunday evening. We were in the car, and he started talking about someone, I thought he said "John". So I asked, and he said "no, with an 's'. Johns." I asked him where Johns lived, and he said in Johns Sunday School room. He also had a friend named "Ferris" (though upon reflection, it sounds a lot like how he says "fairest", as in "Fairest Lord Jesus"...). Then he told me how Johns has a birthday on May 31st, and right now he's 100, but he'll be 101 on his birthday. And Ferris is just 0 right now, but on June 1st he'll be 1, and on June 2nd he'll be 2, and on June 3rd he'll be 3... and on and on.

The next day was May 2nd, and he told me it was Ferris's birthday. When I asked if he'd be coming for a party, Erik said he didn't know. I asked if he could call Ferris, see if he could come over for a party. Erik said, "yes. I'll call him on my hand phone," and proceeded to have a "hand phone" conversation. Cute! Then, he hung up and said that Ferris would be driving his gray car, but he was very far away and he wouldn't be here until tomorrow.

I love to see his imagination developing. I want to encourage this new development, so I try to have some good imaginative play every day.

We got together with friends Kim, Yuri, and Rafi today. Yuri is 4 in June, and he and Erik are in ways eerily similar. Kim and I get along very well too. This was our second time meeting, and Yuri and Erik are starting to "interact", in their own way. We can see, though, that with consistent meetings they are going to be able to be friends. They share a deep love of numbers and letters. We're also going to start doing a little math school with Chris, the dad. He's a mathematician, and it's going to be fun to be able to have them develop their interest together.