Spanish? Polish? English?

Wednesday was a great day.  I had to fly out Wednesday evening for a quick 1 day business trip, so Zak and I made the most of it in preparation for not seeing each other for the next 2 nights.

We had a lot of errands to run in the morning, but we chit chatted as we went.  He told me that he slept well, but had silly dreams.  I was intrigued, because he's never told me about his dreams before.  He said he dreamt about letter Zs turning into letter Ns, and started laughing..."Isn't that silly?"

I also asked him about his school day the day before, and he told me they had a fire drill...which was pretty fun because we had had a fire drill at work too, which of course I told him.  So then he proceeded to ask me all the details and how it related to his...did we have to walk out single file?  Did we have to hold hands?  Was the alarm going?  Did the fire truck come?  And two police cars?

One of our errands was to go buy 2 children's digital cameras for Rowan and Ethan's Christmas gifts (yes, I'm already shopping for Christmas...but I saw them on a great sale at CVS of all places, so wanted to get them before they were out)...well Zak wanted one too.  I reminded him he already had one, and he reminded me that the batteries keep running out.  Right!  So I told him that we'd check it out when we got home, and see if I could fix it.  He did have 10 stars, so I told him he could pick another toy.  It's so interesting to watch him look through the shelves.  He'll pick up something big, and then say, "No, that's probably too expensive."  Then pick up something else and go through the same thing.  Sometimes, he'll ask "Is this too expensive?"  So he has some concept of knowing 10 stars is worth something, but not everything...and generally he has me about right, he asks at about the $10-$15 mark.  In the end, he decided not to get a toy that time out, and wanted to wait and see if he needed his stars to buy a new camera.  Turns out, I thought the camera had rechargeable batteries and kept plugging it into the computer thinking I was charging the stupid thing...so all I had to do was actually replace the batteries...  Anyway, he was extremely happy to have his working camera again, and started having me pose for him.  "Look this way please.  Ok.  Smile please.  Say cheese please."

Which leads me to our wonderful afternoon at the park.  We spent a good hour or more hanging out at the park, enjoying the beautiful fall.  There is a little creek there, and we sat cross-legged on a little concrete bridge and threw sticks into it.  I got some pictures, and whenever I asked him to say cheese, he said "Formaggio!"  Something he picked up in Italy :-)  I thought he had forgotten about that.  He also found "an interesting stick that looked like a Y," which made me smile that he presented it that way.  I thought I'd share with him the wishbone concept...so I explained how he should make a wish, then we'd both pull and whoever got the bigger side's wish would come true.  So we did it and he got the bigger side.  "What did you wish for Zak?"  "Oh.  I wished for the bigger side."  Guess it worked out. :-)

Telling Stories

Searching for sticks

Making our wishes

After the park, I started reminding him that I'd be leaving for the evening and he'd stay with Tato.  He told me he really wanted to invite someone over to play with him.  He proceeded to think of who he should invite, and said "Hmm...I'd like to invite.....someone that begins with the letter E....is there anyone that begins with E that we can invite?....Hmm....I know!  Ethan and Logan!"  It was so cute how he thought he was leading me on this little journey of who to invite....also cute that he thinks of Ethan and Logan as a pair that comes together...beginning with E :-)

Last thing I wanted to share today is actually about our evening ritual the last couple of nights.  Kuba and I typically will go up with Zak to his room, and I'll read to them 3 books.  This week, we started adding a Polish book that Kuba reads.  After the first couple of pages, Zak asked Tato to quit reading in Spanish and please read in English.  Of course we corrected him and moved on.  At some point he pointed to something and asked what it was...we answered in Polish...he said "No, quit saying it in Spanish!  What is it in English?"  I'm assuming this is from the fact that at school they teach a Spanish class.  Anyway, it's fun to see him learn about different countries and languages.  Yesterday we told him that Mattie lives in Poland, like Babcia...and his first question was "Do they live together?"  So we got out the map and showed him.

It's been really hard to manage work lately in the 3 days...we have lots of people coming into town the next 2 weeks, with almost every night packed with business dinners.  I already know I'll work at least 4 days each of the next 2 weeks, and probably should do 5 if I really plan to keep up.  Unfortunately I couldn't get the HR paperwork done in time to up it officially to 4 days until November, so I'll just have to manage it. It's actually affecting my personal time more than anything, because it means if I'm not at work, I want to spend as much as possible with Zak after work, which means my tennis specifically then suffers.  It's been nice with the 3 days, because I never felt guilty on Wed or Fri leaving Zak with a babysitter while I played some tennis since we got to spend the days together.  I hate the thought of picking him up from one day care, and then dropping him at another so Kuba and I can play....and besides that, I just really want to spend time with Zak as well.  Such is life :-)  We'll manage it, even if it means I don't get to be the tennis super star I want to be!  :-P

Friday was also a great day, but more about that in my next blog!

A very good Friday

We made up for the mediocre day on Wednesday with an awesome day on Friday.  I started off feeling a little sluggish still, but got better as the day went on.  We got up and had breakfast with Tato and were all chatting about what birthday gift we should get for our nephew, Logan.  Zak wanted to get him some cars or trains, and was listing off all the possibilities.  Tato asked that, if we were shopping, could we also get a toy for him.  Zak thought for a second and said, "Well, you have to be good first Tato.  Let's see how your day goes."  Surprised us both :-)

Zak and I headed up to Toys R Us, and for some strange reason they open up at 9:00 on every weekday, except Fridays...where they don't open until 9:30.  It gave us a good excuse to head over to Graeters and have a muffin.  We then headed back over to Toys R Us and spent an hour searching, selecting and reselecting something for Logan...and something for Zak too :-)

On the way home, Zak asked if we could go out for lunch somewhere, and wanted to invite Aunt Katie.  He said he wanted a cheese coney, so we called up Aunt Katie, who unfortunately (or fortunately), doesn't like Skyline....it was cute because then Zak thought for a minute, and said, "Hmm, does Aunt Katie like McDonald's?"...and Aunt Katie, who was on speaker phone, said "Sure, she likes McDonald's."  So we picked up Katie, went to McDonald's, where Zak proceeded to play on the playground, while Katie and I watched from the window (it was too cold for us)...and he didn't eat even one bite of his lunch.

We came home and Zak asked me to play "Garbage Trucks" with him.  So for 30 minutes I laid out legos as if they were trash across the room, and he had the garbage truck come by and load them up to take to the dump.

Then, we laid down for a nap...perfect day for it.  I fell asleep for 30 minutes, then got up and rearranged his toys a bit.  He asked that his "car garage" be brought downstairs, so we moved all his other toys upstairs to make room for it.  I also put a bunch out to give to goodwill.  When he woke up, he surprisingly wanted to do some school work.  I had bought him this Thomas the Train workbook, and we spent about 45 minutes doing the different exercises.  The math pieces he's great at...he still doesn't like to write much though.  So he always wants me to help guide his hand when he writes the numbers or letters.     I'm sure he'll get it :-)  By the way, we've also been doing homework for his school.  So far, so good.  They've been pretty easy so far.  The last one was circle everything that begins with an F, and put an X through everything that doesn't.  He did that very easily, although I can see a clear difference between his attitude and mine on it.  He kind of sloppily puts a circle on it, can even be directly on the picture, not around it.  I notice the girls in his class try to be very precise with their circles (me too).  Should I care?  The best part though was the 2nd part of the homework, where he had to guess a riddle (answer Firetruck), and then draw it.  He got very excited about that...first drew a little boy, then a house around the boy, then fire in the house, then the fire truck (and police car) coming to rescue them.  He was very deliberate about what he wanted to draw and how.  He surprised me :-)

Anyway, it was a nice day after the rather mediocre day on Wednesday and the rather stressful day at work on Thursday.