From our visit to my Dad's on the Mississippi coast this past weekend.
View from the roof of the boathouse:
A swing at the end of the dock is everyone's favorite place to sit:
Cullen pushing his little cousin, Scarlett:
A new fall hair-do:
Clowning around with Pop:
Note his unique paddling technique:
Much easier to get around with some extra man-power:
Sending an "air five" to Pop:
One of my favorite places:
I mentioned in an earlier post that Cullen has suddenly gone crazy for drawing and writing. The level of this new interest is almost frightening in its intensity! He begs for breaks between his usual work in order to draw his latest ideas. I have wondered if this is really the same child!
There are sixty or more drawings just from the past couple of weeks. Most of these are intricate and filled with a number of things happening. You can tell he rushed to get it all out onto the paper, including little speech bubbles with characters interacting with each other. Each of these has a story that takes him several minutes to get through! Then there are a few drawings which he obviously slowed down for, taking greater care in the way things look. This farm scene took him about half an hour earlier this week.
I sometimes - okay, frequently - get somewhat obsessed with a new interest or a revived old one. I know exactly what it feels like to have a thousand ideas frantically running around in your head and the terrible urgency of trying to capture them on paper before they frizzle out.
Today, I am letting Cullen write the book he so desperately wants to work on - something about a boy and his "Boat of Youth." It sounds like the beginning of a real adventure story! The only other formal work this afternoon will be pared down to the basics. It is so easy to double up on history or science another day.
This day, we follow inspiration!
This little guy lives in the bushes beside our front porch and comes out to sit in the sun some mornings. He's becoming a little less fearful of me as long as I'm quiet.
This past week was a break of sorts for Cullen. I had a few doctor appointments and wasn't feeling altogether all together, so we did no formal lessons. Not a single one. There were plenty of the impromptu discussions and life-lessons that are part of everyday life around here, however, and he was a great help with the laundry! Other than his chess and art classes and the weekly gymnastics class, he was able to play as he liked. (With the exception of video games this week.)
Of course, he spent a great deal of time with the usual action figures and in cartwheeling through the house, but I was really pleased that he decided to write two letters to his cousins. I was absolutely thrilled to see that they were composed of more than two sentences each! He edited for spelling and clarity with a little help, and the handwriting, though not neat by any stretch, was legible - mostly!
Friday evening, my husband left work early, my daughter joined us, and we drove across town to Medieval Times for dinner and the show. Cullen was so excited, he had a hard time keeping his feet on the ground!
I couldn't help but grin when his Dad said something about Cullen being a knight, and his response was, "I can't be a knight! I'm not even old enough to be a squire!"
The sword fights sent sparks flying, the jousting was impressive with lances splintering left and right, and the good guys won in the end. Of course, my own favorite part of the evening was seeing the horses show their stuff. Beautiful!
We were seated in the Green Knight's section and were told to cheer for him, which we did heartily, but Cullen was a little bit distressed when he figured out that the Green Knight was the bad guy! The knight was really good at being the bad guy, though, and he also flirted a little with Cullen's big sister, so we managed to get past any moral dilemma in a way that I hope never happens in real life!
Before the show began, we killed some time walking around the Discover Mills mall where Medieval Times is located and found a Lego store. If you've read many of our posts here recently, you can imagine Cullen's face when he saw it. To make the surprise even better, there was a life-sized Lego statue of Darth Vader right at the entry.
We almost didn't get him out of there!
Cullen took plenty of photos entirely on his own during our recent trip to Florida. There were the usual dozens of nostril shots and photos of my Mom's dog with a plastic pirate gun, etc. These few surprised me a little.
My pencil-phobic child just asked me if I would teach him drawing lessons every day! Well, he actually asked for every day at 2:14 PM. He has always been a nut for a schedule!
This borders on the miraculous!
I do know that some boys take a little longer to really get into written expression, but my oldest was so into writing and drawing from such an early age, that I have not been entirely sure how to best handle Cullen. I kept reading to just allow him time. Apparently, that was good advice. In the past two weeks, he has produced at least 50 pages of drawings and lists all on his own.
Can you tell I'm excited?!?
