Spelling by Ju

As part of the literacy process, at least in Portuguese class, the kids are supposed to sound out and spell words to try to discover how to write.  I really like this process and we have been doing it a lot just to play.  Today some of Ju's homework has to identify things that begin with the letter R and write the Rr underneath them.  Just for fun, he sounded out the words for some of the pictures and tried to write them.

Ring - R i  (not shown, this was added after this picture was taken)

Robot -  R A A  (interesting here he only tried to write the vowel sounds)

Road - R U T  (T and D are articulated in the same place, so this for me is a win)


Ribbon - R B N  (not bad)

Rake -  R C

Rock - R C

Owl - A O U (I especially love this spelling, it really sounds like owl if you say it with a Bahiano accent)

We chatted about why rock and rake would have same spelling as he wrote here.  It's also interesting to see how he is sometimes focusing on vowel sounds, sometimes on consonents, and sometimes includes both.  I seem to remember only writing the consonents at this age, making my journal indeciferable when I looked at it years later. 

Some fun Ju logic from the last weeks:

Reading The Lorax one night with Ju, he noticed the picture of the Lorax lifting himself away by the seat of his pants.
"Mommy, I (mimes grabbing himself by the seat of his pants), I can fly?"


***


During the recent (recent being like in 2008) mayoral elections, there was a jingle for "Nilton 50" that got played so often one could sing it quite easily. My husband took the tune and the slightly modified the words to sing a song about our nanny, Neta, calling it "Neta 40" because she is 40. Ju loved this song and would sing it to her all the time and she adored it (we are SO lucky to have such a great nanny, but that is a story for another post).

One morning this week my husband sang another modified version - "Juju 40" and the following conversation took place:

Maridão - "Eu quero Juju quarenta!"
Ju - "Eu não sou quarenta. Quarenta é de minina. Eu sou quarento!"

For those who don't speak a romance language, there are feminine and masculine words in Portuguese. One cannot use a feminine adjective to describe a masculine object (like Ju evidently realizes himself to be), and Ju realized right away that that "a" at the end of "quarenta" did not match the fact that he is a boy and hastened to correct his father's mistake. He is beginning to become aware of grammar, at least in Portuguese- cool!

(He still says "It didn't was me" though, and "I did see it there, mommy. Yesterday I did see it." )

I just noticed the other day that Ju is now producing the "lh" of Portuguese - he no longer says "Olla, mommy!" but "Olha, mommy!" For those unaware, this particular phoneme of Portuguese is similar to the sound of putting the sound of l and y together in English and is difficult for Americans to get right. Many people here have told me they can always spot a gringo because of their lack of proper "lh." Mine is okay, if I do say so myself, but it hardly holds a torch to my not-even-four-year-old son's who gets to speak it naturally. Since I find that I generally find that I follow the same kinds of time lines for speaking Portuguese as children here do (i.e. a child will not use the past tense correctly until around or after age 4, I have been here for more than 4 years, and I find I am using it mostly correctly and innately), there may be no hope for me, as I have been in Brasil longer than Ju has been in existence.

I suppose as part of being a Quaker, I have always had a strong anti-war, anti-violence view of everything. I am constantly trying to instill this in Ju, although it can occasionally be challenging here. When he was given a bunch of made-in-China war toys (plastic hand grenade, knife, gun, etc) there was no question that they would become a donation for kids in the street. I refuse to have anything like that in the house. He is not allowed to watch Power Rangers, Spiderman, Batman, or any of those fight-and-kill violent styles of programming. (I cannot understand why anyone would expose a child so young to these kinds of ideas, although it seems to be the norm here at least in Brasil.)

People here allow boys to be much more wild, misbehave much more, and in general seem to discipline them less about proper human behavior, in my opinion. Girls are put on a much shorter leash. There is a certain view that boys "need" this kind of play where they kick and wrestle with each other, that it's a boy thing and I will never understand. Maybe so. But how much of this is what boys NEED and how much is what we put upon them with expectations based on society? Boys are given toy guns, girls are given dolls. I know I've had this argument with myself before and it never seems to resolve itself. And there is always the view of "well, all these other grown men grew up playing these games and they turned out okay, so why does it matter so much"? I could ramble on about this forever.

Anyway, there were some things I liberated after a time, like Looney Tunes, thinking that they really weren't that harmful. Woody woodpecker is very popular here and all the kids disappear from the outside area of the condo at 6:30 to go watch it. I hadn't really paid much attention to the content of these cartoons, having watched them myself when I was about seven or so. It's just a cartoon, why does it matter? But Ju's behavior at school and with us (direct disobeying of rules, lack of respect for other people's space, hitting and bothering people) has gotten so bad in the last several months, I have been forced to reconsider that age old argument that violent cartoons are bad for your kids. The Looney Tunes characters do horrible things to each other - hitting with mallets, blowing each other up, pushing off of cliffs, getting run over by cars.... And Ju laughs. He laughs at all of it. It bothers me that he finds this funny. I never put much stock in it before, thinking that kids know the difference between real life and cartoons, remembering how I felt at that age when some adult made a comment about how these violent shows were affecting children, thinking that these adults assumed we were all stupid kids who didn't know the difference. Maybe for a seven year old this is true. Maybe. But perhaps for a three year old, this division is a little fuzzier. Certainly when I saw Ju begin head butting people after watching Woody Woodpecker, I started to rethink this line.

So now the Looney Tunes DVDs are banned. Woodywood pecker has gone the same way as Power Rangers - not allowed. We just got some new video tapes of Dora and the Magic School Bus and something called Yo Gabba Gabba that Ju absolutely loves. The desire to have him relate to "normal" Brasilian boys at school by being able to talk about the same characters and play the same games is usurped by my concern that he may end up in the principals office because he broke some kid's nose by head butting him. Lets see if TV really makes a difference.

And wouldn't you know it, but as I finished my massive cleaning fest yesterday, it seems one of Ju's kittens knocked over the same potted plant on the veranda that has been knocked over twice before. The pot is (was) made of a dried coconut shell held together by some steel wire in the middle. It is now splintered beyond repair. The plants are no loss really, since they had been torn from the pot and ripped to shreds several times before, probably by the same mystery kitten. They were just barely hanging on. I guess it's a sign that I have one too many pots up there in the middle of the kitten highway.

In other news, apparently the huge massive snow that I am so sad to miss this year trapped my mom in GRR and then again in Chicago and then she got stuck in Miami because she missed her connection. Anyway, now she's there and we are here, up early but not in a rush anymore to get to the airport. I didn't sleep very well between the kittens bounding in at 2 a.m. and some kind of security alarm going off around 3:30 and continuing to sound for another half an hour, so it will be good to get a nap in too. And I'll have time to clean up the mess on the veranda.

Ju is watching Planet Earth, again. At least if he's glued to the T.V. it's educational, as shown by this conversation we had yesterday:

me - "Ju, it's time for a shower and bed.

Ju - "Why?

me - "Because it's dark out and time for sleeping."

Ju - "Why's it dark out?

me - "Because the sun set and that means it's time for sleeping."

Ju - "It's dark out because the terra esta rodando." (the Earth is turning)

me - "Yes, that is exactly what's going on. The Earth is turning and that's why it's dark out."

There is playdough of various types all over my house. Little bits and pieces that Ju has used for all kinds of things - stamping cars in it, making it into "food" on his play stove... Now he has discovered that the nice wooden letter and number stamps make very clear marks in it when he squishes it onto the floor in front of the T.V.

"Mommy, look, they're sliding."

"Oh Ju, everything is going to get massinha all over it."

"It's alright mommy, we can wash it."


He is also trying to figure out death, since we watched "Thomasina" and the main character, a cat, dies and then comes back to life. It's hard to grasp this concept, since kids this age have to experience things to understand them. He has been making comments like "My mouth is dead. It won't eat." or "The spider is dead" (his hand is frequently a spider that gets into mischief all over) as his hand lays palm up on the table, motionless, and then "It's alive again!" as it moves. Many times in the past, he used to say something didn't have a "pila" (battery) when it wasn't working ("my mouth don't have a pila!") and these associations are now linked with death - something not moving means it's dead. From the perspective of a three year old, I'm not sure it can get much clearer than that. Maybe he will get the idea, finally, when we have to take Ona-key to the vet later this week, although she hardly moves now.

The Ona-key saga continues - she now has two open wounds on her left paw that have been open wounds for almost a month now, and today the other paw opened up. She now has a huge bandaged on each of her front feet. Today, while trying to wash her again (as she only sleeps in her own pee, it's become quite a frequent event), she bit me. It wasn't a malicious bite I am sure, just a reaction to being sprayed with the hose in the shower, which I am sure she doesn't like much. It's not very deep either and considering I was in the shower at the time and was able to wash it immediately, I doubt there is much risk of infection. When I came back down with my ring finger bandaged, I told Ju that Ona-key had bitten me, to which he replied "I'm angry with the Ona-key. She did a coisa fea!" and folded his arms to show his mood. I explained to him that she didn't mean to bite me, that it was because she feels sick and doesn't like to get wet, but he still insists he is angry with her. I'm surprised he didn't say she had to go into time out or something. I can't help but feel happy at his anger about an injustice done to mommy, despite the cat not deserving it. It is cute.

Part of Ju's prepping for school is working with his fine motor coordination. He has loved to paint and color since he was 1 and he has been beading with pony beads for the last 4 months. About a year ago, I got him some plastic (yes, even the blades) safety scissors to practice with, but after a few runs, they wouldn't cut anything anymore, so I started letting him use the pink handled kid's scissors that Sheila left here two years ago. Mostly, he would just cut little pieces off the edges of papers and that was interesting for him and I let him make little messes all over. Then they disappeared and he went over a month without cutting anything. This past weekend I bought a new pair of standard kid's school scissors for him and now it seems somewhere in this month of no-cutting-time he has matured to a "cut strait lines through a piece" stage and is now making many paper strips here at my feet.

Today I wandered around a toy store, looking for new things for my classroom. Ju came. He was reasonably well behaved and left without a tantrum AND without getting anything. It was amazing. Now... could I risk taking him into Toys R Us next time we visit the States? hmmmmmm.......

Last night we went to the "Praia 24 horas" event to see some bossa nova played on a stage in the middle of the ocean (while the audience all sat on the beach). It was great fun - lots of food and drink vendors walking around, we met up with some friends, parking wasn't too much trouble, and you could swim out to the stage and tread water watching the artists sing and play right in front of you. I stayed out for half of one guy's set - I had forgotten I could just tread water like that for that long. (I actually think I swam a lot more last night than I really have since I moved here - I have a terrible fear of ocean currents and waves and rip tides that I'm not sure when and where it came from.) The event was well organized and safe and pleasant for a free event in Bahia; I was quite impressed. We even went so far as to take the digital camera for some nice random shots.

After we dropped off Isis and Vito (family friends; Vito is Ju's age minus 3 months) at 11:30, we came home and Gustavo had the great idea to skinny dip in the condo's pool. I have not skinny dipped here since I first moved here, mostly for fear of seeing my neighbors, or worse their kids, who are often out later than late. The good thing is that our house is right next to the pool, so anyone looking out of their windows to see us incognito would have to be doing it from ours - no worries there. I was rather nervous about it at first, since it's much easier to see that a woman is naked in the pool than a man (although because of tan lines this late in the summer, it is quite obvious) and I actually let my hair get all chlorinated in hopes that it would shield my embarrassment should we suddenly have company. After some time playing with Ju, who has gotten over his fear of going under the water after two months of swimming classes, I forgot I was naked until Gustavo pointed out that I had done so, at which point I started hearing voices and decided to get out before someone saw me. About 15 minutes after we got out, a bunch of teenagers took over the pool area until well after 2 am. Good timing!

Ju thourally enjoyed the experience and promptly asked to go swim naked as soon as he got up this morning. I explained to him that mommy and daddy can't swim naked during the day but that because he is small still, he can swim naked if he wants to, at home. He seems pretty excited about the prospect of going back into the pool and trying to swim, naked. Hopefully it will work the same way if I make him wear his sunga again.

At least it's healthy....

Ju has developed some rather strange eating habits. I chalk it up to my basic rule that snacking is okay as long as it's on healthy stuff. Don't all these health magazines keep telling us that grazing all day is more healthy than several full meals. A basic day of food might run like this:

7 am - yogurt with wheat germ
8:30 - banana squished up with powdered milk
10 am - two apples
11:30 - rice, beans, some frozen peas and maybe a can of sardines
3:30 - another apple and a yogurt drink
5:30 - 1 tomato, juice, a pear
7 pm - half a french bread roll, juice

Last week he would only agree to eat his veggie soup if I would let him dip his apple in it. He ate the entire bowl as a dip. On Monday we went out for sushi and he ate all the cucumber garnishes, the sea weed off several shrimp wraps, and the roe from the sushi rolls (large orange fish eggs that look like tapioca balls).

Everything these days is "mommy, papai, Juju" - three butterflies, three cups, three paint brushes, three rocks... Each set of three has a representative of each person in the family.

Ona is more and more decrepit by the day, not really walking so much as dragging her back legs along the floor to support her behind. The consequence of this is that she will often come in and poop on the tile floor somewhere rather than try to step into her litter box. Ju knows that coco is dirty and he can't touch it, so when he finds some, he usually comes to tell me and then watches as I clean it up.

This morning he found there was some on the veranda next to the litter box, and told me so, but since it was out there and not in the middle of foot traffic, I just said "okay, don't touch it, it's dirty. mommy will come clean it" and continued drinking my coffee. A little while later, he came to the top of the stairs and told me again, but this time accompanied by a long stretch of Ju language that I was unable to decifer, so I thought I'd better take a look. When I came up stairs I saw he had a diaper sitting in front of him, and inside it was the cat poop. Outside on the veranda I found another diaper with more cat poop in it. I guess he just wanted to help.

Some interesting random things from this week:

Since I took one side off Ju's crib, he's been climbing in and out several times a night, sometimes falling out onto the flip out chair we leave beside it for that purpose, and sometimes going to sleep in the hammock. The other night Gustavo went into say good night and he wasn't in any of the former listed places, but UNDERNEATH the crib, sleeping away on the hard tile floor in just a diaper. Gustavo reckons he was hot and got out to sleep for that reason, as it runs in the family (Gustavo will slither off the bed onto the floor if he's hot and NEVER sleeps with covers, even in the winter, usually). I think it's more likely he just rolled off and found his way under there.

Ju is getting very resourceful and is climbing everything! I had to take his Spiderman ball from him today and put it up on the bookshelf because he kept throwing it at the computer screen, so he just climbed right up the shelves and got it down again. This was a real test of limits for him, as he did it right in front of me, laughing the whole time. I should also mention this shelf is eye level for me, so he was up pretty high for him. Later, he kept doing the same thing with a straw hat, so I took it and placed it carefully on top of the standing fan. He went over and shook it a bit, to see if he could get it to fall off. When that didn't work, he looked around, spotted a t-shirt I had left hanging on the dining room chair, took it and started whipping it at the hat until it fell down. Where do they learn this stuff?

The things you learn from television or perhaps parents trying to be funny....

Ju has been obsessed with Cookie Monster since he started watch Sesame Street videos he got for his birthday. This slowly evolved into a Cookie Monster imitation of daddy being "papai monster" and pretending to try to eat him. About a month ago, Ju started tearing all the foam letters and numbers to pieces with his teeth, and recently discovered the joys of doing this to onion skin and spreading it around the house. Today he went one step further and did a cookie monster with his soup for dinner. He seemed to understand that this was not appropriate when I told him I was upset about it, and then proceeded to ask if he could go do it with the onions instead - "a cookie monster widdy uhn-uhn, num num num."

Strange finger positions. I'm sure this is genetic, but it's not from either of his parents.

Ju is now in a "what's this, mommy?" phase. I hear this question about 50 times a day and always try to answer it (how long do most moms stand this stage before they stop answering?). He is also trying to count "1,2,3,4,6,8,9" and everything is a "1,2,3 fill-in-the-object" And everything has the potential to be a car - a cracker, a shoe, a stick, a ripped up foam number...

Independence comes with a price.

Ju has been wanting to do things himself, like close doors, put things away, turn on the T.V. etc. This is a great development and I usually encourage him to do his own thing. He even has been waking up and coming downstairs by himself in the morning, usually right before I go out to catch the transport to work, and I leave him to watch a Sesame street video on the couch while daddy takes a shower. The nanny often arrives about 5 minutes later, and as far as I know, he has not gotten himself into trouble with his early morning activities unobserved.

Until today.....

On the weekends, Ju usually wakes up, comes to our room, sees we are still sleeping, and goes back to his room to play until he hears one of us in the shower. It's very polite of him to let us sleep and I had really stopped worrying that he would fall down the stairs or otherwise hurt himself. This morning apparently he decided to come down stairs to play, and by the time we got up at 7:30, he had found his way into the storage room (probably under the pretense of feeding the cat, which is his job every morning) and had made the biggest mess I have ever seen him make. Cat food had been thrown around the room, mixed with some sunscreen he had emptied onto the floor outside the door, a pile of stuff including a keyboard, old motherboard, and painting supplies had been knocked over and spread around, and he was digging in the bin of cat food with his beach shovels and rake. Not to mention that he had a huge poop in his diaper and it was slightly escaping down his legs. We removed him promptly and put him in time out (luckily on the stairs and not on the couch considering the mess he left when he got up later because of the leaking diaper problem) for the duration of cleaning the room, and then threw him in the shower. Does this mean we now need to close his door at night so he doesn't escape?

Ju is eating canned sardines and pumpkin and rice for dinner. Mmmmmm, healthy.


Ew, and he just called me in there to show me a maleka he picked out of his nose! Are all boys this gross? Makes you wonder how they grow up and marry....

Ju is actually forming full sentences, even if they aren't grammatical. I haven't really heard him doing it in Portuguese because he doesn't talk to me in Portuguese anymore, but yesterday he said this: "kitten papaya no want it" which translates into "the kitten doesn't want papaya." This sentences is probably the result of all the times he has thrown food at the cat, trying to see if she will eat it, and my telling him that she doesn't want it or doesn't like it. The interesting thing about this sentence is that he isn't recalling an utterance exactly from memory, because then it would probably be grammatically correct. It doesn't seem to be translated from Portuguese either, because the order would be different. I have no idea how normal it is, having never interacted much with native speakers of English who were less than 5 years old really (not counting baby sitting years - who can remember what happened before high school?), but it's really cool to see him take these sudden spurts of development in his language. He has also started saying "I sorry" when he does something wrong, and comes over and kisses me and says "I love you" if I am angry with him (how do kids know this makes us forget the broken DVD player, just for a moment?) . Which reminds me - today he broke the DVD player, no one is sure how, so getting him over his Thomas and Sesame street addiction should be easier now.