From your local first grader
Nolan came home from school with this list today, and when I asked him what it was he grabbed it from me and read it with such authority and fervor I knew I had grab the camera to share it with the world.
If only he practices what he preaches.
I’ve been way too businessy- with not enough family on this blog here, so today I am sharing a video of our little man helping with the laundry. As you can tell by his non-stop chatter, he is terribly excited to be doing this. Let’s just cross our fingers and hope that when he is big enough to do chores consistently he will enjoy it just this much.
Nolan is doing the laundry from Kiona Wilson on Vimeo.
Last Monday was a teacher workday and so the little stinker tagged along with me to the studio. He loves visiting ‘his lovely ladies’ there and touching their stuff, and asking them about what hey are doing, and tell them when they are doing it wrong. Apparently they love it, and kinda miss it when he is not there to keep them on task.
So I am thinking this day he wanted to really make his mark and leave his lovely ladies with something to talk about for all the following weeks he would be spending back in school. Because when we weren’t paying attention for a few minutes, this is what he did with the poly fill that was originally destined to be inside Michelle’s peculiar pets
Last month Nolan started first grade which ofcourse had to be documented thoroughly on camera. As I was digging though pictures of last year, I realized we had taken near identical pictures of his first day of kindergarten too. Something tells me there are probably also similar pictures for the first day of pre-school, but for those I will have to dig a little harder.
So here is our little beansprout on both his first days:
His backpack can still swallow him whole, and probably a second kid too, but he certainly seems to have grown in both confidence and height!
And both my birds still sit on their perch waiting for Nolan’s ride every morning:
I wonder at what year this picture will show a wiry Nolan towering high above his dad, sitting like this. That is ofcourse if Nolan doesn’t first decide he is WAY too cool to be sitting next to dad while waiting.
I still just can’t believe we have a first grader! What’s next, college?
I know I’ve been quiet here on the blog pages, but what can I say- School’s out and I’ve been doing a lot of hanging out with this little goofball
So can you blame me? We’ve been spending our due time at the pool, the kid’s museum, the free kids summer movies, and whatever else there is to be enjoyed during the hot summer days. We squeeze a little time at the studio too, and Nolan has made it his priority to make everybody there his new best friends. I am fairly sure he has succeeded in that. One even uses a powertool and I know she’s made it to the top of his ‘cool new friends’ list.
I will try to make more updates here over the summer. I said try. I can’t make promises. This little (big) guy is just too much fun to hang out with.
I have been in the process of clearing old pictures off the computer and burning them on a CD, which has to be done at least every 6 months, and that’s if I wait for the computer to get painfully slow due to limited available space. Which I typically do. I think it’s fairly obvious that I am a bit trigger happy when it comes to my camera.
While clearing out these old pictures I realised how many share-worthy pictures on Nolan I had not shared yet! Shame on me. So here I am making a few (probably more than a few, can’t say I didn’t warn you) retroactive updates, mostly of the boy, but also a few of the dog I am sure.
For starters, and I am ashamed to admit I didn’t post this, The First day of Kindergarten!
Greg and his mini-me waiting for the school-cab.
Nolan points out it’s his ‘first!’ day of Kindergarten, not to be confused with the second day.
And his backpack is about to swallow him up. It’s big enough for lunches, folders, notes, craft projects, and acting as a tent on those unexpected overnight stays in the wilderness.
Looking back at these pictures from only half a year ago, I can’t believe how much he’s grown already!
Last weekend we had a small party at the park to celebrate Nolan’s 6th birthday. We made a point to keep the party nice and small as the poor kid got incredibly overwhelmed last year at his 5th birthday party. That party had also been planned to be outside in a park, so we had invited lots or our and his friends, thinking there would be lots of space. Then windy weather made us change plans and we moved the shindig indoors, making our house filled with friends like sardines in a can. I will never forget the look in Nolie’s eyes when we all crammed into one room to sing him happy birthday. All eyes were on him, and he wanted nothing to do with it. He spent the rest of the party in his bedroom playing quietly by himself, and to this day refuses to be anywhere near someone singing ‘Happy Birthday’. A week later we got his autism diagnosis, and as we learned a bit that meeting what it means for a kid to live life with autism, we thought back to his birthday and felt terrible about the large amount of over stimulation he got that day, enough to overwhelm any 5 year old kid, but especially one that has trouble processing all of it.
So having learned our lesson, we kept things nice and small this time around. We felt sad that this meant there were a lot of friends we wanted to invite and couldn’t, but as long as it meant the chances of the boy enjoying his birthday party would be better, it was worth it.
This was also the first year that he had specific requests for is birthday cake. The requests were: A purple cake (his favorite color) with gumballs (he’s been eying a gumball machine at our favorite Mexican restaurant for months). So that’s what he got, and he loved it. But when it came time to blow out the candles he reminded us plenty of times that we were not allowed to sing the birthday cake, though after some careful thought we were allowed to say ‘yay!’ after blowing out the candles. He isn’t anything if not specific.
For the rest of the party we just had a really great time at the playground. We couldn’t have asked for better weather, it was a freaky 70+ degrees sunny, and breezy. Kids blew bubbles and colored the ground with chalk, ate chips and cake, and played on the playground. Adults socialized and saved the occasional child stuck at the top of a climbing contraption. And most important of all, Nolan was genuinely happy, relaxed and enjoying every single second of it.
I have a whole folder full of additional pictures right here should you feel the need to check the rest out too.
So Monday we got another bonus southern winter day. Winter day as in; it snowed, and southern as in: it snowed all of half an inch and therefor school is closed. But even though it was a teensy bit of snow, it was still very pretty. Especially when I first got up in the morning as the sky was the perfect solid dark-gray snow cloud, and the bright white snow on all the tree branches stood out so sharp, and the house colors stood out like frosted gingerbread houses.
So, little snow or not Nolan, Sasha, and I had to get out in it for at least a few minutes and enjoy actual winter weather while we had it. It also happened to be absolute perfect snowman building snow, and so we got to work on that too.
So, I have had my fill of winter weather. Thank you very much for the two snow days. Now, how about some sunshine and heat. Anyone?
This weekend the weather was nasty, gloomym and cold, and so I figured it was prime time to pick an in-house project to complete and distract me from looking outside, before my mood started to match the weather. So we tackled Nolan’s bedroom. We still had Ikea shelves we’d meant to put up in his room in the old house! So this was a project that was definitely past due. And now that we’ve completed it Greg and I find ourselves walking back into his room every hour or so to enjoy a finally finished big-boy-room.
I thought it would be fun to post the pictures as the old ‘progress updates‘ I posted way to few of after we moved into this house almost two years ago, can you believe it? I can’t!
So, here’s a memory refresher of the shape we found this room in, and the work we did on it.
This is the state we found the room in. Compared to the rest of the house, it was actually in most decent shape.
After a nice lick of paint and ripping out the disgusting carpet.
Remember that aweful shape the hardwoods were in? We were so fortunate to have original hardwoods throughout 80% of the house, but some knuckle-head had used them as a drop cloth before covering them up with awful carpet.
(hear the angelic *aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh* ? I do every time I look at this picture) Refinished hardwoods. Heavenly.
His room today after our weekend of putting shelves up, putting things away, taking things off the floor, cleaning out outdated toys and furniture. Lovely
Nolan has been loving rediscovering books and toys that were stored behind doors and inside buckets. He probably feels like he just hit the jackpot and got a new room and a slew of ‘new’ books and toys. Little does he know he had this all along, just a set of lazy parents too.
No son of Greg is going to grow up in a room without a sports wall, so we (he) tries to blend it in. I pretend not to notice.
This is my personally least favorite angle, except for that it shows his easel! We like the easel.
And next are my new little favorite spots:
I love this little shelf. Fortunately Nolan can’t reach it (yet) so I have reserved it for my own little display of Nolan’s things, from past and for present.
This I love because we made use of the huge mantel for part of his enormous collection of books. This way he can just stand on his bed to pick one out, and then plop down and read it right there. I also love the two maps above one another in colorful Ikea frames. Thank you tall ceilings!
And no ‘big boy’ room would be complete without at least a small collection of dinausaurs.
So I can now finally take that room off my house to-do list. Greg and I are now totally re-energised after finishing this little project, and are already thinking of which room to tackle next.
I have just uploaded two weeks worth of the World through Nolan’s Camera Lens. As you’ll be able to see, he’s broadened his horizons a bit, ventured into other people’s houses, and taken a few quality shots from the safety of his booster car seat.
At this point, his favorite subjects appear to be
Yes, that would be my rear end. Interesting how things look from his perspective, no?
He has also been experimenting a bit with either blocking part of his lens with one or two fingers as he takes a picture, which takes me to the second experiment; adding grease spots to his lens for a very interesting partially blurred effect.
If you ask me, he is merely paving his way to great photographic heights and stardom. I hope you, as I, are excited and inspired by the journey.
Sincerely,
the mother of a photographic genius.
