puzzles

yesterday I got akwe a 60 piece dinosaur puzzle, and he did like 85% of it all by himself. I am so proud of him. He may not be language oreinted but he is a super puzzle master. He always has been. It is so fun to watch him progress over the years and see how he uses more logic now to fit the pieces together.

alphabet blues

so sammy's favorite thing in the world is not the alphabet. i think he is just not language inclined but Mike freaks out a little bit about it. So we are trying to do more alphabet stuff with him. On Thursday night we told him that he couldn't watch his favorite cartoon tomorrow unless he could tell us what letter it starts with (A is for Avatar!) SO when I went to pick him up Friday afternoon, first thing he said to me was "avatar starts with A". It was sooo cute. So we are slowly blackmailing him with Avatar time to learn his alphabet. Not sure how I feel about that in my soul, but I guess it can't hurt too much.

however, his manners were very cute this weekend (and this is not something he gets from us. we are not manner-inclined jajaja)so he randomly says "no, thank you." instead of just "no" and he says to me "yes, man" I think this is supposed to be "yes, m'am" but that just makes it cuter.

Also I went to a montessori parent training on Saturday, and they said, "never do for your child what your child can do for himself" because it undermines their self-confidence. so on sunday morning I asked Sam if he would please get himself dressed. And he did! it was so awesome. He got his own clother out and got everything on by himself. I was so amazed. And then this morning, Mike was going to dress him, and I asked Sam if he wanted to do it, and he did it all by himself again. We were very proud of Sam this weekend.

a rose by any other name...part 2

So now you may be asking how the trinity decided on akwe. And honestly this was four years ago so I am sure that bob will yell at me for remembering none of the details. She will have to fill the holes in my memory jajaja. I only remember that we were super excited to pick out a name for you, akwe. and we wanted it to be meaningful. So all I remember is going to Barnes&Noble, where bob worked at the time, and we would look through all of the baby name books. We really wanted to name you malik but that didn't go over too well with papa. so we randomly flipped through international baby names. I have a special affinity for Africa so we saw "akwe" and it is Igbo for peaceful. We thought this was perfect, because the world was going to hell in a handbasket after 9/11 and we needed an antidote to the warmongering of the time. I saw a quote at a Codepink booth that said something like, 'I will not raise my child to kill your child. I will not be the source of your tears.' I wanted you to respect peace, to know that there is another option. so that is your soul name - Akwe - full of peace.

a rose by any other name....

We have always put a lot of thought into our children’s names. We, as in my husband and I, and as in the trinity and I. Separate names, separate processes. Mike and I would take long walks throwing names back and forth. We decided on Samuel after Samwise Gamgee from Lord of the Rings. Sam is my favorite character of this wonderful story. I love him because he is loyal and steadfast and a great friend. He isn’t the biggest or bravest or the best fighter, but in the end Frodo would never have made it through his journey without Sam. It shows that the little acts of love we give to the world can make all of the difference in the end. That really means a lot to me. I think it has proven a wonderful name for my first baby who impresses me always with the depth of his love and kindness and innocence.

Mike wanted Sammy to be Samuel David, but I said that was too, too biblical. And thus was born Samuel Michael. (As a sidenote, I at first wanted to name my son, Joseph, in the Ruwe tradition, but Mike would have none of this. However, he was all for naming Mary after his mother hmmm….) ‘Michael’ is after his(sammy’s) father, but as Mike likes to say, also after the greatest of angels.

This is a blog about my baby boy, Sam, otherwise known as Akwe, who is really not a baby anymore. As he would say, "he is a big junior now." Sigh. I think this is where I am supposed to say, "they grow up soooo fast." jajaja but no I cannot be that trite.

We took Sam to get some professional photos done two nights ago and I learned that my montessori-taught child is horrible at following directions. Independent he is, since we never demanded obedience from him in that horrible follow-the-leader sort of way. Just goes to show that there are pluses and minuses in recognizing the sacred humanity of your child. Not that I would make a different choice in hindsight. If he grows up to respect others, because we respected his right to self-determination, it will have been well worth it.