Thankful

We've been reading some Thanksgiving books and I've been trying to teach Eli what it means to be thankful.  Last night, right before he went to bed, Eli told me "Mommy, we have a lot to be thankful for.  Cocoa, plates, cups, straws, animals, the farm, the museum, dinosaurs and ice cream."

Yesterday, he also started listing off things that God made and that God loves.  They were: horses, cows, legos, markers, motorcycles, people, rabbits, backpacks, choo choo trains, froggies and folders.

Gotta love that kid.

He's HUGE into Lions right now, thanks to the Lion tribe in Lego Chima.  A lot of the time, he wants me to call him Eli Lion.  I'm Mommy Lion.  Liam and Daddy are wolves... Liam Wolf and Daddy Wolf.  Then there's Brielle Camel and Grandma Camel.

His favorite things to watch on Netflix (he gets three choices every day) these days are Mickey's House of Villians and a Mickey Christmas special with a bunch of animated Christmas shows.  I vowed I wasn't going to let him watch Christmas stuff til after Thanksgiving, but eh.

We are HUGE into Legos right now in this house.  With the Duplos, Eli is constantly building robots, airplanes, vehicles for Leonidas (his favorite Lion).  We got him his very first little lego set, a little race car...and after the 3rd try (with help on the first three), he can now build it (following the directions and everything) all by himself.  He has a hard time getting the pieces apart, but does a really great job following the directions and putting them together.

Every day, we go through about 25 pieces of paper a day, cause he is still big into drawing.  This week, he is big into drawing Lions, turkeys and turkey like things.  He likes to label all of his pictures now and always asks me to spell out words.  He's getting much quicker with his writing, though he still doesn't get the spacing (if he runs out of room for a word, the letters go all over the place).  He has a few words memorized... Lion, Mommy, Happy.

Yesterday, he wrote a letter to Santa.  It said: Dear Santa Claus.  Can I have a lion lego named Leonidas?  We addressed the envelope to Santa, North Pole.  He put Eli in the return address and drew a little picture of Leonidas.

I had my first ever parent teacher conference yesterday with his teacher, Ms. McAlister.  Eli is doing very well academically and she said his literacy skills are very advanced.  She said he's a very good auditory learner which will mean he should be very good at music when he's older.  She graded him the highest possible in a lot of the academic categories.  He has a hard time sitting still (shocker) especially at breakfast time (again..shocker) and I explained that he has a hard time at home as well.  I told her that if he's drawing or reading, however, he can sit still for an hour and be totally focused.  She realized that when he's in the writing or drawing centers that yes, he is able to sit still.  She gave me some tips on trying to get him to contain his energy until he gets outside.

Busy november!