Garrett is in Kindergarten now, and he's just thrilled to be going to the same school as his older brother. Pre-school was really dragging him down, I think it was cramping his style a little bit. He had lots of days where he just didn't want to go, he was literally bored to tears with the subject matter. He's a smart little son-of-a-gun, I'm expecting great things from this kid. There's no telling where his brain will take him! We've got to keep his mind energized and thriving. He's been reading since he was 2, so re-hashing the alphabet in pre-school was starting to become counter productive. It was a great school, but I feel like we could have done more to cultivate his gray matter. I mean, he was reading books about he solar system to the class for show-and-tell, and it made him sad that the other kids weren't "in to it" like him. Toward the end of pre-school, I think he was feeling like he was a little bit different, and he may have been masking some of his intellect at times to fit in better. His buddies were all into Transformers, and Garrett would play with them at school, but when he got home he would say "I know that Transformers are not real. They are boring." I'm thinking "Wait a minute! I liked Transformers!! What the heck?" Oh well, scratch that one off the Santa list.

Now that he's in Kindergarten, he has a new batch of friends and a specialized program to keep him moving forward. It's great! He loves school again. He seems a lot happier all of the time now, not as moody or dark like he was. I'm sure the Feingold diet has helped that tremendously, but it also has to do with his new found "liberty of thought". For whatever reason, he feels safer in Kindergarten to let his ideas be known, not to conceal his extraordinary grasp of concepts beyond his years.

The very first time he met his teacher is the best example of that. It was open house night, and parents were meeting the teachers in the classrooms while all the new kindergarteners were playing in the cafeteria. After we met with his teacher, we brought Garrett in from the cafeteria where he had been sitting at a table with crayons and a paper. After a bashful introduction, he shyly handed his new teacher what he had been working on - a complete map of the United States - and she kind of stared at it in disbelief. The conversation after that was priceless, I'll never forget it:

"This is neat Garrett! Did you trace this from a book or something?"
"Well... I used a crayon and I just remember." He said sheepishly.
"Wow! Really? Were you looking at a picture of a map?"
"Well... kind of. I think about the pictures from Google Earth on my computer."
(by then her jaw was on the floor)
"This is incredible! You can do this from memory? How do you start it?"
"I know Kansas goes right in the middle, then I add states when I think of them. I messed up with West Virginia."
She was laughing in a confused kind of way.
"Hey, it looks pretty good to me Garrett! Maybe I'll have you teach the class about maps for me."
"Well, I think I'm too little. And this just looks silly because Hawaii isn't really right by California. It's far away in the Pacific Ocean."

Garrett's a funny little thinker - a deep thinker. He's almost always deep in thought. Sometimes he has trouble with the shallow thinking stuff, like getting dressed. He'll be at the chalkboard, toiling away on some made up number game, and I'll tell him to get dressed for school while handing him his clothes. Ten minutes later I check on him, and he's wearing one shoe and a backwards shirt - nothing else! It happens all the time like that. He's like a nutty little professor. There's so much going on in his brain, I think the little tasks get lost in his ocean of ideas. 

We have signs all over the house. Some are labels, some are direction markers, and others are dire warnings. A visitor to our home might ask "Uh, what's up with all the signs?"

Well, let me go back to Gavin's infanthood. When he was little, we put up index cards on everything to help him learn to read. We labeled the doors, windows, fridge, tv, etc. I even wore one around my neck that read "Daddy." Due to autism and the circumstance that he didn't speak until he was into his 3rd year, we had no idea whether or not he gave a hoot about all the signs. Eventually the signs came down and the scotch tape was scraped off. Gavin began to communicate and learned to read, and is an academic all-star in first grade presently. Enough bragging, I'll try to make my point now.

As it turns out, he did pay attention to the signs when he was a baby. How do I know this? Because he told me. He just brought it up with me one day. He asked "Dad, why don't we have signs on stuff anymore?" To my amazement, he then proceeded to tell me about all the different signs he remembered on all of our stuff. I couldn't believe it. He said "Why was there a sign in my crib that said 'Jeep'? That was so silly."

How could he remember those details?

Now he wants his baby brother Bodie to have the same experience with the signs. Gavin has diligently made labels for everything again, from the floor to the ceiling. I've carefully followed his instructions on where to tape them.

The little 3x5 cards are one thing, but lately he's moved onto printer paper and the signs are becoming fairly elaborate. Every corner of our house now has a direction assigned to it, such as "The South East." Near the walk to our front door there's a set of signs that read "Go North West to enter our home." Then "Welcome to the Compass house." It's getting out of hand, but its pretty funny. Paper's cheap, and its good writing practice for him.

 My favorite sign so far was the wasp warning. We had a family of wasps take residence in the soffit above the door, so Gavin immediately whipped up this doozy:

It reads "No going out this door thers a wasp." The blue figure with the red slash obviously means the warning is intended for all humans inside our house. He says he wants to be a sign painter when he grows up. I think he has a great mind for it!

If you have toddlers that are thirsty for learning, we have found the best thing for them in the world. It is called Starfall, a website just for kids learning to read! It is so awesome, and free! Garrett and Gavin absolutely love it, and can't get enough of it. (See photo - Saturday, pre-breakfast!) It is an incredible tool. These kids literally spend a full hour at a time on Starfall, and its a great hour of learning - not pointless cartoons or something. Granted, most little kid tv shows these days are not pointless or without value, but Starfall is such a better way to keep their little light bulbs illuminated. Plus, the real bonus is that these boys aren't begging us for entertainment! They are totally engulfed in the word games and stories. It's a priceless hour for parents to do dishes, fold clothes, change oil, fix broken ____(fill in the blank) etc.

Garrett and Gavin both fell in love with the computer at about the same time. Once they realized that the mouse makes the little arrow go, it was on. I'd come home from work to find every application on my computer open, and every file on my desktop in complete disarray and renamed. Nice. They'd rename my projects stuff like "krgghjivbnre" or "1i6u4mk++=+". Sometimes stuff would vanish completely. Luckily its all still in the apple time machine. That thing has been a lifesaver since the boys have started meddling with our computers! I now use a password lock.

We realized that there has to be some software or a program to buy that would suit these guys' ages, so we started hunting for it, and voila! We found Starfall. Nothing to buy, its free! Its the best thing out there that we've tried, even compared to some of the pay sites "free trials".

I love the way the buttons on the site are really large, easy to click. There are matching games, spelling games, and click/drag games that teach coordination. These kids have gotten so good at using the mouse just in the last week or two, its amazing. I recommend using a wireless mouse, for sure. It eliminates a lot of wired frustration.

Gavin and Garrett take over our computers like a couple little thuggish computer jackers. They just love these games! I love the way Gavin is sounding out each letter of words now. He's actually learning to read the right way! He was reading by memorization before. He could memorize a book after I read it to him a few times, and he would recognize the words in other places. I don't know if that's a bad way to learn, it just doesn't seem conventional or practical. Starfall has some magic way to keep these kids engaged and progressing. Their brains are just flourishing. Its very exciting! We've got to get these dudes their own computer. Or two. Everything has to come in pairs nowadays. Maybe we can get some used e-macs on craigslist for cheap! That'll have to be after Christmas...