Whose Pile Would YOU Choose?

When you have more than 1 child you notice things.  You start to figure out when kids are "suppose" to do things and when one children does it more quickly, more easily and when one child, well, takes a little longer to do things :)  Sofia, by the time she was 2, could identify all her letters save one or two, knew most of the sounds, could sing songs, count in both english and Italian.  In part, this was because her mama was an at home for the first time, ex-first grade teacher mama.  At 7 weeks I panicked because I hadn't been able to get her to stop crying long enough to sit and read a book with me.  So from that point on I would lay on my back with her and read her books throughout the day.  I had a goal of 10 books each sitting.  (OH MY GOSH WAS I SO PSYCHOTIC OR WHAT?) 

 After reading proved to be a success we would then spend time EACH DAY in front of the fridge doing the leapfrog ABC thing - the goal was to go through the ENTIRE alphabet with each magnetic letter at least once, singing the songs.  I also checked out books from the library with fingerplays and typed up a few of my favorites and kept the papers in the living room so we could go through our fingerplays each day.  (Are your eyes rolling back in your head right now thinking THANK THE GOOD LORD I DID NOT KNOW THIS WOMAN DURING THIS TIME PERIOD?  And apologies to all those I did know at this point in my life......)  I was slightly bored, slightly wanting to do every little thing right and well, there's nothing wrong with a little educational material in a child's life.

All this to say that the first, our first, had quite the head start..............

Then along comes number 2.......................and a MUCH MORE RELAXED mama and a MUCH MORE RELAXED child.  Nico, Nico, Nico......where Sofia came home screaming and wanting things very much HER WAY, Nico came home placid.  Nico slept.  Nico ate.  Nico let anyone hold him.  Nico was calm.......about EVERYTHING and still is.  His baby sister, Francesca, was singing her abcs the other day (she's more Sofia than Nico.....or maybe it's more girl than boy :)  and Nico decided to chime in.  He got to about G and then said something along the lines of oh, well, I don't really want to sing them, I'll learn them later.  The child still doesn't know how to sing his ABCs.  He's almost 4.  Add to that he doesn't really care if he knows them or if Francesca does.  He will read books by himself or with me for LONG periods of time now.  He will sit and will make an effort to do learning games with me.  He's a good kid, a smart kid.  But Nico knows what he is about and that is pretty much playing with his stuff, fixing stuff, eating stuff, helping with man stuff and he really can't work up the energy to care about all the other stuff :)  

I love it.

You need at least one kid who will just roll with the punches.  The other day he said he wanted to be a cooker.............and cookers don't get married or have kids............and he wanted to cook at McDonalds. (This was later changed to some other restaurant but at the time it was McDonald's).  So apparently his plan will be to live at home for the rest of his life.............oh, well, maybe we will use that time to work on the ABC song :)

Oh, and if you are starting to doubt the boy's intelligence, take a look below.............

Nico's pile of candy after trading with Fia - note the excess of chocolate and king size candy bars

Fia's lesser pile of suckers, Dots and fruit snacks AFTER trading

He's a wheeler and dealer.......just like Nonno and Uncle Anthony and well, we all know how well they turned out ;)