Nicholas is growing fast and developing rapidly. He knows all his colors in both languages, including "dark" and "light", all his shapes (the basics, including trapezoid, pentagon, hexagon, octagon), and the alphabet. He can count to ten independently, and with help, to twenty. He has a pretty big vocabulary and his sentences are getting much more complex. His pronunciation is becoming more clear-- now he says "octopus" correctly (used to be ah-poo-ta). He can recount a simple narrative (where did we go? what did you eat?), and tell the next event in a story he knows. He will hold a simple phone conversation. He sings songs (Farmer in the Dell, Sapo cu-ru-ru) by himself. He also has several books memorized, so he can "read". Although he now knows the phonetic alphabet, he doesn't seem to be able to make the leap to real reading yet-- of course, he's only 2 (and 3 months)! No need to rush!
It's really fun and refreshing to be part of a child's innate curiosity and drive to learn. It makes one wonder how older kids get so negative, bored, and jaded so quickly. I am getting nervous about school-- the institutionalization of children... I mean, I hope we'll find a really good school later on... but since homeschooling is illegal in Brazil (to prevent the possibility of children being shipped off to work), we'll have to deal with what's available-- unless we return to the US. Even then, I'm not sure homeschooling would be best, but it's something I think and read about. I had a really good public education as a child, with creative teachers, field trips, computers (when these were new), huge libraries, sports, art, theater, music... times are different now with budget constraints in the US, and in Brazil, schools just aren't at the same level. That's not to say that kids don't get a good education-- Bruno certainly did. But definitely, learning begins at home. In my experience, learning is mostly about attitude, goals, and self-application.
In other news, we are trying to buy a house, and hopefully that will come through for December, when our lease is up in our current house. Buying a house in this city has proven extremely difficult. We originally intended to build, but things go sooooo slowly here, we knew it wouldn't be a viable option in the short-term. Also, we don't want to buy another car, so living in the countryside would be hard here, where people and services really concentrate in the "urban" (more like suburban in our town) neighborhoods. The house we are buying needs a little work, but it's affordable and should be really nice once we fix it up! Nicky can't wait!!
