Summer... the start

I am out of school!
We have had false Summer start in April and in early June, but now it is taking its sweet time to make an appearance. It is supposed to be too hot in a few days but that will be a welcomed break from the rain we have had lately.
I was certainly counting the days until school would be out. The past 5 months have been rough both at school and at home and, based on Maman's exasperated look this morning, I can safely say that it is not going smoother on this first week of our extended vacation.
I try hard to break the parents down so they finally let me do what I want.  They are tough to break, let me tell you. But I am also relentless so it sure is a fun tug of war in this house.

Maman is a tad worried about next month. See, we are flying to France to be with Papi and Mamie for 3 weeks. And while I am super excited about it, she thinks that we might get thrown out of my grand-parents' house if I still insist on being the King there. Nonsense I say: grand-parents' role is to spoil their grand-kids right? So obviously, they will let me do a lot more than I am allowed to do here. ( Maman is rolling her eyes).

Yesterday I actually declared that I went from 100% difficult behavior down to 50%. Sure by the end of the evening, as I told Maman, I went up a notch, a mere 1% I said. She did not quite agree with that but seemed to like the hours where I was at 50%!  And most days, I have about 10% dedicated to be fairly pleasant and it certainly allows us to have some fun time.

In May we went to Bend for the yearly reunion of the Pole Pedal Paddle team. I had a great time and although the previous years I barely looked at him, this year I was glued to the hip to my cool friend Grant. Because you have to be cool to handle all my craziness! 

 I also got to row with the girls in front of the house we were staying at, during one of the few shower breaks. Quite fun!

 There was also a big party where I got to help our friend Paula celebrate her 50th birthday. The best was the spread of food and the easy access to anything I wanted. I probably had a few more desserts than I am usually allowed to have ( I know that Maman reads this otherwise I would have written "a tons more" instead of a "few more".)

 We ended the week-end with a hike for most and a bike ride for me. Beautiful area just on the outskirts of Bend.

 The early June sun had helped with the growth of our strawberry patch and by mid-June, after I finally stopped eating all the berries that were ripening every day, we were able to get our first big batch. One out of already 3. Papa thought he would have the strawberries all for himself in July while we would be gone in France, since it is when they usually were good to eat, but the weather decided in my favor!

 And then came the last week of school. Papa came with my friends and I to the end of the year field trip. It was a fun bike ride at Vancouver Lake. I was proud to ride with Papa but soon, the taller kids with their taller bikes were pedaling faster than I could with my short legs and Papa had to go with them.
I still got to have my picnic next to Papa and that was nice.  Notice the stash of cookies I found!

 My buddies and I got quite wet in the Lake but that was part of the fun. 3 of those 4 boys have nearly drawn their kindergarten teacher to take an early retirement this year  ( although she is still about 20 years away from retirement age!)... One of the four is trying to keep all the other ones sane... and it's not me :)

And finally, on June 20, it was the end of the year for students and with it came the end of the maternelle years at the school for me. Three years where I have built quite a reputation of being the cutest kid ever! Wait, what? That's not quite the reputation I have? How could it not be, look at those pictures!

 Maman asked me those two questions on the last day:
- What did you not like about Kindergarten: "Being sent to other teachers' classrooms."
- What did you really like about Kindergarten: "Recess and FREE time".
We are in for a long road of schooling years she said.

I'll give you more news from or about France in a few weeks. In the meantime, be nice to each others.

Spring Break 2013

There we go, it has been seven weeks so it must mean that I am on a break!

Let’s see, what has happened since February…  I am still very much a handful, well make it two while you are at it. The way I see it, is that it keeps the parents busy and up on their toes. 

Since rewards did not work, since removing privileges did not work, they decided to try a new approach with me. They read this book from Dr Jane Nelsen called Positive Discipline. No more rewards, no more removal of privileges? Really? I wonder how they are going to pull that one off.

It turns out that I am also in charge of making some decisions in the family and we end up meeting every Sunday morning to make those decisions. I decide on my own consequences and I am sometimes harder on myself than my parents would be.

Of course, like with any system, I am pushing on it hard, very hard. I still try to turn it to my advantage because, after all, I am King Noah.

Luckily, I am much more than that and hopefully, when I figure all this relationship thingy, there will be less power struggles…

In March, we had a great Summer day and Maman and I spent a leisurely day riding our bikes, having a picnic and enjoying a sun time on the side of the river Willamette.

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In April, it was Tina’s birthday and I worked super hard on making a project for her. I was really proud of what I did and Tina seemed to like it too!

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Then, it was finally time for a little break. En route to Seaside we went. End of April, at the Ocean, in Oregon? Not much chance for sun and warmth you think. That’s what we thought too, but this was the sunniest Spring break in a long time and it was warm enough to be in shorts and t-shirts at the Ocean.

On the menu for the 3 days: reading ( yes I still do that A LOT), 

eating, but mainly playing on the beach, getting wet in the salty water of the ocean, 

 finding sea anenomies, building sand castle, getting more wet in the water and playing games with Papa and Maman.   

The bonus was also the fact that the place we stayed at had an outdoor pool open year round and boy, that was fun! It was even warm outside on the last morning of our stay.

Pictures and videos will speak for themselves. ( There are some weird kinks in the movie but Maman has spent too much time on it already and does not feel like redoing it- sorry!)

On Thursday, it was take your kid to work so Papa took me to his work. 

 There were a lot of talks before hand to make sure that I would behave well. But, come on, this place is the heaven for physical sciences and I LOVE physical sciences.

There were a lot of kids there but we were about 20 in each group, moving from one lab to the other. Since you can come only when you are 6, at 5 ½ years old, I was one of the youngest and was surrounded by kids that were up to 10 years old.

I was super interested by all the things they showed us and as you will see in the video, parents and other kids in my group seemed to be quite impressed by what I knew. Most kids were quiet, but I sure was not, making surer to try to answer every question, raising my hand high.

“Do you guys know the name of a gas?”

“Carbon dioxide” said I, the first answer that got heads to turn to me and my small stature and high pitched voice.

“You guys know about acids, but do you know what the opposite of acids is?”

I gave a few seconds for others to interject but since nobody jumped in I said: “Bases”.

Parents looked at each other surprised and the other kids kept looking at me with a “who is this kid?” kind of look. Turns out that even Maman did not know the answer to that one.

At the electromagnetic lab, they were trying to help us learn about electricity and I was unstoppable on the subject. At some point the guy was showing wires and a battery and I raised my hand high to say: “If you hook those wires to the battery and make a circuit, it will wear out the battery pretty fast and make a short circuit. That made the parents chuckle this time because I was probably beginning to sound like a know it all.

Anyway, I had a good time there and it made the P’s wish that they could find a school that is just about Sciences because I clearly enjoy that stuff. 

Now we are back to old school time schedule. Although the weather still feels like Summer... which was great this week-end as I got to baby sit 2 of the chicks that hatched 3 weeks ago in my classroom. Lemon and Cookie, that's how I call them. Sure it was fun having them around but they did not seem too interested in going down the slide or playing soccer with me.

That's all for now. Seven more weeks and then Maman and I will get ready to leave for our trip to France. 

A bientôt!

The February break...

Yes, it has already been seven weeks since I last posted. Well, eight if you count this past week. It was a week to be home and have fun... and I mostly did!
See, it is hard to make the adults realize that the whole entire World should revolve around ME. My last inquiry unit in my kindergarten class was about the rights of children in their families. Yes, you read it: the rights. Sure there might have been something about responsibilities too, but I studied hard on the RIGHTS part.

Here is a list of the kind of rights I feel entitled to:
- Stomp my feet when somebody, mainly the Ps, are not giving into my demands.
- Raise my fist towards unwilling adults, ahem, mainly the Ps again.
- Scream and fake-cry if demands are not met... by Ps.
- Say NO, before even hearing what the Ps are asking me to do.
- Becoming deaf or hard of hearing when asked to do something.
- Pushing adults buttons to see how fast they can loose their cool ( just ask my teachers and Ps).

Aren't those reasonable rights? Somehow, I seem to be the only one thinking so because there are no adults in sight who seem willing to give in. I might actually file a complaint for loss of privileges. Can you believe that I sometimes go without dessert, that I have to sit my butt in the laundry room when I stomp my feet or raise my fists, that I only have 30 minutes ( timer on!) to brush teeth- put pajamas on and get ready to listen to my story ( and I have had no time left for stories many times). But worst of all is the loss of tablet privilege... no Angry Birds, no Apparatus, no Bad Piggies, no Phineas and Ferb. I am telling you, it's the worst punishment of all.

When I am left to be, my bestest, favoritest pass-time is, and remains, reading. I have always spent hours with books but now that I read fluently in both languages I read, read and read again. I love comics in the newspaper for breakfast, love comic books all day long ( I am into Spirou and Fantasio right now) , love documentaries type of books and I am even beginning to learn things in my sciences books that Maman does not even know about. She even had to check if I was right about a science fact the other day. Pff.

Here is a little photo show of what we did this week. Outdoor and indoor.
And the video is of our fun filled day trying to come up with Rube-Goldberg-like chain reaction systems. Pretty cool and requiring a LOT of patience.

Tuesday- 8.5 miles bike ride from Oaks Park to OMSI

 Wednesday- Making a cool castle with my magna-tiles

 Wednesday- Listening to my radio in my fort.

 Friday- Portland Children's Museum- Always fun-

 Thursday- Rube Goldberg's contraptions day... you have to watch the video!

The end of a fun filled vacation

Last day of vacation!
It was certainly fun while it lasted and for my first week of 2013, I already have quite a bit to show.

Maman took me to OMSI to see Grossology: everything about barfing, pooping, farting. Loved it. I wanted to get Papa to come see it the next day. I must say that the huge nose sneezing scared me and I would not go closer than 3 feet away from it.

We ended the tour with a trip to the Chemistry lab. Cool experiences in there. Did you know that Calcium Chloride mixed with water can make the water super hot in a second? They use Calcium Chloride to deice plane wings during the Winter. Cool fact huh?

The next day my best friend L. came for a playdate. Did someone already told you that I am a goofball? Well, 10 minutes into the playdate, while jumping on my bed I told my friend: "Hey, let's get naked and run around!" My friend is apparently not the goofball variety because he said: "Hum, are we going to get in trouble with your parents?". I said: "Yeah, maybe but it would just be a time out." And who is afraid of those right?
Anyway, soon enough I was naked and running around the house like I was the funniest guy on Earth. But since nobody else joined in, I settled down a bit to actually play with my friend.
We found those glow in the dark sticks, a dark closet and that was quite a hit!

On Saturday Maman took me to a Rock climbing gym. It was my first time there. I used to be fearless but my understanding of gravity and the potential hurt factor you acquire when crashing back to Earth, made me be cautious and even slightly scared of heights.

But I made it to the top a few times and, if you look at the video, you will see that I even had a celebratory dance after a side climb. That gym has some loud music alright!  Oh, and the sweater? That's because it was 55 degrees in there when we showed up.


To conclude my vacation, Papa took me to the pool today and we splashed around for nearly 2 hours. It was SUPER fun!
Not sure when I will have the time to be on here now since the crazy schedule will be back on starting tomorrow, but it was sure nice to relax during those 2 weeks.

Noël 2012

Bonjour and Happy New Year to all! Bonne Année!

Santa did come to my house and it seems that Raccoon was nice to him. Now, hard to know who ate the cookie and drunk the milk, but I was just happy to see presents under the tree.

There were some gifts that were actually not for me. Can you believe it? I mean, we all know that Santa comes for kids right?

I had a list for Santa but he got quite creative with my list. I was still very happy though.
I got two cars that transforms and one even has a remote control.

I also got clothes. What's up with that? I know I am not good at spelling yet but this was not even close to any of my wishes.

I also got books... science books of course. And I love them. It's physical science, my favorite subject right now tied with the human anatomy.

And now is the time to show you Noah's Top Picks for cool gifts for this Christmas!
Number 1.... Electronic Set! SNAP

 

 I first thought it was the remote control helicopter that was on top of my list but even though I never got that one, I was not disappointed by this set.
As you will see on the video, Papa and I have been making a lot of projects with the set and there are tons more to do. It's fun learning about electricity


Number 2..... Lego Crazy Contraptions...

I barely looked at the game when I opened it but I have spent a lot of time having fun with it. You learn about gears and levers, belts and wheels. Really cool game!
I also enjoyed presenting it to you guys and most of it is in French but it sounds like I am addressing a crowd while presenting my projects.


I had plenty to play with after Santa came and just was happy to stay home. We traveled just one day to spend time with Tina. We had fun being silly as always and laughing about my goofiness! 

Good thing I sleep well to rest my brain from all this activity!
I wish you all a great year 2013 and I cannot wait to talk to Santa next December!