Two!

Our littlest mancub turned two this week!

 He's had a splendid time this week playing outside.  All winter he wanted to play outside with the bigger boys, but then when it actually came down to it, he would get frustrated about walking in the snow and downright mad about falling into the snow, which is inevitable when you are two.  This winter was a winter of cold, icy, hard-to-walk-in snow.   And now the snow is almost gone and the season of mud has arrived!  A boy's favorite season!

We are celebrating Hen's special day this weekend with family, but couldn't pass up the chance to make chocolate cupcakes on the actual day.  The littlest boys and I made these, while the older two were at homeschool co-op.  It was fun, but I'll admit Owl and Hen were not very into helping make them, but were very into helping to eat them.  Ah, well...

He licked the chocolate buttercream off the top and tried to grab a second one, because isn't that what you are supposed to do?  The cupcake must just be something to put the frosting on for ease of holding and licking!

Today we walked to the local bookstore and when we walked into the children's section Hen spotted Arnold Lobel's "Owl at Home".  He pointed to it, and promptly said, "Owl at Home! Owl at Home!" The bookstore owner knows us and has been the supplier of books to our oldest boy (voracious reader) since he was 3.  When he heard Hen's response to seeing the familiar book he said, "Another one? How old is he?"  "Two", I said sheepishly.  And yes, we've got another one, whatever that means.  Having  children like this (bright, gifted, amazing?  i don't know what to call it?) seems "normal" to me now, and it's funny to be reminded how not "normal" it is for a just turned two year old to be talking in sentences and starting to sound out words in a book.

What a crazy journey we are on.  Parenting.  Loving.  Living.  I'm so thankful for this time I have with these Little Men.  Someone I know says, "Normal is just a setting on your dishwasher" and I am finding that is so true.

Sources for Gender differences and the Brain

As requested by J's brother and sister-in-law, here are some sources for the information I previously posted about. 

First there is this book.  Raising Boys by Steve Biddulph.  Interesting and informative, a first look into the idea that there are actual physical differences in the brain in boys and girls.

When I wanted to learn more about this and also to make sure the science was accurate about this, I turned to the Eides.  They are a husband and wife team, one a neurologist and one a neuropsychologist I think, that are on the cutting edge of research about learning and the brain and all that jazz.  Check them out.  They have written many books (i've only read the Mislabeled Child) and they have an awesome blog that is very informative.  Start here to read about Gender differences and the Brain and then you'll have to follow it up by looking at the other links to their other posts at the bottom of the page.  There are countless studies that they have cited....here is one that I found particularly interesting about hearing and gender from Indiana State University.

I first found out about the Eides through Tagmax, our online community for gifted children who are being homeschooled and their families, which has been an excellent resource for us.   If you'd like to check out Tagmax you can do that here.  They have other branches of the community to support gifted kids that are in the school system too.

That's all for now, I guess.  I do believe that there are many things that we teach our children in regards to gender just by the way we live.  And we need to be thoughtful about this just as we do about all aspects of living and parenting.  And I also don't mean to imply that somehow the value of a child is different simply because of gender....only that science is finding that though we may be capable of many of the same things, we may go about them differently.  We actually use our brains differently.  We process things differently.  If I am going to be present with my boys as they learn at home, then I want to understand this to the best of my ability.