Sunday, July 29, 2012

Cute things Jonathan did recently

We brought an electronic appliance and those come with cartons. This particular carton was just the right for Jonathan, so he adopted it. He was so happy with it, he wanted to have dinner in it, I refused to allow this. Jonathan must eat at the table. He still ha s a low table suited for his height to eat his dinner, even though he is slowly growing too big for it. At the end, he sat on the box, at the table and ate is dinner. For my birthday, Jonathan gave me a present, a horn – like the ones used in football fields. He loved the sound and thought I would be happy to receive the gift.

One other day Jonathan found a business card with a drawing of a pair of lips in the street…you can easily imagine what the card was advertizing, but the graphics was really nice and Jonathan liked it because the lips reminded him of a kiss. So he gave it to me as a gift informing me that “mommy, I brought you a kiss!”

Jonathan is a fan of the touch game “Angry birds”. The principle of the game is using a sling to shoot birds at various objects, depends on the version you have. Besides the application on the smart phone, Jonathan is also the proud owner of a fur Angry Bird puppet that makes laughing sounds, like in the game. One day when we were visiting friends, I found a ball shaped like an angry bird. I spend the next half hour throwing the ball at Jonathan imitating the concept of the electronic game, Jonathan had a ball trying to catch the ball bird and we had a lot of laughs. Compelled to create other versions of the game, a few days later Jonathan took a shoe lace and wrapped it around his waist, then propelled himself forward, the lace serving as a sling and Jonathan being the angry bird. The result was not anger, just a lot of laughter.

Jonathan is coping with a new baby sister (who is already six months old). He loves her and usually is very kind to her, getting the most laughs from her. He also has to try out all her things! He is once again showing an interest in various baby games, especially the beeping or music playing ones. He loves them as a toddler and now he plays with them for his own amusement and that of his little sister. Taking a bath in her little baby tub was also obligatory. One morning my husband was giving me the morning off. So he and Jonathan made breakfast by themselves. They made pancakes and then painted faces on them with chocolate syrup and candy. I was served a very cute breakfast.

Jonathan the language expert.

Growing up with two languages is complicated. Growing up with two languages that are very different from each other, like Hebrew and German, which also have gender differences in words, is doubly more complicated. And even so, Jonathan is slowly getting the hang of it, and he can even read… My husband makes gender mistakes in Hebrew and one day he got scolded by Jonathan, who protested that he is not a girl! “What do you think I am, daddy, a girl?” and yet he tends to use the female format himself…I am sure one ay Jonathan will also be correcting the gender mistakes I make in German, but we are not there yet…

He is just getting the hang of putting words together into sentences in German, but as time passes he becomes more sue of himself. When his German grandmother came to visit, he was fully capable of informing her that he was not yet tired, when she told him it’s time for bed. Recently he went to get his father’s assistance and informed him that his little baby sister is crying and daddy should come now please. All in perfect German, with correct grammatical structure. Other times he uses German words but in the Hebrew order of a sentence, which is the other way around…something like “I no want”.

 Another manifest of his understanding of language is that he not only recognizes all the letters in Hebrew, he is able to read all the names of the children in his kindergarten group. He is also learning to recognize the Latin alphabet with the help of a free app in my new touch cell phone…ah the marvels of technology. It is needless to say that Jonathan is slowly improving his skills on the home PC and playing computer games in now a major pastime. He loves to share his excitement in the game and have me watch him play. Boys and their toys…if at the age of 4.5 years the boy already has access to a computer and a touch cell phone, the ipad cannot be far off and the TV console too…if the ipad did not cost the half of the average Israeli salary, Jonathan would probably be the proud owner of one, just like some of his friends…