Math Genius

Let me count the clouds. I'll count the berries. Hold on, stop reading. I need to count the caps. 1,2,3...Mom what is five plus eight? You know what fifteen and six is? Twenty one. 

This is how most days go. Counting under his breath, loud in the car, before bed. Adding in his head, out loud, teaching Stella. Numbers are constantly in his head and talked about. Things are added and subtracted. Fingers are used for tricky problems, but mostly the answer is just given from memory. Most times I am baffled by this- who taught him all this, where did he learn it? Sure Brady and I count things and help him along when he's stuck, but counting by twos? Tens? Not I. Not school. Just Teigue.

Tonight I decided to write down some problems for him so he could see how they are written on the page. He got them all right. Then he started to write his own problems. As we were doing it I asked him if it was OK and if he liked it- I don't want to be a pushy mom about learning, I want it to be fun and exciting. He told me, "Mom, I could do this all night!'. Future Stanford grad here in the Fox house!

Happy Valentine's Day

xoxo

Connecticut

For the weeks leading up to our trip to Connecticut we kept on hearing about all this snow that they were getting. You won't believe it! You've never seen this much before! We kept on hearing things like this over and over again. Yeah right, I thought. I grew up in Connecticut, lived in Chicago, vacationed in Tahoe. I've seen snow. There is no way there is that much snow. I was so very, very wrong. It was shocking when I got out of the car and saw the snow piled up in my parent's front yard. Snow so high that a certain 5 year old was able to do his favorite thing in the whole wide world- reach the giant icicles growing from the top of my parent's roof.

He helped at Aunt Jean's house too.

Some, sadly, remained out of reach.

Every single day we piled on the snow clothes and played outside. We built snow forts, created an outdoor play area complete with snow slides and discovered just how much fun sledding in a backyard on ice crusted snow is.

The kids would start at the top of my parent's yard and slide diagonally all the way down to the fence. Sure the plowed into the bushes and that wood pile a few times, but he very quickly learned how to steer  that little sled away from the barriers and, more importantly, bail when they couldn't. 

We played until we were tired, cold and exhausted. The only thing that made us feel better was a steaming mugful of hot cocoa top with Fluff and whipped cream. Such a delicious combination. We went through quite a lot of milk and Fluff. 

We even were a tad adventurous and climbed trees higher than we have ever climbed before.

Don't get too worked up. See the tree behind Teigue in this picture? He was about halfway up. Not too high, but still higher than he had ever gone.

Although we had so much fun playing outside as much as we possibly could, by far the best thing that we got to do was spend loads and loads of time with Grandpa and Grandma. We taught them how to play Candy Land, Match and our version of GoldFish. We danced our silly dances for them, helped them shovel the driveway, listened to books...we just soaked it all up. We visited Auntie Jeanie and her scary ghost house. We wish we could have spent more time with our cousins and family, but some stinky Nor'easters and the threat of snow that never materialized kept us away. The time that we got with Uncle Timmy, Auntie Em and her sore foot, Gracie and Lily was just amazing. I love how they may not see each other very much, but when they do they make the most out of every single minute. (Notice how Teigue and Gracie are holding hands in this next picture).

Until August Connecticut. I'm sure some of that snow will still be there for Gracie's birthday.