Lewis speaks Chinese, Art is into music and other random things.

So, many people who are local and been around me lately have heard this before, but Lewis speaks Chinese!  In Chinese the same word can mean completely different things depending on how it is intoned and Lewis has several meanings for some of his "words".  I'm sure this is totally typical of kids his age, but it is fun for me to notice that "Eh go?" means where'd it go?  "Eh GO!" means there it is!  "EH GO!" means let's go and, the new one, which is slightly different, "Heh go?", how does this work?  

Art and Lewis have survived the long, hard winter break.  And so have we.  Sometimes I swear they were going to kill each other, that is if I didn't get to one of them first.  They were incorrigible!  It seemed 10 minutes didn't go by without one of them screaming at the other one.  We rode it out, though, and yesterday they played together beautifully most of the long, napless afternoon.  Art engaged Lewis in a game of surprise, running one direction around the first floor and telling Lewis to go the other way until they met with a ROAR!  And they played with instruments and scarves for the longest time.  I got a toy for Lewis that I always wanted for Art but never got before, some wooden fruit that is attached together with velcro so you can "cut" it, and Art gathered it all up along with the play cooktop and some spices for their "picnic" in the living room.  That was really cute.

The other day Art and I successfully played Chutes and Ladders.  I never realized that there are behavior lessons tied in with the game.  A little boy bandages a dog's foot and gets to go up a ladder where the dog is then licking him happily.  Another kid is reaching for a cookie jar on a high shelf and has to go down, down, down a long slide where he's found with stars over his head and the broken cookie jar on the floor.  Go figure.  Art was really interested in what was happening to all those kids.

Well, tomorrow is my first Music Together class as teacher.  That's why we have all the instruments and scarves.  I think it will go really well but you never know.  I think I'll go practice right now.