I hope people still read this, because I’m not so great at posting with any kind of regularity.

There are a few new photos on flickr.

Kiernen is: “I’m gowin and gowin, Mama.” (growing and growing)

He can do 100-piece puzzles. It takes a couple of sittings with breaks in between to diffuse, but he did a 100 piece Spider-Man puzzle with minimal help from us.

He can identify numbers up to 11 by sight. He can read numbers!

He reads some letters, too. He knows “K for Kehnen!” and several others. We’re sort of working on spelling his name, but I didn’t make it easy by what I named him, did I? He DOES know his full name, and he knows we have the same last name, MBD, him and I. He is very interested in letters, and will often stop when he sees them and name the ones he can, asking for help with the rest. He seems to know (if I remember them all) A B C E I K M N O R S T W X pretty consistently. That’s more than half of them! lol

He loves Spider-Man despite not having seen anything of him other than pictures here and there. He has Spider-Man underwear, boots and puzzles now. He also still loves Thomas, Bob the Builder, Wall-E, Lightning McQueen (the Cars movie), and Spongebob (although we have called a moratorium on watching the latter anymore, as it ends up in edginess for both of us). He LOVES his Noddy books, and plays out the stories with MBD.

My mother got him this huge book of Thomas stories and he has us read from that all the time as well, and does the same thing. I LOVE listening to him act out all of these scenes while I’m otherwise occupied. He doesn’t miss a word, either - the other night I was reading a Noddy book to him and I accidentally got a word mixed up and he corrected me immediately. So I pretended to do it a bit later in the story and he caught me and corrected me immediately again. Did I mention the Noddy books are 7-9 chapters long and have only a picture every other page? Same for the Thomas stories. Shorter, but not so many pictures.

He also very much loves the Franklin the Turtle and Arthur (from PBS) books. In fact, we make a point every time we go to a thrift store to look for these books, as they’re very popular. He has almost all of both sets. Luckily we also very much enjoy these books, as we are required to read them over and over again. Since he only has one video day a week (with few exceptions), he asks us to read to him a LOT.

He has little sayings he uses, like, “That’s what I’m talking about!” and now I am blanking on what the others are…darnit! They’re cute, too! I’ll write them down so I remember…

For his video days lately he has been watching Donald Duck/Chip and Dale on YouTube, and Postman Pat (a BBC kids show from like to 90s or something).

He is really into pretend play, as I mentioned. He will act out little scenes for HOURS. I am not able to interrupt him when he is in the middle of a scene, because he becomes SO absorbed. I’ve learned to say, “Excuse me, KIernen,” if I really need him to answer me. No amount of my just saying his name will bring him out of it otherwise. When I say, “Excuse me,” he comes right to. Everyone needs respect.

He was DELIGHTED to receive first his very own Valentine card in the mail from his Gigi and Papa, and THEN an email Valentine from his Grandma. His own mail and email! He has no idea what Valentine’s day is, but the attention and cards are just fine with him.

He is really loving living here, and he is relaxing into it well. He is getting friendlier with some of the adults and he even will sit and ask them to read with him when they visit - a high honour in his book. He is very much looking forward to visiting St. Louis again and seeing his family. He asks about it and LOVES to look at our photos from our trip there last year. Soon, soon we will know when we next get to visit again.