He continues to enjoy kindergarten. He is reading quite well and is only impeded in his progress by the fact that he tends to give me a run for my money every time I ask him to do anything. We talk a lot about complaining and choices, he and I. When he's on fire, he's on fire. He can be so good and obedient,, and he can be so the opposite! With reading and homeschool/learning in general, he reminds me so much of Stone. They both have brilliant little minds, particularly about science. They both learn things effortlessly. However, I think I was in a position with Stone to put more energy and patience into our teaching sessions, and I kind of expect Brock to just cooperate and comply immediately. I have a harder time finding the patience I had back with Stone, not to mention the time. But we're continuing to work away at it, and his progress is good. We're reading The Cat in the Hat and he only struggles with an occasional word. I'm pretty sure Stone told him that he (Stone) was well into reading Magic Tree House books by his (Brock's) age, so Brock has been "reading" Magic Tree House books and insisting that he's completing them. He's really not far off. His brain reminds me of Stone and his sense of humor and personality remind me more of Zeke's in his delight in making the people around him laugh. He does a good job at that.

One of our goats had little baby goats and Brock is just delighted with them. They are about the cutest things ever. He loves to go out and hold them, even when they cry at him. He is definitely the most fearless of all our kids when it comes to holding animals. He loves those goats.

I have a hard time getting most of the kids to dress warmly in the mornings. Not Brock. Often I'll come downstairs to see him looking like a mummy with two coats, a stocking cap, and gloves. Then I have to tell him to take them off so he can eat breakfast.

He loves playing with Mack. Those two are wonderful friends. He also loves playing with Ella. Today is her birthday and last night he kept getting sneakily out of his bed as he made her a card. Once I realized what he was doing I let him finish. It was super sweet.

I call him Broccoli Pants. Stone calls him Tomallow because that's how he pronounces "tomorrow."

I love Brock.

April 10, 2012. Five years old. Kindergarten.

I was carrying the snake when I saw the class and all the students were a-dither about the snake. Brock was disappointed because what he brought was supposed to be a surprise. He was tearing up because he was deprived of the fun of the kids guessing what he brought. But Stone (who was with me because we had just been to the doctor with his broken collar bone) and I convinced him that it was okay. We had the snake skin he had just shed in a bag and the kids could guess about that. Once the kids were seated with Brock up in front with the snake, Brock enjoyed it. The teacher was pretty freaked out about the snake and she made sure the kids were sitting a safe distance away. Brock took the snake out of the tank and the teacher let kids come up, two or three at a time, to touch it. The kids loved seeing and touching the snake. Brock enjoyed showing him. We've all gotten pretty attached to Long-Tongue.

Brock is a complete ham. Stone's bus comes before the other kids' in the mornings. Stone was telling us that after they pick him up and the bus has turned around at the dead end at the end of the street and is passing by our bus stop again, Brock stands at the side of the road and does funny dances for Stone's bus. A few minutes ago he was standing on the picnic table, dancing. He has the funniest dances and the funniest faces. He's really delightful. He has been more mature and enjoyable lately. I love my sweet little Snapper! Who is in Kindergarten!! I still can't believe that.

October 1, 2011. Five Years Old. Kindergarten.

These are Brock's growth charts. Brock has always been small for his age. As a baby the pediatrician was usually concerned and directed me to fatten him up as much as possible. She didn't have any concerns this time, though, even though he's obviously still small.

Five years old is a big deal! The morning of his birthday he was concerned that his clothes and shoes wouldn't fit now that he was a year older. He was a surprised and a little disappointed to see that they still fit!

A birthday is always a fun way to kick off a summer. Brock has been enjoying having all his siblings home--it's always a party around the house. They have loved to ride bikes together and play outside. It's been nice and cool during the month of June, so that keeps everyone outside and happy. Brock loves going on the boat on the pond. He loves collecting nature items around the property. He had about 50 goose feathers crammed into his mudroom cubby recently. He has found eggshells, bones, rocks, shells, and all kinds of goodies. He and Mack had a particularly good time with an abandoned goose nest in the field. We had some friends over to our house to play and he and an older boy went out on the boat and brought back a bucket full of shells. We were all standing around admiring them. Brock leaned over, scrutinizing them, and said, "I think they're mammals." He was insisting the other day that he had learned about a bird that was a mammal. He certainly has an inquiring little brain. We've been continuing homeschool this summer. He tolerates the reading a math--doing well at both. But his love is science and social studies. He is so like his big brother Stone. We've learned the continents and oceans and are on to the states. Stone's teaching science this summer and Brock loves it. They've learned about continental plates, volcanoes, lightning, and lots of other stuff.

His witty comments and silliness keep everyone laughing. He loves to make people laugh. He loves his brothers and sisters. We all love him!

June 26, 2011. Five years old.

But, it was okay, because we went from one fun thing to another. Brock had fun at Lagoon the next day. We spent almost the entire day there with his cousins. He has two cousins his age: Alex and Kasen. They, along with the other little boys ran around from ride to ride and had a blast. They loved the train, of course, and the planes and cars and rockets. But, when I asked him what his two favorite rides were, he said they were "Octopus," and the Ferris Wheel--both rides that he had been scared of prior to riding them. In fact, with the Ferris Wheel, he was absolutely having a fit about going on it. It is a huge ferris wheel and he was scared of how high it was. He was crying and trying to run away from me in the line--which lasted a good 1/2 hour. And on the ride, he clung to me pretty good, but afterward, he thought it had been the greatest! As fun as Lagoon was, I think he had nearly as much fun playing with his cousins' toys at their house last night and this morning. Different toys are always so much fun!

I'm working on homeschool with Brock a couple times a week. We work on reading and Math which he does well with, but he really just tolerates those subjects as he waits to get to Science. He loves Science. We pull open a science book of Stone's from when he was younger and just talk about the concepts in it. Brock listens intently, remembers everything, and is fascinated by it all. He can tell you that everything is made of molecules and that gravity is why things drop. We also have been studying some geography. Last week I was quizzing him on the continents and Ella, who was home ill from school, was sitting by him. After he identified them all, she expostulated, "Gosh! I don't know all those!" When we learned about the countries in North America, he would shiver in exaggerated fear every time I mentioned Mexico. Zeke has been studying about Harpy Eagles and learned that Harpy Eagles, whose natural habitat is Mexico, can carry away small children. Now Brock is under the impression that every child in Mexico has been or will be carried away at some point by a Harpy Eagle.

His sense of humor still doesn't fail us. We get quite a kick out of his funny sayings, expressive faces, and silly dances. He is very particular about his clothes, particularly about the way they feel, and he has certain pants and shirts he likes and certain ones that when he has to wear them he acts like his left arm is being cut off. He has about five things on earth that he will eat. That makes mealtime interesting. Stone was the same way at his age. He has loved playing outside lately as we've finally had warmer weather. He even got to wear shorts a few days. (Shorts fit into his not-having-a-fit-when-I-have-to-wear-them category.) He plays really well with Mack and I love hearing their cute little voices interacting. He is a wonderful little boy and I'm thoroughly enjoying him!

May 15, 2011. Four Years Old.

How fun it is to get to know this little Brock of mine! I have discovered in the last few years that he has a brilliant little mind. He reminds me in so many ways of Stone at Brock's age. Their characteristics, intellect, and the way they tick are very similar. Brock, like Stone before him, has an active mind. He absolutely delights in learning about the world around him. He pours over books, committing to memory, without effort, the things that he learns. He prefers nonfiction books to fiction and generally picks out juvenile-level books about volcanoes or dinosaurs from the library. I try to teach him a little science out of a book we have at the end of every homeschool session, and he absolutely eats that up. A few weeks ago we learned about molecules and he was quite taken with that concept. Right now he has a passion for dinosaurs and can rattle off facts and names about dinosaurs that impresses his siblings and parents alike. He has effortlessly learned his alphabet and is now doing basic reading. He can sound out words quite well, but it is still more difficult to sound out words than to guess, using the pictures and other content, what the words are. Often, When he starts getting a little weary during homeschool, he'll start guessing at words instead of taking the effort to figure them out. Most of the time he comes pretty close to guessing correctly. But the other day he was way off and it was hillarious. We were working on a list of words, "an, man, Dan, and tan." He read "an." Then he came to "man." He has sounded out this word many times, but this day he was somewhat tired and uninterested in figuring it out. So he looked at it and said, "um, um, um, . . . sausage?" I burst out laughing. Sausage? Where in the world did he get sausage? I don't think he was really serious, but I'm not sure. Anyway, it was a good laugh.

Brock and Mack love to play together. They love to fight together, too. But lately they've been spending hours disappearing, playing happily together with trains or stuffed animals or rescue heroes or trucks. He will similarly disappear with Ella when she's home. They usually play imaginative games with a variety of toys. Yesterday Stone babysat Brock and Mack while the rest of us where at Zeke's football game and the girls' clogging pictures. When we got home, Stone had a cowboy hat and a red bandana on, carrying two big bags of tortilla chips where were to represent bags of gold. Brock and Mack, aka "the law," were chasing him with guns and having quite the great time. It was pretty cute. Brock does not lack for playmates.

Brock has a delightful sense of humor. His funny actions, faces, dances, and sayings send the rest of the kids into peals of laughter. Brock loves making them laugh. The other day he was at the breakfast table saying, "I don't like toast." Then he slowly took a bite and said in a funny voice, "Oh, yes I do!" The kids made him repeat that about a hundred times. He also has a funny way of answering things by saying, "uh, . . . yes!" "uh, . . . no!" by drawing out the "uh" and then saying yes or no in a high-pitched, staccato way. Now the whole family responds that way.

I love my little Snapper. I set up a time for his kindergarten registration the other day. I can't quite wrap my mind around the idea of him going to kindergarten. I want him to be my little buddy forever.

Fall 2010. 4 years old.