Almost 5..

But not quite yet. Another four months to go.

The year has been interesting and Kylee has continued to charm. She refers to herself as a ‘four’ and uses the term in the context of ‘Fours can do that’.

One of the things that ‘fours’ can do is pick up a book, open it and not use the story as written. She looks at the pictures and then uses her imagination to create a new story. The great thing about using her imagination in this way is that one book never becomes a bore because the story changes every time.

While we as adults may see this as a get-out from reading proper, it shows a great ability to adapt and overcome. Full marks for that.

What else do Fours get up to during the day? Apparently, accidents are all part of a Four’s day, aren’t they Papa.

Kylee is by no means the nimblest child on her feet, and it is normal practice to pick up a small injury during the course of the day. She is not the bravest child when it comes to climbing frames, and is often shown up by kids younger and smaller than herself, but that is no bad thing. The alarming part is that she can fall while jogging along. Excitement gets the better of her and she does not look in the direction that she should be looking.

Now for a major triumph.

On a recent weekend trip to the family cottage, Kylee was introduced to the art of fishing. Set up with a kiddie fishing rod, her Mom placed a worm on the hook and Kylee dangled the line over the edge of the boat jetty. Her Uncles, Mom and other Grandfather, all big into fishing, baited up and cast their own lines.

So who caught the big one? The biggest fish ever caught by any member of the family? Expressing concern that she had caught something and would need help, her Uncle Darryl took on the job. The fish was so big that it broke Kylee’s rod, but Darryl fought with what was left of it and finally a four foot fish was landed.

Kylee really did catch one <……… this big………..>. Never underestimate a ‘Four’.

School for the coming year will be ‘French Immersion’, and we are all hoping that she does well. She is a very smart kid when she applies herself, and being bi-lingual, even in an eminently English part of Canada will help her get work later in life, especially in government jobs.

The only downside is that nobody else in the family knows much more than ‘Merci Beaucoup’ and I doubt that they could even spell it. As with any language, if you don’t get to hear it much, it will be forgotten. It always helps if one or both parents are Francophone and neither are. Oh well.. 

Her first trophy..

Kylee has for the last year been a member of a local hockey team. She is the youngest and smallest of all of the players. The team received trophies for the 2011-2012 season, and today she brought it with her such that she could surprize us all. A magical moment..

Almost as magical as watching her skate, stick in hand, falling occasionally but always getting back up on her skates and ‘shaking it off’. She is so small that she can’t manage the step between the ice and the bench, and if she does try it, there is the inevitable fall. Fortunately, the coach or trainer lifts her out onto the ice most of the time.

I would like to think that I would have had the courage to go out on the ice, but I don’t think that I could have done it. Kylee’s mum is an exceptional player, and Kylee thought that she too would be exceptional from day one. It has at times being very frustrating for Kylee to accept that it is harder than it looks, but she still perseveres. The trophy will spur her on to her second  season later this year.

On the general front..

Kylee does well at school, is liked by many and thoroughly enjoys the experience. She can count to 100, and can spell and recognise a lot of words.

She is still progressing on her computer too, even teaching her 3 year old cousin how to do it.

Having learned about ‘earth day’ at school, she instructed me on which lights I should turn off and which would be ok to be left on.

Her demeanour is quite unlike any child I have ever come across. She is a star, a ray of sunshine, casting light and smiles wherever she goes. Words do not do her justice. Now she is a star with a trophy to prove it.

Kylee goes to Florida

Who’s a lucky girl. Tomorrow, she will be joining the ranks of the Snowbirds again and having fun in the sun. This will be her second visit, and I don’t doubt that she will appreciate it more than the time before.

She has been counting off the sleeps for over two weeks now, and is finally down to one. Will she miss us? Yes, most probably but one can only hope that she doesn’t too much and that she gets maximum pleasure at the Disney park in Orlando.

Do I wish that I was going too? Yes and no. I am a Brit and was brought up with Rupert the Bear, not Mickey da Mouse. Florida is probably more humid than I can easily cope perhaps, and somebody has to remain behind to keep the flag flying and enjoy the warm – cold warm – cold weather which SWO is presently experiencing.

On her return from her visit last year, she had a play routine centred around the facial and speech idiosyncrasies of a Florida waitress. When serving us pretend tea and snacks, she would adopt a pose and voice which was definitely not her own, and we did smile (no offence to the waitress in question, whoever you are).

It will be interesting to see what she comes back with this time. When I was a kid, I came back from vacation with sand in my shoes. How boring was that??   

A new world opens up..

The world of elevator buttons is now within reach, I am not making reference to public elevators in malls, hospitals etc. The reference is to apartment blocks with aging elevators which are not generally ‘disabled’ friendly. Invariably, small children can’t reach even the lowest of the buttons, which is as well really because the alarm button is always one of them.

Kylee is not so small these days. On tiptoe, she can reach the G button, and of course the alarm button. She has almost outgrown the five point harness in her car seat, has been in Junior Kindergarten for a while now and is getting way too smart for a four year old.

Do we all grow up this fast? I don’t remember being particularly ‘squeaker toy’ savvy when I was her age.

When she reads a book, she puts her own words to the story, and will tell you that you can do this with books. One might get the impression that she has no real reading skills, yet when she clicked on a link on her computer, she came to me and told me that she needed adult supervision to complete the task, which is exactly the wording of the message on the screen. When I was at school, I was struggling with the content of the ‘Janet and John’ reading primer.

Wish that I had done it sooner..

A while ago now, I set Kylee up with her own computer. It’s not bad and is actually my old production machine.She picked up on how to use the mouse very quickly, manoeuvring it around with her right hand while using her left to click on it. You should try it.. very difficult, but she was doing it so adeptly.

So, one day, I was surfing through hardware websites and I came across keyboards and mice suitable for kids and noticed that one or two keyboards had built in trackballs. A good idea, yes, but as Kylee was doing so well, I drifted over them.

Just recently, I visited somebody who had a Logitech Trackball laying idle, and it got me thinking again. I asked if I could borrow it with a view to seeing how Kylee would get along with it, and I was offered it to keep for free.

I came back home, connected it and showed it to her. She seemed unimpressed at the time, but after she saw me do some updates on her computer, and decided to try it out for herself. Amazingly, she is now using the computer more than she has ever done.

She has developed a method of cupping the front leading edge in her right hand while using her left hand index finger to click on stuff. Now she can move the pointer with unerring accuracy and clicks away on her games like a pro. She still asks me to come look at what she is doing but now hardly requires any assistance to get her out of messes caused by trying to negotiate the screen with a regular mouse.

She has even taken to teaching her younger cousin how to use it. In case you don’t know what a trackball is…

This is the Logitech T-CM14 Marble Mouse, a PS/2 connected two button type. Newer versions of this have four buttons which could introduce problems, and I think that it would be best to disable two of them in the mouse control panel or give them the same function as the main buttons.

Kylee’s JK teacher teaches her songs, dance, and the normal education given at Junior Kindergarten. I am no expert in that field, but what I can do is introduce her to technology, get her beyond the fear that some have with it.

If you think that your child/grandchild would benefit from one of the above, they are available new for around $30 or just like the one above for maybe $18 on eBay. Trust me, they are worth every last cent.

Kylee is good at the games I have installed, but she also tells me when things are not right. She has been around me fixing computers and her own use of a computer to know when the computer is not doing what she knows that it should. How is that for just four years old, eh..

She even complains about slowness sometimes and she has a pretty good dual core, 4gb machine which can run high end games way above the stresses that Purble Place puts on the machine. I guess that I will have to upgrade her to a quad core for her fifth birthday.

Looking back at my life at four, I struggled to get a clockwork train to traverse the lounge floor, let alone have any real grasp of how it worked. 

Kylee goes to school..

Just Junior Kindergarten for now (three days, two days over two weeks), the age when school is fun and one makes new friends daily. She is growing up quickly now, and it will not be long before peer influence starts to show.

For sure, I will miss seeing her on a daily basis throughout the week, but we all have to learn to learn, not just academics but how to co-exist and work as an individual and as a team.

I can honestly say that I am amazed at how quickly kids pick up on what we do. I am sure that I was never as aware of my surroundings.

This is Kylee shopping in the local mall’s Dollar store. See how she examines products before depositing them into the basket. There was a time when she would see cookies, and just drop them in. Now she studies each pack. This photo was not posed and she was not aware that my cellphone had photo ability, by the way.

At  little under four years of age, I don’t remember ever doing this. Maybe I wasn’t allowed to pick stuff, or I just wasn’t interested enough. I do know that Kylee was putting the same amount of care into product selection as she does with everything else, which is why I think that she is so remarkable.

She has an old head on her at times, but equally displays the fun and exuberance one would expect from somebody so young.

And yes, we bought everything that she put in her basket.. and no, she didn’t buy the whole store, just a few carefully selected items..

Learning to use a computer..

A few months ago, I set up a computer for Kylee to use. I had a spare desktop type kicking around, and it seemed a shame to waste it. A laptop would have been good but desktop keyboards and mice are more robust.

She had shown interest in what I was doing on mine and was always eager to ‘help’ me fix client computers, so that is why she has full use of her ‘own’ now. The computer is not too bad at all, a 64-bit system running XP for a short while until I installed Windows 7. There is a suite of games called Purble Place, ideal for Kylee to cut her teeth in the use of a keyboard and mouse.

Even using a laptop mouse, Kylee still uses it two handed and it is amazing to watch her complete online jigsaw puzzles, play the Dora games I bought for it, go through the Purble Place games, make up pictures in Microsoft Paint. I can take credit only for introducing her to computers. The rest is all hers. I only have to show her once, and she is good to go from there on.

Kylee can even tell when all is not well with the computer, and will either reboot it or ask me for my opinion. She will be a guiding force for other children when she goes to school and I hope that they have Windows 7 at her first school. Kylee will advise the IT department on where they should be heading re hardware and software.

Oh, and she knows how to print pictures off too. Soon, she will have her own email ID which I will add to my account. Typing out coherent messages are presently beyond her ability, but it will not be too long before she can do it, and the email ID will be ready and waiting.

Some might think that the above is excessive, but I don’t. Nothing is too much for Kylee, space and finances permitting.