For those of you who started reading my blog post-graduate work, James and Charlotte are the children I nannied for throughout my seminary time. I love them, and their mom and I are more like sisters than employer/employee. We get along great, and I really miss this family.
And again, for those of you who have never met these children, they are the smartest kids I have ever known -- and I know quite a few really bright kids. James and Charlotte are the kind of smart that is almost scary; I have no idea what they're going to learn when they get to school. James, at 4, does addition in his head and has a remarkable knowledge base of history. (He corrected me last week on a confusion between Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus, showing me ON THE GLOBE where Polo found Indonesia!!!) Charlotte, at almost 3, knows the story of Helen Keller and Anne Sullivan, and her favorite song is Alouette (of course sung in French). She corrects me if I miss-say a word in a story we're reading, and her ability to master-mind a situation makes her a challenge to watch - she'll outsmart you if you're not careful! :)
Anyway, I got to visit them for 2 1/2 days last week, including making a trip to their preschool for their Valentine's Day parties. So, without further ado -- James and Charlotte:
I had to keep sneaking pictures of James because he did not want me to take pictures of him.
Here are three of the boys with their Valentine's Day crowns, I think they were playing swords or something. James is very into pirates right now!
Charlotte, on the other hand, could not get enough of my camera. These are just a few of the pictures of her that I took that day. What a Ham!!!
Hard at work on her bear bucket for her Valentines.
This is her "sweet girl" face. Notice the red frosting on her face. She managed to weasel two Valentine's cookies out of her teacher, instead of just one!
Carie and I had to let her take a silly face picture in order to get her to agree to the next one.
This picture makes me so very happy!
2 comments:
Thanks for alerting me to the presence of these pictures on your blog. Those kiddies just keep on growin'!
After I saw those two pictures of Charlotte on your Facebook page, I had a flashback to the time we took the Paine children to Fernbank. You made the comment then that most the other folk's there on a weekday afternoon were likely to think that you and I were married and that the Paine children were our children. I can remember thinking to myself, "I can handle that just fine. These are good kids."
Looking over this post made me think of a couple of classic James utterances as well. Before he became fascinated with pirates, he was obsessed with "mine train." And before he was showing you Indonesia on the globe, he could confidently tell you which way to turn to get to "the donut house."
And as I type this I'm recalling something funny about JRP the II: Jim's entertaining MST3K commentary on Everwood. God Bless the Paines.
-Dave Scott
Those are beautiful pictures!
Becca
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