Tonight at dinner...

We were chatting about our respective days and Amy said "Unfortunately, I didn't get to play with Matthew [her new BFF] today." Unfortunately? What 4 1/2 year old says 'unfortunately'? I guess ours does!

Wowee!

It's amazing - Amy has learned to ride a bike! She spent a couple of weeks learning to balance and coast - Tod took the pedals off the bike so she wouldn't focus on that aspect of bike riding. She spent a lot of time working hard at practicing balancing herself. On Sunday she asked Tod to put the pedals on, and he said she just took off! So she's got a ways to go before she is really steady, but wow it's incredible how well she's doing at just 4 and a half! She says "I'm gonna do it!" and then she does! We're so proud of her, but more importantly she is proud of herself.

Moving on up

Well two weeks ago Reed started first grade. I can hardly believe it. Though he would say differently, he was excited to get back to school after his first real summer break. His teacher, Mrs. Gill-Anderson, seems excited for the new school year, and I hope it'll be a good fit for him. We haven't gotten any of his papers sent home yet, so I'm not sure what all they're working on, but he seems to be enjoying all-day school. He's buying his lunch a couple times a week and being sad about not being able to bring PB&Js the other days (allergies in his classroom). He has "specials" now - P.E., music, art, Spanish and computer. Tod drops him off at school each morning and he goes to CASA after school each day. So far, so good!

Part of his daily homework is to keep a reading log - that's going to be interesting! Yesterday I'd say he probably read 8 or 9 books. I guess we'll probably just have him write down one a day. It's funny that he read a bunch this summer, but going back to school has put him in reading high gear - he's reading all the time and can't ignore his books long enough to even get dressed. He's also back to doing some of his workbooks that he loves so much, but that he didn't really touch much over the summer.

It's funny, we looked back at the pictures from his first day of Kindergarten, and he's grown up so much! He was a baby then! And he's doing much more for himself now - okay, so it's probably stuff we should have had him doing a while ago, but still. He changes the roll of toilet paper, he rides his bike around the block alone, he's enjoying playing soccer, and he's sometimes helpful with Amy. He's got an allowance too - we give him $4 each Monday - $2 he can spend however he likes, $1 for charity and $1 for savings. So far he has bought a few toys (Legos, Bionocles), some Pokemon cards and a game for his Nintendo DS. Hopefully we're teaching him something about money, but who knows. He's sure eager to spend it!

She's figuring things out

A week or two ago, Amy was watching TV and ran to get a pen and a piece of paper. She knew the TiVo list was highlighting the show "Cailou" and she wrote the word down. We asked why and she said she wanted to write it down so that next time she was looking at the list of recorded shows, she could compare it and be able to find Cailou again. Smart cookie!