Funny guy

We have some fun family dinners. It's just about the only time we're all together without our noses in our screens...once dinner's over we all retreat to our separate corners and screens. The other night we were giving Reed a hard time about being a jokester and he laughed and said "Jokes replenish me." What a goofball! And for the record I'm so glad our kids are avid readers (well, at least Reed was an avid reader, not so much anymore) which gives them a wide vocabulary. Pretty sure there aren't a lot of 10th graders using the word "replenish" (not that it's a big word, just not an ordinarily used word).

Homework

So Reed is really good about doing his homework in a timely way. He does much of it at school - not sure if it's in class or in study hall, but either way he doesn't log a lot of time doing schoolwork at home. I'd say he spends at most an hour per week on homework. Now sometimes he doesn't remember to turn stuff in (minor detail!), but he does it. These days there's an app/website where we can see his current grade and the assignments he's missing....and honestly I try not to check it too much, but I get a weekly email summary which leads me to check it and pester Reed about what needs to be turned in. Some students obsessively check this app for their grades, but Reed has never once used it. I hope at some point he'll take more ownership of his grades and take care of this stuff himself.

Now Amy, on the other hand, her schoolwork becomes a huge problem probably every three weeks or so. One frequent cause is that she has a philosophical disagreement with the content of the assignment. And lordy is it dramatic. There are usually tears. Some yelling. It's not a lot of fun. Sometimes she has trouble just getting started on projects that she thinks will be daunting. There's a lot of over-thinking and second-guessing. This is also no fun for any of us. And she is one who checks the grade app pretty often, but not obsessively, thank goodness.

Fortunately both of them get great grades. We know how lucky we are to have two fantastic students.

A slightly unusual Christmas

The face of someone who's just opened
exactly what she
hoped to get for Christmas.

So this year (well, technically last year at this point) Amy really didn't want any 'thing' for Christmas. Reed didn't either....he got all the video games he wanted for his bday (I know the pain of having a birthday that's within a month of Christmas, just the other way around – it's a challenge).

But what Amy did want was to see two Broadway shows. In NYC, you know, where they do Broadway shows. ($$$$$) And Reed's phone was starting to crap out. So since neither one really wanted anything else, we decided to spend more than we normally would have to give them those things. (Note: We don't plan to repeat this in future years.)

So this time Tod got to take Amy up to NYC, and to save a bit of money they took the bus. Super convenient and cheap. It was a full day – early bus, 2 p.m. show and then 8 p.m. show. Amy was able to do the "stage door" after both shows ("The Prom" and "Dear Evan Hanson") and get autographs from most of the actors in the shows, which she loved (even though she spoke to almost none of them and was too nervous to ask for pics). They had a good couple of meals, including one in the rotating restaurant on top of the Marriott Marquis, and stayed in a hip hotel with a tiny room that had bunk beds (Tod's choice). I think she loved every minute of the exhausting trip.

Amy reading a new book,
Reed wearing a new sweater and
playing with his new phone.

Reed got his fancy new phone and he's happy too, since it hardly leaves his hand/pocket when he's at home.

And I didn't have to spend a ton of time shopping, since Tod did both the phone and the trip arrangements. I'll call that a bonus gift for me as well!

It's a multi-step process...

Like so many of us, our kids have trouble letting go of "stuff" once its outlived its usefulness. It's more pronounced for Amy, just because she has more stuff. She had another purge recently, of this stack of books - she wasn't ready to get rid of them, just didn't want them on her bookshelf anymore. So I bought her another underbed storage box (her third) to store them until she's ready to really let them go. We've also got another bin of her books in our office closet, awaiting their fate. (That bin has the Rainbow Fairy books that she loved so very much, but for a parent were soooo tedious to read [the two friends in the books didn't go to the same school but they were seemingly always on some kind of break so they could be together, and the stories themselves were pretty much the exact same in every single book [and there are dozens of them]. But boy, did she love those books!)

In the basement we've got a big container of stuffed animals that are in this same holding phase. I guess one day we'll get back to it and maybe then we'll cull the herd one more time and see how it goes.

If that's how it's gotta be

Amy asked for an Instagram account. Then she changed her mind. Then she changed her mind again a few weeks later. So she's now officially on social media of at least one type. She said she only wanted it so she can share her own art and comment on other people's art.

So this means that the only way we get to see the things Amy draws is to wait until she posts it for the world to see. I guess that's better than not getting to see it at all, which was the way it's been for quite a while now.

*Sniff* don't say that! *sniff*

A couple of weeks ago we were on our way home from the corn maze and passed by the spot where we've been waiting and waiting (and waiting) for a movie theater to be built in our neighborhood. He asked what the status was and we said it's super slow going and would probably be a couple of years at best before it opens. Reed said "With my luck, the theater won't be built until after I'm gone."

Guess things are getting closer to real, huh? Less than three years and Reed may be off at college, on his own.

Not even close to ready for that at this point. Others have said by the time their kids are ready to head off to college, they're really ready to see them go because they've become giant pains. I guess time will tell if that applies to us. Right now I'm just going to appreciate and enjoy our last few years having him at home.

Sixteen!

Today's the big day – Reed is 16!

Reed is a good kid with a kind heart. He still doesn't love school, but he does what he needs to do and gets mostly A's on his report cards without a ton of effort – he's like his Dad in that way. I didn't try much in high school and was a slightly above average student. He's got a great group of pals that he does online gaming with and hangs out in person with from time to time. He's really good with the little kids in our family and they just love him. He has a great sense of humor and makes us laugh all the time. He drives his sister batty, he is so skilled at pressing her buttons, it's crazy-making. He has gotten so much better about doing the chores he's assigned and thank goodness hasn't fought with us over them in a long time. He may grumble about it (especially on those back-to-back odd days that are his dishes day, or when it turns out that he's got to unload the dishwasher two times in a row) but he does it, and also does a pretty good job. 

He still won't get a haircut, which is totally fine by me. However his failure to comb his hair regularly led to me spending an hour plus a couple months ago un-ratting his hair which had become impossibly matted (NOT going to do that again, I've made that clear). I think he likes being a little different, having long hair, and long curly hair at that. He still doesn't care much about being "fashionable" and just sticks with blue jeans and comfy shirts – has no interest in brand names or what's "cool." Sometimes he doesn't match at all but he doesn't care. 

During the summer he made dinner for us pretty regularly (he was bored!) but now that's school's back in, not as much. I'm always grateful when he helps (in turn, we do the dishes if he's made dinner). He isn't much interested in getting his driver's license – he hasn't practiced in more than a month. When you prefer staying home, having a way to get out isn't top priority. Hopefully we can get back on track pretty soon so he can get his license when he's eligible in a few months.

Happiest surprise of all – he wanted books for his birthday! A big, boxed set of Stephen King Dark Tower books, to be specific. It's been years since he actually asked for any books so this made me incredibly happy.

Last month he decided, without asking, to host a big sleepover. Kinda told us about it after he'd already invited 8 people. He said he'd looked at our family schedule wall calendar and there was nothing on it so he figured it was okay. (I cleared that up for him...you gotta ask first next time!) Turns out six friends could make it (Robbie was there but didn't make it in this picture) and they had a great time, eating pizza and ice cream, staying up way too late....breaking our TV (oops). In the morning we had a big waffle breakfast too.

His annual birthday movie outing is this weekend – for the first time, I'll be the one taking him and five friends to see "Bohemian Rhapsody" at the Alamo Drafthouse (Tod will be out of town for school). Ought to be interesting!

Happy 16th, baby boy!