Homework

Amy loves homework. LOVES it. Some days, she forgets her homework journal at home, so when she's at Quantum Leaps, she'll do her homework on a loose piece of paper. And while another kid would just shove the paper into their homework journal at the appropriate spot, Amy will re-do her homework, so that it's properly done in the right place. She got two "homework passes" that would allow her to skip doing her homework for a day. They hung in the kitchen for months before she decided to take them back to school to see if Mrs. Mitkowski would let her give them to another child. She had zero interest in skipping a day of homework. Quite different from our experience with Reed's homework in kindergarten, where it was a literal fight more days than not!

Reed doesn't mind his homework too much, though he does think it's boring and useless. The only thing he really takes issue with (and I don't blame him) is the word searches on Thursday. These are computer-generated word searches based on the week's spelling words. Now these are not like a word search you'd find in a book, oh no...these computer-generated word searches are hideously awful. The words are upside down and backwards and sideways and just terribly difficult to find. We've long since given up on getting him to find all the words on his own (usually there are 15-20 words), instead we say "outside" is in the upper left corner and let him find it that way. So much easier. He doesn't see the value of these word searches, and frankly neither do we. He doesn't get a single thing out of it other than frustration, it's not like it helps him know the words any better. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that word searches will end when second grade does in a few weeks.

We finally figured out how to get Reed to do his homework at his after-school program (CASA) most days...if he does his homework there all week, he can bring his Nintendo DS to CASA on Friday. So much easier on all of us! Only problem is that we're probably not paying as much attention to his homework as we should, but that seems to be okay.

I certainly don't remember ever having homework in elementary school, so all this is pretty foreign to me. Hopefully they're getting something out of it!

Say what?

Looking over some work Reed brought home tonight.

Q: What adjectives describe you?

A: "awesome!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

Q: What adjectives do NOT describe you?

A: "boring, female, pineapple-ish, constipated, and loser" What a nut.

Things and stuff

Nostalgia

Monday was my first day back at work after our big San Diego vacation (more on that later), and the weather was lovely. Just the sound of all the kids on the playground at the Employee Child Care Center made me so nostalgic for the days of having our kids there. What a great thing it was, having them downstairs from me, getting to see them outside having fun with their pals. I miss having little ones, but also am enjoying having big kids too.

Comments from Strangers

Every so often, someone we don't know will comment to us about Amy. It happened just today, as we were waiting for bagels at breakfast. A lady came by and said "I just wanted to say that your daughter is beautiful, and she has such a great spirit!". It's not the first time it's happened. In fact, at Katie's wedding, the boyfriend of one of her friends sought us out to make a similar comment about what a delightful spirit she is. Amy is quite something!

The Royal Wedding

Well it may not have been the real royal wedding (that'd be Prince William and Catherine's, which just happened a few days ago), but it was our royal wedding! Katie and David had a beautiful San Diego wedding on April 16, and just about the whole family was there to wish them well. We're happy to have David join the family and only wish that California were closer, so we could see them more often. Amy was invited to be the flower girl, and she's been excited about it for months. She got a manicure, a pedicure, and her hair done all fancy like the big girls, and really enjoyed being part of it all – she was quite an observer, quietly taking everything in. She tossed petals as she walked down the aisle with Mitchell, and stood quietly through the ceremony, looking just beautiful. Reed and Aly were assigned to hand out programs to the wedding guests, and they looked great and did a terrific job. Then it was on to the reception, where let me tell you, Reed cut a rug like you can't even imagine!!! It was the first wedding he's been to since Cristie and Brandon got married six years ago, when he was just two years old. He boogied the night away then too. Once Aunt Jennifer got him on the dance floor at Katie's wedding, he was all over it. He needed about 6 feet of clearance on all sides to allow for all the fancy dancing he needed to to. Afterward he told us "I just did my arms freestyle but for my feet I had a routine" – so very much fun to watch, I can't even describe it. I will remember and treasure it always.

Growing Up

Reed is nearly eight and a half years old now, and we're doing our best to give him more autonomy and responsibility for himself. Just yesterday he rode his bike to his friend Harrison's house (it's only a block away, but crosses a semi-busy street). He was so very proud of himself for this adventure. I know in another day and age, in another place, this wouldn't be a big deal at all and he would have been doing this kind of thing for a while. But we live here and we live now, so it's a Big Deal. These kids grow up so fast!!

Race for Hope

This morning, Team Ginger gathered once again to participate in Race for Hope, a fundraiser for brain cancer research. There were 12,000 race participants, 300 of them survivors. Just 300. While I was so happy to see each one of those survivors, wearing their bright yellow shirts, it made me so sad that Mom wasn't there among them. This year we didn't work so hard on fund raising like we did last year, I think partly because we were all caught up in preparations for vacation and the wedding, but I think next year we'll be back on track. We gathered together and we all took time to stop by the "Wall of Hope" where the picture above was posted along with those of others who've lost their fight with brain cancer, and those who have survived it.

How I wish we didn't know anything about this disease, and we were back to when life was simple and easy and we still had Mom around. It feels like she's been gone so long. I think of her every day. And while I know they are just "things," the kids are outgrowing stuff that Mom gave them and it makes me sad that they might forget her. I don't think they have any clothes that she gave them any more – Reed has long since outgrown the NASCAR paraphernalia she bought him over the years, none of the special outfits she bought for Amy fit her anymore. They have lots of stuffed animals, some special decorations in their rooms. Amy wore the Hawaiian cross Kiki gave her in Katie's wedding. There are books she gave them, some they're getting too old for. While I know the things are not important, the connections they represent to Kiki are, and I'm afraid that they're fleeting. We will all do our best to make sure the kids remember, and know how very much she loved and treasured them.

Getting all grown up!

Amy turned six last week. Six! She got a new bike, since she'd outgrown the hand-me-down that she had. She loves to ride her bike and is really good at it.

She's doing so well in kindergarten and truly enjoys it. She gets glowing reviews from her two teachers, Mrs. Mitkowski and Mrs. Cote, as well as a long-term substitute she had, Mrs. Steppling. They marvel at how smart she is and how they can always count on her to know what's going on. She is a hard worker - every time she misplaces her homework journal, she'll do the homework on another sheet of paper, but then when she finds her journal gain, she redoes her work. I think you can infer that she's got a bit of a need to do things perfectly.

Amy can be all sweetness when she wants to be. She can also sometimes turn on a dime and boy you'd better stand back. She is also quite generous. Cristie gave her a $20 gift card for Build-a-Bear, along with a bear to be stuffed. Amy gave $10 of it to Reed, so he could buy his own bear. Actually both the kids are pretty generous with each other, really.

Amy is a planner and she likes to know exactly what to expect. In two weeks, we're going to San Diego for cousin Katie's wedding. Yesterday morning at breakfast, she said "I think we should get up early, go to the airport, go through security, then find a place to eat breakfast, THEN find our airplane." And that's two weeks out...think how closely we're going to have to plan things when it gets closer!

Amy is working so hard at tae kwon do since she started back in February. Lately I've seen a lot of improvement in her kicks and her body control. She earned a new tip pretty quickly after starting back, but since then she hasn't gotten another one. She's taken it pretty much in stride, which is a happy surprise. Things that before would really set her off, she is dealing with a bit better, for the most part. She still has her moments, but in the last month she's definitely been doing better.

Oh and this past weekend, Amy got her ears pierced! It was a gift from cousin Nikki, and she was there for the big event, along with Aunt Jennifer, cousin Aly, and Great Auntie Wanda. We had a store full of people. I'd told Amy what would happen, but I think you can't really know what it's like until it happens to you. She held my hand for the first ear, and she REALLY held my hand for the second ear. But she didn't flinch one bit, didn't cry (though I think she wanted to). She was very brave, and the sparkly earrings look terrific.

It's so exciting to see her learning and growing. She truly is a joy and we're so lucky to have her!

Look who got glasses

When Reed had his 8 year old checkup, I was surprised to see he didn't do well with their mini-eye exam. They said he was borderline for being referred for a full eye exam. Then a couple of weeks ago, I was reading the clock from across the house, and he said he couldn't see the numbers. Wow. I finally got around to making him an appointment, and today was the day. Sure enough, he is slightly nearsighted, enough to warrant glasses. He quickly picked a pair of glasses and we returned a few hours later to pick them up.

To our surprise, Reed was excited about it and happy to have the glasses. Of course, he hasn't run into any pals yet, so we'll see what happens when other kids see his new look. Hopefully it will go easy for him.

He's supposed to wear the glasses for general everyday stuff like being in the classroom or around the house, but not for reading. We'll see how that goes.

In doing a little online research, it looks like nearsightedness can be hereditary (both Tod and I are nearsighted [or he was before laser surgery, anyway]) and they think it can also be caused by too much "close work" (i.e. reading). Well bingo, there's your recipe for glasses in the second grade! I guess in this case, too much reading is bad for you.

Lately, Reed has been very into Harry Potter. I can't recall when he started reading the books, but I think it's only been about 6 weeks. He's blown through them, finishing some in a single day (school days, no less...what's he doing in that classroom?). Even though I'm told some of the books, particularly the last few, have really scary parts [bad parents for not pre-reading the books, I guess], that hasn't seemed to bother him at all. When he was reading book 7, he said "I think for a reward when I finish all 7 books, I should get to watch the movie." So that's what we did. He enjoyed the movie so much that the next day he started re-reading the series. That was last Saturday (7 days ago), and he's read all of books 1-3, is reading book 4 at school and book 7 at home. The speed with which he goes through books is amazing. But he seems to catch all the details, even in books like these that have a lot of words that he's not familiar with.

With these glasses (for today, at least), he's happily receiving compliments that he looks like Harry Potter. Hopefully he'll continue to feel good about the glasses.

"What I want to be..."

The other day Amy had to do a “What I want to be when I grow up” thing as part of her "Star Student" poster and she was trying to sound out how to spell her answer. It started out with “sec” and I was horrified that she was maybe going to say “secretary” (my girl can do so much better than her mama started out!)….but she said “secret agent”. Then she thought more about it ended up changing it to "person who can do magic”. I think she's pretty magical already.

Amy's lesson...guest post by Dad

The other day Amy and I were were working on Amy's word club where the teacher gives her 5 words to learn to spell... Or "master." I would say "Amy, please spell the word 'because'" then Amy would write the word on a piece of paper. I wasn't paying very close attention while Amy very quietly spelled all words perfectly.

In addition to being quiet (which is abnormal for her) she had a guilty look on her face. I asked her to hand the scrap paper that was near her. She said, "no, you don't need this. I'll just crumple it up." with hand motions and head bobs trying to be as casual as possible. I asked for the paper again. This time she said, "how about I'll just throw this in the trash?" She was working hard to not have me see that paper. next, she said I could have the paper but I could only look at one side.

It turns out she has written the words on that paper and used them to cheat. I very calmly confronted her and she finally she admitted to it and said "I was cheating".

We had good talk about the importance of doing work honestly...but it was hilarious the way she knew she was busted and tried so hard to cover it up. 5-6 must be the age that kids realize they have the ability to cheat and they know that cheating is wrong, but they need to test the waters.