Sunny Day

We enjoyed an unseasonably warm weekend, which was a welcome break after all the rain and snow we've had. I realize that I'm not going to get any sympathy from friends and family up north, but our feeling is that you don't endure the Raleigh summer only to have winter be rainy and snowy.

We took full advantage of the day yesterday. Noah and I played just about every sport we could in the front yard. We started with hitting golf balls, moved to frisbee, then soccer. We also played some catch with a tennis ball and the velcro paddles. He had a great time.

Meanwhile, Amanda and Lily went for a bike ride. They have a spot that they like somewhere on the Black Creek Trail between North Cary Park and Lake Crabtree. They had a nice time, but Lily fell on her bike on the way home. She didn't even bleed, but you would think that she had broken both wrists. I figured something was up because as she rode back to the driveway she was whining.  Fortunately, a few minutes with Noah's stomp rocket was all it took to stop the whining.

Amanda had dinner plans with some friends, so the kids and I ate pizza. We then had a campfire and roasted marshmallows. Overall, it was a great day. I did want to get some schoolwork done, but days like yesterday don't happen every January 30 and I figured I'd better take advantage of it. It was certainly one of those times where you think of the expression, "No one on his death bed says that he wishes he had worked harder."

Sore Every Night

Noah does not have any long-term ill-effects from the bump on his noggin except when it comes time to sleep. He has not quite got the hang of sleeping on it, which has been a problem. I gave him some Motrin last night just before bed and he made it until a little after 5:00 before screaming out in pain. I had him go potty and gave him more Motrin before going back to bed. That did the trick so well that he had a hard time getting up later. It worked out well for me because I wanted to get up then anyway and was struggling with getting out of bed.

I took today off as my floating holiday that I get for New Year's Day. I got a lot of research done for the extra work my professor wants for me to put into my thesis. The only problem is that my brain is a bit fried. Tonight is the convocation for our spring semester. As the Student Council President I do a welcome and a prayer. I'm going to take Lily as my date. She really likes helping to pass out programs. She also enjoys seeing me get up front and speak. She's got performance in her blood!

Long Night

It turns out that there were indeed some repercussions from Noah's cut. He found it very difficult to sleep. He woke up around 12:30 and was very unhappy. First Amanda brought him into our bed and after he fell back asleep she transferred him back to his bed. Unfortunately, he woke up again. I went in to comfort him, but he couldn't get comfortable. We brought him back into our room and he ended up sharing a pillow with Amanda.

As far as I could tell, he was not too bad in the bed, but I didn't have any little elbows jabbing me in the face. I do hope that tonight goes better.

Our Tough Kid

Amanda had some excitement today.Lily was off for a teachers' workday, which meant that she and Noah had to fill up the day. They were arguing/fighting about something in the hall by the kitchen pantry and she pushed him. He fell to the floor and cracked his head open on the corner of the baseboard. After some heavy bleeding Amanda took him to the urgent care. Since the bleeding stopped on its own the doctor recommended against a staple because the scar will be under his hair. There was no need to put him through additional trauma.

It took him a little while to find a comfortable position for sleep, but all's quiet on the monitor. Meanwhile, we chose not to punish Lily because of how badly she already feels about this. When Amanda called me at work to tell me what happened I could hear Noah crying and Lily yelling, "Noah, I'm so sorry!" I think she really is this time. Hopefully this will be a good lesson for her.

The Reader

Lily is burning through books like crazy. She has tested for 19 books, which is a great start. The minimum goal for the contest is 35, but the serious goal is 50. I think that she is going to get there. It's now mostly a matter of acquiring the books and going through them.

Meanwhile, the school is also starting its general read-a-thon. Thanks to Mrs. Slocum and this reading challenge she is doing on her own, her class gets double-credit for reading all these books. Amanda and I really like this Mrs. Slocum. We appreciate anyone who puts a premium on reading.

Noah's Busy Day

Noah had quite a day yesterday. It started off with preschool, as is normal on a Thursday. After preschool he had lunch and then Amanda took him to North Cary Park to enjoy the nice weather. It wasn't exactly warm, but 50 and partly cloudy sure feels good after a series of days in the low 30s.  Noah played with his stomp rocket for about half an hour and even shared with other kids at the park. They had a great time. After that there was time in the playground, running around the soccer field (Amanda says that he is quite adept at dribbling), riding his trike, and going down the slide. It was a busy afternoon.

I had to get some books at my seminary library, so I took the kids with me. They love chasing each other in the library and fortunately there were no other students there. I got my stack of books and then we went to Marmalade Skies for some frozen yogurt. It did not take him too long to get to sleep after that.

High Score

Noah surprised us again today. He had accomplished something with the Wii and got a high score. It was likely on Carnvial Games. The game is not so important as the fact that he read his score as being "seventy." Yes, he can read the number seventy. We've talked about numbers higher than 20 a few times, but we didn't realize that he was catching on.

The boy is a little sponge right now. We're trying to take advantage of it while it lasts.

Family Date

We had a great time as a family on Saturday morning with a trip to the local roller skating rink.  You can see that Lily was really moving.  Noah was not going nearly as fast.  Amanda and I took turns skating with him so that we could both actually skate a little bit.  He can skate without someone holding his hand, but he basically makes a walking motion with his skates.  As you can imagine, he does not move very efficiently that way.

Lily did extremely well.  She did fall a couple of times when they turned down the lights and turned on the disco balls.  The spinning lights disoriented her and she got dizzy.  Nevertheless, she did very well overall.  It's amazing what she can do when she puts her mind to it.

We will do this again relatively soon.  I wanted to strike while the iron was hot with them skating around the house every day.  Plus, it was fun to get out and move on the old rollerblades a bit.

Reading at Home

We've got a lot of reading going on here now.  Lily is in a book challenge where she is going to try to read 50 books over several weeks.  She got a little slowed down by the weather this week, but books are coming into the library and she is getting them done.  These are not long books either.  She just has to read them and fill out a very short report on what she read.  She also has to take a test on them at school, but it is multiple-choice with only three choices for each of the 10 questions.  She was initially quite worried about those tests, but once she saw them she was fine.  Watching her makes me realize how ridiculous I can be with a new situation.

Meanwhile, Noah and I were playing with his alphabet puzzle the other day and he surprised me.  I mixed up the letters and tried to think of words that started with each letter so he could find them.  I asked him, "What does mommy start with?"  He didn't get the M, but when he saw the D he said, "D for daddy!"  Then later he got distracted by the "R" and said, "R for Ruby!"  Lily has a friend from dance named Ruby, so that's how he knows that name.  The point is that he is starting to get it.  He also likes playing with the word puzzles and does not get frustrated too quickly.  I think he is going to be a reader.

Glazed Doughnut

We had a legitimate winter event come through yesterday.  We got a tiny bit of snow, but as it warmed up a bit we ended up with somewhere around 1/8 inch of ice on everything.  It may have made it up to 1/4 on our cars.  This of course led to canceling school.  I didn't have to get to the office until 11:00, which was nice.

Both Lily and I are on a two-hour delay for tomorrow.  Hopefully she will get back to school.  She got to come home early on Monday in anticipation of the weather and was home today except for the time she spent at Katie's.  The day went really well, but after a while it's just time to get out of the house.

Happy New Year

I'm writing this a day late because of the busy day we had yesterday.  We all got to bed late because we went to a party as a family.  Everyone had a great time.  I slept until nearly 7:00 and the rest of the family slept until 8:30 or so.  We met some friends to go bowling at 10:00, which everyone enjoyed.  I think that the kids may have liked playing in the arcade more than the actual bowling, but the important thing is that they had fun.

We went home for lunch and afterwards I took the kids to Uncle Bill's house to watch some football.  They actually did pretty well with each other.  Meanwhile, Amanda ran a couple of errands.  We met at church and then went back to Uncle Bill's for dinner.  Amanda took the kids home and put them to bed and then I came home after the Rose Bowl ended.  Everyone was ready for bed pretty early yesterday.

The big thing today is that we need to take down the Christmas decorations.  We also need some groceries for the week.  The only snag is that instead of being cold and snowy it is mild and rainy.  Consequently, everyone else is still in bed.  It's one of those mornings.