Noah's Big Day

Yesterday had to be one of Noah's better days in recent memory. It started with his basketball game, which went very well. His coach gave him the white star for effort, but on top of that he also gave him a box of M&Ms because his effort was exceptional. That was certainly unexpected, but it did seem warranted. Noah played very good defense and was around the ball a lot when it was time for a rebound. He also scored three times. I'd say the only knock was that he took too many shots, but he was open for most of them.

Things only got better after basketball. We came home, had lunch, and then went to Target. He had been saving his money for the Angry Birds Go Pig Rock Raceway, and since the first is allowance day he could finally make the purchase. We got it set up as soon as we got home and then he was off to the races. We even gave him some extra electronics time so he could play with the new karts in the game on Amanda's tablet. It was a special day, after all.

Meanwhile, Lily was playing at her friend Grace's house. Noah and I picked her up, but we did it by way of Gamestop. He still has a gift card from there, but he didn't find anything to buy. He did, however, enjoy playing the Wii U. He is pretty much all about the Wii U when he goes there, which isn't so bad. However, we don't get the welcoming vibe we get from Play N' Trade.

While the day was hardly like Christmas, it was still a really good day for Noah. It's nice when these things can happen once in a while.

Stormy Weather

We have had an interesting weather week. It was below 20 on Tuesday and Wednesday mornings. Friday morning it was around 40, which was really nice for my run. This morning it was 60 and balmy. This was good because Amanda was really struggling with the dust and whatnot that came off the Christmas tree as we took it down. We opened up the windows and aired out the house.

We needed a few things from Sam's and the weather seemed OK, so we braved the tornado watch. As we were getting in line I got a text from Amanda about a tornado warning, which of course is pretty serious. I looked at the radar on my phone and figured that we could beat the storm if we hurried. It turns out that the radar was a little bit behind on my phone. The skies opened up just as the person ahead of us was starting to check out. I figured that I'd have the kids wait with the cart and I'd brave the sheets of rain to get the van.

Just as we started our order someone came running in from the door yelling to "get to the middle of the store." I got my card back, took the kids by the hand, and we calmly walked to the middle of the store. We hung out there for a few minutes until the all-clear. We had a nice pocket of calm to come home in, which was nice.

We saw a few downed pine trees on the way home and a lot of pine straw on the road, but that was about it. Apparently they clocked 89 MPH winds at the airport. Amanda said that it wasn't that bad by our house. Nothing blew around in our yard, so I think that we were spared the worst of it.

Lily was a little shaken by the ordeal. Noah was completely fine. It's a good reminder that we are not really in control. It's also a good reminder of how incredible it is to worship the Creator of everything who controls where the storms go. I don't claim to understand why He sends tornadoes or any other weather, but I take great comfort knowing that nothing happens apart from what He wants.

Fish Story

Those of you who follow me on Twitter (@freedjpc) may remember Noah's business case for a fish. We got back our fish stuff plus another aquarium from the family we gave Lily's fish to when she lost it. Armed with all this, we set out after Christmas in search of a new fish.

Everything has been great for Lily. We got a new filter for her aquarium and it now hosts two beautiful guppies. One is called Rainbow (or Ray for short) because of his tail and the other is some version of Indigo because of his color. We just vacuumed out her aquarium yesterday and things seem to be going well.

It has been a different story for Noah. We first got him a beautiful red betta fish that he named Laser. That was the name he wanted for the fish in his kindergarten class, but the class chose Swimmy instead. Laser seemed a bit listless and, sadly, he died after a couple of days. We took him back to PetSmart and got a pretty blue and red fish. We also got a heater since our house is a little cold for tropical fish.

Noah named that one Nick. We suggested Swish, but he liked Nick. This was of course after Nick Swisher. Nick did better than Laser, but he died after 4 days. It was very sad because we just got back from the pet store with Lily's second fish and Noah discovered Nick at the bottom of the bowl not moving. We got our refund from Nick as well and went to a different store to get yet another fish.

Now we're back to red. We got the fish on Saturday and Noah still hasn't named it. I asked him if he was going to name it or if he wanted to wait to see how it does. He decided to wait because "it's hard" to get attached. There is something about naming the fish that makes it harder to lose it.

It's hard to be optimistic about this one, but we will see. Noah cried at the loss of the other fish, but got over it in about 10 minutes. We will see how it goes if this one dies. Hopefully he will do better. I tested the water and it seems to be OK, so I'm going to be cautiously optimistic.

Long Night

We had a brutal night last night. Noah had a fever around Christmas, but it went away. He had complained of an earache, but it also went away. The earache came back with a vengeance last night. He first came into our room at around 10:30, which was only rough because we had just started to fall asleep. We gave him some Motrin and sent him back to bed. Then he came back around 2:00 and was really miserable. We tried warm compresses and Amanda made a solution with olive oil, garlic, and tea tree oil. These things helped a little bit, but he was still pretty miserable. He finally fell asleep, though poor Amanda couldn't move with him up against her.

We all woke up to Amanda's alarm at 7:00. She had set this so we could get up for church today (ha!). We were trying out the alarm through Pandora and were heartily greeted with this to wake up. That was a shock, to say the least. Noah didn't even notice.

I got myself up and started doing my morning stuff when I heard Lily come out of her room. She threw up twice and had some diarrhea. So that pretty much did her in as well. The good news is that Amanda and I didn't feel sick. We just felt tired.

I took Noah to the urgent care where he was promptly diagnosed with an ear infection. We started him on his amoxycillin and I think he is on the road to recovery.

Lily has started feeling much better. We're not sure what happened there, but she ate a good lunch and has been listening to an audiobook all day on her iPod. Noah is also feeling better and has been enjoying unfettered electronics. We do make allowances when sick.

As you might imagine, today has been a pretty mellow one here. I did squeeze a run in before the skies open up later. This isn't really how I wanted to finish up my vacation from work, but apparently God had plans that were different than mine.

Merry Christmas

We had a great Christmas celebration here. It started off a little rough because Lily had been feeling sick for a few days. She had an earache on Tuesday, so Amanda took her to the Urgent Care. They diagnosed her with a double ear infection and sent her home with a prescription for some amoxicillin. As always, once she started taking the medicine she felt fine. That was good because it would have been a very tough Christmas day otherwise.

 I also wasn't feeling great Monday evening, so we ended up not going to our church's Christmas celebration. We hated to miss it, but we also know that it was going to be a lot of work to attend it. I think by Monday evening the only person with the energy to do it was Noah.

We went to the McKenzies' for the family Christmas celebration on Tuesday. We had a lovely meal with ham, mac and cheese, and various other trimmings. A wonderful time was had by all.

Of course, to the kids all of this is just a warm-up for Christmas morning. My videography was not quite as extensive this year, but I did capture the highlights. Lily had a hard time coming up with gift ideas, so we got her a refurbished iPod Touch. Now she has her own device with a camera and won't have to clog up ours with her "artsy" photos and videos.

Noah got a lot of stuff through my involvement with Amazon Vine. He still doesn't know that his big gift is a series of golf lessons with me. He was happy just to get this basketball hoop. He also got a batting tee and a big net that you can use for hitting balls. He also got a few new games for the Wii. It's pretty nice that the Wii is an old system and the games can be had fairly cheaply now.

We ended the day with some standing rib roast, which came out really good. We kept the meal simple with roast, roasted asparagus, and mashed red potatoes and gravy. Nobody seemed to mind the simplicity. 

Everyone had a wonderful Christmas. Although I tried to do this at dinner, I think that we need to do a quick refresher of why we give gifts. After all, the incarnation of Christ was the ultimate gift to everyone who believes. So as we enjoy our new stuff, we need to remember that:

James 1:17 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights with whom there is no variation or shadow due to change.

I hope that you and yours had as nice a Christmas as we did. Now that I'm off for over a week I look forward to catching up on some stuff and just relaxing a little bit. That and hitting golf balls.

Birthday Trip

We took a trip to Ohio to celebrate my 40th and Dad's 70th birthdays. We left on Wednesday after school and drove to Charleston, WV. We stayed at what has become our favorite hotel in Charleston and had a good night's sleep followed by a lovely breakfast buffet. The whole family enjoyed the pool for about an hour and then we hit the road to Ohio. It's not every day you get to swim in a warm pool while you can see it snowing outside. That did make for a cold run back to our room since the hallways were a bit chilly by comparison.

We had lunch in Marietta and got some coffee drinks for the road. It was in the low teens, so we decided to forego the riverwalk until another time. We got to Wadsworth and had a fun evening with Grandpa and Bubbe along with a great meal.

Friday was kind of a slow morning and then in the afternoon I went shooting with Dad while Amanda took the kids to see Frozen. After that my stepbrothers took me out to dinner, which was really fun. Of course, since this was a 40th birthday celebration and not a 21st we were still in bed at very reasonable hours.

Saturday was the really big day. While Uncle Mark went to the gym to run on the treadmill Aunt Jen took us to the local farmer's market and to the West Point Market. We got some goodies and then went home to get ready for Grandpa's birthday party. The video below was taken before lunch on Saturday.

What started this was Uncle Mark convincing Noah that he had to shovel all of his driveway, the neighbors, and the street (but only to the stop sign). Of course, Noah bought it. He and Lily enjoyed doing the driveway and even made a few bucks. Later that day when Lily saw Uncle Mark snowblowing the neighbor's driveway she exclaimed, "He has a snowblower?!?" She doesn't understand about keeping up when there is just a little snow.

We had a great party that everyone really enjoyed, especially Grandpa. It was fun to have him as the guest of honor and we even got to celebrate on his actual day.

Saturday night was fun because the twin cousins spent the night. They all slept in the same room and I think that everyone got to sleep fairly well. Lily had some trouble sleeping and she woke up one of her cousins to see the clock turn to midnight. The good news is that Lily was able to nap in the car on the way home.

Sunday morning started out a little rough because Noah threw up a couple of times. He didn't have breakfast, but his stomach seemed to settle down because he was fine at lunch and dinner. He also was fine today.

Now it's back to reality, at least for a week.

Sick Day

It's been a slightly rough day here. Last night Lily was really congested and complained about some symptoms that sounded like the onset of a bad cold. Today it was confirmed and she stayed home from school. The problem is that Amanda is now starting to show some early signs. Fortunately, it is nothing too debilitating, but Lily is going to stay home tomorrow after having a 102 fever tonight. The good news is that the little Peanut is pretty resilient and doesn't really seem to be too bothered. Right now they're watching The Voice.

This came at the end of a really fun weekend. Of course, Thanksgiving was fun with family and good food. Friday night the kids spent the night with the McKenzies so Amanda and I could go see Catching Fire, which was excellent.

On Saturday they brought the kids back and we all watched the Michigan game, which ended up being much more thrilling than we thought it would be. The McKenzies went home and then there were a couple of naps during the first half of the Auburn game. We all watched the end of the game together over a makeshift dinner and everyone agreed that it was well worth our time to watch it.

On Sunday we had some new friends over from our new church. There is some Polish heritage with Amanda's friend, so it gave me an excuse to make stuffed cabbage. It was a little risky making something new for guests, but between an online recipe and my own intuition I have to say that it came out great. I'm pretty sure the secret was including some good kielbasa from the Meat House. Nothing like a house that smells like cabbage and garlic!

The good news is that Noah and I seem to be OK. I feel slightly off, but I think I'm going to dodge this. Noah seems completely nonplussed. The highlight for him is that we spent time yesterday and today working on a video game. Good times for Pook.

Our Little Host

Noah hosted his first sleepover on Friday night. A few months ago we had done a sleepover exchange with Noah's oldest friend Nathan. Noah slept at Nathan's house and Nathan's sister Rachel slept over here with Lily. Everyone had a great time and it was our turn to host the boys.

Nathan and Noah are good for each other. Nathan is much bolder and adventurous than Noah, which is usually good. You may remember that back in the spring the boys were playing outside on a beautiful Saturday and decided to wander off. However, in general this is a good thing.

One of the first things they did was to climb up into Noah's top bunk with a flashlight and tell ghost stories. I can't imagine that they were the stuff of Poe or King, but they seemed to enjoy themselves. There was a very cute time when they decided that they weren't going to wear shirts, so we had two little boys running around the house in their shorts. Eventually, they did go to bed and they even managed to sleep in the top bunk all night. Noah's room was in bad shape Saturday night so I suggested he sleep on the top bunk rather than clean off his bed. He said that he'd try it and I left him up there. I checked in later and found him in the bottom. Good thing I cleared it off for him.

I got the boys some doughnuts for breakfast, which of course everyone enjoyed. They played together for a while as I started organizing our garage. You can actually walk through it now thanks to some new shelves, so that's an improvement. It wasn't much fun for the boys, but they seemed to find things to do all morning.

Overall, I'd say that the sleepover was a success. Noah is definitely maturing as a boy. By that I mean that he and Nathan entertained themselves with making armpit farts among other ways of reproducing bodily noises. I wonder if that is on the pediatrician's list of developmental milestones?

Closing a Chapter

  You may remember that we have had some encounters with not quite wild enough wildlife. On Sunday evening I took Oreo out for his final walk of the night and when I came back I thought I saw a log in the yard. We had a bonfire on Halloween and I thought maybe there was a stick that I missed, but I didn't remember leaving a big one in the yard like that. Then the stick picked its head up. It turns out it was Oreo's old friend the gray fox.

 

The fox was acting kind of strangely, almost like it was sleepy. It looked at Oreo, but didn't make any threatening moves or noises toward him. Of course, Oreo wanted to do battle. Oreo is nothing if not territorial about his yard and his people. I ushered him into the house and gave everyone the news. It seemed like the fox was just sleeping in our yard.

 

When I went out running Monday morning I found the fox just like in this photo, though it was still dark. I held out some hope that perhaps it had just gone into hibernation, but as the day warmed up it was clear that the fox had died. If you look at this photo closely you can see that it has its eyes open.

 

I wasn't sure what to do with this, but fortunately Cary has an animal control department for such things. I was all set to glove up and put this beast in a trash bag, but they are going to get it. They would have come yesterday, but it was a holiday for them too. The good news is that it is finally starting to feel atumnal here with highs in the high 50s and lows in the high 30s. I'm pretty sure that they will get this today, so we will be spared the stink.

 

Amanda wondered aloud why it came into our yard to die. I think it's because it has had a relationship with Oreo over the years. I'm glad that he emerged victorious. I suspect that there may be other foxes around, but I think that this is the one rabid one that has given us trouble.

 

It really was a very pretty animal, but I'm not sorry to see it go. I'm also glad that I never had to shoot it, though I was prepared.

Our Celebrity

First, a bit of background. The mascot for Northwoods Elementary is a koala bear. The goal for every child there is to be a "koalaty kid." Get it? Yeah, we think it's kind of corny too.

The school has a closed-circuit news show called KNN which stands for, you guessed it, the Koalaty News Network. I remember how we had students do announcements in middle school and high school. This is kind of like that, but with TV. Way higher-tech than I remember!

Last year they asked for volunteers for KNN and of course we suggested that Lily do it. She was a bit reluctant at first, but between our encouragement and the encouragement she received from her fourth grade teacher she eventually agreed to do it.

This has been her first month. She's doing weather, but I think that she will rotate to other positions as the year goes on. So far, so good. She was afraid of not reading well and stuttering on the air, but she has done a great job by all accounts.

Unfortunately, Lily inherited my tendency to fear the unknown. This is one of those times when we're glad that we pushed her a little bit. We're also glad for the support of Ms DuPree who encouraged her to do it. Good job to our weather girl!

Teacher Conference

I had a conference with Noah's teacher yesterday. It went well. The main thing we discussed was how we see him reading better than his tests would indicate. A lot of it comes down to how they have to assess him. When his teacher said that they were under "Common Core," her voice sort of dropped at the word "core." I commented that nobody's voice seems to go up when they say "Common Core," and she just smiled. It seems that when Lily was in first grade they assessed students orally, but now they have to write. This is not so bad, but it is something for him to work on. He's going to keep reading chapter books though. The trick with Noah is figuring out whether he really comprehends what he is reading. He has no trouble decoding what words are, but he may not be taking it all in.

His other subjects are going very well. He goes to Lily's first grade teacher for math and she said that they love Noah. Noah occasionally talks when it's not appropriate, but overall he is a sweet, well-behaved and well-rounded kid. He's certainly not one of those kids who seems like he eats pop rocks for breakfast.

He is also well-rounded in that he is not just into sports, Star Wars, Mario, Angry Birds, and Wii. His teacher said, that "Noah likes the ladies." He has made friends with two girls - Nina and Jasmine (or Jazzy as she is also known). One day Noah came home with a purple scarf tied around his wrist. That was a gift from Jasmine. Mrs. Griswold said that they had to change Noah's seat because he kept making faces at Nina.

I'm afraid that those big brown eyes are already starting to attract attention. It's all sweet fun now, but in a few years it won't be. It sounds like Noah is starting to be like a guy in an Axe commercial.

Weekend Activities

We had an extremely active weekend and I am very glad to be working from home today after it. We started it off by attending a Halloween party at the McKenzies. Amanda worked hard to get our costumes together and I think that they came out pretty good.

Being Barney and Betty Rubble was pretty easy, though in the future I have to remember how static electricity works as my costume kept clinging to my shorts. Nevertheless, the costumes were a hit.

Saturday morning brought frost and soccer. This was our last game, so I mixed up the players and positions a bit more. Noah was on offense and alertly stayed near the goalie while the goalie tried to drop-kick the ball. He picked up the trash and put it in the net! This was very exciting for us as it was a pure hustle play. We came home in the afternoon and had some grilled burgers before I watched the first half of Ohio State's pasting of Penn State.

Sunday we went to church early and then got ready for the Monster Dash 5k. Here are Amanda and her sisters in their Pink Ladies getups.

The race was an unqualified success for all. The ladies ran through the whole thing. I finished with a PR of 23:46, which made me happy. Then we headed over to Lilly's Pizza to eat and drink some carbs. Brenna spent the night last night, so I took Noah out to Buffaloe Lanes to play some arcade games and earn tickets. We finished with a long browse at Target, which is one of his favorite things to do.

All in all, it was a very successful weekend. Today I have a parent-teacher meeting with Noah's teacher. I am looking forward to what she thinks.

Family Weekend

We have had a fun, but busy weekend with Grandpa and Bubbe coming down from Wadsworth for a few days. It started Thursday evening with a nice dinner of meatloaf, mashed potatoes, roasted green beans, and an amazing caramel apple pie. Friday we took them to Adams Vineyards so that we could all get a sense of what Muscadine wine was all about. We had lunch at the NC Seafood Restaurant at the Farmer's Market so that they could learn about Calabash style seafood. It was a huge hit.

Saturday we went to Chapel Hill to check out the Coker Arboretum and to do a little shopping at A Southern Season. The Arboretum is not quite as massive as Duke Gardens, but it is a lovely place to take a walk. I think it would be incredible in the springtime. We finished the day with some good meat from the Meat House and, of course, some great wine provided by Grandpa Gary.

Grandpa and Bubbe are currently on the road to Cleveland and we are having a mellow Sunday morning since we have been going to church on Sunday evenings. Noah slept in until 8:00, which was later than the 7:30 he was directed to. He said he woke up at 7:30, but decided to be nice and stay in his room.

Later I made some pumpkin-spice pancakes with fresh caramel sauce. Everyone enjoyed it but Lily, who made her own chocolate-chip pancakes. She got Noah to help her so that he would be eligible to get in on leftovers. I guess that he was in a certain mode of listening to her because while I was talking to Amanda in our bedroom and Noah was in his room Lily shouted up to him to get his attention. He opened his door and angrily yelled, "What do you command me to do?" Clearly she has him trained well!

Justin is going to come over to play with Noah today. Lily and I are going to go out for some errands and to play chess with my new clock. But right now I'm going to keep hiding in the basement and do some reading.

Retreat

The church we've been attending had a retreat for the fifth and sixth graders. Lily has a friend who was going and we made her go. She wasn't very excited about it because she didn't know anyone else and wasn't sure what she was getting into (I blame my genes for this), but she went. They separated the kids into teams and fortunately she and her friend were on the same team.

We dropped her off Friday and she seemed to be keeping her spirits up, despite a general lack of enthusiasm. When I picked her up Saturday she couldn't stop talking about all that they did. She had a great time. I don't think that she made any BFFs there, but she did have a good time.

It's hard to think of Lily as being old enough to spend the night at a church retreat, but she did. We're just glad that she had a good time. Everything we saw encouraged us that it was run very well and that the teaching was very good.

Now if we could just convince her not to wear jeans and boots on an 85 degree day. She did look real sharp though.

Neighborhood Watch

Anyone who knows Amanda knows that she isn't afraid of much. She sees bugs as targets. Snakes are friends. Why? They eat the one thing she does fear - rodents.

She is going to be able to go outside more confidently now because of our new neighborhood watch. Lily found this guy in the tree in the cul-de-sac. I got this shot a bit later when she went back out to take Oreo for his evening constitutional.

I tried to get a little closer, but the owl flew off. Oreo picked up on that and tried to chase it. Good luck flushing a bird that might have tried to eat you when you were a pup.

10 Years Ago Today...

Roughly 9 years, 364 days, and 22 hours ago we welcomed Lily Helena Chamberlain into the world. I can still remember Amanda waking me up in the middle of the night and the drive through downtown Cary as we went to the hospital. I remember slow dancing with Amanda through labor. I remember transition in the tub. I remember the nervousness of the hospital staff since Lily had the cord wrapped around her neck. And I remember how grateful we were to God that she was healthy.

A lot has changed for Lily over these 10 years as she's grown into a young lady, but some things haven't. From the moment she came out she was looking around and paying attention to the world around her. She has never been afraid to voice her opinion about things either. The good news is that she now has much better hair.

We let Lily celebrate with friends last night. She had her two best friends from school over for a sleepover. We got pizza and they watched a movie. Amanda helped them make tye-dye shirts as a favor from the party. We enjoyed a cookie cake that Amanda and I worked together on. They stayed up until 12:30 and got up around 7:30. We have a wedding to attend this afternoon, so we figured we'd better celebrate early.

Happy birthday Peanut!

Still Our Little Hero

Oreo’s heroics continue. On Saturday he flushed the finch out of the basement. Last night he did something even better.

It was around 9:30. We had the lights off in our room. Amanda was reading and I was drifting off to sleep. Lily was finishing up her electronics time. We heard Oreo’s collar stirring and I commented to Amanda that it was great to hear that she was going to bed when we told her to and that she was taking care of Oreo.

The next thing we knew we heard the door slam, Lily run up the steps, open our door, and start yelling, “A fox! There’s a fox! And Oreo chased it! And he’s gone!” This was of course accompanied with tears. It seems that Lily took Oreo out for his final business. As we often do in the evenings, she did this without a leash. The problem is that there was a fox in our driveway and Oreo chased it away.

I immediately threw on some clothes, put on my sandals, grabbed the big flashlight, and went outside. Poor Lily was in hysterics because she thought Oreo had run away. But just as I started asking her about it we heard the jingle of his collar and he came running back to us from between two houses a few doors down from us on the cul-de-sac. We also heard the fox bark a couple of times and then the sly devil slowly came down toward the street. I quickly ushered Lily and Oreo into the house.

Lily was pretty scared because the fox was back in our driveway and then skulked under our neighbor’s car. After a few minutes I took Oreo back out because I wasn’t sure that he had done what he needed to do. The fox had disappeared and Oreo was able to take care of business.

Once again, Oreo saved the day. The fox is pretty comfortable with people, but he didn’t like having Oreo chase him. I’m not sure what Oreo would do if he caught him, but clearly the little guy wants to protect us. There were no signs of a struggle on Oreo, so I don’t think that they had any contact. Oreo was pretty excited after all that. I guess it makes sense since he doesn’t often get to do what he was bred to do.

Our Little Hero

Noah got a call from his friend Justin to play, so I took him over around 4:00. I came home, made some chai, and went down to the basement to putter a bit on the computer while Lily and Amanda read. I was very surprised to hear a loud bird call coming from the hall leading upstairs. I thought that it was Lily trying to play a trick on me until I saw a brown finch fly around the bottom of the stairs. It must have come in through the crawlspace when I had the door open this morning. Now it was stuck in the basement, confused, and likely scared.

I ran through my options. I didn't like the idea of going after it. I considered shooting it with my BB gun to put it out of its misery, but thought better of that. I opened up the outside door to the basement and tried to goad it into coming out. It was perched on the door leading inside, so I figured I'd go around and knock on the door.

I explained the situation to Amanda and Lily, who were very surprised. Lily wanted to come down to see it. Amanda made some comment about Oreo and that gave me the idea to bring him. It was time to put the half Cocker Spaniel in him to work.

He was very interested in the bird. He ran up the stairs to check it out. I turned off the light in the stairwell and turned on the lights in the basement to coax it out. It found just about every corner of the room until it eventually made its way out with Oreo about one step behind the whole time.

Since I am not a hunter I never thought that Oreo would be good for much more than snuggling on the couch. Today he saved us from what could have been a very messy situation.

Two Things

Amanda took Lily to a Jars of Clay concert yesterday evening, so I thought I would take advantage of a YoLo coupon to treat Noah (and me) to some yogurt. As I got in the car to pull out of the driveway I noticed some trash that I had to take to the dump. This was from the blinds in the upstairs bathroom that I replaced several weeks ago, but needed to throw out. Since we were going right by the dump I grabbed them and put them in the back of the car. We stopped at the dump for a minute and then went to Sam's for gas.

While driving I found the Durham Bulls game on the radio. I asked Noah if he wanted to listen to the Bulls game or to music and he chose the ballgame. That's my boy!

We went to Sam's and I left the radio on for him while I pumped the gas. When I got back in the car Noah announced, "I have two things to tell you, Daddy." This of course piqued my interest so I asked him what they were. He said,

One - he (referring to the Bulls' play-by-play man) said "dig into reading," which is the program I'm doing.

Two - there's a lizard in the car.

It seems that I brought in a small lizard with the trash. Noah wasn't too nervous about it, but we definitely didn't want it in the car. I don't know as that we ever got it out either. I will find out more when I come home this evening and hear about the family driving around in the van.

What really struck me was how he told the story. It seems like in the last few months he has made some great leaps in his verbal communication skills. We always expected stuff like this from Lily since she was such a good talker from the beginning. Noah, however, struggled for a while and didn't sound so bright when he was really little. It's nice to hear him becoming more articulate.

Our Kids

I don't think that anyone who knows us would ever need genetic proof that these are our children. Yesterday was a good case in point. As a reward for riding his bike without training wheels Noah got 3 days of unlimited electronics He used one day on the ride home and he used the second day on Tuesday. Amanda and I wanted to watch a show, so I left him in the basement playing Wii after dinner. When I took Oreo out at 9:00 I realized that Noah was still downstairs since nobody put him to bed. He was happily playing Wii. Takes me back to those summer evenings when I'd play video games until I could barely walk.

Meanwhile, Lily was engrossed in some 500+ page book that she started yesterday evening around dinnertime. Amanda and I turned off the lights at around 9:30 so I could sleep, but she stayed awake reading. I awoke with a start at 10:30 when I heard her saying Lily's name pretty loudly. I remember the last thing I said to Lily at 9:00 was, "don't stay up too late reading." Apparently she didn't heed that because Amanda noticed light in the hall and when she investigated she found Lily still reading at 10:30.

I also have caught Lily reading in bed with a flashlight. It's tough to punish a child for a thirst for books, but we also have bedtimes for a reason. It's a mixture of pride and frustration when she keeps breaking these rules.