Snippets

James asked to have someone over to play today. First time ever. And he didn't ask to play with the kid his age that he sees regularly. No, he asked to play with the other kid, slightly younger than him, that he fights with 75% of the time. Huh, what!? Why?!

For the record, Robert has yet to request anyone to come over to play. He has also never asked to go play at someone else's house.

Alice. asks. every. day.

Alice wants make-up and jewelry for her birthday. Real jewelry: clip on earrings and necklaces that she can wear for real. Not dress-up stuff. Ack! Ack! Ack! Trying not to panic. I'm scratching my eyes out at the thought of visiting the jewelry portion of a store, much less selecting something that I think my child will like. I have NO idea! She also asked for a puppy...maybe a puppy would be less painful.

Wait...just got an idea...maybe I could let her choose her own jewelry...make it one of our girls' nights or something. Set a budget, let her go wild. Yes. I can handle that.

Robert is reading! It finally clicked. His teacher tells me he entered KG at a reading level A, which is barely sounding out words on his own. One of his closest friends at school started at level D. Both boys made incremental progress through the year, but suddenly Robert decided he wanted to read what his friend was reading and he worked at it until he could. Now he reads level J. Robert has this quiet little competitive streak in him...most stuff he doesn't care about, but if he DOES care about it, he'll find a way to succeed at it. He confided in me that he likes being a good reader. Which, you should note, is different from liking to read. He likes being good at it. See? Subtle competitive streak.

Our furnace stopped working last night. Lucky for us, the house managed to stay relatively warm (63F) despite the freezing temps outside. When Bobby went into the crawlspace to have a look, he discovered inches of water on the floor. Yay. Two service calls, 9 hours, 4 furnace parts, and $1500 later, all problems were identified and repaired. The furnace just happened to stop working AND make the flood. Two totally different, unrelated parts broke at the same time. Go figure. It's a blessing, though, 'cuz we would not have discovered the leak for months otherwise.