Tidbits

No word from the CSA farm.

I broke my toe. Not in much pain anymore, but it means I won't be doing any running until January at least. It's a good thing I can still work on cycling and swimming.

Had another swimming breakthrough today. I'll spare you the details, maybe, and just say that I'm not practicing it perfectly like my swim clinic taught, but I'm getting it in bits and pieces. Twice during my swim this morning, I almost ran into the wall, because I was thinking so hard about my stroke that I didn't notice how long the pool was. For the first time EVER, 25 yards just didn't seem long enough.

Cycling in a spin class is torture. I hate it. Come warmer weather, I'll be looking for a biker posse to ride with periodically.

Matthew is talk, talk, talking like crazy these days. He's adopted his siblings' habits of theorizing and explaining interesting bits of life. He's telling me stories and imagining hilarious alternative endings to everyday situations. I wish I had a specific example to share with you. I'll pay better attention and try to record the next one. He's communicating more clearly with James and setting firm(er) boundaries. He actually kicked James out of his room today when James was being annoying.

James is hitting a pretty fun stage. He's clever and capable enough to cause mischief, but the last week or so, I've somehow managed to channel most of that energy towards positive, cooperative activities. Like cooking. He can actually measure out accurate amounts of ingredients and he LOVES to measure on his own. He feels great about using those skills, I can lavish him in attention and positive praise, and he doesn't seem to pester others as much. Not just cooking...what else have we done? Well, I've been showing him how to clean up his own messes and mistakes (instead of sighing painfully and sending him to a time out while I clean it up). When he got peanut butter on the wall (ahem) I handed him a Clorox wipe and asked him if this would do the trick to clean it up. He tried it and it worked. He was SO happy that he could erase that mistake and be all grown up with the cleaning wipes. I dunno. It doesn't always happen like that, but the last week or so, he's been really cheerful about admitting genuine mistakes and working to fix them. Maybe it's just a lucky streak and we'll be singing a different tune next week. Who knows? Right now, though, I wanted to record something positive :)

I'm torn about Robert's piano lessons. Again. He reads the music long enough to memorize the note sequence, then he doesn't look back at the page. Ever. His new teacher has him working on some nuanced pieces with all sorts of dynamic changes. Instead of reading them on the page, he's taken to memorizing them one by one through practice (e.g. louder here, softer here, accent on this note, ritardando here, etc.). It's painful to watch. If only he could use the written page as a reference! His sight reading is still very slow, but slowly getting better as we work on it. I appreciate his attitude, however, as he keeps working on things even when they're vexing him to periodic tears.

Alice is transforming tomorrow afternoon. A new hairdo. A pixie cut, she tells me. A friend and her mother will be taking her, with my blessing, because haircuts are not something I get excited about. Maybe that will change when I see the new Alice?