Household Happenings

So, we've been having a week. Not an exciting week, not a bad week, just a week. I'll just ramble awhile about what the family has been up to. Collecting my thoughts right now is like collecting fireflies....just grab the one closest to you and look at it for awhile...let the other ones go!

Matthew has been playing Mario Kart Wii every day this week. He is limited to about 30 minutes of play time and thankfully doesn't complain when the timer goes off. Here's my justification for allowing Nintendo play at this young age: He has poor fine motor skills and it's improving them, it helps his hand-eye coordination, and he's learning directional sense (which his Daddy does not have, so he needs all the help he can get.) He loves it and is doing very well. In a short time, he's gone from barely finishing one lap to finishing four races and actually placing higher than twelfth! He's won a few single races, so he's doing well. His personal goal is to get a trophy so that he can open up the races with Bowser's castle. (Bowser is his character of choice to race with.) Anna watches him (and him, not the screen) and Ben commentates while he races. It's pretty cute!

We signed Matthew up for the summer reading program and have finished the three steps already. It's 300 pages per step and it went by quicker than I expected it to. Those children's books have a lot of pages! We also read from a chapter book at nap time, so that helped as well. We finished Little House in the Big Woods and Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Now we're reading Mary Poppins, which we'll count as our extra pages. For that step, we have to read 50 extra pages and draw a picture of something in the book. Since Matthew doesn't really draw yet (but he has drawn some letters), I'm going to have him draw with chalk on the sidewalk like the Match Man and take a picture of it to turn in. Pretty clever, huh?? Anyway, he earned a butterfly finger puppet for step one, a free scoop of ice cream from Mullins for step two, and for step three: a free personal pan pizza from Pizza Hut, a family pass to the Wisconsin state park of our choice, a ticket to a library pool party in August, a book, and a certificate of completion. We're also working on the family reading program, for which we have to fill out info sheets, scavanger hunts, attend library progams, make crafts, and make a bug out of recyclables around the house. Rob and I are doing the adult program as well. It's enough to keep us busy all summer!

Along with that, I tried taking the boys to the story time at the library. They hated the first session, mainly because it intimidated them. All of the other children "knew the drill" and the boys were over whelmed. I took just Ben last Friday, and the lady doing it was new (Rachael, Grandma Lou has been replaced!!) and Ben loved it! He came home singing the Baby Bumblebee song and has been singing it with me all week. If he hadn't been running a fever all day today, I'd be taking him tomorrow. The Friday session have far fewer kids, so I think that's the one we'll go with. And I like the new lady quite a bit.

Miss Anna is just a delightful baby. She sleeps 8-10 hours straight at night and naps on and off during the day. I can't believe she's sleeping through this early! I love it!! She's so cheery and smiley and laughs at everything. She's the kind of baby you just love to play with. Matthew said today, "I love Anna. I love holding her and kissing her. She's such a sweet baby!" Anna likes to watch the boys play and you can tell she wants to run around with them. She's trying to turn her head to roll over, but her body just won't cooperate yet :) She's gets excited when the boys are running around. Yesterday I helped her "jump" on the couch with Matthew. She loved it and so did he! She smiles real big for Rob and gave him one of my looks, the look that just melts him. I asked him which one of her little fingers he's wrapped around!

The flooding is going down slowly. Our county is an officially declared disaster area, so that's interesting. Watertown has most streets open now, but Chamberland play area at the park remains closed (for repairs.) The two bridges in Jefferson are closed for an undetermined time. I-94's westbound bridge will also remain closed for a long time. We cancelled our trip to Illinois for next weekend b/c of all the detours and b/c of gas prices.

We've had some coughs go around this week. Ben got it and has had a fever with it today. I hope it passes by me and Anna. Yesterday, Ben was crying for some reason and I was feeding Anna, so I couldn't hold him. I tried to coax him up next to me, but he wouldn't come. Instead, he climbed up on Matthew's lap and leaned his head on Matthew's chest. He was there for quite a long time! It was so sweet. And I couldn't take a picture b/c I was feeding the baby!

I think I rambled enought for now.