Jeremy hasn’t shaved all weekend – during story time right before bed, Vince spent a lot of time fondling Jeremy’s cheek, driving him INSANE! Edda chose the story, John Muir and the Squirrel. It was a little long, Edda got pretty tired of it by the end, hopefully tomorrow she will pick something else.
In western China, sometime ago, this man and his brother found two cute small kittens (see picture, one male and one female) in a very remote roughed mountainous area. After raising them for a while and one morning, he found one of his small bucks (or does) was gone and, apparently, was eaten and devoured in their common pen. First, he thought some wild carnivals did it. Then these two kittens keep growing and growing. Now, they weight about 30 lbs each. Not only that, every day they can consume 8 to 11 lbs of meat. He started to wonder that they were not really cats after all.
We had Vince’s parent teacher conference today. He’s doing well in the 4 areas – reading, writing, math, social studies (where’s science?). Hold on, I have to find the report card and see if they are teaching our children science in school anymore. Oh yes, it’s 5 areas, it includes science. Whew.
He’s struggling a little with writing – the goal is that by the end of 1st grade, the kids should be able to write an 8 sentence story. Can you believe it? I don’t know how they are going to squeeze 8 sentences out of him.
Are my blog posts even 8 sentences long? I think not (OK. this one might be a little longer, but my grammar is not very good.)
Jeremy spent the day at IKEA trying to buy a kitchen. We are trying to convert our basement into an apartment to rent out. After getting a bunch of quotes from various contractors for sums of money which would take us 5 years of rent to recoup, we figured we would try and do a lot of it ourselves (famous last words, I’m sure).
Jeremy is designer extraordinaire, he has spent many hours drawing, measuring, redrawing, looking at IKEA catalogs, looking at higher end catalogs and then returning to the IKEA catalog. His actual hands-on experience is a little bit lacking. (Jeremy’s a theorist.)
My background in building stems from watching my parents put in basements in our various childhood homes. I also spent a summer working for Habitat for Humanity in Austin where I apprenticed for a plumber who helped me learn all about indoor plumbing (PVC pipes and vents and soldering and sewer lines and city inspections and gas lines). I would like the kitchen to look nice, but I’m not going to spend any a lot of extra time thinking about colors and/or design. (I’m decidedly not a theorist.)
So armed with nothing more than youtube videos, my dad’s expertise and suggestings and a jigsaw, hopefully, the kitchen will be put in sometime soon. We had an original deadline of Dec 31, 2008. Well I’m pretty sure we are not going to make this deadline as the trip to IKEA revealed that they did not have what we needed in stock, so we are waiting another 2-3 weeks until they have it delivered.
The hip thing in professional photography these days is flare! I do troll wedding photographers’ blogs and everyone loves the flare. (Vince is a little grumpy and underexposed.)
We are trying out a new routine in the house. Usually Jeremy and I both put the kids to bed together, which usually means that all 4 of us are in the family bed – which is fine, it’s actually great, but it also means that both Jeremy and I secretly hope the other adult person will get the sippy cup of water for Edda or get Vince to floss his teeth while we both try and surf the web for: political analysis, industrial tricycles, or kid’s pants on ebay. So this meant that bedtime often crept from 7:30 to 9:30 pm. We were not being efficient.
So now we are trying it a different way. Since Jeremy gets the kids up and dressed in the morning, I’m going to be in charge of the night time routine. So tonight, the whole thing from putting Edda in the bath to tucking Vincent in was 45 very short and efficient minutes.
Last night, we headed off to Southern MD for an informal gathering of local girls afflicted with Rett Syndrome and their families. There was a pizza and conversation and also a lot of snuggling.
Looking down:
Looking up!
Fridays are my favorite days! I love the idea that the weekend is coming more than I actually like the weekends – mainly because I still like the routine of the weekdays plus the added anticipation of not going to work the next day.
Somehow this Friday evening is off to a rocky start. Jeremy and I got into an argument as soon as we met to bike home together after the subway ride home, which is the main reason that this Friday is off to a rocky start, but I’ve just discovered that many of Vince’s new winter pants are totally worn through the butt and the knees and it’s only November and also that his first adult tooth is coming in behind a baby tooth that is refusing to fall out and pointing kind of backwards toward the base of his brain.
All I can think about is the cost of new pants and also the cost of straightening out that first insanely crooked tooth! Oh, of course, the house is also a mess – as usual.
I don’t know why I’m in a funk, this is actually a great, great week!
