Birthday time!

Man, I really stink for not updating. We're just in the middle of the summer doldrums - it's well over 100 degrees here, so it's just c-a-t hot all the time. Plus, the kids are in school every day, so there's just not much to report about them. But hark! Today is Norah's 5th birthday! Man, she's five. That's just ... wow. And we had a party for her on Sunday! And I took pictures! Whoo-hoo!

She had a good time. Only four kids from her school showed up, but the five of them had a good old time swimming in the pool and playing. Krys had put together an activity for them - they made their own pizzas (she stole this from a friend of ours, who did it at one of her kid's birthday parties a few years ago). So they were in the pool for a while, made some pizzas, ate them, opened presents, and had cake. Exeunt! Norah got some nice swag, although I think she didn't need anything at all, but that's just because I'm cranky. The kids were all very well behaved (for the most part). Norah took her swim goggles off at one point and a friend of hers put them on. When she wanted them back, I told her to ask the girl nicely if she could have them back, and the girl said no. So I had to appeal to her father, who set her straight. When she was opening the presents, Norah was, not surprisingly, a bit greedy, but nothing too evil. They all played well together and nobody had any meltdowns. That's really all that mattered! Krys got Norah a little learning video game that she loves, so she's now not watching as much television, although she is playing video games. Why can't she just read Moby-Dick or Ulysses?

Today, her official birthday, she had to go to the doctor and get four shots. Yeah, that wasn't fun. But she only cried a little bit and then calmed down. She's officially 36.6 pounds and 43.75 inches. Her vision is dandy. All is well! She's been having some issues with pooping recently - she'll go once a day, which is fine, but it was at about four in the morning and it didn't come out easily, causing her some grief. It wasn't diarrhea or too, too hard, it just took a while. So we've been giving her more water (she loves soy milk so much that it's hard to get her to drink water) and trying to force more fruits and vegetables into her. She doesn't mind fruits and vegetables, she just doesn't dig them too much. This past week has been better - she still gets up really early to use the bathroom, but she hasn't been having too many issues with it. The doctor said she looked fine and gave me some more tips about smoothing her out. But she's perfectly healthy, and loving going to school all day, every day!

So here are some photographs from the party. Enjoy!








I don't know how often I'm going to update this over the next six weeks or so. When the kids start school I'm sure I'll have more to say, but we're in hibernation mode here a bit, so who knows. Maybe our trip to see Toy Story 3 this weekend will be eventful. You never know!

School is OVAH!

Mia and Norah wrapped up their school years last week, although they're both going to summer school, so it doesn't really count too much. Norah is totally ready for kindergarten in August, so I'm glad she's going. Her teachers think she's ready and so do we. This summer she's actually going to summer school all day, every day, and after two days, she's ecstatic. She still hasn't wrapped her brain around the fact that she gets to go every day, even though we've told her. Tonight she asked Krys once again if she was going to school tomorrow, and when Krys told her she was, she got really excited. I hope that she still thinks that way after a week or two of going there. I don't know how long this enthusiasm for school will last, but we're trying to encourage it for as long as we can!

Mia, as usual, loved school all year. I've written quite a bit about her school year and how much better it got as it went on. I know that in the final weeks she was working very hard and enjoying herself a lot, and I know that her teachers had really made great strides with her. Her physical trauma with her hips is almost all in the past, and that makes her so much happier it's almost unbelievable. Even when she hurt the most, she was always happy, but she was so much quicker to cry because of the pain. Now she moves fairly well and I can move her almost all the time without making her cry in pain. She's been walking a bit (with help, of course, but still) and moving much better. In the past few weeks of school, her attention improved and, not surprisingly, so did her skills. Her teachers have worked really hard to help her, and that, combined with her healing, made her final few months at school so much better. We hope that the fact that she's going to have the same teachers and at least one returning aide next year will make next year even better. I don't see why it wouldn't!

So that was the school year. Mia starts summer school/camp next week, which she digs, and we hope that both kids keep enjoying school. Why wouldn't they? School is awesome!