Brought to you by the Letter S

Caroline's homework this week was to write down words that start with the letter S. Lately when it's time to work on her homework she just keeps coming up with words and eventually you just have to wrestle her homework book away from her. It didn't help last night that Ben was sitting next to her working on his own homework, and purposely working "S" words into the conversation so that she would continue to name more "S" words. After a while she had come up with probably a dozen, including "stab" thanks to Ben's "Oww, I stabbed myself with my pencil!" and "spank" (totally on her own). I kept trying to tell her, "Ok, we're done, good job!" But she kept wanting to add one more and one more. And then she smiled and announced her final S-word, "Shit!" To which Joel and Ben and I just died laughing while Caroline looked pretty pleased with herself. From the other room, where Becca could hear the laughing but not the exact cause, she yelled, "What word did she say? Sex?" And Caroline's eyes lit up again but I wrestled her homework book from her before she could grab the pencil again.

Busy Week

It has been a busy week so far, with the girls' checkups and Ben had a doctor visit as well so I had two days in a row at the doctor's office. Ben also had his first tutoring session for his bar mitzvah - tutoring will be every Tuesday night for the rest of the school year. Afterwards he said it was fun because one of the other kids there is a friend of his and is also coming on the Israel trip. He does have homework to do,which is to memorize a particular prayer. He was supposed to have memorized it before the first session but that didn't exactly happen. I will have to make sure he gets it done for next week!

In other news I registered Caroline for kindergarten yesterday - hard to believe my baby will be starting kindergarten in the fall! We've got her reading at an end-of-first-grade level, in my estimation, already. For homework this week her assignment was to write at least 2 words that begin with the letter "G". Well, she came up with 9 words including "genius". Maybe that was a lucky guess but I prefer to think otherwise!

Checkups

The girls had their annual well exams this week. Caroline measured 45.25 inches and 45.4 pounds, which is 90th percentile for height and 78th percentile for weight. Becca was 52.25 inches and 62.7 pounds which is 39th percentile for height and 38th percentile for weight. Usually she is around 50th percentile for both, so it's a definite slow down in her growth although she did gain around 5 pounds since last year. Becca was not happy to hear that she had only gained around an inch and a quarter in height instead of the expected two inches, but the doctor said we will check her growth again in a couple of months when she comes back for her ADHD check in the spring. Otherwise they both had good checkups but the doctor had to clean a large amount of wax out of one of Caroline's ears after she didn't do so hot on the hearing screening for that ear. She ought to be hearing a lot better now! :)

Happy Belated Birthday Amelia!

We had a girls day to celebrate Amelia's birthday on Saturday -- manicures for Becca and Amelia and a hair cut for Caroline followed by an afternoon at the mall with lunch at the bistro at the American Girl store. Happy 7th birthday Amelia!!

 

 

Busy Week

The dusting of snow we got Saturday closed the public schools Monday and Tuesday. I have ceased to be surprised by such things. The school district covers over 500 square miles and has over 150 schools. Way too large in my opinion, and some of the schools in the northern part of the county had more snow and ice than the rest of us. Ben and Rebecca went back to school yesterday.

 Caroline had school Monday and Tuesday, though not without incident - on Monday the JCC received a bomb threat, as did many others around the country. They evacuated the campus including the preschool and did a bomb sweep. Caroline didn't seem bothered by it in the least. She just said it was like a fire drill, but with police instead of fire trucks. It totally boggles my mind what kind of person would wake up and be like, "What should we do today? I know, let's make some bomb threats." I resisted the urge to go pick her up as soon as I heard about it, and went and got her at the usual time but with a piece of candy as a special treat.

Ben had the initial meeting about his Bar Mitzvah, tutoring for which starts on Tuesdays the end of this month. He also has to attend 13 services between now and June, and do a 12 hour community service project, in addition to his regular weekly Hebrew school classes. It's going to be a rough six months but as I tried to explain to him, he will be very proud of himself when it's all over.

The girls started their piano lessons yesterday, and they both seemed to enjoy it and were excited after they each had their lesson to show me what they had learned. They each have a notebook where their teacher writes down what they should practice between lessons. Caroline seemed to be playing a game mostly seeing how fast she could pick out all the C keys on the piano, and things like that. Becca progressed a bit beyond that and has a whole page in her practice notebook to work on.

And that's everything that's been going on this week!

When Dad Makes Breakfast

Pancakes with M&Ms, chocolate chips, whipped cream and syrup!

 

Surrounded

Ben and his furry friends.

 

Snow (Sort of)

The forecasted snow storm was a big dud; instead of 5-8 inches we got practically nothing! That didn't stop the girls from frolicking in the (tiny amount of) snow though. Ben, being older and wiser, was disappointed and spent the entire day indoors. 

 

 

 

Happy New Year!

We spent a relatively quiet New Year's weekend, since I am fighting a bad cold right now. Joel and I saw Manchester by the Sea and went out to dinner Sunday night, and Monday Ben and Joel and I saw Star Wars: Rogue One while Mort and Mary took the girls to see Sing. Afterwards we had dinner at Burger 21. Today I am back at work although really thinking about taking a sick day for part of the day. The kids go back to school tomorrow, and at the moment I'm nowhere near mentally ready or physically organized for the return to all the routines. Including some new routines, like guitar lessons for Ben starting Thursday night. I feel like I need a day to mentally prepare before I'm ready to tell 2017 to bring it on ;) Instead it's more like, 2017: ready or not, here we come! :)