Wow, you’re now 3 years old. Crazy little time we’ve had getting this far.
More pix of the festivities will come later. Just wanted to wish the boys a happy 3rd birthday before the day was out.
November 2009 Archives
Sean and Daniel just want to say, Hi. They know they haven’t checked in for a while. If they understood counting down the days, they’d be getting more excited about their birthday coming up. But they do know that it is coming up soon.
Boy, Will is really starting to show some skill in the artwork department. And those who know me would understand that he certainly didn’t get that gene from me.
The big thing is Will actually had a piece of art from first grade on display at a local bank. The display ended last weekend, but right there in the entrance to the branch was Will’s art work. It was in the style of Eric Carle, and I must say that he did a great job with it. (If the name doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps you recall reading Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See? or The Very Hungry Caterpillar.) I can see why it was chosen.
So he’s got one up on his Mom and Dad in this respect — we didn’t do anything public display-worthy.
Then there is this recent project at school, where he made a topographic map of the United States, using salt dough. Being the expert at maps that he is, he actually did a good job with getting the mountain ranges in, with different heights, and even 3 rivers (Rio Grande, Mississippi, and James). He even painted Canada and Mexico in different colors.
Which brings me to an interesting exchange from the recent camping trip (pictures still pending) with Will. He was impressing the kids and adults with his geography knowledge around a campfire, when he had this conversation with one of the adults:
Will: Canada is on top of the United States.
Adult (making a joke): So, if Canada is on top of the United States, what does that it make it?
Will: What?
Adult: The hat.
Will (without missing a beat): So, what does that make Mexico? The pants?
If you didn’t realize how much of a geography wiz Will is, take a look at this map of the United States — that he drew from memory. Proportions may not be quite there yet, but the detail is stunning.
As I said, he’s got an interesting set of artistic skills.
And it just wouldn’t stop coming down. In fact, it’s still misting outside, even 3 days after things started. It wasn’t ever too hard of a rain — an amateur weather station just a few miles from my house has only recorded about 5 inches of rain so far. But it definitely accumulated.
See for yourself, in this picture of the drainage pond at the bottom of the hill near my house. We don’t border on it, so we’re nowhere close to getting flooded. We’d need a Noah flood to get to our house from here. But those trees on the left, in the standing water, are probably almost 3 feet above normal water stage in the pond. And you can see the water trending toward some of those fences on the left.
Sorry for the fuzziness. The weakness of a cameraphone picture, I guess.
Hope everyone else stayed dry, if you were on the East Coast. Our fine governor of the Commonwealth of Virginia stayed dry — by having Democratic Party fundraisers in Memphis and Little Rock after declaring an emergency in the state. (See, both parties’ leaders can be tone deaf.) Have a great weekend.
Someone shared with me an interesting website and a couple of cool videos. The goal is to change people’s behavior by making the desired behavior more fun. The two examples below — taking the stairs, and recycling glass bottles — definitely show how things are different when they are made more fun.
So, what do you think? Both of these cases would definitely be fun for both kids and adults.
It means Daddy won’t be running the half-marathon that he was planning on running this upcoming weekend.
Am I unlucky, or just a klutz, or something else? Who knows, but I’m seeing much too much of the doctor’s office these past 2 months. My latest escapade was stepping in a large hole at work — hidden in a grassy strip going between parking lots. I went down hard, and it took a while to gather myself to stand up. I don’t think anyone saw me, as I didn’t see anyone else around me the whole time.
But anyway, it was slowly improving through the weekend, and walking straight-ahead wasn’t an issue. But an increase in soreness and tenderness on Sunday sent me to the doctor yesterday, and the x-ray says I have a slight avulsion fracture at the end of the tibia. Slight, as in only a couple millimeter fragment of bone broke away. No surgery or immobilization necessary — just treat it like a sprain (like I already was doing). It won’t reattach or need to reattach. But the tenderness and swelling still continues some today, so between the inconsistent training and now this injury, I’m going to have to call off the race.
Maybe next year. (I did run the inaugural race last year.)
And yes, I really am bummed about not being able to do it. But to run another day (and play basketball this winter), I need to let the ankle heal. 13.1 miles would not give the ankle the “break” it needs. rim shot
Well, hold on a minute. I’ll tell you what it is in a moment. This is about Will, and we last wrote about this topic here.
I’m even more embarrassed that I didn’t write about it when it happened. It’s taken me 2 days just to remember to post something on it. On Monday morning, Will lost tooth #7. And yes, it really has been quite a long time since he lost his last tooth — almost 8 months. It almost felt like he had been done. We had to assist it in coming out (it was barely holding on), after he had eaten some apple with breakfast and it got really loose and started to bleed. And yes, it took some coaxing to have him let us get it out. Once it was done, he was happy it was done.
No pictures of this one. It’s really hard to see, even with a big smile. It’s in the upper right quadrant, right next to his front teeth. The other one (on the left) may not be far behind.
In more ways than one. The weather broke just in time for everyone to go out. It had rained from Friday night until about 3pm on Saturday, then the sun started to break through the clouds. We got a nice view of the almost-full moon as we were out in the neighborhood, but by 10pm, it was raining again. (And it still hasn’t stopped as I write this entry.)
If you saw the previous entry, you already know what the kids are going out as. But each of their outfits got improvements to go out tonight — red pants and shirts for the Elmos, facial make up and some added costume jewelry for the vampire.
Unfortunately for the twins, their outfit wound up being too warm for the 70 degree weather we had for walking around. Even I was hot and sweaty from walking around in the humid air. But they were troopers and stayed with the outfit the whole way, only removing the heads (like a hood) over the last 30 minutes or so.
They all got good reactions, but there must be something about seeing two Elmos walking around that makes women — from preteen through adult — just say “Awwww.” It happened probably at least 10 times as we were just walking around.
I know Will and I were done with walking on the day. On Saturday morning, we went around a couple of nearby neighborhoods dropping off paper grocery bags for collecting food as part of our council’s Scouting for Food effort. Next Saturday, we’ll go back to these neighborhoods and pick up any bags that have been filled. Will actually had fun going around and leaving the bags on the front doors and stoops, even if it was lightly raining at times during our 2+ hours of bag distribution.
