[day 64 ... march 5]

It's time to sign up for Spring observation and conferences at Little School. Melissa posted this schedule outside of her classroom so we could pick and choose when we wanted to observe instead of just coming first thing in the morning as parents typically do.

I have a general idea how the day goes in Cory's class but it's still fun to see it written up and imagine him enjoying various activities and projects through the day.

[day 63 ... march 4]

We are so lucky: Grandpa Stan is making a chicken tractor for our hens-to-be! He's building it almost completely from scraps and extras in his shop, following some design ideas that I found on the City Chicken Web site (which he told me about, BTW :-).

I was thinking of a much simpler arrangement that would basically keep the hens safe from raccoons and dry and warm, but Dad added nest boxes and a door that closes on the front of the hen-house part and other niceties. It's looking fabulous!

[day 62 ... march 3]

I finally found a shower curtain I liked, so we can use the hall bathroom shower again after all these months. The repair/remodeling work was finished in November but boy, it's hard to find "normal" looking shower curtains, as it turns out. I finally saw one I liked at Fred Meyer and of course, they were sold out. :-( But a very nice woman got on the phone and tracked one down for me in their Idaho store, got it shipped to Totem Lake, and it was in my hands in week or two later. Yay!

Then I had to get around to installing the tension bar, finding the liner and hooks (purchased months ago), and getting it all set up. And now we're finally there.

Kellen is very happy. This has been "his" shower since we moved in (Tynor and I like the master bath shower better) so he's really missed it all this time. But has been remarkably patient while his mom slogged through all the two-steps-forward, one-step-backwards of getting the curtain figured out.

Here's the master bath shower, with the "Flemish" glass doors, which I love. Truly, they make me happy every time I see them so I remind myself of that when the reality of (shhhh) cost creeps into my thoughts.

I'm also enjoying the bench that Garry and Roger worked out for inside the shower, which they added after removing mostly-empty space behind the original shower wall. It makes the shower so much more light and spacious and is handy to have too.

The work needed doing, after five years of looking at ever-worsening mold, water damage, soggy tile, and all the rest. And the crew did a fabulous job and were a joy to work with. If it weren't so dang expensive, I could get into this home remodelling thing. It's sure wonderful to enjoy the results!

[day 61 ... march 2]

This just seems to sum up the past month or so here: inhalers, antibiotics, and other meds of various kinds. But in a flash of good news, everyone is well enough to be back in school this week! Crossing my fingers that we're over the worst of this horrible series of bugs now. But winter isn't over yet, I know...

[day 60 ... march 1]

Typical weather for late winter here: some clouds, some clearing, temps high-30's to low-50's, scattered rain, some showers. A few sunbreaks, if we're lucky. :-)

I thought I'd capture the newspaper's weather page before 1) they cut it from a half-page to even less (was a full page for years, until recent days) or 2) there is no more printed newspaper - a day which seems to be zooming closer by the minute. :-(

The boys have always started "reading" the paper around age 4 by checking out the weather page. It's easy to get useful information there, even if you're not quite reading yet. True to form, Cory always asks for it now. Next up is always the comics, where you can beg someone to read "just one more" aloud to you until you can sound out some of the words for early favorites like Garfield and Peanuts. Next seems to come sports, or that was the pattern with Kellen and Tynor. But they were big-time into baseball around ages 6-7-8 and couldn't wait to check out the Mariners' stats every day.

Niall isn't there yet (still enjoying the comics, but more into the puzzles than anything else right now), but perhaps he'll skip right to Personal Technology and general news - we'll see.

[day 59 ... february 28]

Niall decided last night to keep himself busy (always appreciated :-) by making paper. He wadded up several post-it notes and submerged them in water, then tore them up once they were squishy and patted them together to make a new piece of paper. I weighed in to suggest that he let the new paper dry on the heater vent rather than on a wet washcloth on the table (I like my wood table as it is, not warped with water!).
This morning he was thrilled to find his new paper dry and looking like, well, paper. A little thick and a little concave - but definitely paper.

Now Niall is all enthused about having us separate our recycling into paper and non-paper so he can repurpose the paper into new paper. Hmm...not sure how this is going to scale. Maybe his enthusiasm will shift before I have to help figure it out. :-)

Cory immediately wanted to try his hand at it too, but Niall wasn't feeling in a teaching mood so perhaps another day.

[day 58 ... february 27]

Cory seems to have caught the musical bug and has been writing "songs" lately - first on paper, and here on the mini-Magna Doodle on the frig. So far they consist of neatly-formed scribble lines but who knows what music or lyrics they sprang from inside him.

Really, I wonder if there is some musical connection in his head as he writes, or if he's simply making the connection that people can create music from a written line just as they can create spoken words from written words. I expect the latter, but it makes you wonder just what is happening as the gears turn in those little heads with all that learning and figuring out going on in there.

He asked me the other day: "Did you know how to talk when you didn't know all the words yet?" I had just explained the meaning of a word to him that I'd said, and he seemed a bit puzzled that here he thought he could speak English but then why didn't he just know all the words at once? It exactly parallels his recent intense focus on sounding out words, learning letter sounds, and sight-reading short, familiar words. If he can read some of the words now, why don't the other groups of letters make sense yet? So close... And he'll get there soon. :-)