September 9, 2006

Aida is doing great. She is walking very steadily now and is even starting to get a little trot to her when she tries to run. Her 1-year check up went very well. She is in the 37th percentile for height and weight, but is very balanced and right on schedule with the talking part. She LOVES going outside and voices her disdain whenever someone else goes outside without her. She is becoming very manipulative with crying when she doesn't get what she wants, so she is experiencing time outs. Not that she quite understands yet, but it removes her from the situation nonetheless. She is becoming less distructive with Liam's trains and more constructive trying to put the trains on the track (instead of eating the track), so Liam is back to enjoying playing with her. Liam had a little bit of reluctance on his return to his school/daycare. He loves seeing his friends and teachers, but misses being with Mama all day long. He keeps asking me to take him with me to my school. So, there has been a little bit of bribery going on. I knew the first week would be rough, so we immediately told him that if he had a good week, we would buy him a brand new choo-choo on Friday after school. So, in the mornings if he started whining a bit, I would gently remind him of Friday. He did great, but has had 2 other "I wanna go to Mama's school" mornings, so he got ice cream at the end of one of those days. He definitely knows how to spell his name now, and is working on trying to write it. Still our mechanically-minded boy, he loves puzzles and constructive things. He is always observing and working things out in his head. Brack finally has his office on its way to the way he wants it. A showcase for cool Star Wars stuff. He has 2 nice display cases now and plans on getting more. It looks really cool in his office. Brack has been exploring all the cool parks around the area with Liam lately. Today they went to the pirate park and to the dinosaur park. I guess all the parks around here have different themes and different toys for them. I need to start going with them even though Brack uses it as some 1-on-1 time for Liam. I am back at school and incredibly busy. Students seem decent and I actually seem to have a nice-functioning team of teachers I work closely with this year. Still have lots of former students stopping by. Most are great to see. The beginning of the year is just hard because I have a lot of pretest stuff that I have the kids do and then it needs to be graded so I know what I need to focus on for the year and where they start. The essays are the worst to grade. I acually grade them on 8 different aspects because I teach each aspect seperately. It takes forever to grade... ick. But, I have 1/4 of them done, so I'm on my way, I guess.