BIG Changes

This is going to be a text only post...sorry everybody....I just cannot seem to find an opportunity to get pictures posted....

During this last week, Richie, somewhat spontaneous started READING! He's sounding out words and we've been testing it by giving 1st reader books that he's never seen. Some words he has memorized, others he has to sound out. This is VERY exciting for me because I've been a little concerned at his lack of interest in making this step. He's known his letters and sounds for about 2 years.

Another big changed happened to Richie today. I took the Nintendo DS away. Not in time-out. I'm done. Or rather, he's done. It has been a progressive battle that usually surrounds it and so I told him that I'm taking it away until he can better balance play, work and studies. He cried for a few minutes, but he seems to understand and is hoping that he'll be ready by the time he's 5 or 6.

In other, happier news, Richie has been enjoying Pre-school at the JCC down the street. We've been investigating the different kindergartens and elementary schools in the area. We had a 3 hour tour of one today. They did a nice job having one of the second graders give us a tour (with her mother). Richie announced that he was in love with our tour guide because she was so nice to him. I tried to explain to him that she is supposed to be, that it was her job, but then I realized that it was just too complex a conversation to explain the nature of a service industry. :-) Richie invited her over for a play date, which I thought was cute but too much of a conflict of interest for the adults. But maybe I'll throw caution to the wind and invite them over for a little play date. We've now toured three different schools in the area and I think they all of different things to offer. And, if all else fails, our local public school is actually pretty good according to our pre-K teacher.

We all continue to enjoy the area and love our house! We have had some challenges, including our dishwasher deciding not to close properly and leaking onto the floor and having to replace our refrigerator, but the challenges haven't been too great. We've started putting up some sheers on the downstairs windows. Part of this came up because the people that trimmed our trees really cut back one of the big shrubs in front of our dinning room window that blocked street traffic from seeing in. I think the sheers are nice in that we can still see out.

We also had the roofer come out this weekend. He did much of the roof, but needs to get a cap for the secondary chimney and decided to do the tall roof and point the secondary chimney when he's got the cap to put on. He did a nice job and fixed many of the slates that were sloppily installed.

Ugh, on the down side, we STILL. HAVE. STINK. BUGS. I just put one in the toilet.

Richie has started doing some after school programs like Tiny Ninjas! His teacher makes them to push-ups when they get into trouble. Richie likes showing us how well he does push-ups at home! He's also been swimming at school and will start doing an added lesson once a week. But I don't know first hand how that is going.

Going back further in time, we had a really nice visit with Omie, when it was still warm outside. Hopefully I'll get around to posting some of those pictures...some day.

On the home front, we started looking at Stickley furniture in the late summer. Two weeks after we visited the local store, they (Stickley) closed the store. We went to the sale but realized we were about to pay as much for as bed frame as a hand crafted one that we had really liked from a store around the corner from us in Baltimore. So we decided to buy the one in Baltimore, which is actually hand crafted in Peru (http://www.artesanosdonbosco.com/). Now we just have to get around to getting a mattress for it and move out of our guest room. Then we can start having guests! Oh wait, too late.

Another cute spontaneous outburst, Richie went up to Mama and said, "You know who my best big-boy friend? Uncle-Curly! He's almost as silly as a clown." Of course, I thought it should be me, but now that I've taken the Nintendo away, I'm sure I'm off of that list for quite some time.

One last thing, and maybe the most important. Richie came up with the cutest little saying a couple of weeks ago. He claims that he made it up, but it is the cutest thing. "Love is nearby!" And if you ask him where it is, he'll point to himself.