As I was getting the pictures together for this month, I couldn’t help feel that New Year’s eve seems like it took place a year ago rather than just last month. Here’s s summary of the month’s happenings:
- Lilah joins YMCA soccer league
- My brother in-law celebrates his 40th birthday
- Family goes roller skating
Lilah
Lilah and Luke both decided to stay up to celebrate the New Year. At first, they wanted us to wake them up when the clock struck midnight, but we told them that to do it right, they had to stay up until the designated time. So that’s what we did. We didn’t do anything elaborate — we played Uno and other card games and watched a couple of movies. In the end, Lilah was able to stay up and celebrate, but Luke couldn’t quite make it, nodding off somewhere between 11:30 – 12:00AM. Shortly afterwards we all went to bed.
The rest of the month has gone by in a blur. We went roller skating for the first time in ages. Lilah had a blast spinning around the rink in her roller blades. She even entered a race and got third. Ever the competitive one, she got a little upset at not being in the top two because she felt the other girls got off to a head start. This made her grumpy for a few minutes but she recovered soon after and everything was fine.
Speaking of grumpy or “very upset” moments, Lilah had a major incident this month with an online program that allows kids to create a custom clock with your own artwork. Lilah spent an hour or more designing a clock in the program. To make a long story, the program crashed and she had not saved her work. When she realized her design was gone she broke into tears and shut herself up in her room. When she came out she covered herself in a red blanket and refused to show her face. She pasted a note where her face would be with the simple caption “stupid kid clock.”
On a brighter note, Lilah is now playing soccer — something she’s been wanting to do for a long time. In her first game she played right defender, left defender and goalie. Since then, she’s gone on to play all the positions. She’s really enjoying the experience and currently prefers defense to offense. Hey defense wins championships right?
Lilah is also preparing for a school talent show. She wants to do a routine with her BFF – Tory. Her idea is a duet of the Toy Story song, “You Got a Friend in Me.” Needless to say, there was a day or two where all I heard was Lilah singing this song on her karaoke machine, really emphasizing the word friend. She even had a script drawn out on a piece of paper of what moves they would make as they were singing the song. Anyway, I haven’t heard much on this front lately so I wonder if she’s moved on to a different idea or if she’s secretly rehearsing this until she’s got it down like a pro.
Luke
Since Lilah is playing soccer Luke is complaining about not playing any sports and wants to make sure that we acknowledge that it’s his turn next. He insists he wants to play basketball again so once Lilah’s season is over we’ll see what we can do.
Like his sister, Luke has also started taking Spanish lessons once a week, which I supplement with nightly reading. Seems like he’s enjoying being a kindergartner. He has his group of buddies that he hangs out with – most notably Chandler and Slater. And according to Luke (and Lilah), Jessica is his girlfriend. But the coolest thing for me to observe this month was Luke actually reading.
A while back ago I thought he was reading, but he wasn’t really reading. Instead he was giving the appearance of reading because he could recite passages from memory or by recognizing what was going on in the pictures contained in the book. But now, I know he is reading for sure because I made him pause and say all the words in the sentences instead of skipping the ones he hadn’t voiced before. To my surprise, he said them correctly. Anyway, as a parent, it’s a nice feeling to see when your children learn new things. And reading is one of those big ones, right?
Luke had a blast at the roller rink. The last time we took him there it wasn’t too fun because after about a lap or two he was through with the experience. This time, however, he insisted on going out on the hardwood again and again. I held his hand and sweated as we circled the rink dozens of times. Once Luke gets it into his head that he wants to do something, he becomes persistent in his determination to improve. In fact, I think I had more of a problem on the rink than Luke and I wasn’t even wearing skates (I kept tripping over my feet every time the bottom of my thick-soled shoes caught the floor — a combination of the soles being a bit sticky and me not picking up my feet high enough while walking).
That’s all for this month…