Resolutions

Two years ago I made a resolution to become more "gadget-ized" and over the past two years my beloved betrothed bestowed tech-y birthday gifts galore. I now am the proud owner of a five day forecaster that links into accu-weather, 4gen ipod, pda, smart-ish cell phone, digital SLR and probably other things I don't even recall. I signed up for a MySpace page, joined LinkedIn and "got connected" in a variety of other tech-y ways. Then, IT happened. Last year I lost my pda, and about a month ago I lost my cell phone, I sometimes forget my login and passwords, I go months without checking my email accounts, then we had to use the triple A batteries from my forecaster in order to operate Annie's new remote controlled "My Little Pony" scooter (for her ponies). The list goes on. Did my technological devises fail me, or did I fail them? And what have I learned from all of this? Not that I need a GPS tracking system for all of my junk, but rather that I don't need all the junk. I think in the depths of my subconscious I wanted to lose all of those things. I wanted to be disconnected.

Since July of last year my cell phone was permanently affixed to my hip and that meant one thing; no matter where I was or what I was doing everyone could be connected to me. That's a connection I am not willing to commit to at this time. I am not ready for the commitment to the tech-y world and truth be told I may never be ready for that responsibility. And what I think it says about me is that I don't want to be predictable, that I want to be spontaneous and that for certain moments of my life I want to be free. Free from people. Free from tracking and free from the indiscriminate knowledge of just about everything that society had forced upon us. Where's the fun in knowing everything? What would my role in life be if there was nothing to gain from actual real life people with whom I interact daily? What's wrong with not knowing the answer? My answer to that and my 2009 resolution is: nothing. My resolution this year: to be less "connected" and more alive.

And here's a little secret: I don't check my cell phone voice mail. I probably have messages from weeks ago that I never listened to. And I am horrible about checking the answering machine at home. I sometimes wait a week or more to listen! :)

Elixir

Naked
Juice
is not
a bedtime elixir.

It actually
winds up
your child
in a
most
unpleasant
manner.

Deep Thoughts by a mother

I had it once,
It was with me.
I dearly miss,
My sanity.

Happy MLK day

The beloved whoppie pie. I pay homage to the great allrecipes for this recipe.

Ryan can do tricks, which he discovered recently when peeling a satsuma tangerine. He can peel the tangerine with one tear AND it will look like an elephant. The girls LOVE this. The one in the picture Madeline peeled herself.

Last night I called everyone to dinner. The first one to the table was Tootsie. No kidding, she was just sitting there waiting. Unfortunately, or fortunately depending on how you look at it, she sat in a chair with no place setting. (do you see her little head poking up from the back chair?)
Tootsie waiting for dinner again tonight. Same chair, still no place setting.

Santa brought Madeline a modified ATV. The thing does seven MPH on the high setting. She was trucking around the neighborhood yesterday. Sometimes she is gracious enough to give her sis a ride.

Today Madeline and I observed the MLK jr Holiday. Madeline chose to observe the holiday by watching a couple of movies, playing with Mackenzie, swimming, hot tubbing, and driving her mother nuts while I observed the holiday by cleaning the basement, doing pilates, swimming, hot tubbing, baking whoppie pies and doing my best to retain my sanity. Thankfully Ryan and Annie came home before all hope was lost.

Speaking of lost hope, I had an interesting experience this past weekend. On Friday I lost one pearl earring when I was changing before or after Pilates class. It wasn't just any pearl earring, of course, it was the set from our honeymoon. I think we bought it in Mexico. I didn't realize I had lost the earring until bedtime. On Saturday we made our weekly jaunt to the rec. club. As I was dressing to go run I spied the earring (sans back) just sitting on the floor in front of my locker. So I happily picked it up and placed it in my locker. After running I changed and hustled the girls out to take Madeline to her dance class. At some point I realized that I forgot all about the earring. Knowing that I had taken everything out of my locker during my change I was certain the earring was no longer in my locker. Later that night we went back to the rec. club in order to take the girls swimming. Lo and behold the earring was sitting right in front of my locker again. This time I put the earring in my purse and brought it home.

Whilst cleaning the basement I was very happy to find the newspaper clipping from my high school graduation. Fwew! I had been losing sleep trying to figure out where that went. Now I can rest in peace.

Also, the dentist said that her mouth bump is normal and is due to irritation from her six year molar. I am still a little concerned so we'll watch that.

Interesting growth

We noticed an interesting growth in Madeline's mouth yesterday. Hopefully we'll find out soon what course of action we'll take. It looks like it may be a gingiva overgrowth.

Reading

Since we determined Madeline's reading "issue" we've focused on squishing her words together. Now that Madeline understands what her teacher wants she has totally changed her reading stype and now reads normally. She reads much faster and smoother. She adds inflection into her voice and is doing great. It's amazing what good direction can do for you. I lament that we shouldn't have waited so long to find the problem and move forward but fortunately Madeline has always excelled at language arts and is soaring forward. Which is just as I predicted in the meeting. Madeline enjoys reading more as well. Gofigure!

Report Card and Conferences

We had a mid-year conference with Madeline's teacher yesterday. It was a very good meeting. We learned some interesting things about reading and about Madeline herself! As we suspected Madeline is reading at a much higher level than her teacher placed her. She does need to work on speed and smoothness and now that we know the direction to move forward we are certain Madeline will thrive. Her readability and comprehension exceeds the year-end goal which places her in the top readers of her class, but she does not read fast and doesn't "squish" her words together. She is more mechanical with her reading which does not surprise me. Her problem solving has always lended itself to the mechanics. So that is good news! Everyone, including the linquist that attended the meeting, was surprised at how high her readability and comprehension was compared to her smoothness and speed. Once again Madeline is showing us exactly how much she is outside the box.

The other great news is that she is focusing on her tasks much better without being overly concerned about everyone else. She has a new assigned seat in the classroom for worktime. Apparently she prefers to kneel on the ground and use her chair as a work surface. And they let her complete her tasks in her own timeframe (to give her extra time for the details since she's extremely detail oriented). To our relief the teacher and the school will allow Madeline to be herself so she can reach her full potential. One of my biggest fears of public school has always been the "conformity" and it's nice to see that Madeline has challenged them enough to give her boundaries while letting her do things in the manner best suited for her. They called her a "Level 4 learner" which is to say that she always thinks outside the box. The linquist put it well: she finds every other way to accomplish a task than the one given. Maybe it is her way of making school more interesting! I love it! I love that she is able to think about things in so many different ways, is goal oriented and creative.

Oh, one other thing! I know you may find this incredibly surprising. The teachers made sure to communicate that Madeline's forte is art. Now that is a BIG surprise. Madeline starts a Pop Art class in a little over a week. It last for six weeks and ends with an art show. We'll keep you updated on that as time goes on...

January

We had our Christmas and birthday celebrations last Sunday. The girls had fun. Tony came with his girlfriend Chelsea. Mary, David and Ron came also. We ate cheesecake for dessert which was selected by Ron, but I heard some rumbling sadness about the lack of an ice-cream cake. Madeline and Annie liked the cheesecake though! They take after Ryan who loves cheesecake above all others.

The girls were very tired and both fell asleep in the car on the way home. I ran 6.5 miles that night. Unfortunately it was aroun18 degrees and too cold to run outside so I had to do the treadmill.

Running Log

On the right hand side of the blog layout I added a link to my running log. I just started it today and added what I could remember of my run two days ago. I still need a few running accessories to get myself 100% outfitted. I'd love to have a watch that is linked to GPS, tracks heartrate and speed. Ryan is getting me the NikeSport for my birthday which will have some of those things but not the heartrate information. I love my new insoles that help keep my pronating in check and the new midweight running pants I got in Boulder. Running in the mid thirty degree weather today was pretty easy with those pants. I was a little cold at the end, but not too bad considering the temp. I need to get some heavy weight pants soon though. Unfortunately Dick's doesn't carry very good gear. I will have to stop in the specialty running shop for those. Plus the Brooks pants have a little pocket in the back which holds my ipod perfectly! I did see two or three other runners this morning so I wasn't the only diehard on the trail. Tomorrow I am going to run around the local lake a couple of times for a 10k hopefully. Anyway, I just wanted to share the link to my running log!

Heading into the weekend

Just a quick note. I went running last night (my new running pants keep me VERY warm) and did Pilates today. The stuffiness is remaining very mild! I think it has to do with keeping fit. I am just glad it's not too bad. Madeline gets back to Spanish lessons today. Tonight we're headed out to dinner with Joyce and Steve to a local Mexican restaurant Hector's. We're looking forward to our monthly dinner with Joyce and Steve.

This weekend Madeline is back to yoga and dance and Annie goes back to dance class. It should be a very status quo weekend for us. I almost forgot! On Sunday we'll be celebrating birthday and post-Christmas with Ryan's family. We're celebrating birthday for JoLene, Ron II, Tony and myself. I guess we're moving toward celebrating birthdays in two waves; winter and summer. It will be a Mexican inspired weekend since we're having taco soup. Ryan made "chicken" enchiladas for our New Year's Day dinner. Good thing we all really like Mexican.

Happy New Year 2009

We have returned to see another year. We arrived home late Tuesday night to wildly rip open the rest of our Christmas gifts under the tree. Santa left Madeline a ride on beach racer and Annie a little wooden kitchen set complete with wooden tableware and food. They were both very happy with their Christmas this year and they had tons of fun in Colorado with their aunt, uncle and cousins. The cousins were very tolerant of our high energy want-to-play-all-of-the-time children! While in Colorado some of us played at the park, went running, ice skated twice, climbed in the mountains, went to a movie, baked cookies, stayed in the YMCA of the Rockies cabin, enjoyed the shops in Estes, and went mall shopping. It was a great vacation except I brought a little stuffiness home with me. That's okay because it's been six months since I've had any kind of sickness. Hopefully it will stay mild.

We rang in the new year by watching movies; Wall-E and the Dark Knight. Mary is coming over today to make cookies with Madeline. She and David spent yesterday morning with the girls too. I heard that Mary had fun riding the beach racer with Madeline. Ryan spent some time yesterday playing with his new Air Hog and Wii games. Today we've just been cleaning out some of the closets to help de-junk the inner depths of the house. I will post Colorado Christmas pictures later. Happy New Year to all!