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!