Catch-Up

We’re still here; it’s just been busy and we all ended up with a cold. No one has done any formal academics. I am going to give the boys one more checklist for them to finish in the next week and then we will switch to summer schedule.

Aidan turned 8! On Saturday, but he was sick that day. We had his celebration on Monday. His main present was a Walmart umbrella stroller. He has longed for one of these for the longest time. He rides in it occasionally (he’s small for 8) but the main motive for wanting it is so that he can push it everywhere — upstairs, downstairs, and on the driveway. Our guess is that he loves to see the wheels move PLUS it provides a very slight balance assist for him, which makes it easy for him not to “posture” when he’s walking. We know the posturing bothers him — a matter of his hand flying up in the air to compensate for his unevenness of gait — because often he lodges the hand behind his back like Napoleon.

He is thrilled with his CostCo cake — our unhealthy and supersized-America birthday tradition here.

Monday was a bit of a nightmare because after seeing the dentist (Brendan and Clare) and orthopedist (Aidan) and running to all kinds of stores to get various things we needed, on a very hot valley day, we headed back up our mountain, and lost power partway up. We didn’t have our cell phone, because I had ever-so-sensibly suggested Kevin take it out when we brought the car to the shop last week, and he had forgotten to put it back in. The CHP man (who is our neighbor, incidentally) eventually swung by and told us it was vapor-lock. Our fuel had gotten hot enough so that our Chevrolet wasn’t reading its presence. He told us to wait 30 minutes and try again. A forest ranger gave the little boys some water bottles (we had already drunk our water) and we waited on the (hot) hill on the other side of the guard railing. That was fun– not.

After the car got going again we headed back up the hill, but it happened again a couple of miles from our house. This time our librarian saw us and offered to take me and the little ones home. We gratefully accepted, though Aidan was pretty nervous about abandoning Kevin. We expected them to follow in 10 minutes or so but it took 30 minutes. We only have the one car so it was sort of a helpless feeling — I almost asked our neighbor to drive me down but finally they showed up.

Tuesday we brought the car back to the shop and it’s still there. So Tuesday let me nurse my cold and catch up a bit on stuff around the house, but mostly the former.

I ought to just have a catch-up category for summer. There doesn’t seem much to write about learning notes these days. Paddy and Aidan are progressing in literacy — I found my Firefox’s desktop icon changed to “paddy” and Paddy has been asking me to point to words as I read them to him, and yesterday was pointing to words and pretending to sound them out.