Matthew has loved playing with the DSi that Kaylee got for Christmas (when she lets him). Then also seeing what his friend could do with his when he came over for Matthew’s birthday convinced him to use a big chunk of his Christmas and birthday money to buy his own. After a torturous wait, it finally arrived a few days ago.
That rather freaky looking alien on his screen actually started out as a self-portrait Matthew snapped with the DSi’s camera.
Um, yeah. Creeps me out just a little bit. ;)
Matthew still has our old non-360 X-Box set up in his room, and it does get used from time to time, but one of the controllers has been out of commission for a while due to a stuck button. Mark decided to see if he could fix it. Getting to the problem spot required a much more complete disassembly than he expected, and he wasn’t sure he’d be able to get it back together, but he got it figured out. The surgery was a success, and the patient made a full recovery!
We had another movie night (which I somehow managed to stay awake for). This time it was “Despicable Me”. After it was over, we had a little time before the kids had to head to bed, so they put on the Spanish language version. Even though they understand very little actual Spanish, they were still quite disappointed when they had to shut if off.
(By the way, I’m not entirely sure my title is correct Spanish for “Despicable Children”. I don’t know much more Spanish than they do, so I Googled. LOL)
… and the cold won. Completely knocked on my butt by the worst cold or flu or whatever it is that I’ve had in ages. Lots and lots of ibuprofen, decongestant, antihistamine, tissues, and sleep.
Not sure what possessed Kaylee to put together this little number. The wig is from an old Daphne Halloween costume, and the Achy Breaky Heart hat is one she snagged from Great-Grandpa’s hat collection while we were visiting last summer.
Look number two is an old hat of mine from college (it was the ‘80’s and did not originally have that shape LOL), and a clown wig Mark used to wear back in the day when he did magic shows for kid’s parties. :)
It was a nice warm afternoon, so I agreed to take Kaylee to the park for a little while after school before Matthew got home. She spent most of the time playing on the basketball court, and then hit the playground for a bit, before heading back home (under very whiney protest) to start her homework.
A gloomy day for our visit to Children’s Medical Center to meet with Matthew’s new neurologist (we switched due to location), but it went great. The new doctor is very nice. He even patiently had Matthew go through a lengthy explanation/demonstration of the DS game he’d brought along to keep him busy while we waited. Since the meds seem to be working, he said he didn’t see any reason to do any blood work. Matthew, who had been very worried, was thrilled with that news and said afterward that I’d picked the right hospital. :)
My desk as I was prepping for Matthew’s appointment with his neurologist tomorrow morning. Rounding up hospital documents, directions, prescription info, and school schedule, so that we’d know whether to take him straight to school afterward or bring him home for lunch first.
I wanted to catch a shot of the Packers winning the NFC Championship, and had to go wide, since my zoomed in ones of the TV weren’t turning out. I’d planned to pick a shot to crop, but I realized this one also shows a nice chunk of our regular life that doesn’t often get captured in photos – one small part of the continually evolving chaos that is Mark’s magic room. That would be his foot and knee in the foreground, where he was sitting in his broken armchair to watch the game, letting the kids have the use of the family room TV. What a generous dad. :)
As a born cheesehead though, I also have to show a more team-spirited shot. Go Packers!!!
Kaylee was overtired and very cranky tonight, but refused the suggestion that she go to bed early. Mark then showed her the proper face she should be making if she was going to pout.
Hmmm… looks like she needs more practice. ;)
Mark got Kaylee’s DSi set up on our router tonight so that she could use the internet web browser. She and Matthew spent some time hitting their favorite online game sites, only to be disappointed when none of those games would actually play on the DSi. Looks like we’ve still got some research to do to find out if the browsing feature will actually have any usefulness for her.
This giant stuffed dragon, which we purchased for Matthew’s room before he was born, normally resides on the top bunk of Matthew’s bed. We had moved it up to the guest room during his sleepover last weekend, and today it made it halfway back to his room, landing in the family room.
Kaylee is in love with it and takes every opportunity to “ride” it. She decided it would make a good seat for watching an episode of “A Minute to Win It”, one of her current favorite shows, after school.
Just a girl and her brother’s dragon. :)
Matthew turned 12 today. He had quite a lot of homework, but we did celebrate this evening with a few small gifts and cards, the dinner of his choice (spaghetti), and a birthday pie. Yes, pie. Dutch apple, which Matthew says is the BEST kind of pie, with one candle. :)
End of a tedious day finalizing the yearbook cover design. Kids long ago in bed. Mark out late after his magic club meeting. I should have been heading to bed, but decided I needed to unwind by catching up on a little TiVo instead. So it was me in my socks and Christmas pj’s, too tired to pick up Matthew’s abandoned shoes in the middle of the floor. Chillin’ with an episode of “What Not to Wear”, and then dozing off during “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” before giving up and calling it a night.
The kids were off school today for Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Matthew spent all of his free time playing with a program called Flipnote Studio on Kaylee’s DSi. The program lets you create an electronic animated “flipbook”. Matthew’s friend S. had shown him a rather extensive one he had done Saturday night, so Matthew wanted to try it. He first had Kaylee show him what she had figured out how to do on her own, then dug more into the help file to figure out some of the other features. After a lot of time and effort, he ended up with about a 10-15 second animation with sound effects. The story doesn’t make a lot of sense without his narration, but it’s definitely very cool, especially for a first attempt, and he was very proud of himself for creating it. :)
Yesterday was my dad’s birthday. With all the chaos of trying to get ready for Matthew’s friends to come over, we didn’t get a chance to call him before they arrived, so we did a belated birthday video chat this evening. The kids were a bit wound up and being silly, but I managed to grab a photo in between them playing with the webcam’s special effects and squishing me while trying to get into frame. Happy belated Birthday, Dad! :)
Matthew had his friends J. and S. come over to spend the night for a pre-birthday party. They spent most of the time back in Matthew’s room playing video games. I went back to tell them supper was ready and found the three of them up in the corner of the top bunk, intently crowded around J.’s Nintendo DS.
I volunteered for the yearbook team at Kaylee’s school for the first time this year. Also for the first time (at least with the current group), they decided to do a custom cover instead of using one of the stock options. It’s a PTA production… just parents doing it, not the kids like a lot of high schools do. Since the gal doing the cover doesn’t have a lot of computer graphics experience, I offered to help out with implementing the design. So I pulled out Matthew’s old yearbooks to use as a reference and spent the day immersed in Photoshop.
Matthew, on the phone with his friend J., who had called him needing help with a problem on their math homework involving the area of a triangle and solving for an unknown. Matthew didn’t know how to do it either, so Mark helped him work through it, and then Matthew called J. back to tell him how to do it. Listening to Matthew’s end of the conversation, for some reason the phrase “the blind leading the blind” came to mind. ;)
They’ve been having “college week” at Kaylee’s school, and today was “favorite college shirt or colors” day. After insisting last night that she didn’t have a favorite school and wouldn’t participate, this morning she was dragging her feet and pouting over deciding what to wear. Normally, I would have just given her a lecture about not waiting ‘til the last minute and made her wear whatever was handy, but it was super-cold and she didn't have any really warm shirts clean, so I went and grabbed one of Mark’s old sweatshirts for her to wear. We had to roll the sleeves up about three times, but she was happy.
After school she used my computer to do her spelling homework. (And, yes, my desk is pretty much always that messy.) They have a website where the teachers input their list each week, and the kids can play games or take online tests to help them learn the words. It’s a fun site and is one of the few homework assignments Kaylee doesn’t complain about.
Matthew, home sick from school Day 2, but obviously feeling much better. He’s picked up a new catch phrase – whenever he’s minorly disappointed by something (like being told it’s time to start his homework or do his chores), he quickly responds by saying “sad face”, even if the expression on his face isn’t sad. Hardly a day goes by that he doesn’t say this at least a few times. I think it may have started with him PictoChatting with Kaylee on her new DSi, where they often send each other quick face drawings.
Matthew came down with some vague illness… achy all over, unusually tired, appetite off, and just a bit of a fever. He was upset when he found out he’d have to stay home from school, since they have so much work that it’s really difficult to get caught up if you miss anything. He spent most of the day on the couch, watching TV or playing Magic the Gathering with Mark, but then retreated to our bedroom to watch TV when Kaylee had to start her homework.
Mark’s poor grill, which he actually just used on Friday and unfortunately forgot to recover, suffering under a layer of frozen wet stuff. I awoke this morning to pouring rain, which by noon turned to snow. Such a weird transition. And it just somehow seems wrong that we even got snow at all. After spending the last part of December in “real” midwestern snow, I feel entitled to balmy weather back here. :b
(Note that while we deflated the kids pool, it never actually got put away. For some reason, I’m not expecting it to be in usable condition whenever the weather finds its way back to hot.)
It seems that Matthew has caught Kaylee’s case of camera-avoidance. I don’t remember either of them being this difficult last year. I wasn’t asking him to pose; I just wanted a candid. But all I got were shots of him hiding under the blanket, or alternatively, actively avoiding me, knowing I couldn’t get a decent shot without flash in the low light if he didn’t stay at least somewhat still.
{Sigh} I may have to switch to random object shots for a while until they’re ready to cooperate again. Either that, or I just need to figure out how to be sneakier. ;)
A typical school morning breakfast. Matthew has Nutrigrain Eggo waffles 95% of the time. Kaylee almost always has a high-fiber Kellogg’s cinnamon Pop-Tart, and she always has one or two out of the dozens of stuffed animals she sleeps with join her at the table. Don’t they look energized and excited and ready to face the day? ;)
Kaylee doing her daily required free reading. (Is that an oxymoron?) She still usually prefers to read aloud to one of us, rather than just silently to herself, so I got to listen to 20 minutes from one of the “My Weird School Daze” books. :)
Since Kaylee gets home from school so much earlier than Matthew, she’s well into her homework before he gets started, which really adds to the challenge of keeping her focused some days. Today she decided to procrastinate by crawling under the table while Matthew was eating a bowl of cereal.
School started back up today. Kaylee was in no mood to cooperate for pictures when she got home. She did everything she could to ignore me while watching a little TV before she had to start her homework.
We took down the Christmas decorations today. This set of plastic sugarplum ornaments are ones that my parents bought for my first Christmas (I think). It’s looking much plainer in here now, but it’s nice to have some breathing room again without the giant tree right by my desk.
