Riley and Avery

I had a conference regarding Avery at her school yesterday. Just a routine catch-up on what the new kids have been doing so far. They say she is an absolute delight and "really, really bright." The teacher talked a lot about Avery's pencil grasp, as it is quite unorthodox. They said that her drawing, painting, and writing are all above normal, so they don't want to mess with her grasp, which I am totally onboard with. She said that she has a pincher-grasp, just seems to have found a better way to hold her pencil. It does really frustrate her when someone tries to correct her grasp. Her school is of the mind that changing it would interfere with her creativity and such. They also said that she could order the Color Box 3 without any difficulties at all, which is very difficult for her age, and is something that most elementary schoolers can't even do. Honestly, I've tried it and can't do it :) She just has the perfectionist artist's eye. She also knows letters and numbers far beyond what is expected of her age, which I attribute to "playing" in that school for the past three years while Riley was attending, and just absorbing things as Riley learned them.

Speaking of Riley, she is really blossoming as a reader. The director of her school said that every once in a while they have a Kindergartener that really "gets" reading. Last week, after storytime, she sprawled out on the floor with books and just started reading them. Wow.

However, because she's so into reading, she's not doing all that much math work at school, it seems. Remember that Singapore math curriculum that I was so excited to get? A long time ago? Yeah, we haven't started it yet. Need to do that! Riley is really into games right now, and we're running out of games to play sometimes, so I made up my own game to teach her about money. I got four little cups and filled each with quarters, dimes, nickles, or pennies. I got a 20-sided dice (die?) from the school store. We take turns rolling the die and take however many cents we rolled from the cups. As we got more change, we would trade the small coins in for the larger coins. At first, if Riley rolled a 9, she would just take 9 pennies, and then I'd teach her to trade in 5 pennies for a nickle, and so forth. She caught on really fast, and in no time at all could get the right change without trading. She also realized very quickly that if she collected, say, two dimes and a nickle, she could trade for a quarter. Fun stuff. Of course, we still have to reinforce the idea, but she caught on faster than I thought she would!

Math seems to come easy to Riley, but just doesn't interest her. She's been doing simple multiplication and division on her own. She will just randomly say that 5 times 4 is 20. Or that if we buy 12 doughnuts (yeah, right!) we each could have 3, or if we ate them when Daddy was sleeping, the three of us could each have 4 (LOL how sneaky!), etc. I know for an absolute fact that she is not doing multiplication or division in school, so I don't know where she's picking it up.

I have started looking into preschools in Maine for Avery. There are some really nice ones there, totally earth-based, many are mixes of Montessori, Waldorf, and Emilio Reggio. I am not totally sold on sending her, especially since it will cost us quite a bit, but Rudi is pretty set on sending her. I guess requesting information never hurt anyone. Being unsure of where we will actually live, and what Riley's school schedule will be, it's hard to determine where, or if, to send Avery. I mean, there's a really really really awesome-seeming school (River School House) which has tuition similar to what we would have now, but it's in a town just a tad north of Portland. Not too shabby as long as Riley's school starts at a different time, or if she rides the bus, or if we actually end up living in South Portland rather than Portland proper. There's just so much we don't know yet. And our move is only 6 months away! Yikes!

Speaking of money, there is another 100% disabled veteran in one of my classes this semester. During one of the first classes, we had to introduce ourselves, and he went first. When I introduced myself, I mentioned that Rudi was also 100% disabled and that I was getting educational VA benefits too. After class he stopped me and asked if Rudi was collecting Social Security Disability. I told him that we applied and were denied. He said that everyone is always denied at first, but if you request a hearing, the judge will never go against what the VA has already determined. He said that disabled veterans don't even need a lawyer, that's how clear-cut it is. The rationale is that the VA has already really tried to find a veteran not disabled, that once they finally do find a veteran 100% disabled, there's nothing that SS will do to counteract that. Nice! However, we had 60 days to appeal the denial, and it's been just a tad longer than that, so we have to start over. There's a good chance that this won't be taken care of before we move, but thought that there's no harm in trying. If it doesn't get finished, we'll just start again in Maine. No biggie.

No one will care, but anyway...I seem to have grocery-shopping induced alzheimers, because I have forgotten to pick up dishwasher detergent for weeks now. So, back to washing by hand. This prompted me to figure out if washing by hand is really more water-conserving as I originally thought it was. Well, come to find out that the average full-size dishwasher uses only 3-4.5 gallons of water. So, how much do I use when I handwash? I try to be economical when I handwash, as in, not letting the water simply run as I am rinsing. I fill one sink up for pre-soaking, using 2.5 gallons of water (I measured it!) and I fill the other sink about 2/3 way with water for rinsing, using again 2.5 gallons of water. Right off the bat, I've used more water than my dishwasher uses. When handwashing, I also rinse the dishes. Yes, we rinse as well when washing in the dishwasher, but I am wagering that I rinse less when putting dishes in the dishwasher. I'll even leave that water usage out of the equation so to give handwashing the benefit of the doubt.

Now, I use the dishwasher as a drying rack when I wash by hand, so it is very easy for me to tell that each time I handwash dishes, I can only wash 1/3 to 1/2 the dishes that my dishwasher would be able to hold. Even assuming that I can use one or the other of the sinks-full of water again, I am still using way more water handwashing than using the dishwasher. WAY more. So, 2.5 gallons for one sink, and 1.25 (assuming that I can use one of the sink fulls twice, so 2.5/2) times 2 again (because I wash half the dishes that my dishwasher could wash at once) equals 7.5 gallons of water to wash by hand the same amount of dishes that fit into my dishwasher, which is approximately twice the water used in a dishwasher. Huh!

But, you say, what about the energy that a dishwasher uses? Isn't the water super-heated in a dishwasher? This I cannot calculate on my own, so I turned to this site:
http://1greengeneration.elementsintime.com/?p=314
Turns out, using the dishwasher also consumes less energy. So, dishwasher, I've missed you!!!

I know I'm behind...

My car broke down yesterday. Yippee. Well, not really broke down in the purest sense, but became un-drivable :) We were about 1/3 of the way to school yesterday (but not on the highway yet, thank goodness!!) and I noticed that the car was overheating. Like, a lot. As in, ON the H, past the red zone. Not good at all. I turned around and stopped the car to let it cool off. I started it again and got 1/4 mile until I had to stop again. Rinse and repeat. Finally, I could do it no longer. I pulled into a parking lot (more on that later) and parked, bundled the kids up and started walking home. Where was Rudi, you ask? Here's the thing, Riley HAD to have a specific pair of shoes out of his car that morning, so I took his key (we only have one) and instead of putting it back in the house, I put it in my pocket, knowing that Rudi wouldn't need it that early in the morning. Yay, me! We were about a 1.5 miles from home, so it wasn't too bad, except that it was in the 20's. The girls were fine, since I had their winter stuff with me, but I just had my jacket liner over my short-sleeved shirt. My toes were freezing. I, of course, had neither a stroller nor a carrier with me, and her majesty Avery would only walk, maybe, 1/4 of the way.

Anyway, Rudi thought that perhaps it was the serpentine belt, but when I looked at it, it looked fine, no obvious wear or cracks, and it was still there afterall. Plus, there was no tell-tale squealing to let me know the S-belt was on the fritz, or slipping. So, we're thinking that it is the thermostat. The thing is, my car has always run cold, for as long as I can remember. The heat was never quite warm. Now the heat stopped working all together. I'm thinking that the thermostat was going bad for a while, hence the car running cold, and finally gave out altogether.

I DON'T think it's the radiator. I really want it to not be the radiator. I've had quite a few radiators go out on me, and it's just not like that this time. Every other time I've had radiator problems, driving faster cooled the engine, as did running the heat to alleviate the heat on the engine (which was always fun in 100 degree weather!). With radiator problems, the engine seems to get hotter while idling. This time, the car gets hotter by driving. See my thinking here?

Anyway, back to the parking lot. I parked outside a store called Crystal's. I thought it was a lingerie store. Turns out it's more than that :) I was about to go in to let the shopkeeper know that my car broke down and to please not tow it, we'll come for it, etc. but I had the kids with me. There was signage and all that they check ID's, etc. So I went to the hearing aid store next to them and told them my sad tale instead. BUT, I had to go back to the car later to get my school books out it, and decided then to tell the folks at Crystal's my problem, since my car was parked directly outside of their store. As I'm going in a mother, her 5-6 yo. daughter, and what looked like Grandma were coming into the store. A 5yo!!! It's a women's toy store if you catch my drift! Really? What is wrong with people? Anyway, the salesgirl turned them away, but still. So, long story short, my car is parked outside an adult store, and that'll be fun information to share with the towtruck driver!

So, I have my money on it being the thermostat, but then there's the whole separate problem of what damage was done to the engine by the overheating. Ugh. In the end, though, I am so grateful that my first three cars were beaters. You learn a lot about cars by owning cars like those. There's just stuff you can't learn with a car less than 10 years old. I think those experiences have prevented me from getting ripped off on numerous occassions, saving me perhaps thousands of dollars in the long run. If your parents buy, or help you buy, a car less than 10 years old, you're really missing out on some valuable lessons!! I argue, well debate, this with Rudi all the time. He wants the kids to have dependable cars. I mean, I don't want my kids stranded in the middle of the desert in a broken-down car, but really, they need the experience of maintaining and repairing cars, especially being girls. I will help them, perhaps, buy a "nice" 8-10 year old car, but he wants them to have newer cars. No way. I know, it's a long way off...They're already brainwashed to prefer Toyotas! Oh, yeah! LOL.

We had actually never been to Focus on the Family, in spite of hearing great things about their (free) play area. Riley really liked the super-huge slide (it was stories high, I don't know how she could handle it). The Narnia portion really got the girls interested. Riley and Avery enjoy it because they said it reminds them of Grandma and Grandpa. Since their visit, we've read The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe (in record time, they request readings several times a day) and watched the movie a few times as well (it conveniently came on the Disney channel right as we were finishing the book). We've since started Prince Caspian, and hope to see that movie too as soon as we're done. Avery requested a Renaissance-style dress like Lucy and Susan wear in the end of the movie. I was going to make her one anyway for the Renaissance fair, and even have a pattern that I think is close enough. Lucky.

Anyway, it was a very neat play area. Avery was kind of in a snit that morning for who knows what reason, so she was a bit of a pill. We left Grandma and Grandpa there for a bit while we went home and did something-or-another (I forget now, probably grocery shop or something). We met up again to go to Manitou Springs later that same day.

No visit to Colorado Springs is complete without a visit to the Garden of the Gods. Nice days are few and far between in January, but we thought we had a good one. It was decently warm enough in the sun, but passing into shade was quite cold. Poor Grandma and Grandpa, being dragged around outdoors in the cold! We managed to get in a decent walk before driving the rest of the way in the car and stopping in to the trading post.

Not that anyone cares, but I noticed that I have 400 posts already published. Neat-o! So even though my posts are sporadic at best, at least I've stuck with it, right?

I have a lot of blogging to catch up on, so here goes...

I guess first up is Grandma and Grandpa's visit, which will probably take several posts, so we'll start with Riley's birthday ceremony.

Well, I guess we'll start from when Grandma and Grandpa surprised Riley and Avery at school on that Wednesday (January 6th). The girls were kind of stunned. Riley kept giggling. Avery got shy for a minute. Riley said that she didn't recognize Grandma and Grandpa at first, because they were so skinny (I somehow forgot to tell Grandma and Grandpa this, so there it is!). The girls showed them around their school, a lot. There were some dicey moments, like allowing Grandma and Grandpa to go back to their hotel room so they could, heaven forbid, actually get some sleep, and understanding that Grandma and Grandpa had to drive in their own car (I have lately been envious of those with mini-vans).

Anyway, birthday ceremony:







Typical birthday ceremony, really. This is Riley's fourth Montessori ceremony, so we're getting to be pros. Riley insisted on a fruit salad (sans pickles, thank goodness!) which was nice, but quite expensive in January to buy cantaloupe, honeydew melon, strawberries, grapes, and blueberries. But, she's the birthday girl, no? And I suppose it was nice for the peanut-allergic boy in her class to actually safely eat some.

Friday after the ceremony, there was no way we would be able get Riley to school, with G'ma and G'pa in town, so we skipped it. Just seemed cruel to make her go!