All the latest...

It currently is and has been a wacky week. Here goes:

Jake is still helmeted. His scan last week showed that he has made definite progress - enough so that if he looked like this 3 months ago we never would have started the process and they would consider him a success even if we quit right now (and we had the option). But, his head could look even better if went longer, so we are. We were both looking forward to chucking that smelly piece of plastic, but instead we've set a definite final date for this: March 23, Jake's 1st birthday. Here's a pic of Jake all getting ready for his scan, with the stretchy stuff to hold his hair down:



Other stuff:

• Jake is starting to climb stairs and is getting into everything in general
• Annika lost another tooth
• My LEGO set sold on eBay for $261.50 (crrrrrazy), spiking in the last few minutes
  
• Yesterday was a snow day for everyone (even Ferris), but we still took Annika to piano lessons. The temp dropped from 47 degrees to 7 degrees over 9 hours during the night, and it came with high winds and blowing snow.
  
• Lisa is gone for a couple days to a conference, by far her longest separation from Jake
• Later today I'm babysitting our friends' two girls too, so once Annika gets home from school I'll have five kids on my own
  
• I went to Father's night with Abby last week - it was safari-themed, and lots of crazy preschool fun
• Last Sunday our family had nursery duty, parking lot duty, reading-in-church duty, and kids' choir duty over the course of two services
  
• Mark and Lizzy gave us some old furniture, so now we have a couch in the basement, and potentially a recliner, if I can fix it
• Mom came and took Abby to dance class today, while I stayed home with Jake
• I've been up to Ferris way more than normal lately because we have candidates for the math department head interviewing, and I'm on the search committee
• Annika has a birthday party to go to on Saturday, and
• Many of the Dekker's are coming to our house on Sunday for soup after church - it's "1st-Sunday-of-the-month-dinner-at-Grandma's", but at our house.

There might be more...yeah, the SuperBowl is Sunday! Last year I ventured out into the aftermath of an ice storm to watch it with friends. I'm hoping for better conditions this year.

OK!

Clarification...

Due to unexpected hostilities by my husband I am under orders to clarify that I wrote the blog entry yesterday concerning Abby's wiping. I did not yet know how to log on as myself and this was my first ever post (I'm still not even sure how I did it!). Mike helped me get in this screen today. So, MIKE DID NOT WRITE the previous blog. LISA DID (and she's darn proud of it!). So there... hehe. :)

Yet Another Conversation with Abby

Three years old is definitely an interesting age. Abby can be both simultaneously adorable and mischievous all at the same time!

Background: Yesterday while getting ready for bed Abby went to the bathroom. She stood up and looked directly at Lisa and said, "I wiped!" Lisa looked into the toilet and there was no toilet paper there. She had deliberately lied! As a result, her computer privileges were taken away for today. The following two conversations were a result of that incident:

(directly following the incident)
Mike: Abby, pick out the book you want me to read you before bed.
Abby: The lie book. I need it!

(this morning after Abby used the bathroom)'
Lisa: Abby, did you wipe?
Abby: Yes.
Lisa: Are you telling me the truth?
Abby: Today?

Lunchtime Conversation

Lisa and Abby were telling a variety of knock-knock jokes at lunch, and it climaxed with this one:

Abby: Knock-knock!
Lisa: Who's there?
Abby: Mouse!
Lisa: Mouse who?
Abby: Mouse in your butt!
Lisa (sternly): No!
Abby: I mean buns.

THE END

Christmas Break Fun

Right now it's halftime of the Jacksonville-Pittsburgh NFL wildcard game. For the first time ever, I just saw one of my former students at Notre Dame sack the Steeler's quarterback and intercept a pass. I had him in Math 107 during the spring of 2003.

Anyway, we made it through the Christmas marathon, including a trip to Chicago that got extended due to bad weather. For New Year's Eve we hung out with friends that also have lots of little girls, and Annika and Abby got to see the ball drop. The next day we had lots of tired family members, and later in the day the whole family was sleeping except for me, including all three cats and our friends' dog that we were looking after. It was right during the end of the Michigan-Florida game, which was nice for me. In the past few days we've been trying to get the our sleeping schedules back on track for school.

During break we've also gone bowling and done some sledding. The park behind our house actually has some kid-sized decent hills, although when the snow is packed down and the sleds go far there are lots of obstacles to run into, like cement walls, bike racks, and trees. Annika actually went over the largest sledding ramp that some kids had built into the hill that I've ever seen. Fortunately, she wasn't going too fast - she mostly went up the ramp and then dropped off the end - a good two foot drop. She wasn't very happy with the result.

In other news, Jake's head is filling out his helmet real nicely, so that in three weeks they're actually going to rescan his head, and he might be done - after only 12 weeks, a pretty minimal amount of time for this sort of thing. We'll see how it actually turns out.

School starts for Lisa and the girls on Monday, and work essentially starts for me, too.

Thaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaats' all for now.