Ever since I started blogging I've been terrible at keeping up on my journal. I kept a journal in spurts while I was growing up, only recording memorable experiences like the first time I bobbed my hair, or the first youth dance I attended, where I danced with an older boy from my ward (a quote from that entry: ". . . and I think I am falling for him in a big way"--horrors!). But when I graduated from high school I started dating a boy who was, quite honestly, above my pay grade. He was ambitious and responsible and funny, and when he left for his mission he gave me a journal. After that I wrote in a journal every day until I got married and had kids and then it all went down the crapper. But then blogging came along, and I've been doing that, but it's not journal-ey stuff. I feel kind of bad about that.
Grant is adjusting so much better to big kid school than I did. I spent six years in a constant state of anxiety about lockers and friends and P.E. He is in my mom's class, being smart, making new friends, enjoying the cachet of being a locker user, and generally being the best he's been since he was born, I think. I always want a well-adjusted eleven-year-old at my house.
Emmett is gifted, LIKE YOU DIDN'T ALREADY KNOW THAT, sometimes practices the piano, and knows all the Value Tales backwards and front. I'm hoping he'll learn compassion and empathy, since currently he has all the signs of a Bond villain in the making. He is very happy, but he is the smartest bear in any given room.
Ike is motivated by positive reinforcement. When he wants to do something he begs and pleads and pesters like a dog with a bone. He will not shut up about it even when we make ridiculous threats, like "If you ask me one more time if you can play with a friend today, you will never have another friend over ever again.!" He has finally figured out syllables, which were just about the death of both him and me last year.
Willa loves school, and so far has only had to sit on the Naughty Chair once. There is a Power Pillow, which I remember from when Ike was there, but evidently Mrs. Jones has added the Naughty Chair--for especially egregious offenses, I guess. She sucks her fingers all the time, so I've started in with the Prince Charles technique (patent pending). It goes like this: "If you keep sucking your fingers you'll look like Prince Charles when you grow up." It worked like a charm to get Ike to stop sucking his thumb.
