Chopper

Our upstairs neighbors are extremely hip. They have three kids, and the oldest one (who wears Prada clothes to third grade) just got a new bike. Vincent has been coveting all of the kid's bikes in our building (there are two third graders, two kindergartners, and one one year old in the two condos above us), but Duncan's is by far the coolest. So when he got a new one, Duncan and his folks told Vincent that he could start riding Duncan's Old Bike (this is what Vincent calls it). So we put training wheels on it and that's how we've been spending every afternoon after school. We get home around 5, and Dan takes V out on the bike, he rides it over to the track around the corner and goes around the track. Yesterday I took him as Dan had a defense so he couldn't get home before 6:30, and V pretty much rode the whole way around the track by himself!

I don't have pictures because we still haven't gotten a new camera yet (it's been broken since our trip to Florida to visit Mom and Paul in MARCH!!!), but here is a picture of the bike from Amazon. See what I mean about our hip neighbors?

I also only have a few minutes before V wakes up, so you'll have to cut and paste this link, as I don't have time to figure out how to put a link in. Jil? A little help?

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/images/B000F9777U/ref=dp_image_0?ie=UTF8&n=3375251&s=sporting-goods

First sick day, though I'm not sure it wasn't first nightmare day

V usually sleeps like a rock, twelve hours, 7 to 7 every night. Last night, though, he started hollering and crying for me at 10 (which was actually after I had gone to bed). I went in and he was so sad so I put him on my lap and cuddled him, and he was SO hot. I thought he might have a fever, and he was asking for a drink of water, so I called for Dan who brought in water, Motrin, and the thermometer. Too bad the thermometer battery was dead, but we gave him the Motrin anyway, and sent Robbie to the drugstore to buy a new one (he was hanging out playing video games when this all happened, so it wasn't like I woke him up. Though he probably would have gotten up for V). By the time he got back with a new thermometer, V didn't have a fever, and went back to sleep (though he woke up a bit later having to go to the bathroom, good job on not peeing in your sleep, buddy!). We decided that if he had a fever this morning when the Motrin wore off, we'd keep him home.

So this morning, I go in at 7, when we would normally be getting cereal and getting ready for school, and he's still out cold. I took his temp again and it was totally normal, but he was so sleepy, I just let him sleep and Dan agreed to stay home with him today and we'd see how it went. Well, he slept til 8, and today told Dan all about how the reason he was hollering for me was that he had had a terrible nightmare, and I needed to go help him because the big bad wolf was climbing up his crib four times, FOUR TIMES!, and I needed to put the rail down to squash it. (And yes, he is still in a crib, I have gotten new linens for his big boy bed, and we've tentatively picked it out, but we need to go to the store and look at it as a family, which Dan couldn't do last weekend, something about a hundred mile bike race..., but we ARE going this weekend. I promise we are not trying to stunt his development or something. )

So apparently he got a day off from school because of nightmares. It gets better: our preschool instituted a policy that if a kid has a fever and a cough (and V always seems to have a cough lately), then the kid must stay home for TEN DAYS. (They better be counting weekends too). So even though I didn't know for sure, the fact that I said "I think he did, though he's fine this morning" when they asked me if V had a fever, well that could mean I'm working from home at least part of the time for the next week and a half. We'll see. Fortunately I'm not teaching so I won't be dropping the ball for my students. So it's possible he gets a week and a half off from school thanks to the big bad wolf.

In other news: the beluga whales are pregnant at the Shedd Aquarium, where Robbie is doing his internship. They're literally about to go any moment. So we're sitting around tonight and every time his phone buzzes with a text message or email we call out, "Beluga babies?", but no dice. He's very excited and nervous. It's pretty funny.

Saturday morning

Hi there,

Yesterday when I dropped V at school the morning teacher told me that he is the best block builder she'd ever seen. :) Apparently he goes straight to the blocks in the a.m. and just has these ideas in his head of towers and buildings and builds these really beautiful symmetrical things while all the other kids who play with the blocks pile them up haphazardly. She said he's a little engineer.

I thought the grandparents (and uncle) would like that little bit of bragging.

(To balance it out, he also got in big trouble yesterday at school for calling his friends names, laughing when he was told to stop and ignoring the teacher, and generally not listening. Yep, my superstar...)

Holy cow start a new job and three months disappear!

I will try to write more regularly, people. :) I have ten minutes before I have to get ready for bed, so here is a gem from today's car ride home. We left school an hour late because I had a parent's council meeting. Normally if Vincent is good at school (listens well, keeps his hands to himself, takes a good nap, etc. etc.) we stop at the drive-through Baskin-Robbins and get him a little kid's cone on the way home. He usually eats about three bites then either Dan or I get to finish it. But tonight, there was just enough time to get home and eat dinner, so when Vincent asked if we could go for ice cream, I said that we were really late but we would go tomorrow. Well all hell broke loose and he cried and cried and I told him I was SORRY and we'll have ice cream after dinner at home, until finally he wailed "IT JUST DOESN'T MAKE SENSE!!!" Which I had never heard him say before so I asked him, "What? What doesn't make sense?" And he goes, "I didn't dump any wood chips in the water fountain, but I'm NOT GETTING ANY ICE CREAM!!!!!!! It doesn't make sense!" I don't know if you find this as funny as I did. I've never heard him use the word "sense", much less exactly properly, so I was blown away. But before you feel badly for him, we came home, he ate a huge meal of awesome pulled pork tacos his dad had made, and then he got a piece of chocolate AND a bowl of the last of the homemade mango sorbet. :)