tap!

Avery's got a dance show at school tomorrow night--a combination of polished choreographed pieces and more casual tap, ballet & jazz demonstrations from each of the three advanced classes.  The video above is just a tiny piece of the rehearsal for her tap class demonstration (the whole thing is 20 whopping minutes!).  I also taped her choreographed piece but it's about a billion meg so I have to decide if it's worth waiting all day for it to upload or not.  Stay tuned.

Oh, Avery is the one who looks all washed out, front row, to the immediate right (from your perspective) of the teacher.

aging

It's been fascinating the past six or so months to watch Josie trying to find her way in this household full of people who are, for all intents and purposes, grown-ups.  She acts most of the time as if she's about to be 17.  Not in a bad way, but in a confident, fearless sort of way.  She sees everything that everyone else is busy doing, and she has no doubt that she should have all those same fabulous opportunities, regardless of the fact that she's all of five.

The other night it was just her and me at home; everyone else was off at some function or another.  She asked if she could watch something on TV and since I was still halfway dead with the flu, I happily obliged.  Without thinking about it, she informed me that she was going to get on Hulu and watch Modern Family, season 4, episode 7... the one where Haley gets arrested.  Because that's her favorite episode ever.

Sometimes it's not easy seeing her grow up so fast.

And on the other hand, there are times when her attempts to make herself appear older than she is backfire and she just serves to remind us all what a youngin' she really is.  Josie's been obsessed with this game on her iPod called Draw Something.  I haven't ever tried it myself (so I really shouldn't be the one to tell the story, but it's too good not to share), but my understanding is that it's an interactive game wherein you're given a choice of three or four things to draw for your partner, much like Pictionary, on your mobile device.  The goal is to make the drawing as legible as possible so you and your partner can rack up the points.

Which is all well and good if you're playing with someone who can reliably draw, read and spell.

(That was a spoiler.)

Fast forward to this weekend.  Andrew is stumped, trying to figure out Josie's drawing (as everyone else in the city has been all week--the rest of the family will get random texts from people, asking us to ask Josie what her drawing is).  It's two half-moon shapes facing each other, with a line (or a crack, as it were) down the middle. 

Somehow, he determines after countless incorrect guesses, based on the jumbled up letter choices available as a hint, that the drawing is of BOTOX.  Perplexed, he goes back to Josie and asks her what she drew.  Very non-nonchalantly, she replies, "buttocks."

Most people might take this as a sign and stop playing this game with her, but no.  Everyone keeps going.  On a subsequent turn yesterday, she draws this random blue grocery-bag-looking thing with a jagged top, and makes a note that it's not the right color (this is where I get confused, but I think you have to pay to upgrade to a full color palette).  No one has any clue what it is, so I asked her directly.  "Broccoli," she tells me. "With a U." But the letters needed to spell broccoli, even with a U, are not available. 

Turns out it was BRUCE LEE.

Then there was the picture of two birds in a tree, one slightly higher than the other. 

HYBRID.

Of course.

down for the count

I've spent the better part (90%, give or take) of the past seven days in bed, with what is far and away the worst illness I've ever had.  It started as a typical cold about two weeks ago and then rapidly morphed into the full-blown flu as of Thursday.  Fever, chills, body aches, horrendous cough, sinus pain, earache, you name it.

I went to Urgent Care on Monday morning because I felt like I was trying (and failing) to breathe through a coffee stirrer, something that I've only ever experienced once before.  The doctor was very sympathetic, but told me there wasn't all that much she could do for me.  The infection is most likely viral so antibiotics won't help; the most she could do is treat the symptoms. So now I've got this mixture of medications that I'm rotating through, trying to overlap some of them and trying to separate others (very hard to keep it all straight with such a foggy brain, by the way).

I think I can say that today is the first day that I don't feel worse.  I wouldn't say I feel any better necessarily, but not feeling worse is welcome and I'll take it.  I managed to drop the kids off at school and pick them back up (with five hours of sleep in between), which felt like a big accomplishment.  If I can stay out of bed from now (3pm) until bedtime (7pm), that will be the longest that I've been up since last Wednesday.  Wish me luck!

calcaneal apophysitis

After 6 months of doing our best to manage his sporadic, sometimes intense heel pain, I finally took Cayden to see a real honest-to-goodness podiatrist yesterday.  I was sure he would be the youngest patient there by about 40 years and sure enough, he was.

The doctor was great.  He must either have an active son, or remember being an active child himself, because he totally "got" that sitting out for the whole basketball season in a walking boot wasn't really an option and that coming out of a game the moment his heel starts to hurt wasn't going to happen.  He checked Cayden's feet and legs out, took some x-rays, and told us that he's got something called calcaneal apophysitis, or Sever's Disease.  He also told us that Cayden's growth plate in his heel is abnormally low (most plates end at the back of the heel, whereas Cayden's curves down and under his heel), which is probably causing it to get inflamed easily.  He assured us that the pain should cease once his Achilles tendon grows a bit more and once the growth plate closes up.  He also gave us some good suggestions to try and manage the pain (very similar to what his pediatrician told us last summer).  He assured me that the chances are very slim that he will do any long-term damage by continuing his high level of activity even when he is experiencing pain.

The doctor thinks Cayden will eventually need custom orthotics to counter some pronation in his feet, very likely brought on by this consistent pain he's been having (basically, he's started walking/standing differently to ease the pain).

I asked if we should look into that now, and he said we would cross that bridge when we come to it.  I liked that answer.

united kingdom pics

I've spent much of the morning uploading Avery's photos from her trip.  And deleting at least half of them.  I have no idea why, but she takes every single picture twice, or three or four times.  I actually asked her if there was something wrong with her camera, because there are duplicates (or triplicates) of every last shot.  Her response was that she just wanted to be sure to get one that's not blurry.  Thank goodness she wasn't using film!

Here are a few pics that stood out to me, first from
St. Andrews, Scotland:

The ruins of St. Andrews Castle

St. Andrews Golf Course, one of the most famous in the world

Next from London, England:

The River Thames, Big Ben and the London Eye

My cousin's daughter, Lily, at Trafalgar Square

Buckingham Palace (no William or Kate sighting)

Platform 9 3/4, King Cross Station

And finally, back up north to Edinburgh, Scotland:

Edinburgh Castle

Greyfriar's Bobby