Six-ish months of posts

I really should title this “A year-plus of posts” because I really feel like it’s been that long since I’ve been really writing here. So I’m going to do a massive update post (with no pictures, because that is my big road-block lately) and try to get caught up.

Football started, school started, activities started, we went to Purdue for an away game, the Tigers made the World Series (Carson still loves baseball), Tigers didn’t win the World Series, Halloween, Mallory’s birthday, basketball season started (Carson still loves basketball), Thanksgiving, Christmas, trip to Tampa for the bowl game, Mallory lost her third tooth, we went to Key West and we went to Chicago.

Mallory

Mallory started first grade in September (and missed the first week of school because she had whooping cough). She is doing great – she loves everything about school, even MATH – which she claimed to not like earlier – she now says is one of her favorite things. They don’t get “grades” on her assignments, but they get smiley faces or stars when they get everything right, or a checkmark with a plus sign if she gets a one or two items wrong. We are so proud of her because she almost always has smiley faces and stars on her assignments and tests/quizzes. So I think she’ll probably be allowed to go to second grade next year. She reads EVERYTHING and I constantly need to do cleanup of the text messages on my phone so she doesn’t see words she shouldn’t.

Mallory started gymnastics in the fall of 2012, along with dance and swimming. As of this week, she is thisclose to testing out of swim class – just needs to nail breast stroke and a flip turn, and get her endurance up for butterfly and backstroke. Dance is dance (I really think she is just in it for the recital in June because she can wear makeup), and she looooooooves gymnastics. She is constantly doing handstands and lunges and it is amazing that she hasn’t hurt our tv or herself with the constant acrobatics in our living room. She even had a little fun meet in December – she LOVED it. I’m afraid for when she has to decide between dance and gymnastics (and I want her to do swim team!)

She loves to be in charge and be right so she must be my daughter. She can be so good with Carson most of the time – encouraging him and playing nicely with him, but then there are times where she is a bratty big sister and gets so irritated with him, which irritates me.

She mostly likes to wear skirts this year, which is a change from past years where it was all dresses all the time in preschool to part-dresses, part skirts in kindergarten. I’ve heard her say that her gym teacher told them they can’t wear dresses to gym class so I think she’s learning that her skirts that have shorts built in are the best thing to wear to school. We got her a pair of neon orange-y-pink jeans a few weeks ago and after wearing them four days in a row, she finally let us wash them. But it has renewed her interest in regular jeans, which makes Rick happy.

She LOVES to play outside in the snow, like she’ll get bundled up and go out by herself for 30 minutes (while Carson runs around the house in his underwear, refusing to go play with her…).

Carson

What can I say about my sweet boy? He continues to be so different than Mallory – he is grumpy just to be grumpy sometimes. At dinner time – he will refuse to even try something new, claiming “I DON’T WIKE DIS DINNER”, but when he finally has a bite or two, he announces “this is yummy!”, which means to me that he’s just being annoying about saying he doesn’t like it. Such a contrast to Mallory who will eat almost anything (she loves salmon and shrimp and lasagna and and and…).

Carson stated gymnastics in January. He looks super adorable running around in his mesh shorts and t-shirt with his class of girls in their little leotards. He’s also been doing rock climbing since last fall with his buddy Ben.

He is also doing great at school – he can count to 100+, and when we go through his alphabet book, he will tell me which of his friends’ names start with that letter of the alphabet. He can “read” the names of his friends on the nap board. His teacher (same one Mallory had) and I agree that we don’t remember Mallory being this good with letters and numbers at this age. He fancies himself a sportscaster because when we watch games on tv, he’ll constantly announce the score and who is winning. He finally figured out that if it’s a tie, neither team is winning (there was a time where he’d say “both teams have 10, we are winning!”), and there is no delay when telling us who is ahead. He also can tell you when a team is in the bonus and knows that is good. If a team has 47 points, he says that they have Jake Ryan’s number. He has a sweatshirt with a #9 on it, and he now calls it his Drew Dileo shirt. I asked him if Zoe (a friend a school who loves Michigan football too) knows who Drew Dileo is and Carson said she might, but that BenBen would really know who he is and so would Miss Paula.

Side story – Zoe’s mom posted this on facebook in February 2013 about a conversation she had with Zoe:
Zoe: Did C-dog say Denard could go to the Michigan store?
Me: does Carson tell him where he can go?
Zoe: yes, Carson is the boss of Denard. You didn’t know that?
Me: wow, Zoe you teach me so much.
Zoe: you’re welcome.

Last weekend when we were in Chicago, we had dinner with my cousin Whitney and her fiancé Imam. We talked a little football and about how Denard is graduating and Carson started to explain that he used to be the quarterback but then he hurt his arm at a game that was when it was dark and then he was only the runner after that.

My jaw dropped. I looked at Rick and he looked back at me and I said OhMyGod and Rick asked “when did Denard get hurt?” – it was the Nebraska game…a night game…and he never played quarterback after that. I promise you that while I love Michigan football and we watch all the games, we’ve never ever talked about when Denard got hurt. I’m sure we probably said he hurt his arm and Devin is the quarterback, etc, but for Carson to know that he hurt his arm in a night game? I don’t know that Carson was even awake when that happened! I’m guessing that in the course of us watching Inside Michigan Football or something, he saw that Denard got hurt and the footage of him on the ground when it was dark out, but it still just floors me.

miscellaneous

I call home almost every morning to check in before the kids go to school (we’ve finally gotten to where Mallory doesn’t need me to get her dressed before I leave for work at 6am!). Mallory usually answers the phone with a chipper “Hi Mommy!” and we have a quick conversation about what she has going on at school that day and what our plan is for after school. But on Thursday last week, I needed to talk to Rick too and shen he got on the phone, he told me that Carson asked why the phone was never for him in the morning. So I hung up and called back and Carson answered and said “Hi Mommy!”. I love hearing their voices in the morning, especially when it’s combined with happy attitudes :-)

One last thing – I sometimes listen to the radio on my headphones at work; whenever one of Mallory’s favorite songs comes on, I get a goofy smile on my face. Any time we are somewhere (at a basketball game or gymnastics meet, or waiting for swim class to start) and one of her favorite songs comes on, I *always* look over at her to see if she hears it too, and she *always* gives me a sideways glance with a little smile. Always.

Oh, one more last thing. Last weekend in Chicago, the kids and I were checking out the marketplace thing in the hotel lobby because I was in search of a coke. As Mallory & I stood in front of the coolers of Pepsi and Gatorade and bottled water and I realized they didn’t have Coke, Carson stood in front of the beer cooler and YELLED "BUT MOM THEY HAVE YOUR BWOO MOON!!!" (Blue Moon beer).

I said "cool but I really need a coke" and he tried to tell me I should just have a BWOO MOON right now.

It’s nice that he is observant and can pick my favorite beer out of a cooler of 10 different beers, but it was a little embarrassing because other hotel guests witnessed this exchange. Sure, I drink beer on some Saturday monrings in the fall, but come on, C-Dog. No throwing me under the beer bus, eh?

Well, I’m going to sign off here. Just got notice that my laptop battery has just 13 minutes of juice left and my charger is downstairs.

Good night, dear readers!