Monthly Archives: October 2014

School Pictures and Pediculus humanus capitis

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It’s been a busy couple weeks here in San José since our last post: the kids did their annual school walkathon; Julia has started doing Girl Scouts in earnest once again; Joe has been practicing his clarinet like crazy in the hope of being promoted to advanced band; both of the older kids and Julie came down with head lice; and I’m trying a new brand of shampoo, because the kind I’ve been using for the last thirty–odd years has been found to cause cancer.

It was Julia’s sixth and final walkathon, and rather than go all-out in an effort to finally hit the 25-mile award level, she decided to take it a little bit easy and enjoy her last time around the track with her friends. Of course, many of her friends were going all-out, but Julia cruised to the 15-mile level and called it a day.

Joe made it all the way to 20 miles (including the 5-mile bonus for playing soccer during the day), albeit with a little extra urging from yours truly. He was ready to stop after about 17 miles—his feet hurt, which was unsurprising considering his gym shoes were falling apart—but he changed back into his soccer cleats and kept going, at least as long as William and I kept him company. He got a snazzy stainless steel water bottle for his trouble; I feel like should have earned some kind of prize for carrying William around for at least half of that distance, but alas, my only reward was a very deep sleep Saturday night.

We’re unsure where the kids picked up lice, but we suspect it may have arrived in our little home on the head of William’s babysitter’s son. Regardless of how the little bugs got here, it was probably our turn: lice have been running rampant through the classrooms at Booksin for at least the last five years. Things have been bad enough that the kids have been urged to bring their own headphones to use in the computer labs. Somehow William and I have avoided the scourge thus far, though dealing with the treatment process (hours and hours of repetitive combing) has been no walk in the park. Julia was especially disappointed, because her infestation resulted in her missing her first-ever day of school.

With head lice hopefully behind us, Julia has joined a new Girl Scout troop and is diving headfirst into earning badges. This weekend, she worked on her basic cooking badge, which involved creating two delicious meals: for brunch this morning, she made chocolate chip pancakes with bacon and apple slices; and for dinner, she made a Nebraskan staple, runzas. Sometime in the next couple weeks, I’m on the hook to help her with the digital photography badge: we are supposed to spend a few hours reading and watching videos about photography online. Given my paucity of knowledge and skill, I’ll probably learn nearly as much as she does.

As alluded to by the title of this update, the kids’ school pictures came in this week, and we’ve updated their albums. Julia’s turned out very nicely, as did Joe’s, with the caveat that he had a pretty nasty case of dry, irritated skin around his nose and mouth on picture day: he had a cold that week, and had spent the previous several days fighting a running nose and licking his lips. In a very rare move for me, I’ve actually retouched his picture a bit, because the original was physically painful to look at.

We’ve also updated William’s vital statistics from his one-year checkup last month. He’s tracking around the 75th percentile for height and the 55th percentile for weight, so he’s a healthy, growing boy. We’re still waiting on a definitive first word, though.

In uploading this year’s portraits, I noticed that we never added last year’s class photos. I’m not sure what happened there, and will do some digging to see if they turn up.

Julia’s Birthday & Back to Booksin

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It’s been a busy fall since we returned from our trip to Texas. The kids started school in mid–August—which seems awfully early to me—and Julia had her tenth birthday at the end of the month. As she has pointed out on many an occasion since then, she is no longer a “little girl”: she is in double digits. To celebrate, we have pictures.

Both of the older kids are gradually acclimating to their new classes. Julia seems to have clicked with her teacher, Mrs. Kammann, and has been doing a reasonably good job of getting her work done in class and at home: so far, there have been many fewer battles over homework this year than last year. Of course, some of that may be down to the fact that there seems to be less homework than there was last year, but a positive step is a positive step.

Joe got off to a bit of a rocky start the first couple weeks of school with his teacher, Mr. Alderette, and threw several of what we unaffectionately call baby fits; the name comes from one of his preschool teachers, which should give you a pretty good idea of what kind of behavior we’re talking about. One such incident was bad enough that the school actually called me at work to let me know what had happened: Joe got frustrated that he hadn’t finished a particular project when Mr. Alderette told the class that time was up, and Joe flatly refused to comply. Eventually, the office was called, and the assistant principal had to take Joe out of the classroom to give him a chance to calm down.

That was about a month ago, though, and Joe seems to have adjusted his behavior in the weeks since. We’ve been checking in with jim on a daily basis to see how he’s been doing, and it seems as though things are slowly getting better. He has always had a bit of a hard time dealing with situations in which things go poorly, whether it’s getting problems wrong in class or striking out in baseball, and we’re focused on helping him learn how to deal with those kinds of truly inconsequential failures.

In the meantime, Joe has been working extremely hard to come up to speed on the clarinet. We’re just a few weeks into his first year of band, and he has already progressed to the point that Julie has been encouraging him to try out for the advanced band as soon as tryouts begin. He derives a tremendous amount of pleasure from learning how to play the notes he needs to get through each of the songs, and he keeps pushing ahead every time he practices. He has made a tremendous amount of progress in a very short time, and it’s been delightful to see him working so doggedly to achieve his goals.

Finally, at some point in the last week—it’s hard to say exactly when, because the older kids have been at home for fall break, and things have been chaotic around the house—William took his first, halting steps on his own. He first did it for me yesterday, at Joe’s soccer game, and I managed to capture a few seconds on video, which I’ll edit and upload later. He still has a ways to go before we can really say that he’s walking, but this is an exciting development nonetheless. He remains pretty quick on all fours, so that somewhat reduces his incentive to get up and walk, but I’m sure he will be very happy to be able to chase his big brother and sister around more effectively.

Gallery: Julia’s Birthday & Back to Booksin.