What the kids have been doing lately

Some actual personal content! How about that!

The kids started taking swimming lessons again after a 9 month hiatus. They swim after school once a week at a great new place that we found. It's an older facility, but it has a heated pool and small class sizes - only 4 kids per class and sometimes there are 2 instructors. Ben and Anna are both enjoying it. I learned how to swim at an early age and would like the kids to swim confidently too.

Anna takes a dance class once a week. Half the time they do tap dancing, and the other half is ballet. I think Anna prefers the ballet so far. They have a recital planned in a couple of months.

Ben continues to do well in first grade. He's really thriving in math and reading. They do a math quiz every day(!), just like when I was in high school! And, just like when I was in high school algebra, when they get a high enough score, they move up to the next quiz. He's already on G, I think. Hopefully he can make it to the double letter just like Daddy. :) Ben is an excellent reader and does a lot of reading on his own, albeit always about Bionicles. And we've been reading at bedtime since he was a baby.

Ben is in Cub Scouts and I'm the den leader. It's an interesting experience since I was never a scout myself. We have great families in our den and we're having a good time. We recently visited the Elgin Public Museum which has a lot of Indian and early historic artifacts, plus a lot of (dead) animals on display. They also have some (live) bison. We also visited a radio station and the fire department, and it is neat to see how they work. Most of this stuff is more interesting for the parents than for first graders. We live near FermiLab and personally I can't wait to visit there.

Anna is in her first year of Montessori preschool. She's doing fine and has made friends. I no longer need to peel her off my leg when I drop her off. She has some good friends in our neighborhood too. We feel that she should be learning more at school than she is, but I have a vague feeling that we felt the same way about Ben, and he really did most of his learning (how to read, for example) in his second year of preschool. Anna went to a friend's birthday party, which was a dress-up tea party and a lot of fun. Anna's birthday is coming up and we may do the same thing.

We had quite a bit of snow on the ground but it was about zero degrees, so couldn't spend much time out there. But it finally warmed up, and we had a great time sledding at a nearby park. Ben even tried Nick's snowboard, and I was amazed that he could stay on it for about 20-30 feet. I stepped onto the snowboard to try it, but the damn thing was so slippery...I could just see the headline "Local man bowls over 12 kids before breaking every bone in his body" and changed my mind. Maybe on a very small hill...

- schneid