Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Good news, bad news

It's been one of those weeks, and it's only Tuesday.  Our ceiling is leaking in the living room, most likely due to something going on with the plumbing from our upstairs "master" bathroom.  It's the smallest bathroom in the house, yet strangely gets the prestige of being the "master" because it's in our bedroom.  You know who actually has a master bathroom?  Yep, the kid.  He doesn't have to live in fear that his toothbrush might one day fall off the sink and land in the toilet.  You have no idea how many new packages of floss I've lost to our toilet because there is literally an inch of space between the sink and toilet.  In fact, I almost hope it's the toilet's fault that my ceiling needs to be re-done just so I can laugh all the way to the landfill with it.  Nope, I'm not a hippie liberal enough to reuse it as a planter box.  Sorry.  On top of that, there is something askew with the wheel on my car.  Isaac got his first stitches yesterday due to a split chin from gym class.  They are the type of stitches that will need to be taken out this weekend.  Ah, Saturday fun.  And whatever is wrong with my right ear seems to be immune to any of the medicine prescribed to me.  Oh, and Andrew came home from the dentist today with news of needing to see an orthodontist.  That's the bad news.

The good news is that none of this is a big deal.  Just annoying.  I will take stitches over broken bones and head injuries any day.  I'll admit to being spoiled enough to have two other bathrooms to use while we figure out what's leaking.  Oh, and what's that?  I have health insurance and a pharmacy that doesn't charge for run of the mill antibiotics that may or may not work.  Did I mention dental insurance?  Yep, we have that, too.  Sounds like my bad news is really just a bunch of reminders to be grateful.

If that's not enough to be grateful for, then certainly the fact that Isaac is officially reading and spelling should qualify as good news.  He's got the phonics bug- trying to read and recognize words everywhere we go.  Our conversations are consumed with how to spell things, what vowels are and do, and examples of blends. You would think we were grooming him for a junior spelling bee championship, but it's all his leading.  Tonight he whined because I told him we couldn't do flash cards until after dinner.  Huh?  Oh, and our most heated argument today was about whether the 'h' in 'hop' came at the beginning of the word or not.  I feel like I'm raising a mini version of my husband, who is a compulsive corrector in all things intellectual.  I actually imagined having to hide my "beach trash" literature from them in the future, so as not to get picked on for reading memoirs of female comedians.  I'll have to hollow out a copy of War and Peace to keep them in.  Andrew would have no trouble believing that it'd take me 5 years to finish that book.  It's the perfect plan!  Meanwhile, Nerd and Nerd, Jr. will be discussing 14th century history and the political climate or something else I don't understand.  Wow, I think I just scared myself out of reading bedtime stories to Isaac tonight.

As bitter-sweet as it is to watch Isaac grow up, I guess the good news is that all those boring old educational Christmas gifts we bought him have really paid off.  In addition to the videos, books, and flashcards, Isaac has been using his V-tech laptop almost every day.  That toy became far more usable once we found the volume control and learned that we can turn the carnival music off with the push of a button.  He's been frequenting the phonics, math, and brain booster games on the computer.  I have to admit that I'm relieved that I no longer have to play memory with him as it is one of the brain boosters on his laptop.  I love my son, but playing memory with him made me want to spoon out my eye.  I was also pleased to find a language game that demonstrated basic conversational phrases.  In level 1, it demonstrates questions like "How are you?" and a response to that question.  In level 2, your child can pair the phrase to the appropriate response.  Maybe I won't have to write those social stories after all.  Now that's good news.

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