Chase:
- He's totally rocking third grade! I volunteer every Friday in his class and I help the kids pass off their math facts. He's passed everything off (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division) before the next closest kid even got half way through their facts. He's got a mind for numbers for sure.
- He's learning some hard social lessons this year- more issues with mean kids and vying for dominance type behavior. We've talked a lot about kindness, forgiveness, being a good example and how to respond to unkind comments (partially by not giving the bully the chance to get you upset). I think in the long run this will serve him well and he's doing a great job at gracefully handling these situations, even if it does break my mama heart!
- Learned a fun version of Chopsticks and Hedwig's Theme (from Harry Potter) for his piano recital. These songs were LONG and HARD- he worked really really hard to get them down. He still wakes up on his own every morning at 6:30 and goes straight down to the piano to practice every single day. Someone once told me "It's easier to get your kid to practice 100% of the time than 80% of the time, once they know skipping is an option it'll become a battle every single day." She was so right!
- He's so responsible about getting his homework done, I hardly need to monitor him. This kid is going places!
- Since I talk to his teacher this year every day (She's my good friend) I've gotten a lot of insight into Hudson at school. Apparently he's a model student, practically perfect in every way! He loves school and is thriving there. He's making lots of new friends.
- He chooses to have school lunch 3-4 days a week! Chase has only eaten school lunch a total of three times in his entire life, so this kind of surprised me. I think Hudson likes the options (and likes being different than Chase). We go over to the menu at the first of each week and he selects the days he wants to eat home or school lunch.
- He continues to love to create with cardboard/paper/string/tape. He's always working on some little project and they all turn out so precious. He made a nintendo Wii recently and took it to Sunday dinner at Nana's to give everyone a chance to play on it.
- We're getting into a good routine with his reading homework and he's progressing really well! He can tell he's already such a better reader than he was over the summer and it's fun to see him appreciate his own progress (as he's told me many times that it's a "waste of time" to practice reading with me).
- He's the best little buddy! I love my mornings with him. He bops around the house, we read and do puzzles, play outside and just enjoy each other. I love naptime especially, we cuddle up and read stories and then while I sing to him he just sweetly cuddles in and grins at me. This kid is magic!
- He's using more and more English all the time and is starting to put words together into 3-4 word sentences! Occasionally we still hear his little Davis language, but more and more is English these days. He talks about "the boys" a lot (his brothers).
- He is in total denial that a new baby is coming. If you ask him about it he'll calmly tell you "no baby sister". I think he really likes being the baby of the family. Luckily we still have several months to help him come around to the idea.
- Would live off of peanut butter/nutella and bread. He asks for it all the time. I've been letting him have it, but also just casually including vegetables and fruits on his plate. Most of the time as long as I don't make a big deal out of it, he eats that stuff too. I try to give him what we eat for dinner- but occasionally he ends up with bread and peanut butter. We are working hard to get him a healthy diet, without making food too much of a battle, overall I'd say it's working. But this kid LOVES BREAD! (And pizza, and cookies)
He's been traveling a lot for work this past month. The day before one trip he came down sick, but went anyway. By the time he got home a few days later he was a LOT sicker- including muscles aches and weakness all over his body. He got home late on a Friday night and after consulting with a doctor friend that night, we took him right to instacare on Saturday morning. The doctor was awesome and ran tons of tests, was pretty stumped as to what was going on, and finally diagnosed him with viral myositis. He guessed that some random virus (we never figured out what it technically was) attacked his system and then either the virus or his own immune system retaliated by attacking all his muscles. It was kind of scary, but we were able to rule out anything life threatening. Unfortunately, about 24 hours later he had to be back on another plane for another business trip. He rested as much as he could and luckily that trip went pretty well and he came home feeling better. Every day got a little better and finally about 2 weeks later he felt back to 100%. It was the weirdest thing, and honestly quite scary. Before we left for instacare I quickly called our friend Anthony, who ran over with another friend to give him a blessing. He gave him the sweetest, most calming Priesthood blessing that I'll forever be thankful for. Overall, we are just thankful for pretty good health these days!
As Ben began to feel better, our friend and neighbor Jesse suspiciously came down with pretty much the same weird illness and symptoms. A doctors visit for him didn't provide any clear answers either, but it could not be coincidental that they both got this horrible, weird virus/flu thing. It had to be something contagious, but likely we won't ever know what!
