Odds and ends

We haven't really done much lately, so I don't have any really exciting updates. So I'll just mention a few little things that have been going on around here.

Hank will start the extended day program at his preschool in March, so instead of being done at 11:30am on Tuesday and Thursday he will go until 2:30pm. He is very excited about this, as it is a major fight to get him ready to go home when I pick him up from preschool. While I'm thrilled that he loves school so much that he would rather stay than go home, it's a tad embarassing when I'm the only mother who has to drag her kid away from school! I think he just has so much fun there, he doesn't want to leave.

Last week Hank had a pretty bad week behavior-wise. It was one of those weeks where I was searching the want ads, looking for full-time employment, and taking lots of Tylenol. He had a huge temper tantrum at the library (I can't even write about it, just thinking about it again makes me ill) and things deteriorated from there. It was, in a word, awful. We finally got things turned around on Friday, but it was a tough week overall. The good news is that he has had a great week so far and (knock on wood) I think it was just a phase.

Meanwhile, we have been having "writing time" every night after dinner. Anyone who knows Hank knows how active he is and how it is difficult to get him to sit still for even 10 minutes. So now we sit down for 10-15 minutes every night and work on writing and drawing, and he has been doing great! He actually really enjoys it and is really proud of himself. He can now neatly write his name all on his own and most of the uppercase letters. He's also really close to being able to spell "Mommy" and "Daddy" all on his own. I'm really, really proud of him! He's also been using his camera a lot and snapping pictures of everything.

Georgie is now 8 months old, can you believe it? He is still such a sweetheart, and is the biggest flirt ever. When we wait in the hallway to pick up Hank from preschool he smiles and giggles at all the other mommies. He's quite the popular guy. He's starting to eat more finger foods now, every night he eats one of those Gerber Biter Biscuits at dinner and while it's a huge mess, its hysterical to watch him eat it. He gets so excited when I bring out the box.

Okay, enough gushing about the kiddos. The big event in my life this week was that our window treatments finally arrived and were installed today. Yahoo! Our downstairs windows were all bare and pretty much the entire neighborhood was able to look right into our living, family, and dining rooms and see everything that we were doing. Not that we ever do anything that interesting, quite the contrary. If anything, I was concerned that everyone would see how lame our lives are - "Wow, those new people sure watch a lot of television," or, "Look honey, the new neighbors are watching Seinfeld reruns in their sweatpants again," or, "Gee, are they having sloppy joes for dinner again? Can't she cook anything else?" The new window treatments will make us seem a little more mysterious.