3 Months

(picture to be added soon)
Elli turned 3 months yesterday.  You can see her getting bigger, but it's hard to think that my little girl is growing out of the baby stage so fast! 

This month she has:

• Rolled over from tummy to back.  I wasn't there for this (I missed Michael's too) but Josh saw the whole thing. 
• Started cooing a lot.  A LOT!  I think she is learning from Michael.
• Started grabbing things more.  She doesn't reach out for things yet, but she'll grab anything I put right next to her hand. 
• Started getting on a schedule.  Slowly.  It's still not perfect.  I try to put her on Michael's sleeping schedule and let her sleep when we go places at night.  Unfortunately she still falls asleep in the car a lot, so I don't feel like I should go anywhere during the day because it ruins her schedule.
• She sleeps in her crib better at night.  Nights where she is having a rough time I will let her sleep with me, but she is outgrowing that.  She still loves to take naps in her swing and on me after I feed her. 

There have been a few other things going on with Elli.  I mentioned her horrible, painful gas.  She goes 4-5 days without a messy diaper, after day 2 she is so grumpy.  I'm trying a few things to help with that, like taking her temperature rectally every day.  I'm also thinking of skipping rice cereal and having her first food be prunes. 

When I took Elli in for a cold a little over a month ago the doctor heard a heart murmur.  A lot of kids have heart murmurs, but the doctor said he only finds 1 kid every 3 years with one they don't hear at the two week appointment.  He referred us to Primary Children's.  The cardiologist listened and told me she had one, but was moving too much to tell me if it was serious or not.  After an hour of feeding her and rocking her I got her to sleep.  They listened again and told me her murmur was fine, they just don't find her type of murmur until kids are at least 4 years old.  It was really rare for her to have it so young.  It should go away when she's a teenager.

This little girl is sweet and cute, even at 1am, then again at 2am, 3am, 4am, and 5am.  I just wish she'd stop growing so much!

A Day In The Life: Michael II

I slowly wake up as the sun comes through my window.  In a somewhat happy mood I try to say "good morning".  No one answers back.  No one comes to see me.  I start getting a little mad and scream "get me out"!  After a while mommy comes in saying something about how she's trying to get me to sleep until 7.  She doesn't understand that I'm in charge yet.  She gives me my bottle while I sit in the bed with her and sister.  Sister and I do this fun thing where we kick each other.  I always win.  But mommy always tells me not to kick her.

After we jump around on the bed I start getting hungry.  I know exactly what I want, a nana.  So I say nana twenty times to get Mommy's attention.  She takes me to the kitchen and puts me in my high chair.  I wait eagerly for my nana. but wait, these red things with seeds on them aren't nanas!  They taste good but I want my nanas.   I tell mommy and she says we don't have anymore.  ARE YOU KIDDING ME?  The store has a whole isle full of yellow nanas.  I scream at her about it for a few minutes because this is ridiculous.  I think she gets the point because she says we'll get some at the store later....yeah right!  There are never enough nanas in this house.

After I finish the red seedy things mommy gets in the shower.  She always put Elli in my old bouncer, I get kinda mad because it's my bouncer.  I still use it, even though mommy says I'm going to break it.  She gets in the shower.  I stick my head in and say "I'm ready!"  She says something about my eczema and how I can't get in anymore.  This is ridiculous!! I used to climb in the shower with mommy every day.  We used to have splashing contests.  It was always mommy against me and this thing that would splash her from above.  I always won.  But she won't play anymore.  I'm so upset I walk out and slam the door!  After a minute I think she feels bad and will let me in, so I knock on the door.  No one answers.  I really want to play now and no one will answer the door!  I'm even more upset now so I go in my room and slam the door.  I realize mommy hasn't gotten my toys out for the day so there's nothing to do in here.  I keep screaming for someone to get me out.  Finally mommy comes running to me saying "why did you lock yourself in your room?"  I want to tell her how mad she made me.  Then she starts hugging and kissing me.  GROSS!!  I squirm and run away.  Mommy runs after me and says it's time for a nap.  Most days I don't like my morning nap, but today I'm grumpy so I'll make an exception.

When I wake up from my nap mommy walks in a lot faster than she did that morning.  She puts me in my high chair and it's lunch time.  I know what I want.  A nana!  Mommy must have gone to the store while I was sleeping!  She puts a peanut butter sandwich in front of me.  That's okay, I'll eat it, I can have the nana for dessert!  I eat my sandwich as I watch TV.  Sister keeps crying and it's hard to hear.  Mommy tries to feed her and eat at the same time.  She always looks funny.  I finish my sandwich and ask for a nana again.  There is no nana.  Mommy gets me down from my high chair and I run away crying.  She has to understand that I need my 6 nanas a day.  That's why she buys 3 dozen a week.  They are just for me! 

Mommy puts sister in her swing to get her to fall asleep while she comes and plays with me.  Except she doesn't play very well.  Sure she plays for a minute, but then she pulls out books and starts reading to me.  She knows I'm not interested so she gives up and reads her own book aloud to me.  I really don't care about it, but she does take breaks to talk and play.  This goes on for a long time.  finally she says it's time for my nap. 

After my nap mommy brings Elli into my room.  I play with toys while mommy sings a lot.  She always asks what I want to sing.  Most of the time she doesn't sing the songs I ask for.  I finally ask for Twinkle Twinkle Little Star and she understands that one.  After a little while I get bored and start exploring the house.  Lately I've been trying to find a hiding place for the kitchen utensils.  Mommy saw me drop the baster behind sisters crib so that place won't work.  I'm going to give her a few more days to try to find the ice cream scoop before I hide another one there.  I also like hiding Mommy's brushes, combs, and contact case.  Last night I heard her say she couldn't find her ring box hahaha.  After hiding utensils I pull the books out of the bookshelf.  I don't understand why they keep putting them back up there, I just want to read them, but they must be on the ground first. 

I find more things to occupy my time until I hear daddy come home.  Now I love daddy, but the best way to get him to play is to ignore him completely.  So when I hear that door turn I scream to acknowledge he's home, then I run off to find mommy.  It works every time!  Daddy gets so jealous and comes to play with me right away.  After we play a little we usually head off to the store or the park.  I like both.  The park has fun slides, but I like to go through stores and talk to everyone.  Mommy promised me more bananas so we better go to the store. 

They put me in my car seat and sit talking in the front seat.  This gives me the perfect time to be by myself.  I like to sing a lot, so I sing to everything and anything as we go places.  Today we went to the store.  Mommy put me in the cart and went right to the bananas.  SCORE!!  She grabbed 8 this time.  Silly mommy, those wont last three more days.  Daddy asks a lot about chips, and crackers, and ice cream.  Mommy gets annoyed.  Sometimes I just want to shout out how embarrassing they are.  I decide I should embarrass them for a change.  They just smile and laugh at me.  I guess I don't embarrass them.  Maybe I should start screaming sometime and see.  We are out of the store before I get a chance. 

We get home and I get to eat dinner.  I get so tired of waiting for them to feed me, they take forever and forget me.  It looks like they've finally figured it out because they decided to let me pick up the ravioli and eat it with my hands!!  After dinner daddy spends forever cleaning me up.  He sticks me in the tub.  I splash and throw my toys everywhere.  I decided to throw some of my toys out of the tub.  Mommy keeps throwing them back in.  It's so much fun!  Finally daddy pulls me out.  He takes me into my room and gets my PJ's on and rubs this sticky stuff all over me.  Mommy keeps telling him to put more on.  After what feels like forever I'm done being oiled.  They say goodnight and put me to bed.  Overall I had a pretty good day.  Hopefully tomorrow I get to throw something in the toilet.

Subjective Grading vs Subjectiveness

(This is a long and probably boring post :))

Last Sunday Josh and I went to his moms house for dinner.  She has had some people living with her recently so she has been sorting/organizing/getting rid of things.  She found some books Josh wrote in fourth grade.  We read them and had a good laugh.  Now, these were cute books - the typical books you see from a kid - but they weren't spectacular.  Josh and I were talking on our way home and he told me he got a horrible grade on them.  I told him about how I had to write a few books in Elementary and I always got horrible grades on them.  That is why he's an engineer and I was always a Biology Major.

While I say this I will add I have a very different style of writing.  You might not see it as much on my blog as you would if I actually wrote a story, but it is more unique.  Through middle school my teachers realized that I write that way.  Not saying I'm amazing, just different.  In Middle School I always got good grades on writing assignments.  High School was the same.  My AP English/1010 English teacher had us write papers weekly, and he always had me read mine to the class.  Probably because I have a different writing style.  Now that I've told you I'm not a horrible writer I can move on to the purpose of this post.

I always wondered why I got such a horrible grade on the books I wrote, yet I was well ahead of the class in every other subject.  When Josh told me he didn't do so hot with his books I realized what it was; we were graded subjectively by teachers who expected cute stories about bunnies and basketball.  We were graded subjectively, not graded because we followed length guidelines and used proper spelling.  Once I got to Middle School the teachers weren't subjective graders, sure they probably didn't like some of my poems, but they realized they weren't useless.  They didn't care that I put sentences together in a different way that made the style of my paper different, or that I constantly repeat the beginning of sentences for dramatic affect.  They cared that they could understand what I was saying, and that they enjoyed it.  They graded on length, understanding, and probably spelling (which I imagine doesn't happen anymore now that everything is typed, but they probably check to make sure you are using two/to/too's right), not if they didn't like underdeveloped writing styles (I mean come on, we were like ten).

Then I started thinking about other things that are subjectively graded.  Art.  Art is huge.  Now I like art, I'm very subjective about it.  Which is okay.  Which is the point.  Being subjective is okay, but you can't grade subjectively based on content.  Here's a little story of mine:

Last Fall I attempted to take classes at the U to finish a degree as fast as possible.  Some misunderstandings about babysitting forced me to quit after the first day.  But I went the first day.  I was sitting in an introductory Art History class looking at a picture of a urinal someone turned on it's side.  I looked at it thinking 'who would call this piece of crap art?'.  Apparently the teacher.  She went on some rant about what is considered art.  Some kids in the class (men I should add) kept saying how they saw cars as art.  The teacher commented back that the car itself is not art because it is useful, but a picture of the car would be art.  Many of the guys said that a picture of a car is crap, but that a brand new Aston Martin is art (O how I agree when I see them in James Bond movies, and how I cry when I find out 5 were destroyed in filming).  Some added that a urinal is useful so how is a picture of it art if they don't think a picture of a car is art.  I was getting annoyed of the conversation so I raised my hand and finally said something similar to "we will see it as art if we want to, and no definition of art can change that.  You can tell me this urinal is a piece of art, but I will never see it that way.  You can tell all of these guys that cars aren't art, but that won't change how they see it".  I got a five minute lecture about how I wasn't "culturally intelligent" enough to tell her what was and wasn't art to different people. 

Sorry for the long story.  Anyways, I wanted to punch her because in a way she was subjective grading.  To her this was art, but a picture of a car wasn't.  What if she was a photography teacher and someone turned in those two pictures?  This one would get an A, the car an F.

This urinal will never be art to me.  But can I put a letter grade on it?  If it was a contrast and shading assignment no.  If they were supposed to do a color photo yes.  Nothing to do with the urinal.

Being subjective is fine with me, but why is subjective grading being used in schools?  If you tell kids to write a story, then judge them on following the guidelines and proper spelling, not the material or how they write.  If it doesn't make sense then give good feedback, don't give them a bad grade because another teacher might love it.  If it's a picture book and has the amount of pictures required, proper spelling, and maybe commas where necessary then call it good and give them an A.  Who cares if the story is about Sweeney Todd?  Okay, maybe the school shrink cares, but the teacher shouldn't.  Same with history papers and essays, art classes (yeah Mr. Dillon, my vase in ceramics fit all of your requirements so you shouldn't have given me a bad grade because I think it looks awesome!), and essays for any other subject.  Let people be creative, say it's crap in your head if you want to (or out loud in the case of the urinal), give feedback, but give letter grades based on simple guidelines, not content.

Easter

I've been MIA from this blog lately, but I'm hoping to catch up on everything.

Easter, just like every holiday, is a little crazy for us.  With 3 families it seems like we have to pick and choose what to do.  This year we had 3 egg hunts filled with way too much candy.  Michael would look for eggs, but he had more fun shaking them then trying to gather as many as he could.