Waterville...here we come!

Our lives are getting back to a new kind of normal. Emily is feeling fantastic. With her hair down, you can't even tell that she had brain surgery. She is running around and playing and so full of life. The kids have both been reading their library books each week and taking AR tests at school and Ethan's reading level has just jumped leaps and bounds above where he was when he finished Kindergarten just a little over a month ago. It is amazing. He still gets frustrated at times when he is reading, but I remind him of Mrs. McFarland's yoga techniques (Ha-ha!) and he takes his deep breath and moves on. Ethan is just a little more protective of Emily right now after her surgery and I guess that is to be expected. I am always hearing him telling her to watch out when they are outside doing something, and he repeatedly checks on her to make sure that she is okay. Yesterday evening he was pushing her around the house in one of our laundry baskets in a game they had made up. Well, I guess he had turned a corner too fast and the basket started to turn over. Emily would have been just fine. They were on the carpet and there was nothing around them. Ethan, however, not only tried to stop the basket from turning over, he also cradled Emily's head on the way down in his hands and said, "Oh, Emily! Your head!" It was just so touching to see his sweetness and love for her.

And although they are sweet with each other, they have become little conniving brats with their mommy. Rob wakes up pretty early and immediately starts his job hunting on the computer. I am typically the last one awake in the house (thanks to my late nights on the computer). Well, the other morning, I had two kids come in at different times and wake me up and ask me for a piece of gum. Shortly after this I could hear them talking in the kitchen. This is how the conversation went about their gum:

Ethan: Who did you ask?

Emily: The one still in bed.

Ethan: Yeah, me too!

Ethan and Emily together: [laughing]

You see, the little darlings should have asked their daddy if they could have gum, but they knew he would have said no because they hadn't had breakfast and they hadn't brushed their teeth. So they come wake me up instead because they know that I will say anything to get them the heck out of my room and shut them up before I've had coffee. But there is one very important thing I have to point out here....AT LEAST THEY ASKED!!!! Ethan and Emily are both such rule followers that they never would have just taken the piece of gum without asking. So, they had to figure out a way to ask to make sure that they got the answer they wanted. I have to give them some credit for that. :)

I have to talk about Ethan's new obsession. Star Wars! He has been playing his Lego Star Wars game on his Nintendo DS and that is about the only game he plays. I noticed that he would talk about the characters from his game, but he really had not clue who the characters were or what it was about. I decided that he would enjoy his game more if he understood it. Plus, I thought since he loved the game so much, he would probably really love the movie. So, I went to Blockbuster and we rented the original Star Wars. He and sat and watched the movie together. He was hooked immediately!!!! Now, it is all he talks about. And I think he has now watched that movie about five times and we have only had it a few days. I told him that we will go rent The Empire Strikes Back next week so he can watch that one. He is so excited. He told me he wants so be Luke Skywalker for Halloween and for Christmas he wants a light saber, some of the Star Wars vehicle toys, and a Darth Vader costume. Now I'm scared and wondering if they even make this stuff anymore or will Ebay be my new best friend this Christmas?

This week we lost two legends, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Of course there has been lots of news coverage. Emily was watching part of the coverage about MJ and she turned to me and asked me why he looked different as a child compared to when he was an adult. She said that his whole entire face looks different. I just explained to her that he wasn't happy with the way he looked and that he had surgery to change it. She said, "Well what was wrong with him to begin with? Why would he want to change it?" And then she wanted to know if he was happy with the changes. I told her that he probably wasn't and that was the reason why he kept having surgery. Then we talked about when it was okay to have surgery on your face like when people were injured or had deformities, etc. We talked about how sad it was for people to not be happy with how they looked. Her final response was, "Well, nobody is perfect!" She is just so wise for her age.

The job hunt thing isn't going so well. Rob and I have both put in lots of applications/resumes, but neither of us have heard anything yet. Of course, it has only been a week. It just seems so much longer than that. I can tell that the longer this goes on, the more discouraging this can get. We are also trying to not let it put a strain on our relationship. We were just coming out of a very high stress (and high strain) situation with two back to back brain surgeries and to have this happen, well, it can do a whopper on a marriage. Luckily, we are strong and we are making sure to work through this together.

We decided that we needed a day of fun today. We are taking the kids to Waterville this afternoon!!!!! Thank goodness we bought those season passes before Rob got laid off. That will give the kids something fun to do all summer long. And now that Emily can get her head wet again since her stitches are out, we should REALLY be able to enjoy it and also not have to worry about her having headache episodes while there either. Today is a day to forget about our troubles and just escape!