week ending sept 16, 2007:

Week ending September 16, 2007: This week Alex seems to have gotten over his fear of school. Tuesday was his first full day (2.5 hours) and he was still nervous, but by Thursday he was saying that he is not afraid any more. Chloe is still pretty blasé about school, she doesn’t seem to care if she goes or not. She hasn’t had much luck getting the other little girls to talk to her yet, so I’m hoping that once the kids get more used to each other, Chloe will like it better.

Grammy Carol had a coupon for a free sitting and discounted prints at a portrait studio, so we took the kids. They said they didn’t want to go, and didn’t want their picture taken, but the photographer was so funny that in the end they were sad when he was done. The studio will send us a link to an on-line copy of the proofs and I’ll send the link around when I get it.

We took the kids for a sleep-over at Mr Rob and Miss Tina’s house on top of a mountain in Frederick. The kids were immediately excited about going and they grabbed their bags and started packing. While I packed the clothes and toiletries the kids each packed a bag of toys. I have to limit them to one bag each or they’d keep going until every toy they owned was in a suitcase or backpack. Alex said “I wuv sweeping at Miss Tina’s” (he’s still pronouncing ‘l’s as ‘w’s). The next morning we drove up to the Catoctin Wildlife Preserve http://www.cwpzoo.com/ which is a small zoo and petting farm in Thurmont. The kids loved it, especially getting to feed pellets to the animals. They fed deer, goats, donkeys, and lamas. Actually, I’m thinking they would have enjoyed Clarks Ellioak Petting Farm http://www.clarklandfarm.com/ just as well and it wouldn’t have cost nearly as much, but hindsight is 20/20. Pictures from the zoo are at http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/CatoctinWildlifePreserve

The image below is the first frame of a video of Alex and Chloe singing Jimmy Buffett’s song Volcano. Click the triangle in the lower left of the picture to play the video.