Rolling along

 After enjoying some lovely, spring-like days last week (with temps in the upper 40s, low 50s), I shouldn't have been surprised to be slammed with snow this weekend, but it still feels more disappointing than it should!

Some highlights from this week:

Oliver finally rolled over for the first time on Thursday! I've been worrying about this (yes, I know, I'm good at worrying)--it was the only developmental milestone that he wasn't meeting. Apparently, by 3-4 months, most babies roll side to side. At 5.5 months (going from his due date, not birth date), Oliver still hadn't done that. (Well, to be fair, Andrew claimed several times that he saw Oliver roll over, but Andrew's not the most reliable witness for stuff like that--particularly since he's not above "helping" Oliver roll over, if I have to step out of the room for a minute).

Andrew qualified for the school spelling bee (the top 2 or so spellers from each class get to go). Oddly, this makes my mother heart full to bursting with pride. Now if we can just get more than 50% of the words on the practice list right . . . the ones he knows, he spells confidently. The one's he doesn't know . . . well, let's just say his spelling gets creative sometimes!

Evelyn officially knows how to read. We've been working on it for a couple of weeks now, but in the last week or so she's been able to read a couple of fairly simple books to me. And by "read" I don't mean she's fluent by any means, but that she's mastered the concept of sounding out words and putting the sounds together. I wonder if this ever gets old? It was thrilling when Andrew did it, and it's equally thrilling to watch Evelyn do it.

(This picture makes me laugh. Poor Oliver--he looks so traumatized by his sister).

Our other main accomplishment this week was making Valentines for Andrew's first grade class and Evelyn's preschool class.

And yes, folks, this is a major accomplishment. Every year, I tell myself I'm going to do something simple for the cards--and every year I forget and we make something, and then, when I find myself unraveling, I wonder why I do it. This year was no exception, particularly not when Evelyn spilled apple juice all across the table, nearly ruining a stack of cards that we'd spent all afternoon making. I managed to make her *and* Oliver cry when I yelled.

But they're done. And I have to admit that I'm proud of several things. 1) I let the kids help. (This would be so much easier for my OCD tendencies if I just did it myself). They cut out the papers for the front and glued stuff together and put on the stickers. 2) I came up the idea without any help from Google or Pinterest. (Seriously, this is huge for me). 3) We made cool Valentines without candy!

As you can see, we included a pair of dice with each card. On the inside, we pasted instructions to a math-related dice game that the kids can play. Last week, I posted some of our rejected sayings. The sayings we ultimately went with included: Odds are, you should be my Valentine. I'd  be lucky to have you as my Valentine. You're the odds-on favorite for a Valentine. We make a great pair! Being with you is pair-a-dice. Etc.

Yes, it's cheesy. But at least it's different!

Here's wishing all of our readers a Happy Valentines Day . . . (and as Dan said, as we were trying to come up with dice-inspired sayings: "May the odds be ever in your favor!")