Balmy January

Here's our little princess in a classroom just before the service at KidPak Jr.  Madison loved KidPak Jr. this morning quite a bit.  The reason?  As we continue with our movie-themed series, this morning her class saw bits of the movie "Brave."  Mommy even dressed her in a plaid mini-skirt and Merida t-shirt.  The service for the older kids was tremendous, as we learned to "just listen," "change our fate," and "mend the bond."

It's been pretty warm outside for January.  Last night, we actually slept with the windows open in a few rooms.  Sure, we could have put on the air conditioning, but there's something about having windows open from time to time.  No barking dogs here, or loud motorcycles going for test runs.  There's only the occasional cow in the distance.

We hit some homework again on the computer, which Madison seems to really enjoy.  Today's lesson involved shapes - but it seems to teach a little bit of reading too.  Madison can click on a button, and a voice will ask her the question.  Yet the question is also printed there as well.  We were pretty pleased to see her not having to press the audio button as much as she read questions like, "Which is the rectangle?"

Despite the warm weather, unfortunately a few of us were tired from a long night last night.  Daddy tried to do the Kinect Brave game with Madison, but it just doesn't want to work that well for some reason.  Certain Kinect games respond better, but this one doesn't even want to acknowledge Madison at all.  And it really doesn't work that well with Daddy either, so we resorted to visiting with the Superhero Squad.  If you're wondering when we got this game, Daddy got it for Madison because she got a good report card.  We gave her the whole, "since you have a good report card," speech, and told her to keep up the good work.  This game is fun, although it is nowhere near as fun as the Lego games. Still, Madison had a great time playing as Iron Man or the Scarlet Witch.  There's no Silver Surfer yet, but I know she'll really want to use that character when we get to him.

Speaking of which, one of the books Daddy got from the library last week was an Avengers comic book.  It was one of those larger books that had a collection of comics inside.  Sure, we read some standard books before bed - one of them was a cute book called "The 108th Sheep."  That one was cue, and simple.  Daddy had to explain the concept of counting sheep if you're trying to go to sleep.  Or, if you're like Rosemary Clooney and Bing Crosby, you can count blessings instead of sheep.  But tonight, Madison would rather count superheroes.  We actually read a few adventures together, which was fun for both of us.  The downside was that this book was a little smaller than your average comic book - it was reduced in size.  The end result was Daddy really struggling - for the first time - to read anything at all.  That was a first!  Daddy's eyes are pretty good, so perhaps it was the effect of a very small font size at a close range, also in a darker room.  It was just before bed, after all.

So she's in bed there as we read, and then it's time for more adventures with the audio story involving the Neverland Fairies (we're on chapter 13 now).  That's when Daddy asks Madison to lay on her back, and stretch her feet out.  Can you believe it?  She's just a few inches away from being longer than her current mattress.  After all these years!

The last time we changed her bed was a few years ago, on June 14, 2010.  Because of this blog, I can tell you this.  Anyway, until that point, we had her in a crib of course.  It was just a spontaneous decision, but we decided to remove one of the parts of the crib, creating a new-and-improved situation for Madison.  She loved the freedom!  When we bought this bed, we knew this day was coming, so we actually can convert it one more time.  We'd better get on the ball in making that change though - she's just inches away from being too big for the mattress!