Reading Program 2014

Great Going Madison!  The difference this year is that she's reading all these books entirely on her own.  We're pretty proud of her - above is just a few of the books that are recorded on the library's website that keeps track of her progress.  She's not quite halfway there, but summer isn't halfway over yet, and there were a couple of really busy weeks for her so far.  But she gets home and gets to reading right away.  And she does some math exercises too - we're doing larger math problems now, ones where you have double or triple digit numbers that involve "borrowing," which was always a bit of a hassle for me as a kid.  I thought math was cool, but hated when you had to borrow.  I have no idea why.  But Madison seems to be getting the concept a bit - it's a new thing, and Mommy and Daddy are being teachers with it, trying to explain it to her carefully.

We're trying to keep her busy with everything but video games - saving that as a reward of sorts.  Ballet Camp takes up a three hours a day right now - she's learning to do a bit of jazz dancing this week, which is also entirely new.  She's doing well though, and dancing to the theme song from "The Lego Movie," ironically enough.  I say ironically, because the day she'll be performing this is also the day of our movie bash, where we'll be watching that movie at KidPak.  It'll be a theme for the day!

And it's a theme of the week, really.  Tonight we left Cloud Cuckoo Land in the "The Lego Movie" game, opening a few new characters along the way.  Madison is really enjoying this game a lot.  We saved this for last, and it was late so we decided to forgo the movie in favor of just some solid gaming.  She really likes doing this, of course.

Daddy and Mommy had the day off in a way, although Mommy spent quite a bit of it with chores around the house.  It can be a big deal cleaning up after us.  In fact, this may be one of the new "big things" with Madison:  her playroom was a disaster.  It was the worst that we've ever seen it, a complete mess.  You couldn't walk in a single part of the room.  Along with Madison, we spent a solid hour and half trying to pick up the mess - and we still didn't completely finish.  We're considering what to do with that room.  I think the amount of things she's been given over the years has started to get overwhelming, so we're going to go through a process of figuring out what to do with it all.  A small purge is coming, as there's stuff there that she's clearly outgrown.  The blessing is that we know some parents with children that we could recycle this stuff to.

We did try to go to the pool today.  Nana and Ye-Ye even came over and met at the pool, but there was a rumble of thunder in the air that stayed around for over an hour.  It was distant enough not to be an immediate threat, but the lifeguard was playing it safe - so we instead went over to the playground.  It was cool outside, and Madison loved going down the slide and climbing around.  As an added bonus, she met a friend from school who happened to be having a picnic with her parents' softball team.  So it all worked out, as Daddy and Ye-Ye and Nana sat and talked for a bit at a nearby picnic table.

It wasn't necessarily a monumental day, but we did squeeze a lot in there, now that we look at it after the fact.  Daddy even got some reading in for a bit this afternoon, and we also got to sit together for some tea, which is becoming a pleasant addiction of late.  Tomorrow is looking to be a bigger day, of course.  Lots going on there - and in the weeks to come!