The Kids

Just some notes on the kids, half bragging and half trying to remember things later.

• Came home from work one day and Lily was upset. She's in First Grade. She had tested to progress to the next reading level at school and did not achieve her goal. As a result she has to go up to the Fifth Grade classrooms *ALONE* to get new books, which is what she really was frustrated about. Her current level and new goal are four grades ahead. Yikes!
• Eli is really turning into a young man. He has this thing where he puts his hand on his chin in contemplation when he's thinking, it's really quite intelligent looking. His personality is also really coming into focus. More than a few times lately I've been interacting with him and can see a personality. Hard to explain.
• Lily's ice skating is coming along nicely - she can make a little spin standing still!
• Eli and I just finished "Surely you're joking, Mr Feynman.", a book (350 pages, no pictures!) of anecdotes from Richard Feynman's life. He was a brilliant physicist who not only worked on the atomic bomb project, but had a very interesting personality and way of communicating complex ideas. Anyway, I read the whole book to Eli. He said he liked it because he "didn't understand any of it" but really did get quite a bit of it. We both appreciate Feynman because of his unique and creative thinking methods. So Eli has gone back now and is reading it to himself.
• Lily is practicing her cartwheel constantly. Some day she'll nail that thing, but for now it's just a half-cartwheel/floppy thing.
• Eli and I have the same brain. Seriously. Half the time I feel awful for him and wish he wasn't cursed with my brain, the other half the time I feel great pride because he's a smart little bugger!
• Lily and Eli are still thick as thieves. Sometimes they bicker, but for the most part they just feed off each other and have a great time. Unfortunately, sometimes they use their powers for evil, not good. Like when we're all in the car and they've decided it's time for a snack.
• Eli has started programming. His goal is to write a game for the Nintendo DS (or GBA), and when he found out I knew how to develop for the DS he hounded me until I relented. (See how I did that?) After a brief shot at BASIC we moved on to Scratch, from MIT. It's a more abstract programming "language" that allows kids to get things going fairly quickly. Even has a repository online where they can all share code and share their applications. Very cool stuff, and he's hungry for more more more!
• Lily is playing the piano, and she's doing it like a musician. Two hands, reading music, using all sorts of complicated Piano words that I don't understand. :) Making beautiful music.

I love my kids more than life itself. It's so much fun to see them growing like this!