Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Confessions of a Slacker

It's been so long since I've written and I can make up a million excuses, but I won't. Instead, I'll tell you what's been going on lately with the Grussing-Pike Tribe.

Ethan's winding up his last semester as a 5th grader. Next year, he'll be in middle school where he'll be among the 7th and 8th graders. I don't know if I'm ready for that so we'll see how we all transition. Here's a picture of him perfecting his Ripstick technique. We got him the Ripstick for Christmas and he said it was the best thing we got him. Yayyyyy!


Graeme is also winding up his Pre-K year and looking forward to starting Kindergarten in the fall. He is working on writing and numbers right now. He has nearly mastered the number patterns and can count to 100 with a little assistance. We do "homework" to strengthen his pincer grip and encourage good writing habits. He still (especially at school) writes with both hands, but we feel he is really and truly a lefty. Graeme's favourite things to do these days include playing with dinosaurs, making up silly names for Xavier, chasing Ethan around (and generally driving him nuts), and, of course, cooking. Every day, he puts on his apron and asks me if he can be my chef, to which I always reply, "Yes chef." He loves putting food in the pans and stirring. He understands the process of cooking and can probably walk you through cooking scrambled eggs, easy. Luckily, they've spent a lot of time at school cooking lately - here are photos of Graeme flipping his grilled cheese sammidge and frosting his V-Day cookies (notice the lefty action):


Xavier just passed the 9.5 month mark. He's been crawling like a fiend for a while now and really loves standing and cruising the furniture. The rooms in the house he's obsessed with are (1) the bathroom (because he knows he's banned from crawling around in there) and (2) the kitchen (where his main goal is to get to the cat's food bowl so he can pick it up and slowly drop it to the floor - I think he likes the sound it makes). He's also eating regular food with us a few times a week and loves to feed himself Cheerios. He LOVES bathtime, especially now that he gets to bathe in the big tub with Graeme. Graeme, of course, considers Xavier his personal plaything when in there. Evidence of this...


Finally, some really great news on the Rodney front - he recently was promoted to Head Graphics Honcho at work. Okay, that's not his official title, but he's now officially a manager. When I told Ethan about this, his first question was, "So he can tell people what to do now?" I assured him this has always been the case... hahahahaha! I kid. I kid. Congratulations sweetheart, you really really really deserve it.

1 comment:

Lora said...

Love the update on your family! I can't believe Xavier is crawling and cruising already. Congrats to Rodney on his fancy promotion :) And hugs to all of you!