Hello There, Bloggy Blog

• Last night for dinner we had this pumpkin-coconut-kale curry thing for dinner that I ate over spaghetti squash. It was Squash Inception!
• There was much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the girls about dinner, even though I gave them rice into of spaghetti squash. Why do I feed them such terrible food?! Don't I love them?! This is in contrast to the night before when we fed them Costco pizza (I had been sick with a stomach bug and didn't feel up to cooking yet) when they sat there in serene happiness, cleaning their plates and asking for more.
• For Lewis, I picked out chunks of pumpkin and slices of chicken from the pot and rinsed off the curry sauce. As one does.
• I am working! Although actually not that much this week, between our babysitter being out of town and me having that stomach bug. Recently I have been working on questions about tidal effects in the Solar System and spaghettification.
• We have a parent-teacher conference for Grace tomorrow and in preparation, her teacher has asked her to come up with an intention for the rest of the semester, like in a yoga class. I think her intention should be to get ready in the morning quickly and independently; she thinks it should be to learn to go really fast on her scooter.
• This week is also parent week at her ballet class, which means we are allowed to go into the class and sit and watch. She is taking ballet at the school associated with Salt Lake's professional company and it is kind of hard-core. They all wear the same leotard and are required to have their hair in a bun and aren't allowed to wear earrings or nail polish. I'm not sure if she'll want to stick with it beyond this year but she likes it, being the rule follower that she is, and I like that everything is in good taste and non-skanky.
• We are going through a tough time with Violet, mainly preschool-related. She's been there since January and seemed to like it pretty well at first, but things have been going downhill. Now she says that she doesn't like school, doesn't want to go, school makes her sad, etc. Her teachers sat down with me recently and we had a hard-to-hear conversation about how she doesn't participate with the group, sits off by herself a lot, has pretty drastic trouble with transitions between activities, and often turns non-verbal and withdrawn when she's upset at school. MY HEART. We're still processing, trying some new things, and thinking through our options-- give her a break from school for a while? get some kind of professional help/opinion/evaluation? try a different style of preschool that would be a better fit for independent Violet with her long attention span, maybe Montessori? push through at her current school? I don't know. I do know I broke down crying while describing her current struggles during a visit to a Montessori school last week, so that's awesome.
• And Lewis? He has moved from the high chair to sitting at the table, he says "nigh nigh" when it's time to go to bed  and "allo" when he puts a phone to his ear, he gives wet open-mouthed kisses complete with "mwa!" sounds, and I really really really want to get him into his own room at night. We have to move the girls upstairs to their new room first, so we are still in process on that. I did buy bunk beds yesterday, though-- hooray!