In Which We Have A Fun Family Sort Of Day

This morning we all slept in, which was lovely.  Then after a leisurely breakfast, we headed over to the local skating rink for some quality family time!  The rink in our town offers a Saturday morning skating session where wheelchairs are allowed on the floor, so it's an ideal time for our whole family to be able to do some roller skating together.  

Surprisingly enough, Eden loves roller skating even though it's really, really difficult for her.  Her cerebral palsy affects her balance and gait in a significant way, so moving around on skates is really tough.  But she's pretty fearless and, if given the opportunity, would probably be a speed demon on them-- she wants to go as fast as possible whenever we're pulling her around the floor.  

We've only taken her a couple of times as it's tough for me to both push Connor's wheelchair and offer her a supporting hand, but I suspect that once Jer's home it will become a favorite Saturday activity of ours.  This time she really started to get the hang of moving her feet side to side, and I think it might even be possible for her to skate on her own without support one day!  

Connor really enjoys skating too-- I think he likes the feel of the wind on his face, and all the flashing lights and music.  Luckily his seizures aren't the kind to be triggered by lights, or we'd be in trouble.  He spent a good portion of the time carefully waving to all the people on the side of the rink every time we went by them, which was pretty cute.  I think he really liked having his sister out there, too.  

And I miss skating really, really badly since I can't do roller derby right now with Jer gone.  It was so nice to be able to strap on my skates again, even if I was forced to skate really, really slowly since I was pushing the little guy's chair most of the time.  The rink frowns on running over small children, and Connor's wheelchair doesn't exactly turn on a dime.

So after a couple hours skating, we headed home, made some popcorn, and sat down together to watch the first Star Wars movie (technically Episode IV, but it's the first one that counts, anyway).  Jeremy was appalled to discover that Eden had never seen any of the Star Wars or the Indiana Jones movies, and he decided we needed to fix this immediately.  We didn't actually have any of them on DVD (we had a VCR up until we moved into this house), so we had to run out last night and get some so that we could finish up all the movies before Christmas break is over.  

I'm not sure how much Eden followed of the movie, but she dutifully sat through it before declaring that it was "okay," but it "didn't have enough fighting in it."  Poor Jeremy.  He's probably going to make her sit through all the rest of them anyway, though.  Poor Eden.  Oh well; at least Jer and I will enjoy ourselves.

Then we played a few games of Wi Tennis and Bowling, ate dinner, put Connor down for bed and finally played a game of Skipbo before heading that way ourselves.  So it was a fun, relaxing day!

~Jess

In Which We Raise A Pair Of Lilliputians

As requested, here's a photo of the kids with The Best Santa The World Has Ever Known.  Note Eden's awesome flame-covered AFOs and Connor's festive tweed cap and cowboy boots-- all important fashion accessories for any holiday photo shoot.  

Also I believe that Connor is wearing the same train vest he wore for this same Santa not one, but two years ago (and also like two years ago, Santa once again wouldn't let us pay for our photos, because this guy is amazing).  My kid is tiny.  I swear we feed him and everything; we're not sure if this is related to his genetic condition or if it's just because he takes after his daddy.  Who knows?  Maybe he'll shoot up at some point.  Somehow I doubt it, though.

At five feet tall, Eden is also on the teensy side and we think she's done growing, but Thai women tend to be shorter than the average American woman as a general rule, so that isn't really surprising.  Also we're not sure what kind of nutrition she got as a little kid, so that might have had something to do with it as well.  At any rate, I'm kind of resigned to being the tallest person in our family, unless we adopt another boy in a few years (which is entirely possible).

Anyway, today I ran by the store for a few odds and ends after picking up Connor from school, and I noticed they had Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World on sale.  Eden read the first book of the series out loud to me a few weeks ago, and I thought that maybe she'd be more interested in reading books if she could see the movie that's based on them afterwards.  So we watched it together this evening as a special (late) reward for finishing the book, and she enjoyed it tremendously.  I think after we're done with Awkward, we'll try something else that has a movie tie-in and that other teens will probably have read, like Harry Potter or the dreaded Twilight.  While the Harry Potter series is, in my opinion, much better written than anything Stephanie Meyer has come up with, there is one thing to be said for Twilight-- at least the language is simple enough that Eden shouldn't need too much help with it.  

Thus far she hasn't been interested in reading any series past the first novel and it takes her a month or two to get through a book (reading in twenty minute intervals), so I don't know that we'd get to some of the more mature things that happen later in both series, and if we do we'll have plenty of time to discuss them.  While there are a few other more recent YA novels the kids are all reading that have been made into movies, most of them have pretty dark plot lines fairly early on.  While she's definitely become way more mature in the past year, I don't think Eden's quite ready for stuff like The Hunger Games just yet.

~Jess

In Which Connor Watches Things Beyond His Ken

Today I tried to clean up a house a bit, as I have been neglecting chores recently and it is rapidly approaching the point where it is less a Welcoming Home and more a Slovenly Embarrassment, and I'll have to step out on the front porch to visit with the neighbors rather than inviting them in.  So I set Connor up to do his stander time, turned on the 25th anniversary version of Les Misérables, and got to work.

Les Mis may not be the most appropriate musical in the world to let a six year old watch.  It's chock full of depressing themes like prostitution and suicide and the looting of dead bodies and such, which are not generally things Sesame Street addresses (T is for Tuberculosis, kids!).  However, Connor absolutely loves Les Mis-- probably because literally the entire thing is music.  He also probably likes it because there aren't any visual depictions of any of the action to distract him from the music, and to top it all off there are tons of flashing light effects.  I doubt he's picking up on the fact that all the people who step away from the microphones are dying, because he's not so good at subtext, he's not picking up all the words anyway because of his hearing loss and also, hey, he's six.  He probably just thinks I'm weird when I start bawling every time Eponine opens her mouth. 

It's not like Disney hasn't done Victor Hugo before.  I still wonder who the heck read The Hunchback of Notre-Dame-- a book in which almost every main character dies in despair in a horrible, horrible way-- and thought it would make a fantastic children's movie.  I mean for Pete's sake, Esmerelda is tortured into a false confession and is hung, and Quasimodo starves to death embracing her dead body in the cemetery after murdering his father figure and a couple dozen other people.  It's a cheery story. 

Connor has never seen Disney's The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and there are plenty of other Disney movies he won't be seeing any time soon, either.  The whale scene in Pinocchio terrified him, and the wildebeest scene in The Lion King had a similar effect.  He doesn't like the voodoo skulls in The Frog Prince, and he isn't a huge fan of the end of Hercules, either.  I think it's the visual stuff that really gets to him; Les Mis in his mind is simply good music.  This is why even though he loves the musical, he will absolutely not be watching the new live action version when it comes out at Christmas.

I need to find some opera DVDs.  He'd probably love them too.

~Jess