Today was Tuesday...the preschool pickup, piano lesson, art class, Latin class, hip hop and modern dance, counseling session, swim lesson, dive practice day. But who's keeping track of the schedule, right? It really wasn't so bad.

My homework for this week is to take some time to think and make a list of all of the physical obligations I'd leave behind if I defected to Colorado. It's very exciting to think of. I think there mere thought of this homework makes my whole family angry. The truth is, I'd bag most everything I'm doing if I flew the coop. I don't really even feel bad about saying that.

I'm on this dog walking kick. It really needs to not be a kick but a lifestyle. Bilbo is fat. Fat like a beagle can be. The diet part is easy to change--just make it impossible for him to get his daily dose of cat food. But the exercise element is more challenging. I have been trying to take him out at least twice a day on a short walk, but I'd like to get to the three walk point. So far, it is helping some. He isn't peeing on the floor as much, and I haven't picked up poop in the house this past week, either (well, there was that nasty diarrhea behind Ollie's bed...how does a kid not only smell poop, but step in it in a nearly spotless bedroom and not know where the source of the poop is? Alas, I found it by sticking my hand right into it. Eww.). Tonight the kids and I went down to the reservoir and took a long walk around the big loop and played at Tom Sawyer Island. The fishing people were out in force, so there were lots of dead and live fish to poke at. Bilbo enjoys getting out and greeting his public. With any luck, he'll get healthier in the process, and perhaps housetrained as well.

Our carpet and hardwood estimate was staggering--more than double what I expected. It's time to search for Plan B. I just want it done yesterday. In preparation for this golden future time, I'm attempting to do a serious spring cleaning and repainting and to purge all the stuff we don't want to move for the flooring folks. I'm wondering if all of our furniture in the bedroom will fit in the master bath. I can dream, right? I'm really wanting this done in the next month. Even if it leaves us with no savings at all.

We're reading Misty of Chincoteague. It's not a book I've ever exactly loved, but since it is semi-local, I'm supposed to adore it. It's okay. And it goes rather quickly because it has pages full of pictures. Still, it's a good book to be familiar with (Ollie and I listened in the past and he remembered most of the details) and for Virginians to know. The older boys and I are reading _Carry On Mr. Bowditch_, another Newbery winner that I'm not sure about yet. It's hard for all of us to get into it, but we're only about 60 pages in, so it might get more exciting. Both this and Misty are hard to read out loud because of all of the dialect. I do it especially poorly and muddle words all up. Still, these are popular books and part of my literacy plan.

This morning I had Frances and Ollie take a cognitive skills test online so that I can figure out a relative baseline before I determine what kind of brain training I'm going to have them do. Ollie's had the Woodcock Johnson and the WISC and did highly variably on both--sky high and rock-bottom on various subtests, so much so that he doesn't have an IQ at all, which is fine with me. But still...do I help him work on his weaker areas. So they did the Gibson Test of Brain Skills, and I made a total muddle of Frances's test. She did so badly that even though it isn't an IQ test, if we treated it as one her IQ would be somewhere around 80, which I know isn't true. I had her do it on my mac and with the touch mousepad instead of a real mouse, and she kept accidentally minimizing and maximizing the screen, couldn't hear the instructions clearly, and had some kind of technical difficulty with one of the subtests, which kept shooting up an error message and starting over. I straightened it out and had her retake the test, and she did considerably better--not alarmingly great, but not alarmingly bad. Now I feel like I know more about where she needs to work so that learning is easier for her. She's a very strong reader, but like my others, she did very sketchily on one of the auditory processing tests. Ollie, on the other hand, took the test on the big computer with the huge monitor and decent speakers, and he was extremely strong--none of his typical weak cognitive areas, probably because he didn't have to use a pencil and manipulate anything but a mouse with his hands. His grapho-motor and fine motor difficulties really affect his performance on more traditional tests. Even his processing speed was up in the mid 90s of percentiles, whereas he has, in the past, been in the 10th. Then again, we have kind of worked up his processing, even with a pencil and paper, through the sporadic training I've done with him.

I also made a decision to push for Frances to get allergy testing. I suspect food allergies, possibly even celiac disease, but I'm wondering if anyone is going to humor me and let her get tested. That's coming up Friday--the begging appointment. I feel like some of her behavior/whininess and her puffy eyes and dark circles may be a result of an allergy to some food, and elimination diets are hard for me with our already limited diet, so I'd appreciate the help of an outsider, even if it is imperfect. I don't know if allergy testing is ever ordered for children who don't have anaphalactic reactions, but I'm going to find out. I change her dosage and configuration of regular allergy medicines; she is now taking Claritin and Nasonex. So far it has resulted in little more than a nosebleed. Hopefully it will relieve her running nose after a few days. I know I act crappy when I have a sore throat or a stuffy nose, so maybe resolving that will resolve some other things.

Tomorrow is supposed to be really nice, and I'm kicking it off with my first tennis match. I'm playing with my favorite partner, and we're playing at the #4 position, which sounds awesome to me. We don't really belong at the level where we are, so being at #4 gives us a ghost of a chance to win. And to be honest, I'm really only having fun with tennis when I'm winning. It's a character flaw of mine. Why play if you aren't going to improve your record? I've been on a roll lately, so I hope that my skill and luck hold out.