Bella and Christian's News

 After a whole post about Peter, I have to mention Bella and Christian's latest news too.  

Bella had her Eagle Scout court of honor a few weeks ago.  Kelly and I were so focused on the moment that we didn't get a single photo.  That stunk but it's so typical of me.  I got this semi-ok photo of an award she received afterwards that show her in her new Eagle Scout neckerchief.  We're so proud of all the hard work she put into this journey.  What an amazing accomplishment.

As for Christian, he got a superior rating at the latest piano federation competition he competed in.  He had worked very hard on his pieces.  I wasnt' allowed into the judging space, so no pictures or video but from what I heard from teh hallway, it sounded perfect.  He's really a talented musician between his snare drum in the marching band, his saxophone in teh symphony band, and his piano at home.  He's amazing.  Here's a picture outside afterwards.  Relief!  All done for a while.

Two days later, he had his pectus excavatum surgery.  That was an ordeal.  The surgeons and everyone else at the hospital were fantastic but it's a very difficult surgery from which to recover.  He's been mostly in bed ever since.  We can see steady improvement, though, and we are sure that in the end he'll be happy with the result.  I promised him no embarrassing hospital pictures or post-op recovery pics, but here's an x-ray of his new chest.  You can see the bars they placed under his sternum and the way they curve outward to push his ribs and sternum into place.

His scoliosis is particularly evident in this picture.  It was such a dilemma deciding which issue to focus on because without a crystal ball no one could say for sure which would become a bigger problem 5 years from now.  We're praying we made the right choice.

To end on a happy note, before the surgery, Christian helped Peter build a cool fort in the living room.  They build a rocket-ship style fort and the two of them had a great time inside.  It was a bit small for Christian, but they made it work.

Winter is Finally Gone

The robins are back in our yard.  Jackie, our neighbor across the street that spends every winter in Florida, is back, and I haven't needed my electric blanket in weeks, so all the signs of spring are here!  It's wonderful.

With the end of winter came the end of basketball for Peter.  I was devasted to see it end because I think he learned a lot and it was very good for him.  I also loved the moms I met in the stands and will miss our weekly chance to get together.  However, Peter is thrilled to be done with his sports ordeal.  The boy really doesn't love ball sports.  It's sad.  I'm proud of him for giving it a good try and going every week and doing his best.  I definitely noticed improvements in his sports skills and also socially.  It was a good experience overall.  

I was hoping to post a cool action shot from a game, but he never contacted the ball a single time in a game all season.  That was a bit of a bummer, but it was just as we wanted it (as you can see where he spends his time in the game - he's the little guy at the back).  He did try hard in practice, though!  I think the fast pace and the flying ball is a bit intimidating.

March always means Pinewood Derby in Cub Scouts.  Kelly wasn't too thrilled to have yet another pinewood derby car to build.  I think he thought he was done once the church got out of scouting.  But we've been really happy with Peter's cub scout troop and he was very excited about having his own pinewood derby car.  He named his car "Speed Racer" and he came in 2nd place among the other tiger scouts.  First place beat him by less than a second.

His is the golden car leading the pack in this picture.  They raced the cars 4 times each for each lane of the track and against various cars because they had so many tiger scouts.  He won so many of his heats that we thought he'd win overall but the math said otherwise.

Kelly made sure he was involved in the building process the whole time.

Peter was also star student this past week.  That means he got to present a poster about himself on Monday, read a book of his choice to the class on Weds, bring show-and-tell items on Friday, and be line leader, teacher's helper, and all sorts of other cool stuff in between.  Pretty much the best week ever.

His teacher has an app where she posts pictures throughout the week.  These are the ones containing Peter.  It's fun to see him interacting with kids at school and doing well.

Every so often they have 6th graders come join for activities.  They are called "buddies."  Peter loves his buddies.  He gets so excited on days they join him.  This day they made bug headbands with the kids.  Peter loved his.

The library had a STEM day planned where the kids could go to science experiments but it got canceled last minute and Peter was so disappointed.  I told him we'd go buy some dry ice and have some of our own science fun.  It worked out great.  He had a blast watching it bubble and steam up in the bowl and the various other fun things we did with it like blow up and pop bags.  Never has sublimation been so much fun.  We played for hours (didn't even want to stop for lunch - just ate while he played.)  Mom for the win.