Me & My Baby

Kind of a blurred photo but it was taken on my phone by someone who is not very adept at picture taking.  Nevertheless, this is what my kids and I have been spending a lot of time doing. Check out my sexy skates with pink toe protectors  8^)

I have shaved 4 seconds off my time already and Mr 7 is loving the extra bike riding time.  You should see him go on that thing!  He is a speed demon!   Scares the hell out of me!

Healers or Money Grabbers?

Mr 7 has had some difficulty in learning to read.  The older 3 never had a problem with reading so this is new territory for me.  I figured if I just read to him all the time and got him to read to me all the time, he would improve.  So we bought the flashcards and the learn to read books and such.  There was a slight improvement but not much.  So I took him to the doctor who thought it might be an eyesight problem.  He referred us to the optometrist who said that Mr 7 doesn't have a problem with his eyes but the reading could be causing eyestrain which would make him not want to read so I should buy $200 reading glasses so he can focus on the words without straining.  So I bought them.  He wore them for a few weeks then lost them.  They didn't improve his reading anyway.

I thought maybe he had ADD because he seemed to lose focus while we were reading together and he always wanted to go off and do something else.  But then I realised who wouldn't want to go off and do something else?  He was already struggling with it and the fact that I can't quite explain how to read words that you can't spell out (ie. boy, love, one etc - I mean you spell out one oh un eh - how can you get one from that?) didn't help matters at all.  I wanted to be somewhere else!

So I took him back to the doctor who referred him to a specialist who said he probably has dyslexia and that will cost $750 to assess him.  Wow!  I should have gone into psychology.

But last night, he read me a book from front to back and got all the words right, words he was having difficulty reading before.  Maybe the solution isn't to throwing money at things....maybe its just taking our time.

Roller Derby Dreams

With roller derby tryouts only two months away, I finally got my skates and pads.  Yesterday I suited up and took off on my gorgeous black skates...then wondered what the hell I was doing!  It was as though I had never skated before!  I wobbled here, there and everywhere, all the while thanking the universe for my pads and wishing I had one for my butt.

But I perservered and it wasn't long before I was zooming all over the netball courts.  It was freezing cold and getting dark and I have never felt more alive.  The best thing was that Miss 12 & Miss 10 were skating along beside me and Mr 7 was lapping us on his bike.  We had so much fun and I've never sweat so much in my life.  I hope that I make the roller derby team in October but if I don't, its a great way to spend time with my kids...and if I don't lose weight doing this, I never will!