what can i say... it's an update...

Today I would like to cover updates on 3 former posts :

turning 30... day 1 of 40...

what's he building in there...

mirror mirror...

before I get into that I want to give you a little insight. I don't like quirky things. Quirky people yes... quirky things no. Today's post was almost cancelled out by one I would have called:

don't you f&%$#ng die on me you stupid motherf&*%ing laptop...

When I woke this morning I went to do what I do every morning... open up my lovely new laptop and check my mail while K attempts to drag herself out of bed (much like mommy she isn't a morning person). To my surprise when I opened it up the screen just sat there. blank. Blank. BLANK. it stayed that way. I poked at a few keys to wake it up. clicked the mouse button. Tapped the mouse pad thingy... nothing. hmmm.. not normal. not the way to start my Friday morning...

After rebooting twice the screen finally came back to life... so that is warning 1 for my computer... don't mess with me. you all read it... you heard the warning... it can't say I didn't warn it...

Onto our updates because I know all of you out there in Internet land are just chomping at the bit to hear what I have to say about things I have already said...

turning 30... day 1 of 40... I will be judging the joy and success of my birthday mostly on the happy day itself... it has been a rough 30 something days... I have been sick for at least 2 weeks of it having just wrapped up an amazingly awful flu/cold tag team that rendered me completely helpless... forcing me to cancel a night out complete with a babysitter for K, cancel the appointment for my coveted 30th birthday tattoo (and with our super busy schedule it will likely be April before I can make another appointment). When I wasn't sick, K and/ or Mike had the icky sicky to make up for it. Joy of joys no? I've learned not to say what I am looking forward to doing as it tends to jinx me and I get stuck at home miserable or tending to those in misery... but I am looking forward to some potential birthday fun... and to people not asking anymore if I am freaked out about turning 30...

what's he building in there... This blog covered two important subjects... 1) what the hell is my recluse neighbor doing with all those workmen... the answer? I have no clue. K suggested after listening to the tune one too many times that Tom Waits should ask his neighbor and I should ask mine... oh sweet simple child... I respect her right to be a recluse... because people scare me. It also looked at the lovely leak in the middle of my street... I haven't seen any signs of the water bureau in weeks. The paint markings on the street indicating pipes and leaks are fading... the leak is not... it slowly grows more persistent and we have several mucky pools in front of our house at all times... I only hope they get the problem fixed before the weather gets nicer, the mosquitoes come out and I have to start yelling at some one out of fear that someone I know could contract West Nile virus...

mirror mirror... finally the mommy panic blog of Wednesday... things here are looking good folks. What has become of my little spawn? Has her head started revolving? no... does she stand in front of the mirror croaking "red rum red rum"? Well... yes but only because Mike asked her to. She is fine. I am fine. The world is pretty fine. Yesterday I had a chance to talk at length with her teacher. I told her what's been going on and my concerns and she stared blankly at me for a few moments... asked a couple of questions and told me the only remarkable part of the whole writing the letter backwards is that K is writing that much by herself with no prompting... Basically, lots of kids write backwards at this age... but K's ahead of the curve for writing so much so well... She has not noticed any signs at all that K has a problem. she thinks my little one is doing quite well, but like a good teacher, Mrs J says she'll keep her eyes on it just in case. The bottom line though? K's smart.

On that happy note I will bid all of you out there in Internet land fair well. We have a busy weekend ahead of us... K and I will no doubt find something interesting to do while Mike heads off to lay down some funky tracks with his new band mates... or however I would say that without sounding like a dork...

mirror mirror...

this is a blog I was hoping I wouldn't have to write... one that I am in no way joyous about... still there is a sliver of super happy light in these dark clouds... you know... the clouds that are probably just fine and fluffy that I could be making too much of. Maybe I should be looking at the shape of the bunny and the pegasus up in these clouds instead of focusing on the oncoming storm.

Yesterday after we got back from school K sat down at the table and wrote Mike and I a letter... It was perfect and beautiful and she did the whole thing herself including spelling all the words... and writing them completely and totally backwards. Mirror perfect backwards.

Oh isn't that sweet.... oh how cute... tee hee hee. Except that I am mildly dyslexic...

If you don't know anything about dyslexia it wouldn't hurt for you to know... but among the things you would learn would be that writing backwards like the demon spawn from some creepy horror movie is not a sign of dyslexia... So why am I worried? because any impediment on the road to literacy scares the hell out of me.... because I was so befuddled by letters that it took me a very long time to learn to consistently make letters the right way... because when I am tired reading a page of plain English can be like deciphering hieroglyphics to me... because spell check is my best friend... because I did a lot of backwards writing myself... though only single letters would be flipped, not entire words and sentences... because my mom suffers from the same learning disability that I do... because my daughter is precious and perfect to me and even though a learning disability wouldn't make her anything less than the remarkable person she is, it will make her road ahead so much tougher...

There are so many other reasons she could be writing this way... and it isn't an overblown reaction to a one time occurrence... She writes backwards a lot. I often show her which side of the page to start on and it helps most of the time. There could also be 1,000,000,001 different factors leading up to this. For instance: I think she is the only left handed kid in her class. Does that make a difference? I am not left handed I do not know.

Today I had planned to talk to her preschool teacher... see if she had anything to say on the subject... see if she noticed that if you ask K to identify a word she points to a group of them... see if she had noticed that while K can tell you how to spell something, and she can write many words she has a hard time picking out her own name at times... to see if she knew some one we could discuss it with... see see see... but the schools are on a 2 hour snow delay (it only snained in our neighborhood) so preschool is cancelled. Instead I'm talking to all of you out there in internet land...

keep your fingers crossed...

** I talked with a friend this morning who gave me a number for an early educational intervention program. I'll call them tomorrow. If anyone else has a child in the Portland area between the ages of 3-5 and feels they may have a problem learning I'll be more than happy to give you the number**