J reads constantly. I mean, constantly. She was at the dinner table tonight with her nose in a book (I have mixed feelings about it). She reads late into the night until we have to tell her to turn out the light. She passes out with piles of books in her bed. She reads in the car when we pick her up from school.
She tore through four of the "American Girls" series - Molly, Samantha, Kit, and Felicity. Molly was set in the WWII period, and J started asking all kinds of questions about the war, about the 1940's. We would ask questions about Molly and she'd tell us about how her dad was a doctor, etc. The questioning was partly driven by my disbelief that she was reading them so quickly (as in a book or two a day). When drilled on the content, however, she seemed to have retained a good bit of it.
She also read a three-book series on a "troll-fighting 11-year-old Orthodox Jewish girl" called Hereville. I wanted to introduce her to the graphic novel format and, wow, did she like it. I also picked up Last of the Sandwalkers but it was a bit too advanced. I'll have to revisit it in a couple more years.
We had a goal in January of both J and R reading out loud for fifteen minutes a day. We skipped a handful of days (less than 5) but we made good on the goal. It was pretty easy because both of them are pretty motivated. C is more than halfway through TYCTRI100EL so she's already reading simpler things.
After December's rather mild weather, January was a bit of a surprise.
At first, it just got a little bit colder.
Then it snowed a little and collapsed our hoop house (but, hey, no complaints - we got greens nearly all winter! Plus the spinach still survives.)
Then it snowed a lot more and absolutely squished the hoop house.
It snowed 8" in total on Friday, so we had the whole weekend to cavort. And cavort we did.
We wrapped up the evening by visiting Ugly Mugs for hot chocolate and witnessed an amazing sunset.
I could do with more snows like that. Unfortunately, that 8 inches was the most Nashville has gotten since 2003, so it's likely the girls will be almost adults before it happens again. I like to think we milked as much fun out of us as we could.
A is already getting out the seeds to start the spring garden.
The bees seem to be doing a-ok even with the cold snap.
And how's R, you ask? Well, she's fine. She has a couple of teeth now. She still steadfastly refuses to crawl, but she's able to scoot around on her butt. She does it veeerrry slowly. If I'm working from home and set my laptop 2 or 3 feet away from her, I'll be working away and look up when she's suddenly banging on my keyboard. I don't actually see her move - she just does.
She's hilariously picky about her food. Picky probably isn't the best word. She eats everything. She wants to look at it first - closely. If you sneak up on her with a spoon she'll just slap it away from her face (where Wilbur is happy to clean it up). If you approach more slowly, she will eyeball it for a few seconds, and finally open her maw.
It's fun to see her personality start to emerge a little more.