Let's Go, Flyers!

Elizabeth and I got decked out in our Dayton Flyers gear to cheer on the Flyers as they played the Syracuse Orange in the second round of the NCAA tournament. None of us got to watch the first game (60-59 win over OSU) live, since it was Thursday afternoon, so we were excited to watch their second game.

Ben has outgrown his Flyers shirt but was a more attentive cheerleader than Elizabeth, who watched a little bit, asked me to read Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, and by about pg. 7 returned to her previous activity of sliding head-first off the furniture. The kids went to bed at halftime but I recorded the game for Ben, although I'm not sure I can stand to watch the nail-biting ending again as the Flyers won 55-53! I'm hoping the Dayton women's team wins by a slightly wider margin today so that the blood pressures of the entire Flyer Nation don't skyrocket for the 3rd time in 4 days!

Visiting Grandma

We took a couple days off recently to visit my grandma in Toledo. She moved into a nursing home in December and this was the first time we were able to visit her there. It is a really nice place (and I say that, having been in a LOT of nursing homes for my job!) and the staff seems very sweet and attentive. We broke the trips there and back into 2 segments each and the kids were pretty good travelers. We turned Elizabeth's car seat around so she got to face forward and watch DVDs with Ben for part of the drive and didn't have the sun glaring in her face through the back window. Between the DVDs, books, stuffed animals, and Magna-Doodles, they kept themselves pretty well occupied.

My parents were already in Toledo and Tony, Jen & Gwen came down on Saturday so we all had lunch together at Grandma's nursing home. The kids also discovered that there was a magical Starbucks machine in the little coffee lounge that dispensed delicious, free hot cocoa. Between that, their great-grandma's candy drawer, and the nurse's supply of animal crackers, they had a pretty treat-filled weekend!

Ben and Gwen chasing each other around Grandma's house

Cousins in their tiaras

Elizabeth & her great-grandma hugging

Grandma & Elizabeth (with her doll Annabelle) cuddling

Grandma & Ben

Grandma telling us stories

Ben & his Grammie, who was brave/foolhardy enough to let Ben play with her phone!

Finally gave in to a nap on the way home, right in the middle of writing in his journal.

Sometimes the biggest parenting victory is stifling your laughter

On the way home from dinner tonight, Ben was looking through the solar system page of the Knowledge Encyclopedia we got him last week and telling us facts about the planets. Earlier, he'd been reading the science of colors page and sharing slightly garbled facts about what made different colors. The combination of the two probably brought us the following inevitable conversation:

Ben: Daddy, what color is Mars?
Dave: A lot of people call it The Red Planet because its dirt is red.
Ben: What about Mercury?
Dave: I don't know. Mars is the only planet most people know by color.
Ben, totally seriously: Daddy, what color is Uranus?


On a side note, we stumbled over the Super Nature Encyclopedia at the library last month and Ben loved it so much we bought it and the Knowledge Encyclopedia. The Knowledge Encyclopedia in particular is meant for slightly older kids, so he asks for a lot of explanations, but they are still accessible enough that he'll sit and read them for a half-hour+ at a time. Both have vivid photographs/illustrations and fascinating information. They are definitely books he can read and grow with for quite a few years. Highly recommended for any child's library!