This is Micah, by the way. This blog has been less frequently updated for a while now. I'm not making any promises to regularly update it from now on, but I feel like writing tonight, so here I am, and we'll see if I make a habit of updating in the future.
Emily: Emily is very, very, cute. She is too cute. She is approaching an age of optimal cuteness, perhaps. Observe.
How our kids have had such cuteness is somewhat of a mystery to me. It certainly has nothing to do with me. It's as if there is some magical combination of Sarah and my genes that produces cuteness which exceeds our own. This is fortuitous since the girls can be a little oppressive and annoying from time to time. But anyways back to Emily. She can say: "dada", "mama", "baba", and "a-lala" (translation Angela). She can stand without support and cruises everywhere, but has not walked yet. She's very close though, she probably could but she chooses not to since she gets around fine with her gimpy crawl in which she favors one side heavily. She is both very happy and very sensitive, like Natalie and Angela have been. I think she will be very bright, though it's hard to say at this point whether she will be more like Natalie or Angela.
Angela: Angela passed VPK with flying colors, and is now feeling pretty bored this summer. She loves playing games, playing more games, did I mention playing games? She can't wait for kindergarten to start and neither can we ; ). She will be going to the same charter school as Natalie, West Melbourne School for Science, and has a chance of having the same kindergarten teacher as Natalie had (she had the same VPK teacher that Natalie had, btw). It feels like there should be a picture of Angela here, here's one
Natalie: To me, it feels like Natalie has leveled up recently. She read's chapter books, such as diary of wimpy kid and the like, on her own and finds this relaxing. She was tested this year for the gifted program, and scored just below the score at which they recommend placement at her school, but they said to request testing next year, which we probably will. Natalie still enjoys playing and being silly with Angela, but recently it feels like she's taken on more and more pseudo-adultish characteristics, which is both refreshing and terrifying. It's fun for me to watch her grow and try to help where I can, because I feel like I understand her better than she knows, because we have some things in common. It's also hard for me to observe some of the negative behaviors associated with Natalie's personality, since many are just magnified expressions of my own negative tendencies. Here is a cameo.
Both girls are a little obsessed with TV shows, which is we try to limit to 2 hours of screen time daily. Natalie, especially, has been a little too obsessed, and can become very emotional at the suggestion that we do something else as a family that can take the place of TV time, e.g. As a parent, it's hard to compete for your child's attention, with Youtube and Netflix offering essentially endless entertainment which is way more captivating than anything associated with reality. Although this is a harsh reality, we have to stand firm in requiring that we do lots of things in the real world as a family, like going on bike rides, playing outside, and playing games together, etc.
As for me and Sarah, we are trying to move forward, but we have our ups and downs. All in all, though, it's hard not to accept the many blessings we have in our life. To not be grateful for the conveniences and relative ease of life which we regularly experience would mock the sacrifices and physical/emotional hardships of most of humanity since well, as long as we know about. We have a home and I have a steady job which pays our bills and enables us to live without worrying too much about finances. We have vehicles which work and can carry our family to where we need to be and we have friends nearby who we can relate with. We have a lot to be thankful for.
I think for tonight I'll just leave it at that, but I hope in the future I can relate more on a personal level about things that fill my thoughts from day to day. E.g., I find it amazing that so many of us can feel so deeply about this thing or that or long for human connections which seem to elude us, no matter how hard we try. Though we live in a world of temporal well being and comfort, many of us are not entirely well or whole. I know that I need to turn to the Savior, and I know that He knows everything we go through, and I'm grateful for this and need to rely on the Atonement more than I do now. I just don't want to let my life go by and not find a way to connect with others or share with the world what I feel and see while I am here.
Cheers,
Micah
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