Spicy Dragons & Dinosaurs

Sarah and Andy are getting married in Spring Green this weekend and Cheshire came home today. She is staying through next Wednesday. An out of work daughter has her advantages. It is so good to have her in the house. We feel like a family -- I have to get over that, but it is how I feel right now. I need more than me and Julia to be a family. She had sent me her travel plans last week but I didn't realize that she was staying for more than the weekend. I was quite happy to have her for a longer time.

It was so much nicer making dinner for three, and doing errands with both girls, and taking an after dinner walk together with the dog. The lake -- I am two blocks from a big lake -- was beautiful tonight. It is cool, the bugs are beginning to die. The sun is going down a bit earlier and a breeze is blowing. Just lovely.

Cheshire came home with an awful black eye. Two days ago, she was hit by a car while she was on her bike. She has ridden her bike all over the city for the past two years, but this incident has scared her. The driver didn't even stop which stunned her. Pedestrians helped her to a nearby fire station and she got help there. Thanks god for her helmet! She hit her eye on her handle bars and then went to the ground hard. She is bruised up some on one side of her body, and she got a nasty cut through her eyebrow. Not a great look for a bridesmaid. Everyone has New York stories like that, although it is different when it happened to me or David or our friends. This is my precious daughter! And i can't even bother to tell her how much safer she would be in Madison because a good friend of mine had a bike accident this summer which had him in a full body brace for a few months. Bikes are wonderful, but . . . . well, I worry about my dear girl.

Julia had another good day at school. I really questioned her teacher today -- she is calling me most days after school -- and Julia's behavior has really improved a great deal. They are still "practicing" how the classroom works, something I never realized that teachers did. Cheshire says, of course! Julia is getting it this year. Getting that she needs to line up, or do things in a certain order, or sit with certain other kids, or go to the rug to hear a story. She still is not eating her lunch (except for the pieces of carrot cake that I put in her lunch the last two days) but that seems to be the only kink in her day. And her reading at home is getting so much better. She is remembering words from one sentence to the next. A big improvement.