The End of a Good Day

Yesterday was one of our better days. Katie was feeling good and in a good mood all day long. She still didn't have enough energy to get off of the couch, but she did do a little painting and was happy to knock over any block towers that I built close enough to the couch for her to reach.

She also finally developed a taste for foods other than fish sticks yesterday. She ate oatmeal, salad and Sheppard's pie on top of her normal dose of fish sticks and Tater tots. In addition to that, I was also able to get her to take a little bit of a Dora break, mostly to save my own sanity. Instead She watched Open Season, Cars and The Cat in The Hat.

The complete immersion into a world of watching videos all day long while lying on the couch eating is not something we have promoted in the past and is something I will happily get away from again as soon as she has the energy to get off of the couch. We purposely did not pay for cable, dish, or even an antenna in our house. The kids exposure to TV was specifically limited to the DVDs that we purchased or rented through NetFlix, and then it was only one video per day if we were really feeling too busy to entertain them in any other way. The TV is now on all day long with one DVD or another playing in it, and I can't wait for the day when I get to shut it off again. But for right now, while Katie's entire day is spent either on the couch or on the little fold-out Dora couch/bed right in front of the couch what else are we going to do?

She doesn't usually have enough energy to color, play with blocks, her tea set, doll house, or hundreds of books. On top of that, she gets sick of listening to us read to her after a while. I'm really looking forward to the day I get to see her running and playing again.

Our house has a fairly open design which allows the kids to run in a circle from the dining room into the living room and through another connected room back to the dining room. It is their own personal race track for all sorts of games and I miss the sound of running feet as half of the family zooms around the house, running lap after lap just because they are young and have energy to burn.

Josh had a great day yesterday. We started his day with some sliding. I took him to a farmer's pasture that sloped gently down hill for a REALLY long way. With the icy snow conditions, that made for a very long, fast ride. We played on that hill for a little over an hour, then he went swimming. His mother took him to IROC to meet some of his friends for a little swimming adventure. When that was complete, He went to a friends house to play for a bit and finally came back home to relax at the end of the day. He had a great time. We will probably get some more sliding in today to take advantage of these excellent snow conditions.