A quick check-in

Calvin's arm is healing nicely, though he still says it hurts every so often. He saw his orthopedic surgeon last week and the x-rays looked great. Calvin got the green light to use the fingers on his right hand for writing and computer work, but he still enjoys trying to scratch out letters with his left. He's due to get a hard cast on the 22nd, which he'll wear into early March. It looks like he'll be able to play baseball this season but might not be able to run bases for the first few weeks.
He also lost his second tooth yesterday, on the bottom right next to the first. It fell out while he was enjoying popcorn at a sing-along showing of The Sound of Music, his new favorite movie.

Both boys giddily welcomed the Year of the Rat last week. Finn was enthralled with all he learned about Lunar New Year in preschool and came home eager to prepare: We needed flowers and to clean the house, "to make everything beautiful!" He urged us to clean the car too, but we didn't quite get to it. He helped pick flowers, and suggested we have a traditional dinner of long noodles, oranges, chili and cornbread. Hm. We've been gorging on Chinese food, and enjoying leftover homemade dumplings I learned to make thanks to one of my dear friends on the cooking blog.

Doug is just back from Vegas, where the TVs are even bigger than ours and thus better for watching the Packers win the Super Bowl. The boys missed most of the game (same time as the sing-along) but we've watched some on the DVR. Mostly, they boys are skipping to commercials, and requesting repeat showings of the pint-size Darth Vader one.

They were pretty awesome while Doug was away. There were whiny fits, especially Saturday, when Calvin wanted to do too many very different things on an absurdly warm weekend, but overall they were good company, and it was great to catch them being so kind to each other. We went out for dinner for Lunar New Year and breakfast for the Super Bowl, and I collected a generous handful of compliments for the boys -- for being well-mannered, well-behaved, adventurous eaters, and adorable. It's good to have a store of those for the moments when they seem to be none of those things!

Today Calvin was Super Calvin! (always said in a TV-show-announcer-voice) and rushed to Finn's aid for matters large and small. I love listening to him read to his appreciative little brother at night. The boys'-weekend-but-with-Mom has been fun, but Mom is looking forward to the return of Super Dad! to absorb some of the kids' energy...