Geese are honking

I heard some geese flying back north yesterday, and I saw crocuses pushing their way up through the dirt on our walk today. So spring is quietly "honking" its way back to Niskayuna. As I write, Thomas is in bed after a long day at school and then a play date with his old friend Leo. Well, old for a 6 year old. Nolan is at baseball tryouts right now. He is trying to make a higher level team that is mainly 10-11 year olds. They only let a few 9 year olds play, so there's a good chance he won't make it. And he's okay with that. He will just play the same level as last year again if he doesn't make it, and he would have a lot of friends doing that too. So baseball is slowly starting too!

We had our parent-teacher conferences this week which went pretty well. Nolan is one of her stronger students, I'm told. He is also doing great on his violin too. He is hanging in there with the advanced math class, but might need to step it up a little more. Thomas is also doing really well. His reading level is very high...at a third grade level! He is also needing to get a little stronger in math and his speech too. But his teacher loves him in his class...the class clown she says! Thomas will have her again in second grade. They are doing this thing in their school called looping, where they have the same teacher for 2 years. But we are choosing to opt out of looping for Nolan's teacher. We really want him to experience different teachers before he moves up to middle school where there are lots of different teachers. I can't believe he's going to be a 5th grader.

So Thomas is doing better at swim lessons. The weekday class is better than the Sunday class. I still want him to be a little stronger at it, so I think I'm going to sign him up for another session. Between baseball, swim lessons and an art class, we will have a busy spring. It will be great when we can go to Florida to get away from it all...26 more days!

Thomas also had a fun night this week at our neighbor's house. Our neighbors across the street have no grandchildren, so they've adopted ours. Thomas wrote her a note to say that she missed her and her dog Murphy. He got to cross the street by himself and stick it in her door slot. She came over later to invite him for dinner. So yesterday Thomas went over and had pasta, salad and chocolate sundae with them. I think they were so happy to have him for themselves. We had to go over and get him when it was getting close to bedtime! They are the nicest people.

Well, Nolan just got back from tryouts and he thought they went pretty well. We'll find out in an email later. Pinewood Derby tomorrow!