Miscellaneous about Aubrey

These are just a few things:

While one the way to church, I decided to sing a song that I thought would show my children how much I loved them. We sometimes sing in the car on the way to church. So without any warning, I commenced singing, "Love at Home." I was barely past the first line, and about to sing, "...when there's love at home" when Aubrey looks up from the backseat and says, (obviously irritated), "Mom, stop singing! I'm trying to READ!" So there was neither love at home or in the car. Gone was my vision of my children feeling so loved and bonded with me. Oh well.

Aubrey is again branching out from the Grammatical Tree. She recently informed me that the name for a sponge that can fly is a Sprocket. (Sponge + Rocket maybe? Whoever heard of a flying sponge anyway?) It remind me of last winter, when she saw one of those car reindeer attachments with the red nose and antlers on a blue car at her school and she named the car Bludolph and would look for it everyday. She has also started accurately using the term "technically" and so I fear her powers of correction and negotiation are increasing, ie, "technically, my bedtime should be later since it's the summertime..."

Aubrey recently got a black eye. Roughhousing with Andrew, the rambunctious two year old now has its drawbacks. I told her and told her the day would come when he could fight back and it wouldn't be pretty. Well, Andrew kicks his feet and butts his head when he's "ticked out" (Aubreyism) better than any billy goat I know, and somehow he got the best of Aubs. I think he escaped without a scratch. But right above Aubsy's eye turned a nice dark shade of purple for a while. That was fun. This picture was several days after the billy goat incident, so it doesn't look quite as bad as it was.

Today, Aubrey went roller skating for the first time. And that was fun to watch. I actually felt ashamed that somehow Aubrey had gotten to be almost seven years old (seven years old!!) without ever having gone roller skating. She clung to the wall for the time she was out on the floor, but really got around in her skates on the carpeted area. She fell several times, but I was so proud of her for trying and then trying again. As we left, she told me she had had fun even though she hadn't skated too much on the hardwood floor. I told her next time, I would actually rent skates and come out with her so she could leave the wall and I think she was happy with that idea. Listening to the music and watching the lights flash at the Champions Roller World made me a little nostalgic for Shakey's Pizza and the Fiesta Roller Rink of my youth. I loved skating and we would go to Shakey's and the local roller rink for school fundraisers (I think?) and sometimes friends' parties. They had a disco ball that hung from the ceiling, and "Good Vibrations" by Loleatta Hollaway and Marky Mark will always remind me of Fiesta and how good it felt to pick up speed and watch the disco ball spin when that song came on. I was happy to see too, that they are still doing the Chicken Dance on Skates and the Couples Skate. And skating rink bathrooms are still really gross.