Success

What an exciting week for the Buckley family...
Emma has news from 2 separate fronts. She reached the gold medal level in the accelerated reader program at school. She read over 40 books this spring and took tests on the computer. To honor her achievement, she will participate in an AR walk where all the gold medal readers do a parade through the halls while the other kids cheer for them. Pretty inspiring for the readers! Her other news is that she decided to join the swim team this week and has been swimming since Monday. The coaches said she is doing a great job and is very willing and motivated to do everything they ask. Look out swim meets...here she comes. She'll be swimming the 25 yard freestyle next week (with a few breathers on the lane line, I'm sure).

Alex had his first swim meet of the season this morning. It was a practice meet with swimmers from our team only, so it wasn't quite as crazy as usual. Alex is thrilled to announce he got first place in the freestyle and the butterfly and third in backstroke. These are the first blue ribbons he has earned for swimming. He improved his freestyle time by over 3.5 seconds from last year and his backstroke by about 2 seconds. In fly (which I have no idea how to do), he actually got an invitational time which means he would be able to participate in a special meet at the end of the season where kids who meet certain qualifying times race. Since this meet wasn't official, it doesn't count, but he's hoping to do the same thing next week. On the way home from the meet, Alex was talking 100 mph about getting blue ribbons and invitational times. He went on for several minutes and then stopped dead to ask "Are you getting bored of this topic?" I had to laugh. I told him it was OK to go on since he was excited and had worked hard.

Benjamin's exciting news is that he has been showing much more interest and ability in the eating arena. This morning, Sean called me at 10:30 and said Benjamin was complaining that he was hungry. Wow! I've hardly ever heard him say he's hungry. He wanted "tinies" to eat, so Sean got him some Rice Krispies which have been dubbed tinies by Benjamin. He proceeded to drain the bowl dry. He also has eaten applesauce, yogurt, Teddy Grahams, beans from my bean soup, etc. Quite a week for him.
Tomorrow is Alex's piano recital. He is playing a solo piece by Haydn and has 2 duets with his best friend. I think the duets may be more challenging than the solo because it is so difficult to play with someone else. Wish him luck!