Planet presentation

 If I believed in astrology, I would say the stars have not been aligned well for me this week. Sydney's been sick, meaning I've been getting only three to five hours of sleep each night (most of which is only about an hour at a time with frequent interruptions), and Jeff and I have been juggling work schedules to be home with her the last three days.

On top of that, Maggie took a bad turn Wednesday afternoon, walking with a more pronounced limp and whimpering often.

Regardless, the planets seem to be aligned for AJ. Thursday afternoon, his class performed the culmination of weeks of work learning about the solar system. Below is the very bad video of AJ's part. You'll need to turn the volume way up to hear it.

If you couldn't make that out, he said:

Earth is where life is. Earth is the third planet from the sun. It has one moon.

The teacher explained to us that each child got to choose a planet. They then researched it (According to AJ they did this through "watching a lot of space movies and reading a lot of space books."), worked with their fourth-grade buddies (each has had a fourth-grade student helping them on various projects throughout the year. AJ's "buddy" is our neighbor, Annika.), decorated their own planet and wrote out their notes on an index card.

Here's what I found particularly impressive... go back to the video and note how intently AJ is reading from his card. Now take a look at what he was reading:

I'm glad it made sense to him.

*****



Incidentally, I'll be taking Sydney to the doctor this morning. She (and I) actually slept fairly well last night. Her fever is again down, but the diarrhea continues. This morning she's been asking for soup, which I take as a good sign because yesterday she had no appetite.

Meanwhile, Maggie has been doing slightly better since yesterday afternoon. I think poor Jeff was preparing himself to take her to the vet today. On several occasions I saw him laying on the floor with her, petting her and trying to console her. To keep the house quiet for Sydney to nap, I headed outside to play hockey in the driveway with AJ. And then, just like that, Maggie stood up and headed for the door, wanting to join us. She then hobbled around the driveway as best she could with a tennis ball in her mouth, wanting to be part of the action.

Jeff could only shake his head at the turn-around. I think he's finally learned what I figured out last February after the last time Maggie had a bad spell: don't make a permanent decision based on a couple bad days. We've been blessed with an extra month with her, and who knows, we just might be blessed to have her with us a little longer still. And for that I thank God (not my lucky stars.)