The cuteness was distracting last night

I am *so* thankful that Jazzercise allows kids to stay while I'm taking a class, especially my kids: I brought both of them last night. Monkeyrotica was out at a happy hour, so it was up to me to help them with homework, feed them, and entertain them until bedtime. I got it all done before 7 p.m., so off to class we three went, with the admonition that they had to take turns playing games on my iPhone. The rules are when one of them lost their game, they'd have to hand the device over to their sibling.

About a third of the way through class, I caught a glimpse of them both staring into space, with my iPhone drooping in Rosie's hand. I checked in and found out that the phone's battery had powered out. Oh well, kids! You'll have to entertain yourselves.

That's when things started getting silly. Here are some of the scenes I caught whenever I peeked over at them:

• Dash curled up in a ball, Rosie draped over him
• Rosie laying on her back, Dash sitting on her belly
• Both of them playing dead/asleep (impossible at a 50db dance aerobics class)
• Piling up and sitting on multiple foam exercise mats
• Setting up foam exercise mats into a two-walled fort
• Setting up foam exercise mats into a four-walled fort
• Setting up foam exercise mats into a double-decker, four-walled fort
• Peering over the edges of their fort and collapsing into giggles if anyone made eye contact
• Knocking over their fort walls and giggling
• Shrieking when adults snuck up on their fort to scare them

They were cracking me up! If my iPhone wasn't already dead, I totally would have taken photos. By the end of class, I had so many people come up to me and tell me how adorable my kids were, it was heartwarming. One friend in class told me that she wished she were playing with them in their fort instead of taking class, they looked like they were having such a good time.

A good memory I wish to keep. :-)

Kids' health, as good as expected

Rosie had her nine-year check-up a few weeks ago (what? didn't she turn 9 in November? and yes, true, I'm just kind of a slacker with making doc appointments. anyway...) and looks great, as usual! Even though friends are always telling us, "She's so tall!" in reality, her height remains in the 58th percentile, her weight also is steady in the 70th percentile. You could probably go back to when she turned three or four and find the same numbers for Rosie. :-)

She should be riding her bike more and swimming more (repetitive motion helps develop stamina), but we'll work harder on that as it gets warmer. I'm planning to put her and Dash in their school's track club when registration opens for spring. Speaking of Dash...

We moved him from karate to a tae kwon do studio that is closer to home and doesn't hold classes in the middle of rush hour, primarily to make things easier for me — I loved that karate dojo. Hilarious, to me anyway, is that even though the TKD blue belt level (he was just promoted to blue from white belts in karate) is _much_ more advanced in TKD, they are letting him keep it. Instant promotion for Dash! He's also sporting a super-short haircut due to a bout of head-lice that threw me for a spinning loop -buzzcut-> shampoo-> bedding strip/laundry-> nit-picking- last Monday morning. Today, he's got a low-grade fever that he's had since Tuesday morning and will probably keep him out of school another day. He's in great spirits, otherwise!

And, per Grandma S's request, there you have a couple cute photos of the kids. Cheers.