a few good things

OK, here are some good things from the past couple of weeks.

1.  Brigham has gotten to be a master pancake-maker.  He makes pancakes for himself and his brothers almost every day.  It was so fun to watch him and Mosey a few mornings ago as Brigham taught him exactly how to make the perfect pancake.  Brigham is a good teacher.  I can learn a few things from him.  :-)

2.  T-Rex seems to be on the mend.  Joseph has done a great job in helping me take care of him.  We had to give him injections for a few days, and now we are down to oral medication every other day and eye drops twice a day.  It's really, really hard to give lizards eye drops.  T-Rex's eyes are small, and the surface tension of water is so great that the drop tends to just sit on his eyelids in a bubble.  I'm not sure there's much transfer of fluid between the drop of medicine and his eyes.  Giving injections is even harder.  You have to grab the lizards arm, grasping the teeny eensy bone and squishing the muscle to one side so you can insert the needle and inject the medicine without getting too close to the bone.  Seriously, this is very hard because it turns out T-Rex is feeling well enough that he does NOT want to be held down, and does NOT want to hold his arm still enough to be injected.

3.  After Sunday's orchestra concert, Monday was Brigham and Mosey's orchestra advancement auditions.  Brigham auditioned for the Sinfonietta orchestra, and Mosey for the Camerata Orchestra (the one Brigham was in this year).  I stayed with Mosey and sent Brigham on his own to a different room for his auditions.  Mosey was so, so nervous.  He sat in his chair moaning, "I'm not ready, I'm not ready," for about 40 minutes.  He was utterly immune to my pep-talks.  Finally I got him distracted playing hand-slapping games and thumb wars and he was calm for his audition.  I'm pretty positive Brigham will advance.  I'm not so sure about Mosey, mostly because I don't really think the current cellists in the Camerata Orchestra are ready to advance, and if they don't advance, there won't be slots open for the Intermezzo kids to advance.  It's not like there is a plethora of cellists anyway.  Not like violinists.  :-)  Mosey's orchestra was really very, very good this year and I don't think Mosey was bored at all.  But I'm not sure Mosey will have that same perspective.  We will see.

4.  I've been working on a sewing project the past few days, a few minutes here and there.  I made a new skirt.  Mosey was very interested in the sewing machine and so a couple of nights ago while Brigham and Joseph were at scouts, I gave him a little tutorial on how to use the sewing machine.  Together we sewed a canvas bag.  Then yesterday he made another bag entirely by himself (well, the first seam he made ended up being a mistake so I picked it out, but he did the rest on his own), which he used to carry his music books to piano lessons and cello lessons.