Abby

Abby has been a conundrum lately. Not really a roller coaster, so to speak, but kind of. More of a roller coaster for me than for her!

Third grade has really been her year. There's the gifted/talented thing I mentioned before (or the not gifted/talented as the case may be), and she's getting additional testing. I don't really know what this means, other than the gifted/talented teacher asked me if they could do more verbal testing and I said yes. She also had really good test scores on nationwide tests they just did (she scored better than 96% of the other third graders in the nation) and continues to bring home 100% tests that she takes in class. And fortunately, it's not just all academic success. She also was asked to join the Jackson Ambassador program where students from school, along with the counselor, do various school and community service projects. And I'm also very happy with her friends, all of them really good kids. Am I bragging? Probably. I'm just really proud of the things she has been accomplishing consistently this year.

Tonight Abby is out on a date. With Dave. It's something that Dave and I had talked about before but things kept coming up. We figure if Dave shows her how she should be treated on a date when she's too young to actually date, then when she's old enough she'll accept nothing but the best. We'll see how that turns out! So Friday night, Dave called her asd asked her out. Since then, whenever we say she has a date with Daddy, She gets really embarassed and protests, "It's not a date!" Even today while we were getting ready, she didn't want to do her hair or put on nice clothes. Eventually I told her it's for her, it's just for fun, and she said she'd do her hair and put on nicer clothes, if I just stopped calling it a date. Ok, I give. Then when Dave showed up at the door with flowers in front of the whole neighborhood, I thought she was going to crawl under the couch! But she survived, and I'm hoping they're having a great time right now, eating at Maggiano's and going to Barnes and Noble.

And then there's her leg. This is the craziest thing going on now. Last Wednesday she started saying her let hurt. It was also right when Ava got sick, so I just dismissed it as a pulled muscle and gave her medicine and it seemed fine. But then I had to keep giving her medicine, to the point where she'd wake up at night crying, or she'd cry at school, when the medicine would wear off. I watched her when she didn't know and she'd limp or rub it, so I'm pretty sure it hurts bad and isn't added much for the attention factor. I took her to the doctor on Thursday and they took xrays. Her bones looked fine, which is good, but it could be a tendon or any number of other things. If it still hurts this upcoming week, I'll bring her back to the doctor. So far, I give her medicine roughly every five hours, and I can tell nearly to the minute when it's going to wear off and start hurting again, and like clockwork she's crying, whether she's watching a movie, playing outside or sleeping. It's kind of scary because it's not something that anyone can point to and say "this is what's wrong with her." And it's also making her crabby. Even when she has medicine, I can just tell she's not herself. She's laying down and sleeping, and the other day she took a shower when I wasn't home because she thought the heat would help it. I feel bad for her when she says, "I just want this leg to be gone!" and get frustrated at the lack of sleep going on in our house. Hopefully this week it will either go away or we'll figure it out.

So that's everything Abby. My 8-year-old puzzle!