February continued January’s bumpy streak but towards the end of the month things might be finally settling. We all suffered from the stomach bug that was circulating around the kid’s school. The kids all had a holiday break week from school in the middle of the month. Cordelia spent the break week with Mimi and Papa in Arizona. We’re also announcing this month that we’re pregnant and expecting our fourth kid in September! So, for the first three weeks of the month Alicia was suffering from a lot of morning sickness. That’s fortunately finally been subsiding over the last week of the month.
Cordelia is continuing to do great in school and loves going to school. We had a parent teacher conference this month and her teachers are very happy with her educational and social development. While she’s still working on being patient, not interrupting and answering all the questions, she’s a very caring and responsible young lady. Cordelia really enjoyed her week with Mimi and Papa. She got to ride a pony on a trail ride, fed lots of different animals at an ostrich farm, and did lots of other fun things during her week. She continues to enjoy her time in gymnastics, swim class, and AWANA.
Anthony is continuing to develop his social and emotional skills. While he can be a good leader in his class, he also has a tendency to be a follower and can get himself in trouble falling into younger kids’ behavior. We continue to work with him on being responsible and taking ownership of his actions and choices. Anthony got to enjoy his belated birthday bounce house and had a super fun day. He also continues to enjoy gymnastics, swim class, and AWANA.
Lydia is getting a little better about listening and following directions. She still has a tendency to go around grabbing things and getting in trouble, not playing nicely with her siblings. But she’s still only 2 ½ so she’s still navigating the dynamics of how to play well with others. Fortunately, she does have a very good vocabulary and can communicate very well. So, we can have conversations with her about how to play nicely. Right now Lydia’s only extra activity is swim class, which she seems to enjoy and has been improving.
Alicia’s had a bit of a rough month, balancing morning sickness with attempting to keep on being productive at work. The month of February started off slowly at work, but as the days have progressed things have begun picking up. She received a very positive performance review; apparently her efforts have been getting her notice across the organization, which is a great thing – one of the groups she worked with credited the ‘Alicia Factor’ as the reason for the progress they’ve made. AWANA has been good; while a lot of work, she’s got an amazing team that works with her and they’ve been continuing to host both virtual and in-person nights for the Sparks. Family time has been a little stretched this month; partly due to all the excitement with sickness, but on that front as well things have been getting better. During the kids’ spring break, Alicia was able to spend some more quality time with Lydia and Anthony (and even managed to squeeze in a trip to the zoo!).
Things have been going fairly well for Tim. He’s been struggling to get his momentum back with working out after the Russin Family Christmas trip, but the last couple of weeks have been good. Work has also been picking up for him lately — this month, he went from working on one project to being a contributor on five! He also had his performance review, and was told that he’s a ‘must keep’ employee, which is always nice to hear. On the home front, we got the garden planted for this year, and things are coming up already. He started working on his first major furniture project with his new table saw (a built-in cabinet for the master bedroom), and aside from a few splinters it’s coming along quite nicely.
This month, please pray for us as we are figuring out what we’ll be doing with the kids for school next year. The addition of the new baby will be shaking things up a bit, in more ways than one. We are also working to improve our family time (both quality and quantity), as this year it feels like there’s been a dearth of both.
