Friday Adventure Gang

We had such a fun day yesterday.

Ballet is over for a few weeks, and Jim had the day off, so we went somewhere we have never been in Bellingham. It is this great park/boardwalk near the University.

 

 

 

(trigonometry graffiti. a little Pythagorean.)

 

 

 

Here are some things that make for a successful outing:

1. Everyone was happy. There was an atmosphere of excitement and discovery in the kids. It's rare to have all three in a good mood, but it happened yesterday. The sun tricked us. We thought it would be warm, but it was freezing. No one even cared.

 

2. We kind of had a plan, but mostly just went wherever we felt like and discovered new territory.

After we were done playing at this park, we drove up into the hills and around the campus a little. I can't get out of my head how neat all the houses in the neighborhood are. They are old and unique and colorful and strange. I plan on going back and exploring the campus some more.  

I love when one adventure turns into another discovery and that leads us to something else unexpected.

And everyone continued to be happy. The kids were in the back yelling out the colors of the houses. They were just as enchanted as I.

 

3. Food I didn't have to cook. We meandered downtown totally starving (but no hunger rage yet). We ate at the greatest pizza place - same place we went with Aaron and Kim.

The whole gang was starving. We ate every last scrap of food. The kids just wolfed it down and were so happy and good.

 

I have a list going of fun things to do now that the weather is getting nice (please?). This was a good start. I feel like mayyybe the Mendoza line won't be hovered around this year. Maybe?

 

 

Evan's IEP 2014

First of all, I just love to death Evan's teachers and therapists. They are such smart and patient and amazing women. I will get a picture of them all before this adventure is through. They inspire me in so many ways.

Second, Evan has made such amazing progress since last year when we started.

Cognitive: He met his goals and can spell his name! Me and teacher Andrea were both: "did you teach him that? No, did you teach him that?" We figured out a lot of his letter awareness is from the game Letter School on my phone. Ha.
Next year he will go to the afternoon sessions, which are longer and more rigorous in academia (these morning classes are more social skills and sensory oriented).

Social: He is doing great here as well. He loves his friends and is so self sufficient in many ways (like brushing his teeth and washing his hands).
However, he still needs help with "coping" skills. Like, he still freaks out when a friend comes near his toys or when it's time to clean up.
That's the word I've been looking for for four years now..."coping". He has a hard time coping.

The other day I had cleaned the play room and there was a basket of toys on the pool table. Evan knocked it off while driving his trains on the table and quickly said, "I'm sorry mommy!".

That doesn't seem like much to you, but it's a new development of awareness and empathy in him. It made me so happy, I didn't even mind cleaning it up. 

Communication: This one is huge. I understand most of what he is saying now. Teacher Kathy says he is on the correct trajectory for proper speech, but just delayed.
Next step is to slow and separate words, learn to use pronouns correctly, and learn to conjugate verbs correctly.
She also taught me a few tricks about how to help him "cope" with stuff. Like when I am doing dishes and he wants popcorn, I say "first I will wash dishes, then we will make popcorn".
and he says, "ok"...

I know. Duh. Seems so simple but this is how things usually go in my house:

"I want coporn!"
"I've got to do dishes, I can't right now."
"BUT I WANT COPORN!"
"I know Evan! But I'm doing this right now, we will -"
"I WANT COPORN!"
"EVAN! Don't yell at me or you can go to your room. Calm down!"

So...
I guess they use "first ____, then ____" a lot at school so he is trained on it. So far it has changed my life.
Whyyyyyy didn't I think to do this sooner?

Anyway, teacher Kathy is fabulous. This is just one of the few things she gave me advice on.

Fine Motor: This is the one Evan is least successful at so far. He has made some progress, but still needs more work. Teacher Kris is so smart. She gave me some other pointers on how to help him gain hand muscle and coordination.
Writing and coloring have just never really intrigued Evan, so he is really bad at pencil control.

We have been hanging on the monkey bars and playing with play dough more. That's supposed to help with hand strength. 

So, for about an hour and a half we talked about my kid. Moms love to talk about their own kid. I just soaked up all the advice and insights. I feel like we have turned a corner with Evan. I really do. Just do NOT touch his trains. 

Sunshine's Up

"Sunshine's up" is what Evan says when it's morning and the sun is up.

After two weeks of cancelled church, we got to go today. It's good to be back.

On the drive home from church Avery said, "Today our teacher asked us if we've ever had a nightmare. Then when we were singing I thought to myself, I'm having a nightmare right now because we just keep singing and singing."
Ha ha. I made her repeat the story to make sure I heard her right. I laughed and laughed. She cracks me up for real. PS I am the music leader.

There is always a moment around my house when all three kids need me right this very second.

Andrew of course pooped all over the place (for the second time today...second poop bath and outfit change). So as I am getting him all sorted out, elbow deep in it all, Evan cries for me to button his pants - he can snap but not button - and Avery is downstairs sitting on the counter yelling for me to get her down.

She's sitting up there because we were making cookies. Andrew was playing around at my feet while we were dumping ingredients in the mixer. I smelled something funny, and sure enough the poop is bleeding up his back.

I stop everything and get him in the tub. It's as messy as you think it would be, and everyone is practically chanting my name "mommy! mommy! I need down! Button me!"

 

Today was a special day though. Today was the day. The first day of spring-like weather when everybody comes out of their house rubbing their eyes, eyeballing the tulip sprouts, poking around the yard. You can hear the neighbors all around, enjoying the beauty. Spring is enough to make you cry.

We played outside for hours with our neighbor Noah. Andrew's third outfit of the day got dirty from scooting on the damp ground.

 

Some more good news: the missing Boggle dice showed up out there among the gravel.

 

Later, inside, Avery was playing with the Boggle dice, and spelled "Evan".

Evan sees it and exclaims, "Hey that's Evan!"

I asked him if he knows how to spell his name?

"ddee, vvvvfffeeee, ayy, enn!"

I was so shocked! I had no idea.

Then I gave him the letter dice and told him to spell his name, and he did.

 

We had a good day, and by that I mean we had cookies and milk for dinner.

And bedtime came an hour early thanks to daylightsaving.

A Little House Keeping

Let's start with ballet:

Fridays are the days that we have nothing going on and the kids get cagey and extra extra crazy. So I signed Avery up for a ballet class in South Surrey BC on Fridays. It's super cheap for nine sessions, and once you get over the border it's only five minutes away. 

But the border. It could be five minutes...it could be 40 minutes. The good news is, the kids don't mind sitting in the car; we are out of the house, we go super early and play at the playground outside the ballet studio, and best of all, our friends signed up for the class too. It's a Canadian play date.

I pack a lunch box loaded with snacks for the border wait back into America. That's always a long wait. But again, the kids love it and we burn up daylight on the road to bed time. Win, win. 

The actual class is very low key and perfect for Avery. She has a blast "dressing up" like a ballerina. This last week she was seriously being a class clown. I had to "pssst! stop goofing around" at her.

Next let's talk about Evan's well check:

Nothing exciting to report. Just that he is in the 86 percentile for height. And he has croup. He gets it once a year I guess. 

Last night around 5pm he said he was going to bed, and he walked himself upstairs and went to sleep. Poor sick kid. 

Hey! I think I prefer puking over runny nose. I am sick of wiping his nose all day long, and I feel like there is snot all over the house. 

Anyway, around 9pm he came down the stairs with  a chipper "good morning!".
Oh, hey...it's not morning bud.
He drove some cars around for half an hour, then went back to bed. 

He has his yearly IEP next week and I am really excited to sit and talk with his teachers about his progress. More on that later.

While me and Dr Putney were talking shop, Andrew poops big and loud and it blows right up his back. 

She then proceeded to help me with clean up duty, holding the garbage bag for me and stuff. 

I said, "you're a doctor...is it ok that this baby poops all over the place 4-5 times a day?" 

He's happy and healthy, so the answer is yes. I just need to feed more bananas and rice and less high fiber smoothies. 

This baby loves smoothies!

I took all three crazies to Avery's parent/teacher conference tonight. Of course she's a genius. She can count to 100 and does it all the time. She's a good friend too. That makes me the happiest. Book smarts are all fine and good, but I think the most important personality trait is emotional intelligence. My kids can move those crazy mountains with high emotional intelligence. 

Cavities:

Avery had two. She got them filled. She was super brave. After, we went to the store to get her a reward. She thought she couldn't talk because her mouth was still numb, so she was sign languaging and pantomiming everything. Finally I gave her my phone to type out what she wanted to say. At one point I suggested "lift one finger for x, two for y". It cracked me up.

How about some Gross Motor Skills:

Andrew pulls himself to standing at the couch. He is totally into importing/exporting goods from one container to the next. 

Oh yeah, last night when Evan came down at 9pm, he went to go potty and exclaimed "batman's in the potty! Andrew put batman in the potty!"

Don't ask me when that happened, but indeed there was the batman and his black cape floating in the water. 

He loves to throw things into the shower. He throws puzzle pieces in there and I have to hurry and throw them out before they get too water logged.

Hey, have I told you about how much I love my babies? 

Lately they are a hoot. Me and Avery started reading "Matilda" together. Evan and Avery have been playing well together creatively. Andrew is the delight of the century. After his bath tonight, his hair was so curly and he smelled like a dream in his footie jams, scooting around on his toosh. I just can't get enough of that baby. He also threw a helicopter, puzzle piece, and a shoe into Avery's bath tonight. He did it with such concentrated fervor.  We were laughing so hard at him - hardly a discouragement for such naughty behavior.

I heard the frogs in the pond tonight! 

That means spring is on its way, and we are verrry ready.