School reports, wonderful poo and bath burps.

Hello everyone. I hope all who read this are enjoying life and good times. It's getting better here now that we're thawing out! It's predicted to be in the 47 today (Monday), 58 tomorrow and 61 on Wednesday! There is a downside though - out with the snow, in with the mud.

Let me start with Bryce this time around because he's behind me now, climbing from one side of the back of my chair, standing there and patting me on the back before climbing back down on the other side and doing it again.

If you haven't been to my web site yet, please visit and check out the duet he and I have going in video form. I've been trying to get him to say ma-ma. Yeah, yeah, it IS usually da-da, but he's my kid so I'm gonna try! I should have turned my camera on about ten minutes before, when Bryce was real interested in the going back and forth we do through out the day. I didn't think about taking a video until after he had walked away. I grabbed my camera and went down the hall looking for him and found him "reading" books in his bedroom. So his participation wasn't as eager in the beginning, and in the middle, there's a pause where he either forgot what he was doing, or just wanted to stare at the camera. It's still cute to watch.

While that was fun to be a part of, something else wasn't. I let Devin choose a new toy after I had done something to him on accident (which I'll mention later - serious mommy guilt!). He wanted an ambulance so we brought the toy home, which is about the size of his garbage truck, but if you haven't seen pictures of that, then I'll say it's about the size of your typical bathroom trash can. Why I thought of that as a comparative, I haven't a clue.

Anyway - Bryce was playing with the buttons, opening and closing the doors and pushing it back and forth, sitting next to the kitchen island, but on the living room side. I don't know what he did but I heard his pain cry and found him standing up in the place where he was sitting with the ambulance a few feet away. I knew he hurt himself something awful, because his mouth was open with eyes clenched tight, but nothing was coming out. It was like he was behind a sound proof glass wall. But then he inhaled and that transparent barrier shattered as my baby let loose. There was no blood so I cuddled him for a bit and when he settled down I took a look at him. He had small, angled indentations on his left cheek and the bridge of his nose (which is probably what hurt the most) and a purple mark just below his eye brow. I've been trying to imagine what he did, but he's 19 months, so it's anything and everything!

Bryce loves to take a bath and his baths are taken with Devin. They both splash and dump cups of water, ignoring most of the toys in there with them for a cheap restaurant kid drink cup! Devin is much better at dumping, but Bryce has no complaints. The more Devin pours the water, the more Bryce laughs. Faster and faster they go. Pretty soon, Dev is getting B with the water and he gasps as he partially drowns and then laughs. No matter how many times you tell him it's too close, Dev always gets closer and Bryce continues to gasp and laugh. At the end of bath time one night, I reached in to get a thoroughly soaked B and he let out this huge belch. Too much bath water!

Not only is Devin helpful in rinsing his little brother in the bath, he's been helpful in taking off his own wet Pull-Up and putting a dry one on. A few weeks ago, he was wearing one Pull-Up all day long because he was making it to the potty (pee only), then he just stopped. He was going through so many I ran out and didn't have enough training underwear as back up. I called my hubby at work and asked him to bring home some more and he came into his house, a house where testosterone rules, with a package of pink Pull-Ups! I could not believe it. I said, Babe, did you not notice these are pink? He said he saw the 3T-4T size and grabbed them. Uh-huh. Pink for girls, next to them would have been blue for boys. He scowled at me and said, That's what you get for asking me to get them. OK. So now his three year old son is walking around in Disney princesses and the colors pink and purple!

So, Devin is being helpful by telling me he's wet and proceeds to take off his pants and wet diaper and throws it away and puts on a dry one. I don't always know he's doing this until he tells me so or I see him throw it away. Unfortunately, he does more than pee in them. One time he hollered for me and I found him with poo smeared down his leg and the Pull-Up around his ankles. Another time I found him with legs clean of poo, but the circular poo, hence the cleaner legs because it stayed in a single clump, had rolled out of the dirty diaper and onto the floor. Tim was the lucky one when a third time, home alone with the boys, Dev took his diaper off and, I'm guessing it got stuck, sat his poopy bum down on the carpet. Wonderful times! Thanks for the great memories, Dev! I think he's going to tell us he's poopy now BEFORE he takes off the trainer. Better yet, he might just go sit on the potty. Fingers crossed everyone!

On a sad note, I don't think Devin will be going to gymnastics anymore. The past few times we've gone there, he's refused to go in, and once in, he refuses to cooperate and sits on a line while the other children bounce, roll and flip around him. When we're home he wants me to look at him do the things he's learned in gymnastics, but once there, he's a brat. It brought back memories of Hunter not wanting to play the piano anymore. All was fine there, though, until Mr. Miller moved away and then his replacement moved away and Hunter had to start all over again with a third instructor. I didn't push him then and I won't push Devin now. I would have loved to be involved in gymnastics and I took piano lessons but quit. But they aren't me so I'll back off. Gymnastic lessons last all year, so we'll try it again in the fall.

Tim has a different car seat in his truck. Once Devin is in, there is front part like an arm rest that is pulled over his head and down in front of him. Then you have to snap the belt into the buckle between his legs to secure it. The straps are at their longest and still tight on Dev when he's in his winter coat. I'm not very familiar with this car seat as I rarely have the truck alone with the kids. One day I did, though, and when I pushed down on the buckle of the car seat...I pinched Devin between the legs and he screamed and cried...that's why he got a new ambulance.

A couple weeks ago, Hunter's class was scheduled for a field trip to a science center. Since I now have a part time day care provider I was going to chaperon, something I hadn't done since Hunter was in Kindergarten. The day before the outing a group from the science center came to the school and talked of what the children would see and do. In a note Hunter brought home later that day it said the field trip was canceled because of some safety concerns. When I asked Hunter about it, he said some boys were sniffing one of the items the science center group brought with them and others had thrown some red powder up in the air. So some bad choices from a few ruined it for all. And for me. I wanted to go on that field trip! :P

It ended up being a good idea that they didn't go because I got a phone call late the next morning saying Hunter had thrown up and had a fever of 102. I had decided to take myself shopping and was about 40 miles from the school when my cell phone rang. I had to call Tim, who I knew was in a meeting, but I caught him at the right time. They had just taken a break and he was able to pick Hunter up and meet me back at the house. Hunter stayed home the next day as well, so he got a four day weekend, but he really wasn't himself until Sunday.

Hunter had his first book report due last week. It was actually called a book commercial with an oral presentation. He picked an AR book, which is a book he's read and been quizzed on for comprehension. He had many to choose from and it took him two days of looking through them to decide which one he wanted to talk about. He choose Swindle by Gordon Korman and when he brought it home I was a little concerned because it was fairly thick and he only had a few days to put his commercial together.

The assignment was to take a small paper bag and put on the front the book title and author's name and then an illustration about the story. On the side panel the main characters and a description about them, the back panel a short summary and the last panel (the bag would be cut flat and it was planned to be in that order), Hunter's rating of the story, one to four stars and why he rated it the way he did.

Then he had to gather together four visual aids. Hmm. The main visual aide we should have had was a baseball card since the story revolved around that. Hunter doesn't own any of these and we probably could have made our own if our computer didn't think it has a perpetual paper jam (grrr)! We went over his main characters and summary and decided he'd cut out a house and we'd prop it up and he'd use two of his Star Wars characters for the two best friends in the story, then a small stuffed doberman pincher from a McDonald's Hotel for Dogs Happy Meal and a ghost finger puppet (because the house is supposedly haunted).

The hardest part for Hunter was the oral presentation. Well, following all directions for the oral presentation was rough for him. It involved writing cues on index cards he would refer to while standing in front of the class. He sat at the table with paper and pencil with the goal of writing down the main points of the story. Half an hour later, he had written down only two things. I've talked with Hunter before about him not writing things down. His reading grade has dropped because he's not putting thoughts down on paper. He told me that he has so many thoughts in his head, he can't get them down. Tim, the teacher's and I are working on this. A new goal has been added to his IEP. I'll talk more of this after the book commercial.

So I sat down across from my son and took the paper and pencil and told him I'd act the scribe. This way I learned about the entire story in ten minutes with Hunter talking and me jotting down what he agreed were the main points. I actually copied everything but the title and author's name for Hunter onto his paper bag. He'd need a double sized paper bag with his printing! I sent in the work Hunter printed out and my notes from his re-telling so his teacher can see that he did do all the work himself. I put his index cards together and we did a practice run through, a small part of which you can see in the video on my home page.

When he finally had his turn in front of the class, his teacher wrote in the notebook that he did an excellent job. During the practice run, Hunter never even looked at the cue cards we created. He said he didn't need them during his presentation, either, and that his classmates and teacher laughed and were grossed out during the part where one of the boys reaches his hand up into the body cavity of a frozen turkey!

Hunter's grades dropped in reading and TEN POINTS in math. He is now one point above failing in that subject. I had no idea he was doing so poorly. We knew he wasn't asking for help and had an emergency meeting that resulted in Hunter putting a book on end at his desk to let the teacher know he needed help. He doesn't like to ask for help and we're thinking it might be because he doesn't like the attention drawn, although sometimes he thinks he can just do it without help.

A few weeks ago I had another meeting with his teacher and we talked about how his writing comprehension isn't where it should be. As was very evident in his re-telling of the story to me for the Swindle (do I underline that or use quotes??) oral presentation, he has no problem comprehending it. But when asked to write the words down himself, he falls very short. During that meeting, math was mentioned only ONCE. She said that during the math test this year, Hunter can't go back and forth with a scribe; he can't say yes in one area and not the next. It's either an all or nothing thing.

In the teacher comment section of his report card, she wrote, Doesn't ask for help. This really irked my husband because there was a meeting about exactly that and if he's not asking for help and she can see his grade going down hill, then he thinks, and I agreed, that she should be offering him help or finding out why he isn't asking for help and determine if the current set up, if he's using it, is working like it should. Some fault lies with Hunter, can't blame the teacher for everything :). He often refuses to use extra paper and tries to work out a problem in a small space that his big, blocky printing just doesn't fit into. His works gets squished into each other and he ends up computing the wrong rows or can't make out what he wrote among the jumble. He has absolutely refused to use large block graph paper in the classroom. The teacher and OT said he actually got mean about it. He doesn't want to use anything that makes him different from the other kids. Instead we're trying to get him to use a piece of scrap paper so he'll have more room. If he thinks he has room on the actual worksheet, he uses that. I'd love to have his worksheets be printed where there's no space between problems, but they don't come that way.

Hunter didn't like it at first but he's accepted the fact that he has to do two things from me, math and writing, each night on top of the homework his teacher assigns for him. He has to re-write the math problems on a separate piece of paper and he does a writing assignment. The last one I had him do was, Imagine you can fly. Where would you go? He gave me three good five sentence paragraphs, but the paragraphs were more like a list, like, I would do this...I would do that.... I re-wrote his ideas into a three paragraph story and we talked about the differences in how the paragraphs looked when compared to each other and how they sounded to read them. If you're curious, Hunter wanted to go to Australia because he would get privacy there and eat his favorite snack of cheese without interruption. He said he'd wear his best looking outfit, fly very fast but not let anyone see him because he'd want his super power to be a secret. He concluded that he'd fly to important places and be people's hero because he knew himself to be a good person.

My sister Tiffany called me two Tuesday's ago at 10:00 PM. I knew she and her hubby Mark were wandering the countryside again as they tend to do a couple times each year. I was a little perturbed with her for calling me and saying she was on another jaunt and currently in West Virgina. I admit I got a bit mad because they had once again set off from their home in Marquette and my house wasn't on their itinerary! That was on Sunday and when she called Tuesday night, there were two thoughts in my head. Either it was an emergency or she was coming my way. I''m happy to say that she was coming my way!

They thought they'd be here between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M. Well, I'm sure you read or heard about the ice storm that hit Kentucky. Well, they got into some of that and then the winter storm warning in my neck of the woods. I told them I wouldn't be up when they arrived but that Tim and I would get the camper nice and warm and the bed ready so they could just crawl into there and I'd see them in the morning. When I got up with Hunter at 5:45, their car wasn't in the driveway! I called and got Tiff and they said their were sitting in a block of ice and had to pull over often to knock the build up off their windshield wipers. They were in Akron which is, on a typical day, a 45 minute drive. I headed outside to try to shovel away my worries with the foot of snow in my driveway when they still hadn't arrive at 8:00 and Tiffany didn't answer my call. At about 8:30 they finally arrived and I was so relieved.

My BIL immediately went into the camper and fell asleep. Tiff came in and had some breakfast. Hunter was home to see her because school had been canceled that day. We didn't do much with the terrible weather and they left the next morning, but it was great to see them even for such a short time. I'm looking forward to hugging her again in the summer.

You've shown your love for my boys and I if you've read all of this. Many hugs and kisses to you! Hunter has a four day week this week and next. I'd love to just pack up and head north, but not this time. Two years ago my sister Amanda came down from Charlevoix because her girls had the same days off as Hunter. No visit from them this year. She has said that she'd like to come down this summer and take the girls to either Cedar Point, which is about two hours away, or the water park, which is twenty minutes away.

Everyone take care.

Yo

Sickies, sickies and even more sickies.

Those of you who are lining up and eager to come and see us, it is now safe to do so! The last two weeks here have been with sick germs abound! First it was the common cold, graduated to the flu and then some of us even had the stomach flu. It really started the last couple days we were north for the Christmas holiday. Then we were free of all viruses just to have them return two Tuesday's ago, when Bryce got sick and I couldn't bring him to the sitter, which meant no gymnastics for Dev. It lasted a few days and then Tim started feeling it. The following Tuesday, instead of going to gymnastics happy and healthy, Dev then had a fever and body aches, so once more we stayed home. Before he caught the bug, he had been complaining of his ear hurting and we found he had an ear infection and I started giving him the cold pink antibiotic. It was his first one ever.

We thought Hunter might get by with just a cough and runny nose, but as I took a shopping day last Thursday, the school called my cell phone, telling me Hunter had vomited and had a fever of 102. I was 30 miles the other way and called Tim to see if he could pick up Hunter. He did and we got to the house about the same time. Hunter still wasn't feeling well Friday so he stayed home that day, too. I had a meeting scheduled with his teacher on Friday, but we rescheduled for later today (I'm writing this at 6:00 a.m.).

We all seem to be better now, so come on down, up or over, whichever direction you need to take to get here! :)

Hunter did miss another day of school and not from snow, ice or the sickies. The Friday before MLK, Jr. Day many schools in our area, around the country actually, were closed because it was just too darn cold! The week before we got over a foot of snow, the next week I don't think it got higher than 10 degrees. Hunter calls Mother Nature crazy because this past Saturday it reached 40 degrees. The boys and I watched the icicles drip from our frozen gutters and the sparkling, fluffy snow in the yard that was over a foot deep lost its shine and pushed down on itself and is now just a couple inches above the shoveled driveway. We had plans to go sledding at a friends house this weekend, but we all agreed there wasn't enough snow anymore and what we did have was hard with crusty ice. Now the weather is back to being freezing and there is a winter storm coming our way. (If you are on your way, drive safe! :P)

I'm going to change things up and start in reverse and start with me. I've had my nose in the books I got for Christmas, so the house has suffered! Before I got into that zone, I had cleaned out all three boys' rooms of old, broken and unwanted toys. I did the same to the family room downstairs and then tore into organizing and cleaning out the store/dog room (a room that doesn't get a lot of heat. Brr!) Most recently I cleaned out my pantry and am happy to report that only about a half dozen items were past their "Best use by..." date! Now I need to give my attention to the most unorganized room of the house, my computer/hobby room.

Tim twisted his ankle on Sunday during his weekly basketball game. He's been favoring it since, but doesn't think it warrants a trip to the doctor. The building Tim works in has been around for many years, but as the company grew, they didn't relocate, that just slapped on new offices as they went. Therefore, there were windows not to the outside like you would think, but from office to office. You could sit at a desk and have a conversation with someone on the other side of a wall through a window with the glass removed. Besides that, it was just run down looking inside. It has finally been gutted and redone with new carpet, new paint, new furniture. Tim's office is actually going to get a window to the outside! If I hadn't recognized the building from the outside before opening that door a few days after the work was finished, I would have thought I'd gone to the wrong place. It looks 110% better.

Bryce is getting so big! He is catching up to Devin and they are 22 months apart. He has been sleeping through the night four out of seven nights. Last night was one of them and it feels great to not wake up until you want to! I opened my eyes this moring at 5:50, ten minutes before the alarm was to go off to check on Hunter. I came upstairs and sat with my oldest until he headed out to meet the bus at 6:17, bundled in a warm coat, hat and mittens.

I took a two minute video of Bryce. He's been vocalizing a lot. Tim and I have started the ma-ma and da-da wars, but so far B is ignoring us both and saying ya-ya. He's also waving bye-bye (toward himself) when he gets down on his belly to head downstairs. The past two nights he has sat down at the table and eaten not only his entire meal, but he's climbed down and come around the side to eat mine!

We are still calling him The Destroyer of Homes as everything he passes, from magnets on the fridge, whatever on any and every table, books on shelves, toys on the floor or put away, it doesn't matter. Everything he touches is either thrown, tossed or pushed aside and there is this cluttered path left behind him. Every time, too many times, each and every day! Oh, well. How much fun can a floor really be with no toys and just the clean lines of a vacuum? (It does look good while for the short time it's clean though!)

Except for the Mohawk I can't tame on Devin's head, my middle son is doing well. He spends most nights sleeping soundly under his favorite blanket with a couple of stuffed puppies close by. As his room is directly above ours, we don't need a monitor in there to hear him cough or cry out in the night. Now and then I hear him cough, but he has been sleeping through most nights.

For some time he was using the potty every 30-45 minutes, keeping one Pull-Up or training underwear dry from morning to night. Now he's being a stinker about it and is refusing to use the toilet. If he does, he complains about it the entire time. Now he's been wetting himself often, even getting the chair and couch wet. We'll keep at it and hope he'll get over this hump.

Everything coming out of his mouth is understandable. I'm not remembering the last time I had to ask him to repeat himself. I often tell him to look at me when he's talking and speak up, but each word coming out of his little mouth is a real word. I didn't note anything down, but I do remember him telling me to go away when he wasn't feeling good (sniff), telling me to, Stop that, when I tried to tickle him or play with his hair (which he still does to me), and he did call one of his toys stupid (there are worse words, I suppose).

I don't remember if I mentioned this in my last update, but Hunter was bullied again by the same boy who was picking on him on the school bus. This time around this boy had a friend in on it. This was during recess and apparently really got Hunter down. The teacher noticed and was able to talk to him about it. I know the teachers of these boys know and am told the parents were notified. Anyway - it's been a couple weeks since then and Hunter tells me there hasn't been anymore incidents between himself and either of these boys.

He keeps bringing home high scores on his spelling tests, but it seems his teacher is concerned with his writing skills. From what she briefly wrote in the communication notebook, there's concern of how Hunter is doing in writing assignments; taking what he's read and writing about it in his own words; how, why and his feelings. We need to decide if he's just writing something simple and short because it's him having to print it, or if he's not understanding what needs to be done. When he's had a scribe write for him, he says a lot more because he's not the one writing it. This year the school did get him an Alphasmart, so maybe it's just he needs to be able to use it more than what he's being allowed to. On my end though, I think I do need to get him some sort of typing course.

I'll end this entry by typing out one of Hunter's assignments he brought home. It was a worksheet he did after his class read a story where one of the characters helped his father sell newspapers in his newsstand on Saturday nights. First off, I didn't think it was Hunter's because the words had spaces in-between and the letters were the same size. Hunter confirmed it was his work and his dad and I got a good laugh from his honest answers.

Helping Out

The question: What jobs or chores do you have to do in your house?

Hunter's answer: Clean my room (he has more than that, but that's the biggest one).

Question: How is doing these chores a help to your family?

Answer: I just do it.

Question: Would the jobs get done if you did not do them? By whom?

Answer: Yes. Mom and dad.

Question: What job do you like the most? Why?

Answer: None, because I don't want to do any of them.

Question: What job do you like the least? Why?

Answer: All of them - cause I do.

Question: Are there some jobs that you work on together with your parents or sisters and brothers? What are they?

Answer: Yes. Clean up other rooms.

Question: If you could make up the job assignments in your house, which jobs would you give?

Answers:

Yourself: Nothing

Your brothers and sisters: Everything

Your parents: Everything

Your pet: Nothing

Do you think it is important that people are assigned chores in order to help out in a household? Why or why not?

Answer: Yes. It goes by faster.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week.

Oh - since Tim rebuilt my computer I don't have my address book, so please send me an email so I can put your address in my address book.

1:31 P.M. - Hello again. I typed the majority of this update in my comfy recliner chair under a blanket with my hubby's lap top. I didn't get it finished and proof read before he appeared by my side to take it to work at 7:45. So, I've finished it up now, but since I haven't posted it yet, I can tell you how my meeting with Hunter's teacher went.

It seems that Hunter is having difficulty writing paragraphs. He just wants to write one or two sentences about the subject, but he's not completing the assignments by being so brief. We talked about ideas of how to get him interested in writing more and we put together an outline of how the paragraph should look like, what questions he should answer, etc. He's writing again to his cousins, so hopefully that will help.

He's been refusing help from a scribe, probably because he's the only one in the class with one. It's obvious to us that his assignments are longer and with more detail when he dictates what he wants to say to the scribe. I'm going to try and show him this by having him write out what he wants to say about something and then record what he wants to say about the same subject. I hope I can show him how much more he can do with a scribe in this way. I was told today that his 4th grade testing is an all or nothing thing. He can't have a scribe for certain areas. He either has one or he doesn't. They did a practice math test and because he refused the scribe he didn't write detailed answers and did poorly on those problems. He also has an Alphasmart in the classroom. I've started researching typing classes for him.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Belated New Year everyone!

I think this will be the shortest update on record! I just finished posting pictures for you to see and spent the better part of the day purging the boys' bedrooms of toys they don't play with or are broken, but mostly just cleaning it out. (Tomorrow I do the bathroom. How many expired items do you have in your medicine cabinet?) Hunter's room took forever and he is no help at all. I just want to go and spend my remaining time sitting in front of the TV ignoring Mt. Laundry next to me. I'm imagining that pile would make one nice pillow....

Our drive up north was the best. The boys rode well, the roads were clear; we had no issues at all. My poor husband on the other hand had the worse time. It took him much longer than normal because he was driving up on icey roads and in the snow. Thankfully he made it up there safe and sound.

Like last year we had no plans until the rest of my sister's arrived the day after Christmas. So the boys and I attended my moms side of the family get together on Christmas Day. Tiff and Mark actually arrived earlier than in years past and were able to join us there.

We spent Christmas morning with the IL's, went to the get together mentioned above, and returned to stuff our faces some more back at the IL's that night.

The next day we had our holiday with Amanda and Saturday, a gift exchange with my dad. Our boys opened their Santa gifts at the IL's. Check out the picture slide show to see what Santa brought Dev. Hunter's big gift was a Nintendo DSL. (Bryce can share in Devin's present.)

We had fun in the snow, fun with the Wii, fun playing board games and enjoyed each other's company while making one heck of a mess in the house (five kids and seven adults staying the night with more coming during the day!) Of course, those who enjoy the hunt went on a few geocaching adventures! Check out my other blog to read about those.

Tim headed back to Ohio the Sunday after Christmas, but the boys and I didn't come back until the following Saturday. Those last few days were pretty rough for Dev and B. They caught themselves a stomach bug and had a bit of a fever and both threw up, but thankfully on different nights! Our last night there I considered staying another day because Bryce was up every hour fussing. Before we left my dad gave me a roll of paper towels and a garbage and said if I'm prepared for the baby to throw up then it won't happen, and he was right! The ride back home went just as well as our ride up.

Except for a few Christmas decorations Devin had brought into his room, our house is back to its original state .

I'm sure I've missed something worthy of sharing with you, but I didn't keep track and I'm impatient to get this up. I've been home for a week now and should have done this before!

I hope you all had a safe and happy New Year and wish you the best of health and good fortune in 2009!

Yo

Mostly gross but with a few laughs.

Hello all!

Even though I changed my home page to show some holiday spirit and posted some pictures a few days ago, I'm only just now sitting down to tell you about the last two weeks.

I didn't think I would be writing this at all, at least not during day time hours! I stayed up late the night I posted the pictures because, , my computer died. It was bogging down and freezing up, being overly annoying when I only have a handfull of minutes at a time to sit there. Then I left for the weekend and my hubby turned it off. Now we know he shouldn't have done that, because, sadly, it won't boot back up again.

My hubby can fix it, as he's done previous computers in the past. He actually built this one quite a few years ago and saved us a lot of money. However, when someone works with computers all day every day, you can't get that someone to come home to a computer job, not willingly or happily, at least! I don't know when I'll be able to use it, so instead I have his lap top to use in the evenings. During the day I can use the smaller computer downstairs, but that is supposed to be for our business only. There is no firewall, no virus protection on it what so ever. I have an Internet connection there only to view my orders and to print postage. As I am addicted to computers, I have been wandering down there often to check my email and chat with some ladies I've known for a few years now.

I have presents divided and packaged up in piles designated as Tim and Yo. My hubby isn't heading north for the holiday until the 23rd. He'll have a lot more room than I will, so will be taking a large plastic tub filled to the top with presents. I'll only be bringing up exchange gifts and a selection for each of my boys to open at a family gathering held the same day as our arrival up north. It actually starts at 2:00, but to make that hour we'd have to leave here by 6:00 a.m. That's probably not gonna happen! We'll shoot for 9:00. With potty breaks and half hour for lunch, we should be there by 5:00.

Let me get down to it as it's getting late.

Usually I have more to say about Dev and B than I do Hunter, but not this time! I took note of a few things to share with you, the first on my list are the 95-100% grades he's been getting on his weekly spelling tests. A recent one he came home with was for 101% because his penmanship was clear and even!

On December first, Hunter's 11th birthday, the regular fourth grade teacher returned. I've told you about it before, so I won't repeat myself. I requested a meeting with her and she agreed. My babysitter is only part time and already had a full house for that day so I brought Devin and Bryce with me. Devin was very excited when I said we were going to Hunter's school to meet his teacher. Devin ran to his room and came back with his Go, Diego, Go! backpack.

Mrs. G's planning hour started at 11:00, so Dev and B and I arrived jus before then. Hunter's school is called an intermediate school, located in a much older building in front of the elementary school. The layout was poorly made. There is a big front door, but that's not where they want you to enter. I park on the parking lot, which is at one side of the school. I walk past the front door carrying Bryce and followed by my backpack wearing three year old with this face consuming smile on his face, to the other side where there is a walking path from this school to the one behind it (Hunter has to go to the elementary school for lunch and gym. Lovely.)

Afer being buzzed in we then had to climb three floors to the office to sign in and be announced to Hunter's teacher, who we must go back down two flights of steps to meet in her classroom. For some reason Devin wanted me to get to the bottom of each flight before he would take hold of the handrail and come down. Had Bryce been his usual wiggle, let me go self, I would have had less patience!

I was a little put out when I first entered the classroom and saw Mrs. E there. I don't recall her title, but she's like a coordinator between parents and the IEP team. This wasn't anything official, I just wanted to meet the woman who was spending more hours with my son than I was.

Mrs. G is probably in her early 50's, but you wouldn't have guessed that if you were just looking at her mouth and the neon yellow gum she was chomping. After the introduction it wasn't that noticable in her mouth. Maybe she was just freshening her breath. We discussed how Huner handeled the meeting she, Mrs. T and Hunter had the week before. How Hunter was behaving with Mrs. G in the classroom and the differences between the teaching stles of Mrs. T and Mrs. G. To cut myself short, I feel pretty good about the situation and Hunter has no complaints. (Devin did great sitting in few different desks and checking out the chalkboard. I sat B in Hunter's chair and he spent most of the time scribbling on the back of Hunter's paper. The rest of the time he spent climbinb all over me.)

Hunter takes forever in the bathroom at night. Using the toilet, taking a shower and brushing his teeth can take over an hour. I've cut it down considerably by taking the book away from him before he goes in there. Now he gets the job done and reads the book before going to bed.

I'm wondering if there's one book I should confinscate because of what it's teaching him! After he was done in the bathroom I entered to find the walls splattered with spit balls! LOL I told him he could do that all he wanted, as long as he cleaned up the mess!

I'm not sure how it happened, but Hunter came home from school one day with his eyeglasses broken. The left side was completely snapped off near where the screw is. It was unfixable so I called the eye doc and asked what kind of warrenty there was. He's only been wearing them since the spring. I was told as long as we turned in every piece we'd get a complete replacement, even the transitional lenses, which were scractched up. Even though the woman put a rush in with the order, it would take a few days and that meant duct taping his glasses back together. What I used wasn't exactly duct tape. I really didn't want anyone seeing the grey tape or the black of electrical tape holding my son's glasses together. I found a cloudy clear tape that we've used to help visquine our windows and that held his glasses together until yesterday, when we traded them for the new pair.

Oh...yesterday. I got a horrible scare yesterday. I'm going to break off and tell you about it. Hunter gets home about 3:20. We left the house and traveled the 30 minutes to the eye doc to make the switch. We came back to the nearest town to our house and went to the BK drive thru. Tim and I were going to his company Christmas party and leaving the boys with a sitter, hence the fast food run. I made a left turn from the BK, behind a black pick up who then entered the right turn lane onto the bypass that was put in a few years back to help ease the congestion that is created when you put cars and Amish buggies together.

Before the truck turned I saw a car stopped at the sign at the end of the bypass and then it was blocked from sight by the black pickup. I started to accelerate as the truck moved away, when the car suddenly appeared in front of me! I clenched the steering wheel with both hands as I slammed on the brakes. As I squealed to a stop just inches away from the back panel of that car, I saw the startled face of an older woman who continued driving away. I stayed there for a minute or two, catching my breath and expressing the greatest grattitude to a van which is up there in miles but has a good set of brakes! The car behind me gave me all the time I needed, no blares of the horn to get moving. Had the roads been even the slightest bit icy, I'd be needing a new van. All three boys were safe and secure, although it did wake Bryce up from his nap. We made it home, I handed the children over, then I proceeded to drink four glasses of wine too many and felt it in the morning!

Back to Hunter...he got a phone call! Tomorrow they are having some sort of carnival for the last day of 2008. He and another boy will be managing a game where they will build a pyramid of plastic cups for kids to throw a ping pong ball at. The boys have talked together twice about their booth.

This last one actually happened over the Thanksgiving holiday, when Hunter's grandparents were here. Apparently Hunter had an upset stomach one night and ran to the toilet to vomit. His grandma found the evidence and cleaned up the commode the next morning. However, I didn't know the extent of the sickness until Hunter tells me right before he goes to be that he needs new bed sheets. Why? Because he threw up in his bed before making it to the bathroom and spent the rest of the night on the floor instead of coming to tell me. I got his room cleaned up and told him to come get me right away if this happened again.

If you think that was gross, then read on.

Through Bryces's baby monitor I can hear when Devin is crying. One night I heard his cries, so I put my soft and warm terry cloth robe on and stumbled my way up the stairs. He met me at his bedroom door and said that he needed me. I asked him what was wrong, in which he replied with a cough...and then he puked all over the front of my robe! Thankfully I was protected in that or else it would have been a thin t-shirt and nothing on my legs to stop what I couldn't see coming at me in the dark hallway! After that purge, a new sleeper and a drink of water, he went right back to sleep.

Don't stop now, keep reading....

Devin is learning about things that are smaller and bigger. I've been showing him different sized balls and he uses the words himself in describing things. When children sneeze, they often close their mouth. Devin did this and told me he had a small amount of snot on his nose. I wiped it up with a tissue and we carried on. He sneezed again and came running, shouting, It's bigger, mama. It's a big one! Um. Yeah. The bottom of his face was all snot. It took two Kleenex's to get that off. Bigger was right! (Hey, Uncle Mark! Ya ready to spend some qaulity time with your nephews?!?)

Devin has been testing my patience to the limit. He's throwing things at the dogs and chases poor Kit around so much, she spends a lot of time in my shadow. He hits, pushes and takes things away from Bryce that I'm imaginging myself dividing the house, one side for Dev and the other for B. I had had enough the other day when Dev took an orange plastic recorder (like a small one piece clarinet) and hit Bryce on the head. He knew I was mad because he was apologizing before I had covered the short distance between us. I don't have a problem with smacking a little bum now and then and this was one of those moments where I was going to try and make an impression. I grabbed his right shoulder with my right hand and pulled back with my left. Devin's instinct was to put his hands on his backside and still clutched in his hand was that darn recorder! The bottom knuckle bone of my thumb hit that hard plastic and I instantly froze up in pain! I had a purple spot for two days afterward. Note to self: Take offending toy away first!

But Devin is nothing compared to Bryce, The Destroyer of Homes. At least Devin is old enough to listen and obey when we say no. Bryce? He laughs in our face. Sure he does stop, but look out as he throws whatever it was we wanted him to stop doing at you. If you're within a few feet of him when he drains his sippy cup...watch out, because he chucks that thing hard and contines to pick it up and throw it until it's been refilled and placed in his hands. Is there a coffee table in your house? Does it have drinks, books, perhaps clean clothes neatly piled atop it? Bryce is faster with his hands than Knight ever was with his gator tail! Forget to push in your dining room or office chair? Too bad, because now you have salt and pepper on the table, napkins thrown on the floor and paperwork, CD's, or your computer behaivng strangley because a 19 month old changed a setting you have no idea how to switch back.

I called my parents the other day to warn them of Bryce. They smiled and they chuckled. He's the typical toddler, they said. We're ready for him, they claim. I tried to explain that B is like a set of twins in one body, that you think you have him where you want him, but then he's way over there pouring out your drink you thought was safe because he was with you over here and while you're soaking that up, he's at the other side of the house, checking to see what plants were watered and which ones weren't and then suddenly deciding that they all needed to be repotted.

On Sunday I'll be driving to Traverse City to pick up Devin's big Santa gift. I told Tim that I'd probably just leave all three boys with my parents if they were going to be home. My husband says, Oh, no. Don't leave Bryce with them. Why not?, I ask, becoming a little defensive about his apparent lack in trust of my parents babysitting skills. He replied, Don't leave him with them on your first full day there. They won't want to watch him again!

I've closed myself up in a room with no heat so my typing won't keep Tim up. I'm tired, I'm shivering, and I have a lot of packing to do tomorrow!

I hope you have a safe and happy Christmas!

Love to all,

Yolanda

24 hours and a few other things

Hello all.

How many have you finished Christmas shopping? I’d like to say I have, that I started early like I said I would this year…and last year…and the year before. I think the blame lands on family who don’t share ideas until mid-December! :P

If I could put some sort of clock in this update, you’d see that I started this at 7:36 this AM, December 5th, but am now only sitting back down at 9:18 AM. Since 7:36 I’ve peeled Bryce out of his wet sleeper and changed his bed sheet. He takes a bottle every night, no comments, and if he has two, which he did last night, and sleeps on his tummy with his bum in the air, which he does every night, he’ll wake up soaked and unhappy.

Since 7:36 I’ve gotten Dev into his big boy underwear and ran with him six times to the potty, four of which were false alarms and one was only a little squirt and dribble of pee, but he looked up at me so happy and proud.

I’ve fed them both breakfast, which Bryce threw on the floor to fill the tummies of dogs instead of his own. I didn’t push Dev’s chair in when he left the table, leaving half of his waffles behind. I heard grunts later and look at the table and see B has climbed up on the chair and was now on his knees eating Devin’s waffles. I let him eat them as he worked so hard to climb up there and Devin is eating less and less these days, I didn’t think he’d come back. But I was wrong and had to make Devin some more.

Apparently the children’s TV channel Noggin was having a dance party at 8:00 in the morning. All programs for two hours were upbeat and full of dancing. Devin thinks I make a great dance partner and I’ll agree only because I was the only adult on our carpeted dance floor! Our favorite one was from Jack’s Big Music Show where a woman played the guitar and sang a song about dancing and freezing. One part went like this,”…freeze like a tree with no wind in your leaves. Don’t shake your knees, don’t even sneeze!” I don’t think we’d make good competition for So You Think You Can Dance because Bryce did A LOT of laughing!

Since I’ve started this, I’ve had to make room for one and then two little boys who wanted to share my chair. B in the back practicing his massage therapy with his feet, and Dev in the front wanting to type but instead content with moving the mouse around so I’d sometimes be typing here or in IE or typing when I shouldn’t be and the computer would yell at me, which would send Dev giggling because I told him the computer was yelling at me.

Now it’s 10:22 and I’ve gotten up a few more times to tell Dev to stop burying his brother in the couch pillows and Bryce to stop turning the TV on and off. When I turn on Christmas music later, I’ll then start asking him to stop skipping through the songs! But now I’m going to remove Bryce from behind me and start a load of laundry, because if I don’t do a load or two a day, I won’t be queen atop just Mt. Laundry, but an entire range. A scary thought!

Here it is now almost 4:30 and I haven’t sat back down here. Not too much has happened. I finished getting out the Christmas decorations, so our tree is up and B is fascinated with it. Last year all he wanted to do was pull them all off, but this year so far he’s just touching them and staring at the lights. I used my cell phone to take a picture because of course my digital camera has no batteries. This time it isn’t because I took tons of pictures, but because I left it in the cold van to drain the power for no good reason.

Now it’s Saturday and here is where I had two paragraphs that wouldn’t save, so I had to reboot and have since fed my family plus two. Hunter had two friends over for his birthday and I’ve taken them to see an animated movie called Bolt. It had a good story line I wish I had thought of….

Once back home sitting on the couch with Tim, he mentions that Bryce started to gag himself with his fingers on purpose. He tells me that he had to smack B’s hand away from his mouth a dozen times and while discussing it, we can hear retching sounds down the hall. Bryce started to get fussy and he’d been down for 45 minutes. Tim hopes he’s not poopy. I say to make him a bottle and when giving it to him, take a deep sniff. The only muscle Tim and I moved were our eyes as we looked at each other, willing the other to get up and tend to the baby. Poor Bryce! Third Child Syndrome just isn’t right!

Relax, we didn’t ignore him much longer. Tim and I exchanged a few impish comments before I got up with a glare. The child wasn’t completely down yet. I had given Tim the option of taking Hunter and his friends to the movies while I stayed home with Dev and B. He told me to go. I got back at 9:00, 30 minutes after the scheduled bedtime and planned on finishing an evening without my two youngest, and there I was, back at work again. 24/7 with no spontaneous breaks in sight and the scheduled ones are no more than two hours! (And as I write this paragraph, I hear my husband call to me; Bryce is fussing again, should we check on him? The “we” mentioned was me.)

I’m not saying this to make my hubby look like the bad guy, really he’s not. He admits he doesn’t have the patience or understanding sometimes and would rather I be the primary caregiver. He is a wonderful husband and father, a man who would rather work two jobs to make ends meet than have his wife work while a stranger raises his children. There aren’t many things he concedes to, but in this he shows me great admiration, with a small dash of annoyance on top!

I only wrote down a few things this week to share with you, and since I’ve already gone on for a bit, I’ll try to make this brief. No promises, though!

Devin got in trouble at gymnastics. Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet! At 3 ½ he’s the youngest child in the group (and the only boy) with a whole lot of energy and not use to structure and direction in such a wide open environment. I watch from a balcony above the gym and I want to go down there and jump on that huge rectangular trampoline!

The second part of their lesson involves going from one station to the next, practicing a different gymnastic skill at each one. In one place they practice head stands, another they swing from a bar or climb a rope, hang from a bar and bring their toes up to their fingers, sit on the pommel horse and lift their bottoms up and form their legs into different positions and finally they are supposed to grab on to a bar and walk their feet up a padded wall to finish with flipping over the bar to land back on their feet.

All this is supposed to be done in a clock-wise circle. We’re talking three to five year olds here. Most of the seven children can be redirected. Mr. Jim is great with children and they rush to follow his silly instructions. The circles made by Devin and one little girl always have a few more lumps, zags, dashes and squeals in them than the others. This day in particular they were all over the place. Mr. Jim usually doesn’t have seven kids by himself. Miss Carr unfortunately has been out the past three sessions. She not only is an instructor but a competitor and injured her shoulder. Hopefully she’ll be back soon. Mr. Jim told Devin quite a few times to get behind so and so, do the bars and that he was next on the horse, but Dev would jump out of line and run amok.

There’s a sign up in the viewers balcony that says, Please do not talk to your children. I don’t want to talk to Dev, I want to holler at him! Mr. Jim took control and sat Dev and the little girl down, said that if they didn’t want to do gymnastics, than they would sit there and stay out of the way of the other children who did. Mr. Jim kept glancing up at us in the balcony and I’m hoping he didn’t take my mean mom look as directed at him because I was doing it for Devin who continued to wave and smile at me from his seat against the wall! Finally he caught on and sat there quietly and he was soon invited back to continue, which he did very well.

Bryce is quick. I think he might be quicker than any other toddler! I come back into the room after being gone just a few minutes, and B is on the table surrounded in salt and pepper. Thankfully none got into his eyes! I turn on the TV, start a Blue’s Clue’s recording, turn around and see Bryce has taken Devin’s uneaten corn and thrown it into all previously unknown corners of the house! I don’t dare take five minutes to start a load of laundry for fear of what I’ll walk into when I’m done. Like I’ve told my hubby many times in many ways; So what. Not a big deal. Nothing’s broken. Everything’s fine. Don’t get so worked up and, don’t clean up until they’re in bed!!

Hunter had me fuming one morning, and probably annoyed his teacher as well. I noticed he forgot his lunch in the fridge, so I made plans to go into town. Since it's a fourteen mile drive I would also go to the store and attempt the library. I've been avoiding the place because B has been VERY vocal!

Anyway - Hunter has lunch at 11:30. The boys and I were ready by 11:00 so we all got in the van.

Last week I lost my van key. I have my key on just a single ring. The other keys I keep on a ring that hangs from my van's automatic gear shift. Before hubby left on a biz trip Tuesday morning, he pulled his van key off and gave it to me. I don't leave my key in the van anymore because Dev tries to help me by locking the doors and twice now he's locked my key in the van!

Anyway - I still often forget to grab the key off the hook just inside the door, and that morning was no exception. I went back in the house and reached for it...but it wasn’t there.

I immediately knew Hunter was responsible. I'm sure I've told you all how he loves to horde small things, including keys, and this one was a single, shiny silver key, just winking at him from its hook. Just in case my assumption was wrong, I looked all over the floor, in a couple pairs of shoes underneath the key hook, but no key. I ran up to his bedroom and looked in his stash places; under his pillow, in his safe and in a small treasure chest his grandma gave him. It wasn't there.

Hunter will not eat the food served at the school's cafeteria. He has to have the same thing each day. The only thing that differs is his dessert. I called the school and it wasn't the usual lady who answers the phone so I had to explain more than I would have had Teresa picked up. But after a few minutes she called Hunter down and he came on the phone.

I told him he had forgotten his lunch and that I was on my way to bring it to him, however I couldn't because my van key was missing and asked if he had taken it. He said yes. I asked where it was. He said he couldn't remember. We backtracked and he said it was in the pocket of the pants he wore the day before. I told him how upset I was that he took a key that was on the hook and we were going to talk about it some more when he got home. I told him to apologize to his teacher for the interruption and to have a good day.

He later told me he didn't recognize the key, which I understand as it's always been buried among the many on his dad's key ring, but with him it's about not touching anything that's not his or he hasn't been given permission to play with. He doesn't do that with friends and in stores, but with family he does.

OK. I’ll end it there. I don’t know if we’ll be geocaching tomorrow. We didn’t today because Tim had to spend the morning in the office and then Hunter had his friends over. It’s supposed to be a high of only 23 degrees tomorrow, and that’s pretty chilly!

Hope everyone is well. Take care and be safe.

Yo

P.S. Will post pictures tomorrow!

HOLD IT! Sit back down, please. As I was saving pictures from camera to computer, the step before uploading them to my website slide show and writing something about each of them (just so all you know the steps I take because I want to) I come across a picture I took of my TV remote control. Why, do you ask? Well, I forgot to tell you about the incident with the remote until I saw the picture. I have since replaced the remote and have added the time to the growing list of things I probably won't forget.

It was supposed to be quiet time. Bryce was done for his nap and I told Dev he could watch Dora the Explorer as long as he stayed on the couch, underneath his blanket with Kit. I then went downstairs to run on the treadmill. I heard some rumbling and thudding from above and knew what it meant. Devin wasn't sleeping, in fact he was playing with Knight and they were shaking the house. I sighed and finished what I was doing, ignorantly thinking the worse Devin was doing was getting dog slime on his hands and the couch from throwing a tennis ball that keeps magically appearing when I will testify with my right hand on the Bible that I had put that darn thing back outside!

I slowly climbed all fourteen of my steps and found a very happy black lab on his belly with his tongue lolling out. In his eyes you could see the happiness a game of fetch was for him, and between his paws there wasn't that greyish, grimey, slobbery ball, but my remote control!

Tim has taught Knight many things on top of the training received as a bird dog. Some of the useful things (to the man of the house) are; to retrieve a golf ball hit in the back yard, fetch a piece of wood for the stove upstairs, open the refridgerator door and bring a bottle of beer to the master and, the point I'm getting to is, find and bring the TV remote to the lazy person in the recliner.

So Knight knows he has permission to fetch that silver oblong thing at least once. Here comes the little master and tells Knight to fetch it once, twice, three...four...?? Who knows how many times that needed piece of equipment went from little hand to sharp teeth. I can tell ya it was enough to eject the four AAA batteries, which thankfully were not ingested by our 85 pound knot head, but enough damage was done that I had to work at putting the batteries back into place. It might have been all the teeth marks, or could have been the slobber, but whatever it was it was sufficient to retire the remote to the trash can.

When I told Devin that the TV remote control was not a doggie toy, I got the big eyed look and an, I'm sorry, mama. Ah, well. Nothing broken but some TV time, and we could all do with a little less of that.

Teachers, toilets and toddler beds!

Hello everyone!

I am so thrilled to be writing this to you today! Two nights ago I had to reboot my computer because it was being terribly slow and giving me error messages. Annoyed, I turned it off and back on again and the first screen it showed me was blue, which is a sign no computer owner wants to see, especially when she hasn’t backed up her system since the spring!

My computer crashed. I didn’t want to believe it, so I rebooted it again, but got the same fatal error. I had to accept it with a sigh and a cuff to the back of my head, reminiscent of my days under the care of my oldest sister. :P I did not want to take the next step in this story, which was telling my husband what happened, someone who works with computers and their problems (and the people who create those problems) every day. Without him telling me, I knew he didn’t want to spend the time or effort on it. With his leaving town today and returning tomorrow night and then family coming for the holiday, he didn’t have any time to spare. I knew this, and he knew I knew this, but he had to tell me anyway in that loud, annoyed and impatient way he has. And I told him, even though I know he knows, but I told him anyway, that my family and friends are in this here computer and if he didn’t do it, I was going to call the traveling geeks and spend at least $100 on something he could fix for free. I also mentioned some other things I won't talk about here, since this is a family blog!

I left him to it and when I came back later, he was burning music CD’s to take on his business trip. Success! He had worked his magic, so here I am! Darn it though that his victory didn’t fix my outgoing email problem. It seems every three months or so I have trouble with my provider. Last week it was incoming mail and beginning two days ago it’s now my outgoing mail! I’ve sent them another email which I’m told has been forwarded to another person to get it fixed.

Anyway – let’s get to my boys!

Hunter’s school called me today about 1:00 to say that he was being sent home early. I sent a text to my husband who had been on the road for about three hours by then and passed on the news, with a couple extra words like, Got in fight. A few blank lines down I included the letters JJ, for Just Joking. Apparently he didn’t see that part because he immediately called and said, What’s this? Did he win?? This is a running joke with us because Hunter will probably never get in a verbal battle, let alone a physical fight. My son wasn’t in trouble. Because of the previous day of rain and today’s snowfall, the school was sending kids home early before the roads became hazardous. He returns to school on Monday, which is his 11th birthday!

Monday marks another significant event for Hunter. If you go back to my update around the time Hunter started fourth grade, you’ll remember my telling you how Hunter and I went to his classroom to meet his teacher and learned that Ms. G had been in an accident and would not be returning to the school for some time. Well, that time has come. On Monday she will be there full time and Mrs. T is out. I’m told that today and yesterday she had one on one meetings with every student and I was reassured that she read Hunter’s file. What she didn’t do, however, which sits a bit foul in my stomach honestly, is attend Hunter’s IEP meeting which we had yesterday morning and will be in effect from yesterdays date to November 23rd 2009. They told me she would only be doing so much in these first two days back, but that she and Mrs. T have been talking about Hunter. I know that the two teachers were meeting with him today to talk about a solution the IEP team and myself agreed on. Read more about it below.

Hunter still isn’t asking for help and it’s affected some of his grades. I’m getting ahead of myself. While reviewing last years IEP, we talked about the class aide. I asked how that was working out this year and the faces across from me went from smiling and eager to blank and uncertain. Apparently there is an aide in his class again this year, as there is supposed to be, but the aide is assigned to one child specifically and has not helped Hunter at all. He doesn’t need a lot of help, but he does need some direction at times when the teacher’s hands are full with 31 other kids. According to the paperwork in front of every person at that meeting, Hunter should have been receiving assistance in the classroom up to December 1st. My reason for being upset is that Hunter has brought home quite a few tests where he has gotten many wrong because he didn’t remember to use scrap paper so he would have more space to write out his answers. It’s those little things that make the difference with him.

To make a long story short, we agreed that Hunter needed some sort of cue to let the teacher know that he needs help. We think he doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want other kids to see him asking for help or getting something wrong. So we came up with the idea of using a small item of some sort provided by his teacher. If it’s something of his he’ll want to play with it. When he takes this item out and puts it on his desk, that’s the signal for the teacher or the aide to come and see what he needs. After that I felt better about signing the new IEP.

Last week was parent/teacher conferences. We couldn’t get our sitter to cover for us, so Tim stayed behind with the boys. Mrs. T was very positive about Hunter. He is still doing great work in all areas and he has made noticeable improvements in his printing! The only thing counting against him, although Mrs. T chuckled about it and I, having been guilty of it myself, had to as well, is Hunter sneaking in a page or two from the current book (or three) he’s reading when he should be doing his school work! She says he puts it back in his desk right away, but in-between subjects she knows what he’s doing!

On to Devin and I have great news about him! He’s using the potty! For the past two weeks he’s been wearing underwear while at home. In the morning he tries to go when we take off the diaper and he is great about putting the underwear on afterward. Actually, last week he didn’t wear anything at all but a shirt and, well, I didn’t get to him in time and he pooped all over the floor. There was a trail from where he headed toward the bathroom, so he tried to make it. But following that trail was Bryce, who stepped in it and was reaching down to play with some when Tim and I came on the scene. What brought us running was Devin’s wail because he knew what was happening. He had the same reaction when he peed in his underwear for the first time. But here we are in the second week, maybe about five days wearing underwear and have only had four wet accidents and only one of them was real big! He hasn’t pooped in the toilet yet, but he’s interested! He often calls for me to run fast to the bathroom behind as he sprints ahead, just loving his little bum in either Cars or little dinosaur underwear. In his excitement he often overshoots the bathroom door. His left leg is still going while his right leg stops as he tries to turn into the bathroom with a Whoa! That was close! I turn the light on for him and he lifts one lid and I remind him to lift the second lid while he tucks the hem of his shirt under his chin and proceeds to make bubbles with a huge grin on his face! After an especially good amount of bubbles he’ll jump in the air with his arms up and exclaim, Yes!, giving me a high five and sometimes telling me to give him a hug.

He’s also caught the eyes of some ladies! Last weekend the weather was crappy so we took everyone to the spongy playground in the mall. Hunter being almost 11 and too tall for the equipment meant for kids no older than seven or eight, found himself a seat in the back and read his book (any surprise there?). Dev and B took off to slide, climb and conquer. Tim and I took turns leaving to shop and coming back and positioning ourselves by the open entry way, preventing B and other quick children from escaping. During all but maybe the first 20 minutes of the hour and a half we were there, two boys and their parents came to play. These two boys, on the other hand, were one head taller and the same as Hunter and also both were quite a bit wider. At the start they were just walking around and sitting on some of the equipment, but then they started chasing each other and running and knocking each other over. At one point one of the boys jumped over the side and into the miniature version of a local minor league baseball team's stadium, landing on a four or five year old who was sitting inside. The smaller boy was OK, he pushed back, but I couldn’t believe the parents just sat over there and let their children, who were well over the height limit measured by the charming forest creatures clustered around the measuring stick by the door. On our way out Tim called security and reported the family and honestly I didn’t feel guilty at all because those boys were obviously too far grown to be in there.

I said all that in preparation for this! On our way from the indoor playground, Devin ran a bit in front of us, emphasizing the movements of his arms and legs. He stopped when we called, looked back and then continued walking and ended up next to two girls about eleven or twelve. He looked up at the one nearest him, smiled and waved. His eyes fell on the purple, large sequined bag she carried over one shoulder. He took a step closer and touched one of the shiny discs and then told the girl he liked it! Then he walked next to them like he was their traveling companion. The girls kept looking at each other and giggling. Finally they took a left into a store and we had to call him back because he was going with them. They looked back and giggled again and when he saw, he waved, too.

We finally got Dev a real toddler bed and not just a crib with one side missing! After getting sticker shock for how much a new Devin sized bed and mattress would cost us, we rummaged around Craig’s List and found a race car bed and mattress for $50! So after Hunter and I got back from geocaching this past Saturday morning, Tim drove about an hour to get the bed. While there he filled the tank at $1.58 a gallon! Devin loves his bed, but within seconds after sitting on it the first time he said, Where’s the steering wheel? (I realize now I forgot to take a pic.)

We probably would still be procrastinating if B hadn’t suddenly appeared beside Tim sitting in the recliner. Apparently he had not only climbed out of his porta crib, but landed quietly and without injury on the toys scattered through out his room and then left by the partially opened bedroom door. It was a work day so I stayed up with Bryce who fell asleep just before midnight and I could put him back in his crib without worrying, at least until morning, of him climbing out and wandering around. The next day I took the crib apart and reassembled it in B’s room after retrieving the missing side from the attic. Devin slept two nights I think it was on a single sized air mattress before we presented him with the race car bed.

Bryce is doing absolutely wonderful! He’s not eating everything in sight anymore. He’s become as picky as Devin, which means the dogs are going to be getting fat this winter because almost his entire meal lands on the floor! He still does not like my dropping him off once or twice a week with a sitter. As soon as I open the door he starts to cry. I’m told his crying bouts are getting shorter though. Sometimes Bryce just walks around not touching anything, but I can see he’s thinking behind those soft brown eyes. He’s looking at everything around him, wondering what he can get into next, working things out. We found out what happens when he throws his dad’s cell phone on a tiled floor, what he can do with a pen you didn’t think he could possibly get to open and did you know an 18 month old can make the number 116 appear on your TV screen and make you spend an astonishing amount of time trying to fix it and not being able to figure it out??

Well, I think that’s all for this week. Be sure to check out my website. I made a video of Hunter and a science experiment he wanted to share with all of you.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving!

Yo

Report cards, stubborness and mess makers!

Let’s start with this morning (11/13). Devin had waffles and a yogurt, Bryce a waffle and some cut up banana because I didn’t want to clean up the mess he makes if given yogurt. When I let Bryce loose Devin wasn’t done. I was dumb and went downstairs and started folding a huge pile of laundry, since I do live, as my blog is titled, On Top of Mt. Laundry. Anyway, I was making progress when Bryce appears at the bottom of the stairs like I knew he would, and toddles quickly over to me, all smiles. He’s still snug and warm in a red footed sleeper. As he draws closer I notice his belly and chest are smeared with something…pink. I smell sweet fruit and see his stubby fingers and chubby cheeks are covered in cold yogurt! Oh, no. I don’t wanna go upstairs. Please, don’t make me! There’s no one else here but me and the child who didn’t finish the yogurt and doesn’t remember to throw it away when he’s done.

The table and the chair Bryce climbed up on were smeared with the drying goop, but all I could find on the floor underneath and around was the empty, suspiciously yogurt free container. It seems without me around the dogs parked themselves underneath Bryce and pounced on that container before it could spill its sticky contents onto the floor. I considered laying Bryce on the floor and having the dogs lick him clean, but I decided that wasn’t such a good idea and stripped and wiped him down.

Then, Devin wanted Fruit Loops for his afternoon snack. I gave him a bowl and put the half empty box on the counter. Later I hear him filling up his bowl again and I called to him to only fill the bowl one more time. I hear it again and when I came back into the room to tell him that was enough, he told me it was for Knight as he patted the dogs head as Knight quickly ate the bowls contents before I could take it away. The cereal box was then empty.

Poor Kit has come running to me and cowering between my feet. Soon after, Devin appears from around the corner with a toy chasing Kit, or his pop gun shooting Kit or using his head to ram Kit. Neither words, time alone, nor a pop on the bum is getting my point across of, Do not chase Kit!. He’s also getting a little rougher with Bryce, but Bryce is holding his own. It’s being pushed down that gets him upset and seeing Dev smothering B with couch pillows gets me worked up.

It was the beginning of the eighth sleep filled night of putting B down to slumber when he didn’t make it through to morning. Devin shows up every other night, but Bryce was with that wonderful Sand Man for so many nights in a row I felt spoiled! But this one night my poor boy must have had growing pains. He woke up twice and the only way I could get him to go back to dream land was rocking him and massaging his right leg, which he kept moving around like you do when you try to get rid of those stubborn pins and needles. It was almost 4 AM that second time when he finally stayed down until 9:30, and then he was his happy and adventurous self!

I am going to start seriously potty training Devin. I’ve been letting him take the lead, but he’s going too slow for me. I don’t want to scrape any more poopy diapers! LOL Seriously, though, I only have so many diapers now that fit him, and he is coming up on 3 ½ years old! You’d think if he can tell his dad to drive faster because he’s poopy, he could sit on that seat and do the job!

Shall I mention Devin and his curiosity with boogers? No, let’s skip that one. But I will mention the 5:45 AM wailing that roused me so fast if I had been in the bunk beds of my younger years I probably would have knocked myself unconscious! I went upstairs squinting in the light over the table where Hunter was eating breakfast and into Devin’s room. When Dev paused from a cry I could hear Bryce beginning to fuss in the room next door. I quickly scanned Devin, wondering if a leg was broken. I asked him what was wrong. He sniffed and hiccupped that he wanted Kit. WHAT? Apparently Kit woke him when she left to climb into the great ball of blankets Hunter’s now vacant bed had become. Not sick, no pain, no blood, just that the dog had left him. I called Kit back into the room and lifted the blanket as she made herself comfortable. Devin rubbed his eyes and told me, Thank You. Bryce had fallen back asleep but I was up for the day and saw Hunter out the door.

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve started putting Devin and Bryce’s clean clothes in baskets instead of taking the time to fold and put them away. Bryce just meanders in each room and pulls clothes out of drawers. It’s easier and faster to just gather them up and plop them back into baskets. (I thought about putting names on each basket, but wondered if I did that, would I put clothes away ever again?) I have two bookshelves in the same room as this computer and every single wonderful, blessed day I have with this child, there is one part of the day where I find him in the middle of pulling all my books down or at the end where he’s perched himself on one of my treasured hard covers, chattering happily while assessing his hard work around him. All I can do is sigh and hope he hasn’t ripped any jackets. I use to shelf them in order as many of them are part of a series, but I don’t bother anymore. No, I’m not packing them up in boxes. I love my books.

Hunter had a dentist appointment last week. I am still shocked but very happy to report that Hunter will reach his 11th birthday next month with not a single cavity! He has been doing a poor job brushing his teeth now that school is back in session because I’m not hovering over him. Most mornings he doesn’t do it unless I tell him to. He had a lot of plaque to be scraped off this time around, but the doc gave him two thumbs up!

A few weeks back Hunter brought home a progress report. He was doing wonderfully in all subjects but Social Studies, which is actually called Ohio History in his 4th grade classroom. His score in that matter was 60%. From that report on I had him bring home his textbook and for his reading assignment he read that book instead of the Goosebumps or chapter books he so loves. His first report card of the year came home this past week. In past years that seem to have flown by this information was on colored, oversized paper, like I was opening a large but thin greeting card with the school’s mascot, a cheery looking husky, on the front. This year though, it’s a simple piece of your typical computer printer paper with bold boxes and some grey shaded areas. Inside these boxes I find that Hunter is doing excellent or satisfactory work in all but three areas. Art is low on the list of his favorite subjects. He’s never liked being told what he had to draw. He was given an S- in that little box with the comments of, “Needs to follow directions. Does not use care in completing work.” His Social Studies grade was a 70, up from a 60 a few weeks back! The other unacceptable grade (I told Hunter anything below 80 would make me unhappy) was a 77 in…Reading. What? WHAT? No way! Even back in Kindergarten Hunter had high scores in reading and has passed every AR tests he’s been given. I looked over the list and saw that for writing he was given an 89. Huh? Now THAT is wrong! Obviously there was a mistake. I sent in a note to the teacher, asking if she may have inadvertently switched his Reading and Writing grades. She wrote back and said that, yes, she had. She got it straightened out and Hunter’s school record is now correct.

I’ll end here with one more thing. If any of you have tried to Text me over the past two days, I was not able to see it. My cell phone had a software glitch and was doing things on its own and locking me out of other things. I traded it in for a new model of the same make and my Verizon rep. transferred my address book and music over to the new one, but was unable to keep my messages. So I wasn’t purposely ignoring you, I just couldn’t read or respond. I also have a request in to my email provider because I haven’t been able to send out emails, incoming is working fine. This update is almost done, but right now my emails not working I can’t tell you to stop what you’re doing and read it immediately! :)

I hope everyone is enjoying this unseasonably warm weather. I know were in for a big change here tomorrow!

Take care,

Yo