Catching up on a few pictures here… The kids have started swimming lessons again (all three of them).
We’ve also started ice skating (thanks Crystal for roping us into another activity LOL)…
And one more… Bill and I went to a wedding on Saturday and dressed up 🙂
Stood in line at 4:40 this morning to get the kids signed up for swimming. There are advantages to being 10th in line. There was no problem getting them all signed up for lessons in the same time slot. I was hoping for early afternoon classes, but they don’t exist. It worked out ok, because there was a parent/toddler class offered at the same time, so even Alyson is signed up. She’ll love it, and I won’t have to keep her out of the pool during the boys’ lessons. The downside is that I won’t be able to watch the boys. Even that worked out, though, because Bill should be able to come watch. Fun fun.
It’s bedtime in our house. A typically very chaotic hour. The kids were finally all in bed, tucked and covered, and Alyson insisted she couldn’t sleep. I suggested she close her eyes and imagine the puppet show we saw this morning at Brandon’s graduation (Yay Brandon!). She squeezed her eyes closed and smiled. The kids and I talked for a minute about imagining something that makes us happy when we try to sleep. Here’s what they said:
Alyson: Purple color makes me happy!
Brandon: Imagining Christian doing good at baseball makes me happy!
Christian: Imagining one Brandon talking to me, then two Brandon’s talking to me, then three Brandon’s talking to me makes me happy because it’s math!
What a crew we have here!
Brandon suddenly last weekend decided he could ride a bike without training wheels (in fact, this was how he woke us up… Daddy, take my training wheels off!). Yay Brandon!
Brandon – had an evaluation with a speech therapist today. Very interesting what he knows and what he doesn’t. The sounds he doesn’t pronounce correctly (of which there were many)??? All sounds that kids master by the age of EIGHT. Yep, you read correctly… they aren’t going to worry about him until he’s EIGHT. She said that the inconsistencies in the sounds he’s making is a good sign… he’s learning. The only sound she’s mildly interested in is the ING sound, which kids master at age 5-6. She’s going to find some pictures and send them to me, to help work with him. She’s also going to send the results to the speech path at Seaview.Christian – Here’s a good one. Last night I asked Brandon to clean up the fort he made upstairs. When he said he was done, I sent Christian up to see how he did. I asked, “Is Daddy going to think it’s cleaned up?” Christian’s response? “I don’t know. He thinks different than I do.”
Christian – One more conversation with Christian… “Mommy, you know that CD you have?” I have lots of CDs, I’m thinking. “The one with the guy singing all those songs?” Didn’t narrow it down much. “The one where he sings in different languages?” Ah ha! My Josh Groban CD. “Yes, Christian, what about it?” “Could I take it to school on my birthday so we can listen to it while we do my birthday stuff? Ms Lawrence said it’s ok.” LOL I can’t believe he wants to listen to my Josh Groban CD during his school bday celebration 🙂
Christian – I guess I should do an ADHD update. He’s on a caffeine trial. The first two weeks it didn’t seem to do much, so after consulting with his doctor, we upped the amount on Tuesday. But on Wednesday he forgot to take two doses in a row. After school he had the worst headache I’ve ever seen. Sent us back to the doctor’s office where they declared he’s fine but it was a caffeine withdrawal headache. Scary, but it seems to be helping him at school, so we’re not giving up yet.
Alyson just repeats whatever anyone else says 🙂 Her story of the day is… her new favorite show is the Wonder Pets. Silly little show, but they do a lot of singing. She has learned TEAMWORK from this silly little show. The animals work together to do things, and they sing, “What’s gonna work? TEAMWORK!” over and over. So Alyson now joins in (particularly if we’re doing laundry), starts helping, and sings teamwork 🙂 She’s got all of us doing it.
We had a nice Easter yesterday, managing to hunt Easter eggs in the sunshine. We had a nice visit with Grandma Julie, and dyed eggs in the evening. While we missed our tradition of spending the day in Arlington, it was really nice to stay home too.I’m attaching pics of Alyson and Brandon from Easter… Christian was a little grumpy all afternoon and didn’t hunt eggs with them.
Seems like it has been a while since I’ve posted… too much time in that I’m sure I’m going to forget something. I’m writing this from my new cool MacBook (I’m the newest Mac-convert) and I’m hoping to write more often (although don’t forget this is April LOL).First of all, Nana passed away last Sunday. We’re all sad she’s gone, but glad that she’s not suffering anymore. There was a nice memorial for her on Saturday, and it was nice to see so much family in attendance as well as so many of her friends.
What else… I’m staying at Orrtax a bit longer if my plan is approved. I’ll just be working at home much more. It’s been great to have Keina watching the kids some days, but all of this childcare juggling is killing me. We’ll see how this summer goes, though, when I have to work AND take care of them. Should be interesting. I’m sure I’ll be counting down the days to the first day of school 🙂
Speaking of the first day of school, I’m taking a statistics class this quarter (technically starting tomorrow, but I’ve already started). I figured it wouldn’t hurt to start working on the prerequisites to enter the BS Accounting program at CWU (they have a Edmonds extension). Who knows if I’ll ever finish, but it’s nice to be working on something. It’s a LOT of work, though!
Christian: Got his 2nd trimester report card and had a conference with his teacher. Christian brought all of his grades up, and we are so proud of him. He is still having problems with peer pressure and self-esteem, but academically he’s doing much better. He currently works one-on-one with someone for writing three days a week. We haven’t gotten any test results back yet, but they’re in progress. His teacher is going to be re-evaluating the kids in reading over the next few weeks too, so the results of that will be interesting as well. We can tell he’s doing much better. The last four weeks in church, the kids have presented a banner they made to the congregation and each had a notecard to read and Christian read his really well.
Brandon: In the same banner presentations, Brandon has done great with memorizing his lines (except for today when he declined to participate, even though he knew his line perfectly). He takes such pride in memorizing, it’s really cute. He’s VERY excited about Easter coming up (so am I… I gave up chocolate for Lent and I can’t wait to eat my Cadbury eggs LOL).
Alyson: Little Miss Alyson has reached the terrible twos. Most of the time, she’s still the sweet charming little flirt we all know and love, but oh boy look out if she doesn’t get her way. Especially if she didn’t have a nap and it’s after 4 in the afternoon. She can turn into quite the terror-tot. But we love her anyway… it is fun to see her becoming so independent.
Bill’s been busy with recording and web projects, and now he’s also one of the assistant coaches for Christian’s baseball team.
I can’t think of anything else… I’m surviving tax season. April will be crazy but May should be really quiet.
The conference with Brandon’s teachers went well today. His progress report says that he is a sweet spirited, quiet little boy. They said he does a good job of focusing on a task and doing his work carefully. They showed us a painting he did the first month of school that he had obviously spent much time and effort on. They said he enjoys building with blocks and painting, and is starting to play more with the other kids. They’re going to continue working with him on his alphabet, shapes, and counting, and they were glad we’re trying to get him into speech therapy, but overall they said he’s doing great! Yay Brandon!
Brandon – had his hearing test today and aced it. He did a fantastic job of raising his hand when he heard the beep, and of repeating the words he heard. Yay, Brandon! His hearing is normal. On to a speech evaluation we go…Christian – got a call from the teacher, and she has scheduled an ‘intake meeting’ to determine where Christian is and the best things to do to help him succeed in school. This meeting will be 2/8 and it will be us, his teacher, his math teacher, the counselor, the nurse, and a support person. The great news is that they pulled him for a reading test today and he’s testing at a 2nd grade level… an improvement from the first testing this school year that put him at a 1st grade level! Yay, Christian!
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