Ethan had a pretty good spell at school right after his 2 week break for the holidays. He was very excited to get back to school, colored in 8 pieces of his space shuttle that first day and was “green” for the first two weeks (they get greens for good behaviour). But I think now, he’s pretty much back to “normal”. One good thing – normal seems to not include nearly as much hurting other people. There was always something going on, each week, kicking someone, punching someone, some sort of scuffle, and thankfully, it seems to have lessened quite a bit – he did do some pinching last week, but that has been it so far this year.

Just a general sort of round up on his behaviour: He has a few friends in our neighborhood that he will play with, but James and I feel the need to “hover” if they’re outside or even inside, to mediate any issues that come up or step in if things get rough. When he is over at their house(s), we worry the whole time. At school, he will roll around on the floor at times, if too close to his neighbors, he will get in their space and/or poke them – his desk is generally pulled away a bit for this reason. He will sometimes circle his desk around and around. Some sensory things we’ve noticed, he will also often chew on things, and will make a sort of whistling noise through his teeth. He loves to wear super soft clothing – he won’t wear jeans, and loves the pants that are made from sweatshirt-type material. He loves footsie jammies partly because he prefers to be on the warm side when he’s sleeping, but partly because every inch of his body is covered in softness.

Actually, now that I think about it, I think he’s stopped the chewing (or if not stopped, it’s lessened a great deal) as well as the whistling through his teeth.

He is very inventive and curious about all sorts of things. They were doing surveys and votes in class, and he decided to do one at home – he counted up all the smoke detectors and all the sprinklers and tallied them up with tally marks. He loves to tinker on James’ workbench – taking apart an old printer, or attaching components to an old mother board. He knows how to make a computer fan work by attaching the wire ends to a 9volt battery. We used to have him read us a book every night, but during the winter holidays he complained he was too tired at the end of the day, so we switched it to mornings, and we call it our snuggle reading time. He is growing more confident with reading, but still will sometimes just look at the beginning of a word and guess at the rest instead of seeing the whole word. He’s grown so tall that it’s hard to snuggle with him (and yet we still manage somehow!)

He is very sweet and compassionate, loves anything that is “cute” (puppies, kittens, wee little robots, the color pink) and lately the WALL*E obsession in our house has reached epic proportions. A number pad has been installed in front of the stairs where numbers are entered before walking up them. “Trash cubes” are made from anything handy (blankies and laundry mostly). Anything picked up is picked up with robotic WALL*E-ish movements, and whole conversations from the movie can be repeated verbatim. “Give me the plant! -Tell me Auto! That’s an ORDER! -Very well sir.” “HALT!” is also a common order given around our house, like the steward bots on the Axiom.

Well, I think that’s enough for now. We’ll see how it goes from here.

-amy

THE GIRL

This morning Jocelyn had picked out a pair of shorts that had a little drawstring bag attached to the front belt loop. We dithered about what to put in it, and settled on a little wooden clothespin doll I had painted last christmas. It fit about halfway in, with the head and torso sticking out.

When we arrived at school and she was getting out of the truck, I said, “Oops, don’t your little doll girl fall out! Little Pansy! Is that a good name? Shall we name her Pansy?”

“No..”

“How about Lucy?”

“Emma!*”

“No.. TOYOTA!”

THE BOY

And in Ethan news, he had made a little lego car/tank creation that he wanted to take in to school. During the school year, and always for Jocelyn, our policy is toys can go to school in the car, but there they must stay. So my instant response was that it has to stay in the car.

He moaned and groaned a bit, but it was pretty contained, not getting near any sort of tantrum territory.

He brought it in the car, and when we were halfway to school, he said, “Mommy, I would like to just take this toy in for a quick minute, just to show Austin.”

He hesitated a second, and then quickly added, “But if you say no, then that’s ok. It’s ok, if you say no, Mommy.”

I didn’t respond, but mulled it over the rest of the way to school. Earlier, I went with our go-to response for toys, but for summer camp, kids bring their hand-held gaming devices and pokemon cards and all sorts of crap. Why would a little lego car be any different?

“You can bring it in, Ethan. We’ll ask the counselor when we get in if it’s OK.”

“Thank you Mommy! You are the BEST!”

It’s pretty easy to be the best to such a sweet boy.

THE PARENTS

Every week of summer camp, on Fridays there’s a “big event.” The preschool campers have theirs posted on the board right as you walk into the school, and the older campers have theirs at the front of their wing of the school. James and I… well, we don’t usually check either of them very often.

This morning, the preschool campers had “Beach Day!” as their big Friday event. They were supposed to arrive in their swimsuits and bring any related beach articles they wanted (toys, chairs, umbrellas, etc.)

It’s been a somewhat distracting week ANYWAY, and yes, neither James nor I clued in to this fact. So after I took the kids in, I had to high-tail it BACK home, grab her suimsuit, towel, and water shoes, and head BACK to school. It’s times like this that I wish we didn’t pick a school for them that’s in the next town over. And of course (and I’m going to stick to “this week sucked” as my go-to excuse here), Jocelyn’s swimming suite, water shoes and towel were still in the plastic grocery bag, all wet, from splash day on Wednesday.

Oops.

Next week is the school’s last week of summer camp, and Ethan and Jocelyn’s last week at that school. They’ll be moving to a daycare/school that’s close to us, and that buses public school kids to their school (for Ethan). I’ve already spilled my guts about how much we love our current school, so I won’t get into it all over again, but … Wah.

Me: Ethan, I’d like you to set the table, please.
Ethan: OK, it would be my pleasure!

Now that’s more like it!

Today went swimmingly. No issues, a message from his KG teacher that he did great. We came home and played on the Wii to celebrate.