A Day To Celebrate

Today, X-man had a series of awesome.

The first is the math he loved doing after school today with the Mathman. X-man is learning division. Check it out. His handwriting (the top numbers) looks pretty lovely, too. It's funny. There are days where he has bad days, and he just can't get himself together to make it to soccer, but he's always happy to go see Mr. Cohen. And I like that. He's like a little math sponge, and he likes it that way. There's no agenda when he goes, just to learn and enjoy it.

The second excitement today was that X-man reached 50 "Terrific Notes." He missed five days of school when we went to Maine in August, so he didn't get those, and he got too many tally marks (you have to have less than five to have a terrific note) on three other days. I was very proud of his work, so I made him a big yellow star to post with it. X-man does his chores around the house with the idea of getting allowance. But I did tell him at the beginning of the year when he brought his first note home, that if he got to 50 notes, he could pick out something special from the Toy Store. So tomorrow after seeing the behavioral therapist, we'll head up to north. I suspect it will take a while for him to pick something out (so many toys under a limited dollar constraint is hard work when you're 6 -- especially if you divide it up between two or three items and your Mother makes you work the money math!), so we're going to eat dinner up there, too. Then I'll take the notes down, and we'll start all over. 

The "oooh aaah" Wednesday item is that X-man's teachers gave him a new anxiety chart today. The theory is that he feels from a 0 to 3. A 0 means he's pretty happy and something good is happening. A 1 is that he got a tally or someone bumped him or did something that was annoying or bothersome. A 2 is when someone makes fun of him or he gets privileges revoked for making poor choices. This is when he starts to escalate. And a 3 is when he's really hurt, bleeding or being bullied. The chart gives him a sense of how his day is really going. It also requires him to tally what is happening emotionally and when so that he knows when he's escalating and can use some of the calming techniques we've taught him from April. (We sent his spinner and breathing card to school in case the teachers wanted to use it.) The idea being that by being responsible for his chart, he'll be able to communicate better what he's feeling before his feelings get the best of him.

This is what the chart looks like. You'll see that he wasn't hurt or bullied today (hooray) but that even though MANY good things happened, the number of annoying or frustrating feelings he had through the day was pretty much double the good things. I asked about some of the things that happened in the 2 level. Three of them were people making fun of him. I asked him if he missed activities. He said no,  but he said other problems that made him feel really sad and frustrated (everyone talking in class out of turn, someone purposely stepping on his foot, not feeling listened to, etc.). It helped him though because he came home today with one of those special pencils that he missed out on yesterday and had no tallies. Hooray!

The last item has nothing to do with X-man, but it had to do with my mail today. I would like to issue an apology to the trees of the world. I know it's Christmas time, but it took two hands to carry my mail into the house today, and many catalogs (Zingerman's I mean you!) are going straight into the recycling pile. 

Feels Good to Geek Out

Tonight was Science Night at Carrie Busey, and we had a ball. X-man was excited about showing everyone his project, but then he got there, told his two teachers about it and ran off to see what everyone else did. There were 65 projects made by 80 students from Kindergarten through Fifth Grade.

There were a lot of volcano projects there, but as far as I could tell, ours was the only one about what happen to a volcano pre-eruption. In other words, how the magma got into the volcano. KTDID came along with us and she interacted with some of the kids. She also took photos of some of her favorite projects. There were a lot of people there. Mr. Scott, the principal, estimated that we had over 100 students, which for a 400-student school, is pretty amazing. One of my favorite Carrie Busey and MMO parents put it together, and I think she did fabulous.

In addition to student projects, REACT was there and they put on a performance showing kids different kinds of chemical reactions. They even made ice cream and handed little samples out to all the kids.

X-man was tired when we got home, so he and I played Legos for 10 minutes and then I read for 30 minutes. His brain was too tired to function, and he passed out pretty quickly.

I think I'll keep him

Today was an experiment day. X-man has been complaining lately that we don't listen and that we just boss him around. It's hard for him to understand that that's the only perk of parenthood... :-)

Anyway, so we made an agreement. On New Year's Day, from midnight until 7 p.m. (bath time), MacTroll and I wouldn't tell him he couldn't do something UNLESS it was a safety issue.

Know what he spent the day doing without complaint? Helping me set up metal shelves in the basement storage room, reorganizing toys in his room and the downstairs play room and -- vacuuming.

Okay, the pictures are when he did it on Friday... but seriously, he did it twice this weekend. (We have three cats, a dog and two messy males in my house... so, yeah, we vacuum a lot. And yes, that is the Dyson Animal.) He even gets under the couch!

It's his favorite chore. I think mostly because he knows I won't "accidentally" vacuum up any stray Legos if he's the one down on his hands and knees doing the work.

Sure, we also played the Game of Life (his favorite board game) and we made stuff out of air dry clay and painted it... and painted a few paintings. But most of the day he was pretty self sufficient doing whatever he wanted to do while MacTroll and I got some chores done around the house.

We also all sat down and finally watched the first episode of a TV show we got from Netflix DVD that came at the beginning of December. (Whoops!) It was the first season of Different Strokes. I love Mrs. Garrett. I totally remember why she got the gig on the spin off Facts of Life.

From Tiger to All Star!

Today, I got the news that X-man will be moving to a four-year-old room on June 7th. He is going to be in All Star 2. He is so excited. I've been talking a lot about the big boy school (the 4 year olds are in a different building near the primary school) a lot. He apparently finds it very motivating because tonight, without a sheet of paper to copy the look of the letters, X-man wrote his name for the very first time from memory.

He was scribbling on a post it pad on my desk. I asked him if he wanted to write his name. He said sure. So I reached for the pen so I could write it on the paper and he could write it underneath it like he normally does.

"No, Mom. I can do it by myself."

He made his X, which he's been doing forever. Then usually he scribbles. But this time, he made an upside down V and then put the line through it. It was clearly an A. I reached out and grabbed KTDID's hand. Then he made an N. Sure, it was backwards, but seriously, who cares. Then he made a D, a very clear E and an R with a long stick, a short stick and a swirly circle in the right place.

I was ever so proud. He and I have been alone all week. And as far as weeks go, this one was superb. No tantrums. No freakouts. No hitting or biting. No screaming in my face. It was awesome.

My Little Gymnast

X-man started a semester worth of classes at the Little Gym in Savoy today. He tested it out two weeks ago during the snow day, but it was just him and one other little girl. Then he got to go to a birthday party there for one of our neighbors and a fellow NG Tiger.

The first time he was a bit shy. He didn't understand that he was going from one kind of school to another. It's my fault. I maybe shouldn't have called the Little Gym instructor a teacher. Maybe I should call them coaches? But today, all the Funny Bugs (kids ages 3-4) and Giggle Worms (ages 4-5) were there for the first day of their combined class. There were 20 of them, which is a normal pre-school class size, but they had three teachers. With all of the kids, parents and younger siblings X-man was a bit overwhelmed. We entered the gym to get our pottying out of the way. And when the teacher welcomed the kids into the gym, he didn't even say goodbye. He ran into the gym and sat down on the floor with the other teacher.

He did awesome forward rolls, scaled the climbing wall, swung like a monkey on the bars and worked on his balance beam (he seems a bit apprehensive of this one by himself). The class worked on "safety rolls" and he adored the fact that they split into teams and pretended to be trains to get from place to place while singing "Down by the Station." I loved watching him have fun, and in my mind I kept thinking to the day I met his physical therapist when he was eight weeks old about his torticollis. "He'll need to be active. You'll need to provide lots of play and activity that works his left side as well as his right. He's always going to naturally want to go to his right hand, so encourage different movement. Swimming, tumbling, dance are all great choices for little kids. But he's got to love it to want to do it."

An hour later, he was spent, but completely happy. "We go there again soon, Mom?"

"Every Thursday at 4, Baby. From now until summer comes." (Then I think we're going to try swim lessons.)

He got home and had a piece of left over pizza and some milk. Then he played quietly with Legos for pretty much an hour and a half, before he and MacTroll CREAMED their tennis competition on the Wii. Seriously, if you need an aggressive, crazy man at the net -- X-man is so your teammate.

He was in the bath at 8 p.m, but is refusing to sleep for MacTroll right now.

I am, I am Supergirl and I can do anything

I was going to blog about my annoyance in class today. But that can wait, because I'm having a good time right now. I'm loving that I am 2 finals away from being done with the semester. I love that I've got LOTS of fun plans made with people that ROCK. And I'm over the moon a bit that my self-motivation and hard work is paying off with my weight management program. I just finished 11 weeks, and I'm doing really well. Which inspires me to make even more future plans.

I finished planting my vegetable garden. I'm really excited to have a pro gardener spending some of the summer at my house with me. That's right! Ms. KTDID is going to come and visit this summer. She may take up temporary residence at my house, which awesome. I'm also excited because we hired someone to come take care of the building the garden project, and Aaron, one of the workers from Premier Scapes based out of Savoy, is working his butt off digging up the grass. He did as much as he could with a machine, and now he's got to do all my pain in the butt work by hand, but I really appreciate it. And I know MacTroll now thinks I'm brilliant when he sees that at the end of two days, Aaron is about 70 percent done... and he's been working at it six hours a day... and they still have to amend the soil with good top soil (it hasn't dried out from last week's rain yet).

Other good things from today: 

• I rocked my final project for Program Planning for Young Children today.

• I got to talk with Quigs about our Saturday road trip up to Schaumburg with Bubba and X-man to see Thomas the Tank Engine -- and do a quick stop by Ikea... and maybe Woodfield. 

• X-man, who hates pajamas, suddenly asked to buy some because tomorrow is Pajama Day in the Tiger room. He also has to take a sleeping bag or blanket and a story book. So, we've got his sleeping bag out and his copy of Go Dogs Go! We also stopped by Meijer. I thought for sure he was going to freak out that there weren't any Cars PJs in the big boy area (he's now most definitely wearing 4-5 clothes in the big boy sections -- no more infant/toddler!). But instead he bypassed all the video games and Spiderman and Batman and even Scooby Doo (which would have been my choice) for a set of Baseball Pajamas. Then, on our way around the corner to check out he saw something I completely missed -- Superman underwear. So we bought some. Then he picked out a pair of pink and purple sunglasses. 

• I took Rileybug on a walk after my weight management class tonight and got to check out my neighborhood. Supershawn's jungle of grass has been mowed three times this week, and I'm starting to see the benefit of having crappy grass with thatch. I have mowed once this season -- to remove thatch from the top. Oooh, and all the lawn care companies bidding on that say not to dethatch, they say it tears up more good grass than it should. They all seem to suggest waiting until September and doing a complete aeration and possible slit seed.

• X-man is obsessed with How It's Made. He was particularly excited about the one about hot rods and the one where they made a 20-year-old woman  a latex mask that made her look 80.

• X-man ate his whole dinner, showered, chose to wear a t-shirt and cotton pj pants, brushed his teeth, read his three books, turned off the light and went to sleep with no hassle. 

I'm just so looking forward to the next several months of fun and freedom and getting things done. Mostly, I'm just happy I won't have to spend the summer painting the damn fence! 

A First!

Last night X-man was sitting in the tub playing with his toys when he told MacTroll he had to go poopy. This has happened a lot lately. MacTroll helps him out of the tub, readies his potty and then X-man sits and waits. 

Usually he ends up going pee pee and is generally surprised there's not poopy in the potty.

Last night, however, when he got up, there WAS poopy in the potty! MacTroll cleaned him up and then we all did the happy dance of praise. 

He started peeing on the potty in December. He was doing it pretty regularly in January, and then slid back all of February into only doing "exploratory" peeing. But this was a big thing for him. We're hoping that now that he's getting ready to go into a room at school where everyone is using the potty that it will be a regular thing by the fall. 

In other words -- no rush. But it was a huge accomplishment that he knew what his body was saying and listened to it. Hooray for X-man.