Candy Cane Hunt FAIL

I work with small kids, so I get that with every new idea you have that there are some bumps that you have to iron out before it really works great (or you toss it in failure). Unfortunately, X-man and I were at an event on Friday night that sounded much cooler in its description than it turned out being.

The Champaign Park District advertised that they were having a flashlight candy cane hunt for free at Prairie Farm. I thought this sounded awesome. We assumed it would be a kind of scavenger hunt, where the candy canes would be hidden during the daylight and then kids would run around with their flashlights and bags hunting for them that night. Or at least that's what I thought this sounded like...

"Kids, we just found out that Santa hid candy canes all over his reindeer’s favorite Park District place – Prairie Farm! So bundle up, grab your flashlights, and come on out to the farm to help us find them! We even hear that some rare and special candy canes have been sighted on the farm – and you’ll get prizes if you find them! Plus you’ll get to meet Santa himself and you’ll stay warm with as much hot chocolate as you can drink!"

MacTroll even found his uber cool headlight so that we could find each other easily with our red blinky lights, in case we lost each other in the dark.

We arrived at 5:35 p.m., 25 minutes early to get a parking space. We were one of the first to arrive. X-man had bad feelings when he saw their Santa, so he just waved and got some free hot cocoa. Then we went out to wait for the fun to begin. X-man ran around with a neighbor by the duck pond shining his flashlight in the water to find the fish, and I began to wonder how exactly all this was going to work. I mean, what if they started finding candy canes laying about?

Then X-man noticed a bunch of people gathering at by the animal pens, so we wandered over to check out what was going on. They had put signs up on the farm animal pens (that are empty for the winter) having different age levels in different pens.

"Really?" I said. The idea that they were picking up food (even though it was individually wrapped) where pigs poop and pee gave me the willies. There was a streetlight that lit up the area, so flashlights were completely unnecessary (and really using the flashlight to hunt had been the big allure to us). X-man handed his flashlight to me and took his bag into the pen. He followed directions like a champ and, as usual, acted as a verbal enforcer for the park district person in their pen reminding kids to come in, line up around the fence, hold onto the fence and wait for instructions. I ran into two CARE friends and we agreed this was -- not what we'd pictured from the description.

X-man (in the blue coat) was standing behind this sign, which I found humorous...

Then 15 minutes passed by. The organizers noticed they had a lot more 3-5 year olds, so they ran a first "heat" for them, but they made the mistake of not letting the other two (6-7 and 8-10) year olds go at the same time. So the kids had to wait... another 15 minutes. At around 6:27, X-man looked at me alarmed. He knew they were about to start, but he suddenly had to pee really bad (Yes, he did go before we got in the car to head there). I managed to get him to the bathroom (warning the announcer we were going -- but he was waiting for some late comers who were still visiting Santa, so we were safe), and we returned just in time for the start.

Now here's the next problem. 45 kids in a concrete pen charging toward candy on the ground. I warned X-man to watch his hands and his feet so he didn't get hurt or hurt anyone else. He was really pretty considerate as he moved through the kids. But the problem was that all the candy canes got crushed by the stampede. Seriously, ours were in 6-10 pieces in the plastic wrap -- and they were the mini ones.

But X-man came out with six crushed mini candy canes and four Twizzlers for an hour's worth of waiting around. He had been very patient waiting the whole time we were there. He hadn't melted down over the need to pee. He had used his words and communicated wonderfully. Then on the way out of the pen, he noticed a boy crying because he hadn't gotten any candy. X-man reached into his bag, grabbed a piece and walked over and offered it to him. The boy refused it. X-man looked confused. "Why didn't he want my candy?" he asked me. I pointed out that he was probably really disappointed and just didn't process what was going on. Or maybe he was hoping for chocolate or something.

On the way out there was a mother with a smaller child who was crying. X-man did the same thing. This time, the Mom took it from him and said thank you, but the child was beside herself.

On the way to the car, X-man said, "Mom, I don't like to go to events where everyone doesn't find at least one candy cane. Kids hate when they don't get something. It makes them feel sad and like they lost at it." I told him I thought he was right, and that we wouldn't return next year. But at the very least, Santa or an elf could have been at the gate handing out normal-sized candy canes to each kid that came, so that everyone got something for being so patient. We also felt bad for the people who were just arriving at 6:35 p.m. when the whole thing was pretty much over.

For the last several years, a group of friends of mine have been helping me put on an egg hunt during spring in my backyard. We do it, usually, the week after Easter. We divide up the yard into little kid/allergy friendly and "pure sugar." So everyone can have a safe holiday. We get all the stuff during the after-holiday discounts, so things are really, really cheap. And the kids go home with their baskets FULL of goodies. Each family brings 12 eggs filled with whatever side their kid will be on and then we put them out the morning before everyone arrives. We open the gates at 10 a.m. and in 10 minutes everything is found and being sorted out in the yard.

Everyone gets something. It's relatively inexpensive, and it's easy to organize. What the candy cane hunt experience made me want to do was invite two or three families to our house next holiday season (maybe when we're in California) and do an actual scavenger hunt with flashlights with about six kids. Because it was a good idea. But scrapping crappy candy off of a cement pad with legions of pig poop germs really doesn't seem like a very festive occasion. I hope things change for the event next year.

Feeling the Need for Speed

Today, I walked Lily for a long time >45 minutes. My foot was great. It was a little tender the last five minutes, but I have basically returned to where I was last week at this time before had my moment of stupid on Sunday and injured it.

Tomorrow, I hope to finally have my re-eval at physical therapy. But I have to admit, while I was out with Lily this morning, there were times when I could picture myself running rather than walking. Tonight I walked over to the neighbors to pick up some wrapping paper that I'd ordered from one of the kids who goes to Barkstall. I felt like running down the two houses. It felt like a night to run. Two years ago, I totally would have been out there in it wearing my reflective sash, zooming around Prairie Fields and getting a good look at all the Christmas lights that only a neighborhood within 1/4 mile of a Wal-mart could produce.

I miss coming back somehow covered in sweat but not at all warm.

I hate the extra fat around my middle and in my thighs. I'm scared to get on the scale. I know that I'm about to give up dairy in the new year due to my lactose intolerance. I know that I'm pretty much (outside of eating eggs and honey) about to go vegan.

"Nearly vegan" is what it is called in the book "Becoming Vegan."

I'm not entirely happy about it. But my body is also obviously, not happy about anything dairy that goes into my body. So, I don't have much of a choice.

I got on a recumbent bike and was able to peddle it for an hour the other day. I couldn't do that last spring. It hurt too much. Now there is no pain. So that's something. I think it'll be a long time before I'm able to get dressed up and put on nice shoes.

X-man had a breakthrough this week, which is nice. We're still back and forth between going in for an evaluation here and waiting until we get to Silicon Valley (i.e. Land of everyone is likely to be on the spectrum). We got a letter from Unit 4 the other day about some test he took as a precursor to being invited to test for the Unit 4 gifted program. His results were very good. He wanted me to explain to him the concept of the bell curve. He was worried he was supposed to be in the middle and that he was dumb and missed it. When I explained that he was on the advanced size of the bell curve he got excited. And I have to admit that I got excited seeing him excited.  But it gave him a dose of self-confidence, especially after a day where he'd gotten bullied on the playground. The kids have a nickname for him -- "Absent." X-man explained that he said it's because they think he's stupid in the head. And clearly, according to the test results, he's not.

At Mathman, X-man was working on graphing all the possible addition problems he could make to equal six. When he got through them, he asked if he could use 7 + -1. Mr. Cohen said, "Yes!" So they started working together with negative numbers.

In reading, he's advanced from a level 6 reader to level 12-13. That's good progress. His teacher says they want him to be about a level 16 to be at grade level for second grade. So we're working on it. My worry is that he doesn't perform as well in the school environment as he does at home.

Today, after school, we dropped our neighbor off at home to his grandmother and then we went to the Cookies at the Clearinghouse library. It's where I've gotten most of my materials regarding the Autism Spectrum, Gifted with learning disabilities, emotional intensities, etc. My friend LL is the librarian there. X-man had four cookies, won a door prize (who doesn't love a coffee mug with a beach ball and angry bird bandaids?) and got to see his friend Awesome there. X-man knows where the picture books are, so he brought a couple over for me to read. Then we went to and enjoyed the pottery painting place in town. We ran into neighbors. X-man painted a snoopy on his dog house. I painted an ice cream bowl and spoon for X-man to use at home.

When we got home, he ran down the street to meet his friends' new pet -- a mouse. He said it has three names. One in Russian and then two in English that the kids can't agree on. (Three kids, one mouse.)

Tomorrow is Friday. We're taking X-man's teachers their gifts tomorrow afternoon. Then we're going to a Candy Cane Hunt via Flashlight at the Prairie Farm. MacTroll doesn't get home until late, but he did find his headlamp before he left for X-man to use.

Oh, and I got foam gingerbread houses instead of the ones made of candy and food. It was enjoyable to do together, but much less messy and no bad candy!

12-12-12

The medical craziness continues. I was supposed to have my re-evaluation on Tuesday at Physical Therapy, but it didn't happen, because on Sunday, I did something stupid and did too much and got hurt.

So it took yesterday and today to get me back to where I was last Friday. So they're doing the re-eval on Friday. My surgery will have been 3 months ago tomorrow. That's a long time!

The other bit of news is that we noticed a growth on Lily's back this weekend just over her shoulder. I took her into Dr. Mary on Monday and she diagnosed her with a Histiocytoma for now. Cells from the tumor showed that it's made up of round cells and that there are no granules. This means that if it is truly a Histiocytoma, it's likely that the body just identified it and started fighting it causing the growth (it's a little pink and angry). It should go away in 2-4 weeks on its own.

If it doesn't, then Mary's going to have to go in and remove it and biopsy it, kind of like she did with Luke's growth last spring.

I dropped off the two backpacks that X-man and I put together at the New Covenant Church on White Street in Downtown Champaign. They had a room for all the donations, but it looks like they could use a few more backpacks. We made a backpack filled with personal care items and new clothing for an adult woman and for a 5-7 year old boy. Go figure. But I learned that they help a LOT of grown homeless men. They pass out hundreds of backpacks at the holidays. They're also the home to the Daily Soup Kitchen.

They're collecting backpacks from now through Dec. 19th from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., if you'd like to take one in. I picked up my backpack from the post school sales at Target and bought everything to go into it there, too. It was a nice hour with X-man thinking about others at the holiday.

Progress on All Fronts

Friday, I bit the bullet and went into the Savoy Recreation Center to walk 45 minutes. If I could get to 45 minutes without stopping, this meant (at least to my physical therapists) I could start moving onto more difficult exercises. It might also mean that I could cut back from 3 visits a week to 2 visits a week, which is nice in not only getting some of my time back, but is also nice because my copay is $30 each visit! (I get totally re-evaluated tomorrow, so I'll know then). Anyway, I completed 45 minutes which was nearly 3 miles. This is very exciting because three weeks ago on Thanksgiving I walked 1.8 miles in 51 minutes. Two legged work is now easy... but now I have to focus on one-legged work. And that's a lot harder.

The other progress has been coming from X-man. He's learned to make a regular capital R, and he's doing it most of the time now when he writes his name.  He used to make what looked like a popsicle with two sticks coming out of it on angles for his R. You can see an example of the popsicle R on the lined paper image below when he writes the R in his name. But the correct R is on the less neatly written unlined image further below.

His "copying" has gotten really good. So when you give him a word to write, lined paper and some time, he does pretty great. It's readable.

When you ask him to make a list often gives you hieroglyphics. He'll point to the letter-like symbols and tell you what they say. That's normal for beginning writers (you'll often see kids do it in pre-k). It's just not usually neurotypical for a first grader. But now, since he's been writing more and reading more, he's starting to pick up the letter sounds at the beginning and the end of words. He wrote a letter to Santa the other day where he copied some words (because we went over what the different parts of a letter are and he could see words like please, thank you, etc. in my letter example). But he phonetically spelled nice = nis. I don't correct him when he does this because he's finally starting to be able to deal with the auditory part in his brain. When he reads, he's mostly memorizing words and word order. That makes spelling so much more difficult. He's a very visual learner.

Anyway, at school they were supposed to make a list of jobs. This is what came out.

Number 1 is Architect. It starts with an "r" sound and ends in a "t." He had to explain to me what it was, but once he did, I got it, plus, he knows that's what his cousin Nathan plans on studying at college next fall.
Number 2 is Dom. Meaning dome. He had to tell me he was referring to the people who dance and sing and put the shows together at Assembly Hall, our local theater space, which is, indeed, a dome of sorts. (A saucer would be perfectly acceptable in my head, too.).
Number 3 is the same. He knew Dom wasn't quite right, and said he got frustrated, so he tried to write it again.
Number 4 I knew without asking. "Mathman." (i.e., He can grow up and be just like Don Cohen.) Notice that he knew that math starts with "ma" but has trouble with blended sounds like "th" or "sh." His spelling test this week was all about those two blends, so we'll see how he did. But it's clear that he knows how to spell "man."
Number 5 or 6 are anyone's guess. I guessed 5 was "Cook Cop" but drew a blank for number 6. And he was tired of talking about it and had moved on. So, I guess I'll never know. :-)

But you can see a radical difference in how he copies when the visual letters are there in front of him and the obvious struggle his brain has when trying to work on spelling words in his head and putting them down on paper. Suddenly lined paper doesn't make sense. Spacial awareness between letters totally disappears. It's like decoding the phonetics and translating the sounds to letters and then thinking about how to form the letters correctly gets all jumbled up in his brain.

We checked out a book from the library called "Ralph Tells a Story." In it Ralph is never able to think of a story to write during writing time. And finally, he thinks of one. My favorite part of the story though is the illustrations, which show that during "sharing" time, Ralph holds his paper to his chest and TELLS this elaborate story in his head about finding an inchworm to play with that a baby comes along and stuffs down his diaper (ewwww!) and then it crawls out. But when you see his paper, you see that what he wrote was one five word sentence. I pointed that out to X-man, and he was fascinated. His goal is to be able to write that one five word sentence from his head like Ralph regularly. I think he's close. He did after all tell Santa in his letter, "You are nis."

Cutting the Cheese

When I was a kid, I loved Kraft.
I could have existed entirely off of Mac and Cheese and Kraft Singles.
When I was in high school, I found Beef-a-Roo Cheese fries.
My god, they were amazing.
In college, it was pizza after pizza after pizza... followed by some cheesy broccoli casserole.
My friend Patrick always had an extra stick of string cheese handy at the newspaper office.
Then I moved to Virginia -- and found Whole Foods.
Gouda, Smoked Gouda, Port Salut, Ricotta in a cheesecake -- not Philadelphia!
I came back to Illinois and remembered cheese curds and goat cheese (thank you Prairie Land Farms).
I visited Quebec and found poutine.
Then I had a child... and, holy cow, is he all about the Colby Jack.
At Thanksgiving, I loosened my purse strings -- a lot -- and found Mt. Tam cheese by Cowgirl Creamery at the Common Grounds Co-op.
Cheese is a comfort food. I don't care if it's cold or hot.
I've loved the taste of cheese my whole life, but, suddenly, my digestive system -- not so much.
It used to be that the words "lactose intolerance" could be cured by Lactaid and substituting almond milk with my cereal.
But now it's including yogurt, ice cream -- and, I hate this, cheese.
I'm facing up to the fact that soon, my ovo-lacto (I eat eggs and dairy products) vegetarianism—is about to just be ovo vegetarianism.
The question is -- do I bite the bullet and start now?
Or do I give myself the next three weeks to adjust bit by bit?

Santa's Helper

Tonight, I volunteered for the Crisis Nursery Holiday Shop fundraiser from 4-7 p.m. I have to admit that it made me miss teaching two year olds. The kids were so very sweet.

If you've never done the shop before, it's pretty cool. Area businesses donate various items that cost between $2-$8. Families make a donation to the Crisis Nursery and then children make a list of all the family members they need to buy gifts for and then they go in and pick out what they want for each family member.

I sent X-man with MacTroll last week while I was volunteering at the library fundraiser. I wrote a check for $50 and told them that whatever he didn't spend they could keep as a donation. I made out the list of the 10 people he needed to buy for and a volunteer took him into the store and let him pick out his gifts. Some of the gifts are toys or coffee mugs with fun characters like Wonder Woman on them. Others really funny gifts like bacon-flavored lip balm. Ours our all wrapped up tight and under our tree. I can't wait to see what I got. :-)

After the child is done shopping, they have a million red decorated bags (decorated by people in the community) and  you "wrap" the items and stape a tag on them to indicate whom they're for. Then the child gets to pick out a free book or pencil on his way out the door.

It was a lot of fun. While I was there, I had to use the restroom during a slow period at the Holiday store. So I went around the corner and then stopped in to Wind, Water and Light. I was there to volunteer, so I explained that I had to get back down the hall, but I promised them I'd go back tomorrow. I still have one or two gifts I need to pick up. And I love that store. I could spend hours in it just looking. The owners are also ever so nice!

I miss when they were downtown Champaign, but they have so much more room in Lincoln Square!

I think I'm finally starting to feel the Christmas Spirit.

Ho, Ho, Ho!

'Tis the season! And to prove it I spent all day out of my house. This morning the Rotary Club of Savoy had it's first Breakfast with Santa at United Methodist Church. We had over 100 people, and it was a giant success. We were raising money to pay for a solar-powered water tank (i.e. a very fancy latrine) for a village in Swaziland that a bunch of local churches had also adopted. I got to sit at the ticket desk while others served breakfasts, oversaw various games and assisted Santa when he came.

Afterwards, I ran up north to buy Christmas gifts at Barnes and Noble. If you lived in town, you could have shopped from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Tolono Public Library would have received a percentage of the sales from corporate BnN. You can also shop online anytime between today and Dec. 6 from anywhere and the library will benefit. More details are at www.tolonolibrary.org.

Then I went to Mas Amigos and had lunch with Freak. It had been so long since we'd hung out. We figured out that we met around 5 years ago. And it freaked us out when we realized that in another 5 years, her oldest would be driving a car. Yikes!

Then I returned to Barnes and Noble to sit at the table for the library and hand out more coupons to people who pass by. If there are any Star Wars fans out there, it looks like members of the 501st Midwest Garrison (i.e. Stormtroopers) will be there next week doing gift wrapping for charity! At least it's on their schedule online!

I headed home at 5 p.m. and had a sandwich for dinner and then got back into the car, but this time (FINALLY) with the boys. We all met up with some other children from X-man's school to see "Santa's Secret Star" at the Parkland Planetarium. X-man liked it. He said he wished it was longer.

We got home and read for 45 minutes. Most of it from me to him because it was after 9 p.m., and he was really sleepy. We're in the middle of a biography about Jackie Robinson. He's been enjoying it a lot. But he also knows that after we finish it tomorrow night, that we get to move on to the Darth Paper Strikes Back Origami Book. :-)