Underwear

Yes, yes, he did it! My little guy wore underwear today to school for the first time and he did awesome! He came home in the same pants I sent him to school in. Way to go, Little man!

So now I know

I now know what our Doctor's office was saying behind our backs. I have all of our records in my hot hands for the move, and I decided to take a look see to see what all was in there. I pulled out the stack of five records and this was on the very top.

I kid you not.

It's the first thing I saw.

I just had to laugh. I remember that day, and that statement was very true.

**Update
For the record, that was the only day there was a note on top of the paper. They either said it verbally before, or never said anything. LOL Now I feel better about my decision to stick to one specific set of nurses and one Doctor for the kids. That day, we went on a Saturday so we had to see who was in.

Some Ramblings

And a lovely evening to everyone.

A little heads up - my ramblings are going to become even more scarce than normal. In ten more days I'm going offline for a bit. The day that we have been waiting for over the past year-and-a-half is finally about to arrive. We will be a family once again, all together! I'm so excited. I think the kids are getting more and more excited about it. They are excited to be on the coast again. It has been a while since we have lived near an ocean!

I have a few updates. My youngest is doing absolutely awesome in the potty-training area. I haven't pushed him. He is still wearing diapers most of the time; but when we are home he is happy to wear his pants with just what God gave him underneath them, or he just runs around in nothing but a shirt, lol. He has even started using the "big potty" now and asks me if "Me a big boy, now?" He's still doing it all by himself. He still asks for a diaper to poo in, but I'm perfectly OK with that. I'm OK with poo in a diaper, but for whatever reason, it drives me up the wall when it's in a child's pants. This is probably one of the reasons I don't cloth diaper, lol. I mean, I get weird about it and I have to walk away. It totally grosses me out. So anyway, yeah, he's progressing nicely! As long as he is "free" he doesn't have any accidents. As soon as I put underwear on him, he squirts a little in them before he realizes he has to go. Then he'll run to the bathroom. So nakey training it is. Fine with me. Especially in our new house...I read that the entire downstairs has Tolley flooring - no carpets downstairs! Just mop it up and go. Sounds heavenly. :) Plus our backyard has a six foot privacy fence, so I bet he can go free back there, too. Well, if it were summer time!

My oldest has been doing awesome in so many respects. Oh my, I don't even know where to begin. I don't know what is different for him to make so many changes within himself. I'm just so darn proud of him! I was going through old papers today and I pulled out a four inch stack of "Discipline Action" papers from First Grade. Every day he was having two and three color changes. In second grade, he had a very hard first part of the year, then in the second part of the year I had him evaluated. We tried different medications and finally settled on the one he is on now. He hasn't had any problems at school this year. His work is neater. His grades...I think he is doing OK. He gets mostly 85% and above on all his tests. There are a few things that are very telling:

1.) His teacher wrote me a note and reported that a conference wasn't necessary. WOW and double WOW. Every year before this I have gone to his conference's where the teachers tell me how bright J is but he just isn't reaching his potential because he can't focus on his work, yada yada yada. No problems at all this year. I'm feeling better and better about the very difficult decision I had to make in getting him evaluated.

2.)I have seen J "pull back" when he is angry. I watch him start to get angry, I watch him ball up his fists, then he pulls back and goes into his room. He no longer keeps tossing insults at me. He doesn't go after his siblings to hit them. V

Very often.

Only sometimes.

Then he immediately apologizes.

3.) J has become very, very helpful. He's a huge help with his siblings and around the house.

I'm very proud of you, Kiddo! Keep up the great work!

My five-year-old is having some issues. I'm working around them. I think it's the weather change. Seriously. He can't go outside three and four times a day like he was. It is making bedtime very difficult. The rest of the day he does OK, though. In school he is doing awesome. So awesome that he has been released from his IEP. He is actually way ahead in reading. Way to go, little guy!

My daughter, my sweet, sweet daughter. She continues to struggle in school. The reading tests tested her at a first grade level after six months of school on the first day of school, and a couple of weeks ago. No change at all. She tries so hard. I know she does. She seems to have a fantastic teacher. My daughter was struggling so much in spelling, that her teacher started giving her modified spelling lists and modified weekly spelling homework. So instead of doing a four page packet of fill in the blanks with the spelling words, my daughter gets to choose three spelling activities off of a spelling Tic-Tac-Toe type sheet. She has to choose three in a row. The actitives range from writing her words in rainbow colors, to typing them in a cool font, to writing her words with her finger in flour. This week, she got to choose and she chose to make her words out of spaghetti and glue them to paper. It was cool. She has been getting 100% on her spelling tests. :-) Way to go, Chickie! In other areas, Chickie continues to be so sweet and bright. She's very helpful and caring. She helps Mommy out a lot. She has been thriving with the one-on-one time I have been making sure she gets everyday.

Hmm, what else? My cat is doing OK. I just released him from quarentine today. He is acting 100% normal and began eating and drinking again. He's doing well. His bite is almost healed. No foaming at the mouth or weird behavior. He acts like the same sweet Chase he has always been.

My oven is still broken. The oven guy apparnetly ignored me when I told him the oven flashed a bright white and made the hair on my head and arms stand up. He was convinced it was just the element, so he brought the element last Thursday, and put it in and turned the oven on...wait, stop right there. He tried to turn the oven on. Nothing. Fried electrical board. He looked at me like it was my fault. Hmmmm, no, I don't think I decided to pour a pot of water down the back of the oven while I was cooking. Sorry, no dice. I hope he can fix it in the next ten days before I leave!

Tigger, almost there! No more sitting in your lonely room. I hope you aren't too fond of your quiet...we have a lot to catch up on. I'm sure the kids will put in their two cents often and loudly.

Upcoming Birthday

My oldest will be nine very soon. At least he'll be nine by my calculation. He seems to have figured it differently.

Me: "Pretty soon you will be nine!"
Him: "I've decided that I am not going to be nine, Mom. I'm going to turn ten on my birthday this year. I am much too mature to be nine. And besides, when you are ten, you are a teenager. I am definately a teenager."

I really didn't know what to say to that, other than I am not old enough to have a ten year old. I would have been much too young back then.

Laughter

My children are a great source of joy for me. They privilege me every day with the gift of laughter. Most of the time it's not even intentional. I just take joy in their pureness and in the glee that they experience every day. For example, I just tried to "repossess" some M&M's from my oldest son's trick or treat bag, and he objected. So I gave him back his M&M's and I thought I was being sneaky by turning around to the fridge to get more from his bag (which I thought I had returned to the top of the fridge). Apparently, I had handed him the bag, so I saw no bag and turned around and he was standing there clutching his bag tightly in his hot little hands giving me that completely gleeful laugh. (Think Dash's laugh when he found out he could run on water in "The Incredible".) I couldn't help but laugh. But alas, I didn't get any M&M's.

Just maybe...

For those of you who know me pretty well, you know that not only do I do child-led weaning when it comes to breastfeeding, but I also do child-led potty training. This means I don't really do much to potty train my children. I introduce the concept of peeing and pooping in the potty in the process of going through a normal day. For example, we'll read a book about using a potty (currently the favorite is http://www.amazon.com/Have-You-Seen-My-Potty/dp/0764160303), I'll tell him that I put my pee-pee straight in the potty and then I flush it and wave good-bye to pee or poo. I only do that last bit if he seems interested in knowing what I am doing. I don't just suddenly one day introduce underwear or pull-ups. I don't start putting them on the potty every half hour. I don't really do anything, lol.

So Robby has shown zero interest for a long time now. Then this weekend, he pulled off his diaper and sat on the potty and peed and pooed. Just like that. And he did it several times over the course of Saturday. I asked him if he wanted to put on underwear and he said no. End of subject. He showed no interest at all on Sunday. Then today, he rips off his diaper and peed in the potty. I asked him again. "Do you want to wear some underwear?" He said "YES!" So he currently has on a too big pair of Spongebob underwear. I told him that he could pick out his own tonight when we are up the road. He has been running into the bathroom and peeing all day. Then he dumps his pee into the big potty, flushes it away, and washes his hands. I didn't do anything. He just decided he was ready! We have been reading his book a lot. He LOVES that book. I would reccommend it for any child who is ready to potty train. :-)


Go, Robby, Go! Mommy is proud of you! His teachers are going to be so surprised when he turns up in school on Wednesday wearing big boy underpants! The timing isn't great with the impending move, but when a guy is ready, a guy is ready. Wish him luck!

Pancakes for Breakfast

Lately, I have really been reveiwing the way I parent. I have been digging deap in my soul, and what I have come up with is painful to admit. My parenting style, which I used to view along the lines of "attachment parenting," is actually more like "Duty Parenting." Yes, I just said it out loud. I have viewed parenting as a "duty," a "responsibliity," or a "job." It may not seem like it, but I really think I have been doing it all wrong. Parenting should be an adventure, time treasured, and a relationship.

I have been making little changes here and there. Today, I made a not so little change. I used to view cooking as "my time." I love to cook and it was my time to be lost in my thoughts, and any interruption irritates me. I would let the kids make cookies with me, but I would dictate over them and just give them stuff to dump in the bowl. Over the past two months, I have started letting them do it all. Crack the eggs, measure it out, etc. Today...today was a big day. I have realized that while my oldest and youngest children each require a lot of extra attention due to their unique needs, my middle two children don't often get extra attention. I had a light bulb moment and I realized every child has unique needs. I haven't been meeting my two middle children's unique needs. So this morning, I asked my daughter if she wanted me to teach her how to make pancakes. I then let her make the pancakes. It's a little difficult for me to teach her things because she is left handed and I am right handed, so I have had to learn how she manipulates things. I was showing her how to flip a pancake, then I had to back up and do it left-handed. Obviously, she wasn't able to scoop the pancakes up from the right and slide them to the left. However, I digress. I let my daughter make the pancakes today. I did crack the eggs. I am just so anal retentive about shell getting into my food. I know, I could let them crack it into a separate bowl and pour it in. I need to begin doing that.

So today, I continued my soul-searching about my parenting and my daughter and I made pancakes together. She soaked up every minute of her time with me while her brothers did boy things together.

My goal is to keep finding things to do one-on-one with each of my kids every day. I admit, it is getting a lot easier to find one-on-one time now that the children are growing. Soon, the Hubby will be with us again and I think we will grow and bloom as a family like never before. We are getting into that stage of parenting that we have been looking foward to. We will be able to ride bikes together and roller skate together.

And don't forget the pancakes for breakfast that my daughter will make for us.