Friday, March 30, 2007

Photograhic Hearing

I don't think I've mentioned my amazement at R's ability to remember what I've said or read. For the past couple of months, we've been reading the Narnia series at bedtime. Both boys love the series and we're on book Five (out of seven in the series.) Usually I read a chapter a night, but this book has exceptionally long chapters, so I just read until bedtime and then put in the bookmark.

The next night I kind of fumble around for a minute or so, reading parts to myself to see where we left off. If I happen to say out loud "now, where were we?" R ALWAYS knows right where we were. Now, he isn't looking at the book, because I have them lay in their beds these days while I sit in the chair in their room. You'd think he just say, "oh, we're at the part where the guy got hit in the head...blah...blah..blah. But, no...He tells me were we are by QUOTING the last sentence that I read. Tonight, it just wowed me. Here's a reenactment:

Me: Now, where were we?

R: It hurts like a billy-o but it's fun. I know exactly what you mean.

Me: What?

R: Eustace said, "It hurts like a billy-o but it's fun". And Edmund said, "I know exactly what you mean."

Me: Oh...(as I'm skimming through the pages. And this is what I saw:)

Eustice said, "It hurts like a billy-oh but it is such fun to see it coming away."

"I know exactly what you mean," said Edmund.


Can you believe that???? Amazing. No wonder this kid is such a good student. I'm still amazed. He often does this, but tonight it was so precise... and who can remember "it hurts like a billy-oh" anyway? I asked R what a "billy-oh" is and he said he didn't know but he thinks it means that it hurts really bad.

Amazing!

For The Smell Of It

I was just listening to the local country music station and heard a song that reminded me of an adventure that we had a couple of months ago.

Once a year in our small town arena, there is a bull riding contest. I've heard about it each year that we've lived here, but have never gone. I had heard that it was fun and asked M if he thought we should go. "Sure" he said "the whole town goes to it. It's called 'Rock n Roll Bull Riding' this year." R was excited and T wasn't so sure about it. We talked it up and got a partial agreement from T-boy that he might have fun.

It looked like parking would be a pain, so we parked at my office and walked across the street. We could hear the rock-n-roll music blaring and felt the excitement in the air as we approached the will-call window. R started jumping up and down (as he does when he's excited -- I can't wait to see him on his wedding day waiting for his wife to walk down the aisle.) But. T wasn't excited. T immediately covered his mouth. As we walked a few more steps, I realized why he was covering his mouth - the bull*poop smell. It was pretty strong. T started crying loudly and stopped in his tracks. He was sobbing and saying "I can't do it. I can't do it." I knelt down and told him that he'd get used to it. "No I WON'T!" he sobbed with big huge tears rolling down his face. Sensing the crowd behind me wanting to press forward, I got a little stern and said, "you'll get used to it, let's go" and yanked him a bit.

To this he responded by throwing up right in the entrance.

A large puddle of puke in front of us, I helped T get over the puddle. At the same time, I motioned to a worker that there was a puddle of puke that needed to get taken care of, and I moved T over to the side to clean up his mouth. Before he threatened to do it again, I got a moment of inspiration. I told him that our seats were way up high and that we'd be really far away from the smell. If we held our breaths and hurried, we'd get up there before our noses even knew it. It worked....and we were off.

Relieved to be out of that messy situation, we settled down to hear T say, "oooh, yeah, you're right Mom. It smells better up here." Whew!

Have you ever been to a bull riding contest? Well, let me tell you, there isn't really a lot of bull riding that goes on. Mostly a lot of waiting and a lot of falling-off-bulls. In order to get a score, they have to stay on for eight seconds. Seconds. Only half of them got scores. (Yes, that means that half didn't even stay on for 8 seconds.) After the less-than-eight-seconds of bull-falling-off-ness, it would take seven minutes to get the next bull and rider ready. Let's just say that now I can check watching a bull riding contest off of my mental list of things to do in this town and call it a day. Luckily the men in my family (even T) enjoyed it. They can go again next year and do some male-bonding while I stay home and do my nails, or scrapbook, or blog, or anything...

Oh yeah, I need to tell you about getting T out of there. He declared that the only way he would leave is via an enclosed elevator that he would enter from the top of the stands. The only problem with that great idea was, you guessed it, there was no such elevator. So, we did the next best thing. I told him to take a deep breath and run for it. He did and we kept him in sight as he dashed down the steps, across the arena, and out the doors -- never looking back.

Tuesday, March 27, 2007

Spring Fever

It was 77 degrees here today. Yahoo! I'm a'hopin that Spring is officially here, but you never know in these here parts....we could get snow next week. Cross your fingers and say a few prayers that it is a lovely warm day on Easter like it was last year.

Here are the Signs of Spring that I've noticed:

  1. Daffodils are popping up (ours are about 4-5 inches high)
  2. We're in the middle of a thunderstorm right now.
  3. Our grass got really green over the past few days.
  4. Motorcycles are out and about (I never noticed that there is a motorcycle season, but there is here in the Midwest. In California, motorcycles are out all year round.)
  5. My grass allergies are acting up even with all the drugs I'm on (see #3 above)
  6. The kids wore shorts to school yesterday.
  7. The kids played outside all weekend.
  8. I hear birds chirping in the mornings.
  9. We grilled hamburgers over the weekend (one of R's favorite dinners)
  10. The ultimate sign of spring -- I saw a Robin yesterday :>

We just got back from the boys' school conferences and they are both doing great. T needs to work on some of his numbers a bit (he gets 12 and 15 confused in writing -- it's understandable). His teacher says that he's a delight in class and she looks forward to his answers when he participates in class. He sat there looking totally embarrassed the whole time during the conference, which was pretty cute. R is also doing really well in class. He's reading at a fourth grad level (he's in second grade) and absolutely excelling in science. He's great at math and loves to write, he needs to continue working on his writing (he has an occupational therapist that helps him too.) It's so nice to look forward to these conferences! I hope I never have to dread them.

On the way home from vision therapy today, R confessed that he had to turn over his clip in class. This means that he got a warning - this was for talking when he wasn't supposed to. He cautiously asked me if I was mad. I told him that I wasn't mad because he's a good kid and does his best. I told him to try to remember to be a good listener when he's in class. He got a big smile on his face and said that he'd try harder. Then he said, "thanks, Mom. It's in the past now and that feels good."

Monday, March 19, 2007

He's looking like a Jack-o-Lantern

Okay, I've heard you all complaining about how long it's been since I've blogged. It's been two whole weeks. As you've seen, I'm having HTML issues. I'll eventually fix that...somehow. In the meantime, here's a blog posting for you...

R had four teeth fall out in 10 days.

#1 Fell out at Aunt Shari's coffee bar in California
#2 Fell out was knocked out by his brothers bony bottom (when he sat/thumped/crashed down on R's face while wrestling)
#3 came out while I was reading Narnia as a bedtime story. R kept working it and working it, then said, "here's another one, mom"
#4 Fell out at about 8:30 pm after R had been in bed for half an hour. I didn't know it was so close to coming out. Evidently, he did, since he spent that half an hour wiggling it back and forth in bed.

Now that he is missing four teeth, he can't bite into anything at all. Whenever I see him with his hands in his mouth, I say, "stop wiggling your teeth! You won't be able to eat anything!" R seems to think that is funny.

He went from being the "only boy in second grade with all his baby teeth in his mouth" to a crazy looking jack-o-lantern boy who is as pleased as punch (that's a saying that you start saying when you start getting old -- pleased as punch.) You'll see in the picture below that not only does his mouth look crazy, but he needs a haircut REALLY BAD. He is completely missing his top two teeth and his new ones on the bottom are barely coming in.



Just to prove that he has all of his baby teeth, here is T doing some sort of cheer on his birthday last month (maybe he was just excited that he got to have birthday cake for breakfast! After, of course, eating yogurt so his mom would feel like she wasn't a terrible mom for feeding her kid cake for breakfast.)


Sunday, March 04, 2007

Testing

I seem to have lost everything on the right side-bar. This is a test to see if it's back.