Chicken

Painting by Little Bitty.

I LOVE it :)

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Two weeks in...

School started two weeks ago.

First day of 2nd grade:

First day of 6th grade (middle school!):

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Two weeks in, we are slowly getting into a new routine. Bearhug and Cuddlebug seem to be adjusting well to middle school overall. It's a challenge with so much being new - the school itself, lockers, separate teachers for each subject, electives, etc. and it's a lot to keep track of, but I'm really proud of how well they're doing.

We requested that they be in the same classes as much as possible, and they ended up being scheduled for all the same classes, which is great at least for this year. They've been in separate classes before but have been together for the last two school years and they work well together. They have enough changes going on this year without adding being separated for much of the day on top of everything else. And let's be honest, it also helps us to keep track of homework assignments, projects, etc. when they have the same teachers :).

Both of the boys decided to join the orchestra at school. They each chose to play the cello. I'm really excited for them and hope they enjoy it. Both dh and I played music growing up and hope it will be a good experience for them. They get to start with instruments tomorrow :).


Bitty is doing well so far at school, and he's been great about getting up and ready in the morning. He still complains about going to school every day though :(. His teacher said he is doing well. She said she's been pacing his academic work to parallel the general ed class and he's keeping up just fine so that is good. However, during the time that he actually *goes* to the general ed class, there are a couple of areas where he's struggling and it sounds like it's more in terms of the approach being different. So we may need to adjust his IEP. Already. We're going to talk about it this week. Hopefully whatever changes we make will help him feel better about school...

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Here is some of what the boys brought home their first week of school:

Bitty's class worked on how to draw cats (which I'm sure he LOVED!). He adores cats. And as you may recall, one of his first drawings from a couple of years ago was of a cat. :)

Bearhug and Cuddlebug were each asked to fill out a "getting to know you" questionnaire. Here's an excerpt from each.

Cuddlebug:
#4 made me laugh as he clearly demonstrates his point, and his answer to #15 is just so sweet! :)

Bearhug:
love how he states the obvious in #4, and his reply to #7 is just so... him :)

The questionnaire was two pages long and the last question from the teacher was "do you have any questions for me?" so this was Bearhug's response (LOL):

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Where did THAT come from?!

So thankfully it's been a while since bathtime was a full-on battle.

Which is why I was totally surprised the other day when I went to give Bitty his bath only to have him not only refuse (yeah, that's not so rare but usually he gets in even while he's complaining and saying he's not taking a bath) but actually start to have a meltdown over it. A screaming, flopping, fit.

When he jumped into the tub specifically to pull the plug, I took the opportunity to very quickly start scrubbing him down. Because I could tell this wasn't going to be one of those times where he fights it and eventually goes along, he was digging in for the long haul. And I just wanted to get it over with, because he needed to go to bed earlier than usual to get up for a dentist appt (checkup) early the next morning.

(As an aside, gotta love this little exchange with dh:
dh: "who scheduled their dentist appt for 8am?"
me: "you did."
dh: "are you sure?"
me: "yes. you scheduled it when you were there for their last appointment."
dh: "oh yeah... why would I schedule it so early?"
me: "I have no idea."
dh: "oh wait... I was thinking of their school schedule, I forgot they wouldn't be in school."
(in July, hehe)
me: "hehe")

Anyway, so I quickly grabbed the soap, blocked his exit from the tub as best I could, and did the fastest wash-down I have done in a long time. As you can imagine, he screamed at the top of his lungs and tried in true linebacker style to push his way out of the tub.

He eventually succeeded, but luck was on my side. The drain was still plugged, and for whatever reason, he just couldn't leave it alone so he jumped back in to pull the plug again.

I had just enough advance warning that he was going back in to grab the shampoo and do a quick scrub of his hair (good thing he's sporting a buzz). I had to get him back in there a couple more times to actually rinse it sufficiently, all the while he was screaming and going ballistic, but we made it through and then I got out of his way and let him out.

In typical Bitty fashion, the end of the bath didn't calm him down in the least. He was so mad he tried to kick the bathtub (to "break it" although I was more worried about his feet than the tub), still shrieking about the injustice of having a bath.

It took him a while to calm down, and he got upset all over again when I told him it was time for bed.

He pointed indignantly out the window, "but it's still BLUE out!!!"

I tried to argue the point, but quickly conceded since I could tell it would only be a continued meltdown in his bedroom and totally defeat the purpose of going to bed early (for him to actually get some rest). So I told him he could stay up until it was "black" out.

And he was fine after that, aside from a few more muttered complaints about the bath ("do I want to take a bath? I don't, do I!! I don't look happy about dat bath!"). And it dawned on me that the whole reason for the bath fiasco could have been the fact that I started bathtime before it was totally dark out.

What was I thinking?!

In hindsight it seems obvious, but it wasn't at the time. With some effort we've managed to convince him that baths are needed every night and we've more or less gotten into a routine of baths right before bedtime. It's not always at the same time (but now that I think about it, it is pretty much always after dark), so I didn't really consider the time factor and didn't think about the fact that the sky turning black is apparently part of the whole bath / bed routine for him.

We have two weeks to undo that particular part of the routine, because school is about to start and it's going to be a while yet before it gets dark early enough to wait for dark on a school night.

Wish us luck!


(p.s. the dentist appt went well, no cavities, yay!)

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My sweet baby

Impromptu photo session in the front yard. He humored me to a point, and then he went back inside to play.

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Birthday party landmines

Bitty was invited to a birthday party a couple of months ago. He's not a big fan of birthday parties even though I have taken him to a few (he gets a fair amount of invites for a guy who rarely talks about his classmates outside of school). This one was from a boy that he has known since preschool and is also on the spectrum, one of the few people he does talk about every now and then, and so I wanted to take him. I knew he'd have fun since it was a local indoor playground with lots of foam things to play on, etc.

He was anxious about the whole thing and refused to go until I stopped calling it a "birthday party" and started calling it a "pizza party" (not entirely inaccurate, considering the invitation specifically said there would be pizza). We started off on a good foot because as soon as he saw the birthday boy and his whole family were wearing Angry Birds t-shirts, he smiled and relaxed as he admired their shirts :).

Not long after that though, he went to play in the play area only to come running out SHRIEKING as if he'd seen a ghost in there. After I managed to calm him down, I went to see what had scared him so much and found the culprit.

(not the actual balloons, I was too busy comforting my little guy to take a picture at the time and didn't think to do it afterward)

Oh the horror. You couldn't see it from where I'd been standing because there was a little half-wall but when I got up close, I could see the floor inside was covered in these.

Covered.

Much scarier than any ghost could be, right? I mean, those things could POP at any moment and it's loud when they do. Even a lone balloon far away but still within visual range is cause for anxiety, so you can imagine the reaction to unexpectedly finding himself surrounded by several of them.

Seriously, considering my little guy's balloon issues, it is truly a miracle that he didn't INSIST on leaving right then and there. He actually managed to get back in control and go play in another (balloon-free) area. Oh yeah, I was a proud mama. :)

He kind of kept to himself, as he often does. Not in a shy way, rather in a "I'm going to do my thing and you're welcome to play alongside me, or not I really don't care" kind of way. He's generally not much for interactive play, although his brothers are tenacious enough to force it on him at times (when they're not too busy doing big kid stuff) :).

When it was time for pizza and cake it took me a few minutes to coax him away from the foam blocks so we were the last ones in. He found a spot at a table in the middle but then he saw the cake.

An Angry Birds cake.

He didn't care about any of the birthday goings-on, all he wanted was to play with the birds and the slingshot on that cake. He kept jumping out of his chair and running up to "look" at it. Finally, frustrated with his inability to look with his eyes and not his hands, I told him he could look at it from his chair (which was halfway across the room).

Without missing a beat, he ran over and started dragging his chair over to sit next to the cake.

Sigh. The boy is too smart for his own good. One of the dads at the party chuckled at his ingenuity, "you did say he could look from his chair." I was glad no one seemed too put out by Bitty's antics... but I was relieved when they finally blew out the candles and the mom discreetly put the cake toys out of sight. After that, Bitty was fine. He covered his ears when everyone sang the birthday song, but he enjoyed some pizza and cake and then joined the other kids to play some more before it was time to go.

When it was time to go, I slowly made my way to the exit to give him time to transition and it helped. After a few preliminary attempts, he broke away from the foam blocks (again) and went on his own to get his shoes and we headed out. I asked if he had fun and he said yes. It was worth it for that :).

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June, in pictures

Aside from Cuddlebug and Bearhug's birthday, here's a recap of what we did in June.

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Dh and I celebrated our 19th anniversary last month. We took the whole family out to dinner to celebrate, here are my four handsome dates for the evening :).

Bitty is very particular about his drink and insisted on a big cup like the rest of us had, so the waitress brought one out clearly labelled for him :).

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Bearhug and Cuddlebug defended the house against zombies with super-soakers, lol. Bitty wanted to join in, so they "volunteered" him to play the part of zombie. He didn't care though and didn't really try to play the part, he was just happy to be outside playing with his brothers :).

After the zombie-hunt, Bitty put his watergun to use watering the plants :).

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I took Cuddlebug and Bearhug on a trip to visit family. I'll have a separate post on that but here's a preview.
In the airport:

Swimming

It was brutally hot... although to be fair this was taken right after we started up the truck and it cooled down after that. If by "cooled down" you mean, all the way to a chilly 110°.

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The lazy cat was, well, lazy. Every day. He loves this window cat bed we got for him, which gives him a great view of the birdfeeders outside.

From the garden

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May, in pictures

Catching up, wanted to share some of what we did in May (separate post coming soon for June).


Little Bitty's class participated in Special Olympics soccer. I was able to take time off from work to go cheer him on with dh :).

I'm glad my big guys aren't too big for this yet :). They've been doing this for years... their typical way to pass the time while we are at the checkout :).

Bitty lost his first tooth. He kept trying to put it back in until I finally put it in an envelope, out of sight, to go under his pillow. He seemed a little weirded out that a mysterious fairy would be willing to give him money in exchange for his tooth. What does she do with all those teeth? Still, he tried to stay awake so he could see her and whenever I told him to go to sleep he answered, "I AM sleeping!" lol

Cuddlebug's science fair project, in which he and Bearhug were the test subjects. He measured their heart rate after various intervals of playing different types of video games, to see (1) whether video games raise your heart rate, and (2) whether different types of games have a different impact on heart rate. Or more specifically, does playing a zombie-attack game raise your heart more than, say, playing an adventure or puzzle game? Hint, the answers were (1) yes and (2) yes and he had the charts to prove it :).

These two have been at each other's throats more and more lately, so when there was a peaceful moment of video game mentoring going on, I had to snap a picture. You know, in case it didn't happen again for a while...

Never too big for a kiddie pool (also, nothing encourages brothers to put their differences aside than a little water fun!)

From the garden

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In his own words

"i like thomas and freinds and i like spongebob i have thomas toys i also like angry birds"

~ found on Bitty's "user information" on the flipnote website. Too cute (and quite fitting, no?) Just had to share.

:)

On a related note, here are a couple of his latest flipnotes.

He figured out how to take sequential pictures and make movie-style flipnotes with them. These are all pictuers of his toys. Pretty creative if you ask me!





This one he narrated himself, I love his voice (and wow he is speaking more and more clearly)! He's quoting a lot of it from "Oliver the Western Engine" in which Oliver gets stuck in a turntable well. I have to give him credit, he couldn't find his wooden Oliver train so he improvised and used another one to play the role of Oliver in his pictures. I was impressed that although he was a little stressed out about it (and keeps asking me where Oliver is, unfortunately I don't have a clue), he was able to come up with his own workaround.




(he changed his username to "spike fan," I don't really know why...)

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Overheard...

Various conversations and comments from the last couple of weeks:


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Cuddlebug (reading billboard): 'Red Bull gives you wings'... I wish that was true, because I really want to fly...

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Bearhug: Time machines won't be invented in my lifetime, because if they were I would've come back to say hi to myself by now. I would do it at this time because right now is when I'm interested in time machines.

Hard to argue with his logic, huh? :)

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Bearhug: "Do you know where I can learn telekinesis?"

me: No...

Bearhug: "Daaaarrrnn!!"

lol :)

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Cuddlebug: "I recommend you don't ever lick the bottom of my shoes. (pause) I don't use my hands to flush the handles of public toilets, I use my shoes."

Good thing I don't make a habit of licking the bottom of his shoes... not sure why he thought to tell me that. Eewww :/

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Bitty's latest thing is "are you just kidding?" whenever we say something he doesn't agree with or answer a question in a way that he finds unacceptable. Sometimes we just can't convince him otherwise, so we finally have to go with, "uh, yeah, we were just kidding..." ;)

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Bitty: I wike Thomas, do I? Because he's awesome!!! But [CB & BH] don' fink he's awesome do they? Is Thomas awesome? Am I seven to wike Thomas?

Cuddlebug and Bearhug have been giving him a hard time about the fact that he likes Thomas ("Thomas is for babies!" "I not a baby! I'm a big boy!") but as I keep reminding them, they were really into Thomas when they were 7 too, so Thomas IS for big boys.

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Biology, according to Bitty

Bitty often asks me out of the blue what certain words mean. Because of his language difficulties, he doesn't always pick up on "context clues" and he has a strong preference for concrete, easy-to-visualize explanations.

I do my best, but my walking-dictionary-on-the-fly skills sometimes fall short.

Bitty: What does "born" mean?

me: You mean like when babies are born?

Bitty: When I was born.

me: It means you came out of my tummy. Babies are in their mommies' tummies before they are born.

Bitty: I was in your tummy?

me: Yep

Bitty: Did you eat me?

(groan, HOW did I not see that one coming?!)

me: No, honey, babies grow in their mommies' tummies and when they are big enough to be born, they come out of the tummies.

Bitty: I don't want to go in your tummy.

me: That's ok, because you're already born. You've been out of my tummy since you were a little baby.

Bitty: Was I born?

me: Yes

Bitty: So I not in your tummy anymore?

me: No, you're a big boy now, way too big to be in my tummy.

Bitty: Do mommies eat da babies? To put dem in da tummies?

me: *NO*, no one eats the babies, they're in the tummies to grow.

Having been through some of these discussions w/ Cuddlebug and Bearhug, I had my explanation all ready to go as to how babies get IN and OUT of tummies, but he wasn't having it (after all, when you're convinced you already know something, who needs mom trying to explain it to you, right?). So I tried to change the subject.

I had a lightbulb moment yesterday when I realized that his coming to that conclusion probably had something to do with this little chat earlier that same day as we were eating lunch:

Bitty: Does my tummy have a mouf?

me: No, the food goes from your mouth, down to your tummy.

Bitty: Where does da food go after da tummy? to da WEE-WEEEE??

(yeah, I'm sure the elderly couple behind us enjoyed that little anatomy lesson, lol)

Two completely unrelated topics in my mind, but in hindsight I guess I can see how he put two and two together... :/

He's asked me about it again a few times since then, at random moments:

Bitty: Mom? I don't want to be in your tummy.

me: I know, don't worry you're not going to be in my tummy anymore.

Bitty: Because I was born, was I?

me: Yep.

Bitty: Are you gonna eat me? To put me in your tummy?

me: NNOOO, no I'm not.

I'm thinking maybe I should have dh add a little biology to the mix for his summer homeschool lessons - to illustrate the difference between the digestive system and the reproductive system. Maybe the visuals will help.

In the meantime, I just hope he doesn't decide to start asking questions like that the next time he sees a pregnant woman (sigh).

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