Happy Birthday Little Bitty!

Seems like just yesterday we were bringing Baby Bitty home from the hospital...



...and this past weekend our not-so-little Bitty celebrated his 5th birthday. Cuddlebug asked me, "do you think 'Bitty' is a man, a big boy, or a little boy?" I love his multiple-choice questions :). I answered "a little boy" and Cuddlebug agreed, lol. Because, after all, he and Bearhug are "big boys" so it stands to reason that Bitty would have to be a "little boy" by comparison ;).

He's actually been interested in his birthday this year - he learned the date and has been counting down all month. We're still working on the whole age thing and being able to answer how old he is.


Checking out his birthday cake with 5 candles


Excitedly opening presents :)


I asked him to show me what he got, and he actually did :)



~~~~~~~~~~~

To my precious Little Bitty (or as your big brother used to call you, "he's a Wittle Bitty, he's a Wittle Bitty Baby Pwecious!"),

I love you so much and am so grateful to be your Mom. You are a blessing to our family with your sweet spirit and silly sense of humor. You're my little "Mama's boy," always wanting to be held and cuddled :) (please stay that way for as long as you want). You make me proud every day, I can't believe how much you've grown in these five years! I'm so glad you enjoyed your special day :).

All my love,
Mama

~~~~~~~~~~~

Here's a close-up of the "Cat in the Hat" cake and cookies I made for him. This is the first homemade cake I've made in a very, very long time, and the first time I've tried using fondant (it's homemade marshmallow fondant, click here for recipe and tutorial if you're interested). To be honest, it didn't quite turn out like I'd hoped, but overall I was reasonably happy with it. Bitty seemed to like it and that's what really matters :).









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SOOC Saturday: Joy in the moment

This one could use some editing (it was starting to get dark, and I'm still trying to figure out the best settings for my new lens) so I'll be posting an edited version later, but I LOVE Cuddlebug's expression in it, so here's the SOOC version.

It's been a crazy couple of weeks. I'll be back to tell ya all about it, but right now it's a gorgeous day outside and we have some pinewood derby cars to finish up!

In the meantime, check out more SOOC Saturday photos at Slurping Life.

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SOOC Saturday: Palkia - 1, Snowball - 0

Found on the living room floor. It looks like Palkia (the Pokemon) won this round. Poor puppy, lol.



For more SOOC Saturday, visit Slurping Life.





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The model student (no, really, or so they say)

We had Bitty's IEP meeting a couple of weeks ago. Dh and I were both shocked pleasantly surprised to hear Bitty described by the school as a "model student."

Huh? Our Bitty? Are you sure we're talking about the same little boy?

Apparently he saves his infamous attitude for us at home. Thoughtful of him, no?

No, really... are you kidding me? The same boy who has such a talent for the "Jekyll and Hyde" routine - such a sweet-natured boy one minute and the next thing you know he's stripping in protest of some perceived injustice, screaming at the top of his lungs, and throwing things (while yelling, "FROW!" just in case you didn't know what he was doing). Um, yeah... it seems he doesn't do such things at school.

Which is great, don't get me wrong. Obviously, we are glad that he's doing so well at school. And since he's doing so well, we collectively decided that kindergarten placement in a regular ed class might work well for him, with resource support of course. So, he'll have a special ed teacher and parapros to help him out during the day within his classroom (they won't be there all day, so we'll see how that goes). He'll have some pull-out for social skills training and speech also.

To be honest, I'm a little nervous about it as he's used to a smaller class (14 kids in his class now, compared with 20 in Kindergarten), and his current class is taught by a special ed teacher, even though it's an inclusion class. Add to that the fact that he'll be going to a new school (he's been at his current school for two years now, but it's a preschool only so he'll be moving on to elementary school), and it's going to be a bit of a transition for him. But, I was nervous about how Cuddlebug and Bearhug would do in a regular ed Kindergarten class too (they also had resource support, and still do) and it worked out great for them. I know every child is different, but I still find that encouraging :). Obviously we'll keep a close eye on how things are going but hopefully this will work out well for him.






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Homework blues

Bearhug and Cuddlebug do their fair share of complaining about homework. And sometimes they drag their feet and take FOREVER getting it done when they could have finished it in 10 minutes had they just put a little focus on it.

But that is nothing, NOTHING compared to Bitty's response to homework.

What homework, you ask? After all, he is only four years old. How much difficult homework could they be giving him to do?

Well, thankfully, it's rare. As in, maybe once every couple of months or so. No big deal, right? And, it's easy stuff. Perfectly appropriate for a 4-yr-old. They send home a short book to read with his family, and a coloring / activity page that goes with it. That's it.

That's IT.

He brought home such an assignment a couple of weeks ago. The book was "The Mitten," by Jan Brett. He was ok with reading the book (only minimal whining). But you would have thought we were asking for a dissertation when it came time to do the coloring page. All he had to do was color a picture of a mitten.

He doesn't really do "coloring" so we would have been fine with just a few scribbles of an attempt to color the mitten.

That's it. That's all he had to do.

After much wailing in protest, he finally did it. I thought he did pretty good:



So, end of story. Right? Ha! I wish.

Oh no, he was just getting started. So upset was he that he had to color the mitten in the first place, that he wanted to erase it.

Well, you can't erase crayon and I knew he'd rip the page up trying, so I said no.

He grabbed his paper and headed to the sink, attempting to erase it with a sponge.

Lucky for me, the sponge was dry.

I took the paper from him, put it away so it would still be intact to send his teacher the next day, and tried to redirect him to something else.

Hahaha. This is Stubborn-and-Persistent-to-the-point-of-Obsession Bitty we're talking about here. There was no redirecting him. The screaming commenced when I refused to hand over his paper for erasement (is that a word?). I put it on top of the fridge, he started climbing up on the counter to reach it. I put it up on the top shelf of the closet, he pulled a chair over and tried to get it down (but couldn't reach). Exasperated, I carried him (kicking and screaming) upstairs hoping the paper would be "out of sight, out of mind."

Hahaha. I did mention, Stubborn-and-Persistent-to-the-point-of-Obsession, right?

It was an all-out meltdown. Screaming at the top of his lungs, tears of anguish running down his cheeks. "Aw duh-wi-da up?" he pleaded. (all done with the up, meaning can his paper come down now). Afraid that he would tear it up and not wanting to send in his homework in shreds, I held my ground. "Sorry, Baby, but no." More screaming and thrashing. This went on for over an hour, until he finally wore himself out and fell asleep.

Seriously, all this over an easy, five-minute assignment.

I am so NOT looking forward to when he starts getting regular homework assignments. :/

Although, now that I'm thinking about it, last time he had homework the meltdown was over reading the book, and this time he at least did that part. So... that's improvement. Maybe there's hope after all ;).

In hindsight, maybe I should have just taken my chances and given him the paper. Would it be the end of the world if he tore it up? No, but we've been through this enough times to know that it wouldn't stop there. And even though his teacher would not have minded if he didn't turn it in (I think technically these are optional assignments at this age), learning to do homework is important so when he starts getting assignments that are not optional he'll already understand what is expected and have a "routine" established for what to do when he has homework (preferably, a routine that does NOT involve a meltdown).

Update: for what it's worth, this was written (just not posted) a few weeks ago, and since then he had another assignment which he did without going ballistic. So maybe we can chalk one up for Mama and Dada in this case. Or maybe we just got lucky that time... time will tell ;).





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My beautiful boys :)

Cuddlebug

Bearhug

Little Bitty






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Practicing for the big day (a first!)

Every year, as Bitty's birthday gets closer, we start talking about it but he has always remained oblivious to the whole concept. Last year's birthday marked the first time he showed an interest in opening his presents (once he realized there were trains inside of some of them!) :).

Recently, we started making comments about his upcoming birthday, expecting the usual non-reaction, but for the first time it seems to have clicked. He got excited when one of his parapros made a little picture for him of a birthday cake with candles, and the words, "Happy Birthday 'Bitty'" written on the cake (something she did trying to keep him busy while we finished his IEP meeting).

Since then, he's been repeating, "iss aw-mohss yoo berf-day!" Last Thursday, he found the birthday candles in the cabinet (yes, he likes to explore, ack!) and wanted to "practice" with a little piece of angel food cake we had.

He put the candles in, insisted that I light them ("fire? fire candoos?"), and started humming the "happy birthday" song to himself :). In the picture at the top of this post, he's admiring the candles and signing "more"... if it were up to him we'd have piled on every candle we had and lit a mini-bonfire on the cake (haha) but I convinced him we needed to save the rest of the candles for his ACTUAL birthday. It's coming up but still almost a month away!





It's really fun to see him getting excited about it! I think we're going to do a Cat in the Hat cake this year. If the weather cooperates, we're still hoping to be able to take him to the petting zoo for his birthday :).





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Wordless Wednesday

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Snow day, February edition

Some pictures of last weekend's snow.

Day 1: the snowstorm

Taken with my phone from work:



Meanwhile, the boys were having a great time playing in the snow at home:


Bitty tried to catch snowflakes on his tongue :)





Even the cat wanted in on the action:





Day 2: sunshine and snow

The next day, Cuddlebug and Bearhug were back outside for more snow fun.













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"Autistic football player an inspiration to many"

Came across this last night, what a great story!

Here's an excerpt (full story is here).

Kyle Weafer had never played football before, but that wasn't the only obstacle to his goal of making the varsity team his senior year.

Shoes. They were the biggest hurdle.

Diagnosed with autism near age 3, Kyle has obsessions that define his world, and many of them posed a problem for playing football.

But Kyle's commitment was stronger than his compulsions. He has so inspired his teammates and classmates at Blue Valley Northwest High School that he was one of 30 semifinalists for a Rudy Award, a national recognition that will go to a high school football player who embodies character, courage, contribution and commitment like Rudy Ruettiger, the famous Notre Dame football walk-on.

Weafer came close, finishing as one of two runners-up for the award, announced Feb. 3. He won a $5,000 scholarship.

...

It all started last January, when Kyle, now 19, abruptly announced to his dad, "I play football."

Bob Weafer was skeptical. Here was a kid who every day — no matter the weather — wore a purple T-shirt, silver shorts and flip-flops. Shoes, never. How would he wear the uniform, the socks, the cleats?

But his son was insistent. Dad talked with Northwest football Coach Mike Zegunis. He explained Kyle.

...

Meeting with Kyle and Bob Weafer, Zegunis was understanding.

Zegunis so loves football that he'll let anyone play as long as the player makes the commitment. Conditioning sessions in the off-season, 7 a.m. summer workouts, a weeklong summer camp, practices every day after school during football season.

"Don't be lazy," Kyle agreed.

Zegunis and Bob Weafer came up with a plan to ease Kyle into the routine, starting with once-a-week workouts in the weight room. Eventually, Kyle was there four times a week, just like everyone else. Kyle got stronger and stronger. He lost 37 pounds. He flexed his new muscles in the weight-room mirror. "I'll tell you what, he was a kind of a pudgy kid, and he started to look to like a football player," Zegunis said.

The other players noticed, and they noticed his positive attitude, how he was having a blast working so hard, just being a part of the team.

"You couldn't help but feel the same way — 'I am really lucky and blessed to be here and play this game,' " Zegunis said. "That's what football is, it's a game. We're blessed and lucky to play it, and I think he taught a lot of us that."

It's great that the coach was willing to give Kyle a chance, and Kyle's effort and commitment was an inspiration to the whole team.

Read the rest of the article here.

And here's some video of the story (please scroll down for the video, for some reason the video will only show up at the very bottom of the post no matter where I put the code... sorry!):

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