November Came and Went

November is nearly gone and I haven't posted since Halloween... how did that happen? Well, actually I know exactly how that happened... one word - Nutcracker. I jokingly told a friend the other day that it felt like I woke up from a Nutcracker-induced coma to realize that Thanksgiving was only four days away. November has just been a series of running and going. Nutcracker rehearsals ramped up both frequency and duration that culminated in four performances last weekend, my dad came for a visit, and Clara's soccer season came to a welcomed end.

My dad visiting was a surprise. He usually only visits in the summer, so this was really nice. He was able to see a little bit of our real daily lives. He was able to see one of Clara's soccer games. He was able to watch Clara's Nutcracker rehearsal and see her in her costume. He was able to walk Clara to school in the morning and be there to pick her up in the afternoon. He got some good bonding time in with the boys, too. Eli started expecting a share everytime "g-pa" grabbed an apple. The only thing that "rained" on his visit was the rain... and the cold.

I attended Lucas' parent-teacher conference. I liked the way that Lucas teacher approached the meeting. It was a bit different than any other PT conference I've attended. Mrs. Winston, Lucas' teacher, made a list of all the great points of each kid in her class. I wish she had made a copy so that I would remember all the great points that she listed for Lucas. She mentioned that he's a very smart boy, he has a good (yet dry) sense of humor, listens well, follows directions, and plays well with his peers. She only listed one point where she would like to see a little improvement: his communication with her and his classmates. He is such a quiet little boy, she wants him to speak up more and let everybody in on more of what he's thinking. I would love to see that happen at home, too!

Before I get too involved in talking about the next big events: Nutcracker, Thanksgiving, and Jason's birthday, I wanted to devote a bit of space to Eli's developing vocabulary. Not only has his word count increased (ceiling, street, motorcycle, helicopter, remote, etc.) and he creates his own words (e.g. "boing" to mean bouncing), but he has started talking in sentences (e.g. "Mommy sit down", "love you too", "read books please"). Although there are times that communication is still a bit of a struggle ("uck" could mean "stuck", "duck", "truck", "fork", "clock", etc.), I love that there is much more of a give and take to our conversations.

Ok... the Nutcracker. The Nutcracker encompassed 2 1/2 months of our lives with rehearsals and fundraisers and volunteer activities, conflicted with soccer practices and games, and required Clara to leave school an hour early each day that last week of dress rehearsals with a series of late nights. However, now that I've said all that, I think I'm just going to focus on the performance weekend for this post. She had four performances (two on Saturday and two on Sunday). Jason and I went to see the very first one on Saturday afternoon and everything that I predicted happened. She was absolutely beautiful and I was so full of pride at seeing her up there that my eyes overflowed. I came prepared to photograph and videotape her, then right before the curtain went up, it was announced that all photography/video was prohibited. It was incredibly disappointing, especially when you consider that she was only on stage for about a minute. I'm still not sure what harm it would have done, but I'm a rule follower, so instead we paid way too much for the DVD. I took Lucas to see her on Saturday evening. That was a mistake. He was miserable... too tired. My hope is that he took away something positive from the experience and won't remember how he whined, tried to lay down on the floor and then buried his head in his seat. Sunday, I volunteered to help backstage for the last performance. What chaos!! It's amazing how polished and organized the stage production is compared to what happens backstage. There were too many over-hyped, highly emotional girls in a relatively small space, which led to a few meltdowns, some makeup crises, at least one costume crisis and adults who couldn't hear each other over the din. And after it was all over, Clara announced that she is going to do it again next year.

This Thanksgiving was our first Thanksgiving not traveling to Florida or Missouri. It was nice not having to worry about the whole travel aspect, especially the packing part. And I was actually excited about the idea of cooking my very first Thanksgiving dinner, so excited that I may have gone a bit overboard. I cooked our Halloween pumpkin and used it to make the pumpkin pie (also non-Thanksgiving related, pumpkin soup and pumpkin cookies so far). I also did the stuffing from french bread that I cubed. I had to put Jason in charge of the turkey as I am just too squeamish dealing with raw meat of any kind. It would have been nice having more family around the table, but it was a very successful first Thanksgiving.

Jason's Birthday was today. I made him a chocolate-pumpkin cake with orange cream cheese frosting. It was delicious! After an exhausting morning of getting our holiday pictures taken, he spent the afternoon up on the roof, cleaning the gutters and putting up the christmas lights. It turns out that birthdays as we get older are just days with cake. It makes me wonder though... at what age or what point does the special fade from our special day.And now... on to December!

On and Around Halloween

It used to be that my posts were easily accomplished once each week, as a recap of the highlights of the previous week. Somehow, it's become more and more of a struggle to sit down and compose a post each week, to the point where it's more of a hurry and post before the next big thing happens... creating longer and less comprehensive posts. (sigh) So... here I am, once again, hurrying to post before my "next big thing", which in this case is my dad coming for a visit.

The Saturday before Halloween, we decided to head out to The Plains for their annual corn maze, which is always fun. We knew that it was going to rain that day, but hoped that we could maybe beat the rain. We thought about going on Sunday, which was predicted to be a much nicer day, but then we would have missed out on the Model Rocket launch. Jason read about it in the newspaper and thought it would be interesting to see and after mentioning it to us during dinner, Lucas just couldn't wait to see the "motor" rockets. We got there anticipating to just stay a short time and ended up staying close to an hour. Clara and Lucas were completely engrossed with watching them take off, pop their parachute, and float back down. I'm sure they would have been completely happy staying there the whole time, but I wanted to have time to get through the corn maze before we had to rush back home for Clara's Nutcracker rehearsal. We did the corn maze... in nearly half the time it took us last year, and even made it out of the maze with our mud-caked shoes before the downpour.
Then there was Halloween and all the wonderful festivities associated with it. Clara and Lucas participated in the annual Spookfest at the dance studio. It was a night of costumes, games, snacks, crafts, and a haunted house. Clara, her friend Isabel, and Lucas all wanted to try the haunted house. I was the one in line apprehensive about it (I have never liked haunted houses... EVER). However, being the adult, the parent, I was going to brave it to allow my kids to have an experience that thrills most kids. When it was finally our turn to go in, I took a deep breath and... it was Lucas who decided it was too scary to proceed. Whew!! I was saved from having to go in by my 4-year old! Clara and Isabel went through by themselves and came out smiling! Isabel claimed that it WAS scary (maybe too scary), but Clara didn't seem to think it was scary at all. On the drive home, Isabel kept asking me questions about the haunted house (I really think it disturbed her more than she let on) and it was always Clara answering with "it was all just pretend, none of it was real!"

Clara and Lucas both had Halloween parades at their schools (although the parade at Clara's school is technically called a Book Character Parade... so it can't just be any random costume, it has to be a character from a book and they have to carry the book with them while they parade). Both Clara and Lucas were robots. Lucas was a Lucasbot and Clara was T.H.U.D.D. (The Handy Ultra-Digital Detective), a character from the Andrew Lost series of books. I made both costumes out of cardboard boxes with spray paint and glue. Jason added a nice touch with some battery powered Christmas lights. The kids were so cute and got many compliments on their costumes. Unfortunately, we kept having issues with parts of the costume falling off, but thankfully the pieces could always get glued or taped back on when we got home. Lucas ended up parading with one of his robot arms completely detached from the body of the costume and Clara had to parade with a missing dial on the back of the costume. But did I mention how cute they were?? Halloween night was a huge success! Our neighbor told us that they had the best costumes hands-down! Of course, I won't forget to mention little Eli!! He was a bumblebee and wore the same costume that both Clara and Lucas wore when they were two years old. I'm not sure I will be able to part with that little costume that saw all three of my kids at different Halloweens. Also noteworthy... Eli walked the entire time that they were out trick-or-treating and would actually say "trick-or-treat" when people opened their doors.
Eli has had a bit of a transformation in the past couple of weeks. He used to only tolerate his baths. He would scream and cry at the beginning and then when it was time to get out, he would move so fast that I would be afraid that he would slip and fall. Now, and it was literally an overnight change, he loves playing in the bath. He splashes and lays down in the water and kicks and laughs and only screams when cleaning gets in the way of playing. In fact, the bathtub is one of the few places that he and Lucas can play together without fighting.

We met with Clara's 2nd grade teacher for Parent-Teacher conferences this past Monday. It seems like Clara is doing very well. Academically, we are not worried. In fact, she has been pulled out with a small group of peers to work on math with the Advanced Academics Programs teacher once a week. The teacher said that her reading level is currently at 24 (and most kids are at a 16 and should be at 28 by the end of 2nd grade). The teacher did give us a few things that she would like to see us work with Clara on: time management (her stories are very front heavy), prioritization (which goes hand-in-hand with time management), oral communication (asking questions and using her words when she gets frustrated), and reading interpretation(understanding the inferred meanings/morals in stories). Socially, we have seen vast improvements. She is liked and respected by her peers. She even has a few friends. In fact, I feel that the best news came from Clara's Special Education teacher, who told us that she would like to reduce the number of hours that are dedicated for Clara's special education services! How fantastic is that?! What a terrific sign that progress is being made!

Speaking of Clara's friends, I have to post about one in particular... Philip. Starting, briefly, from the beginning, there was this name that kept popping up in conversation with Clara. Philip is in her class. Philip eats lunch with her during her Special Education lunches every Tuesday and Thursday. Philip gets pulled out with her to work on math with the AAP teacher every Thursday. Philip is at the park every Monday (his little brother is in Mini Kickers with Lucas) playing "fairy money" with her for the entire time. Philip also has Asperger's Disorder. I have never seen her interact with somebody else the way she and Philip engage in play/conversation. It's like they just "get" each other in a way that no one else can. Two peas in a pod! During the conference, the Special Education teacher even commented on their link; the way that Clara can just dive right into Philips in depth talk about rockets and vice versa, Philip can keep up with Clara's detailed fairy world. For the Book Character Parade, Clara and Philip had the only two homemade costumes in their whole class (pictured below). In fact, after the kids were all dressed in their costumes, the kids crowded around Clara to admire her "very cool" costume. I heard a lot of kids asking who/what she was supposed to be, but Philip walked by without even paying attention to the other kids and complimented Clara on her great T.H.U.D.D. costume. I can't express how purely pleased I am that she has found a friend who truly understands her... I just wish that I did, too!