Saturday, January 31, 2015

Super Bowl party

At KAH, of course. They have one every year, including a turtle race to predict the winner.

Yes, a turtle race. They label two turtles with the two teams' names and let them...errrr....run. As it were. They've never been wrong. This year the reptilian bet is on the Seahawks. Vegas, take note.

Despite all this, Zack still had to ask what the Super Bowl was when Rob and I were talking about it later that night. He knew who was in it and who the turtles predicted, just not what it was.

Thursday, January 29, 2015

Cooking

As part of KAH, they made Puff Puff, a traditional African dessert. Of course, I learned this from KAH's Facebook page. Not from Zack.

Zack's buddy, Kelcee, is to his right.

Wednesday, January 28, 2015

Christmas in CT


So let's backtrack a bit to Christmas, shall we? 

It started out with 3 adults, 2 dogs, 1 child, and a lot of gifts packed into our Ford. Remarkably, it worked out really well. At least until we got to CT, when traffic came to a screeching halt. 

Oh, and then we also had our share of ailments. Rob threw out his back. Zack had some sort of weird stomach bug (though he was totally fine on Christmas day). And I was fighting a cold. 

All that didn't stop us from having a good time, however. It's so wonderful watching Zack still believe in Santa. We've always had a PJ Elf deliver Christmas jammies to Zack on Christmas Eve. Last year he wasn't thrilled with getting pjs. This year he was totally into it. He'd made a fort in the den, which is where the PJ Elf left his packages. Zack knew they were going to be pi's, but he was really excited about it. What was funny was that earlier in the day, Grandpa Jim had gotten a Christmas Darth Vader shirt, so as soon as Zack opened his jammies, he said "Just like Grandpa Jim's!" And he was over the moon when he opened his blanket. We have two other cotton fleece blankets, and he'd been saying that he wanted this own because the blanket felt like Bear Bear, so he was just blown away that the PJ Elf knew he wanted his own blanket. 

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I had been sleeping in the same room as Zack that night, so I heard him get up around 7 Christmas morning and tiptoe out to the living room. I heard him find the note that Santa left him (see above), and then take it out to Nonni to read (I found out later that he read the whole thing by himself). Then he came back in to me, pure joy and amazement on his face: "Mommy! Santa said I was a good boy! Look!" And then he had to go in and show Rob the same thing. The rest of the day, if anyone asked about Santa, he told them that Santa thought he was a good boy. 

All in all, it was a really good trip. We got to see a lot of family, Zack got a lot of love. He got to spend time with Ella, and with his older cousins, too (many thanks to Taryn, Terysa, and Tyler for spending hours with him, putting Lego sets together!!!).  




Tuesday, January 27, 2015

Snow day.

Have I mentioned how much I love his aftercare program? No school today, but KAH was open and outside they went!

I'm pretty sure he's the one on the far right making the snow man.

Monday, January 26, 2015

This boy of ours


I know I haven't been posting as much lately. It seems like the older he gets, the faster everything moves. I don't mean that he's growing faster (though he is, and judging by how much he ate over the weekend, he's working on another growth spurt), just that there is more to do, more to pack into less time. There's homework and reading, and taking him to a class here and there. So I'm going to try to catch up on a few highlights from the past few months, and I'll try to do smaller posts here and there. 

I'll focus on school today. We learned during the parent-teacher conference in the fall that he was friends with everyone in class, and didn't have any trouble socially. In fact, his teacher told us that she would never have guessed he was an only child (I swear Rob and I nearly high-fived when she said that). She did say he had a little trouble focusing--nothing to worry about, but not something we should totally ignore. 

His teacher sends home updates every Friday, and we kept getting notes saying that Zack was very chatty and that it interfered with him getting his work done, and also other kids getting their work done. I emailed with his teacher, asking what we could do. I told her that on one hand, having been a painfully shy child, I was glad to see that he had a lot of friends and was social. But on the other hand, he needed to learn when to be social, and I didn't like that his behavior was affecting others. She suggested that she set up a behavior contract with Zack; this way we'd get feedback daily on how he was doing in class. This actually ended up being enlightening for us and for his teacher because we discovered that he has the most trouble when they have centers---when the teacher is working with a smaller group of students and the rest of the class has a list of tasks they need to complete independently. 

He's taken to this pretty well, and is very proud when he comes home with a lot of smiley faces (he can get smiley faces, straight faces, or frowns). The feedback also seems to have improved now that the class rearranged seats. He had been sitting next to one of his best buds, who he told me was the one that he chatted with. Now they're at separate tables. 

Last Thursday he came home ecstatic--he'd gotten a lot of smiley faces and only a few straight faces (no frowns), he'd gotten tested on a reading level and got a 99%, and his class was having an ice cream party the following day. It was so exciting to see him so excited! He even told me that he was getting tested on the next reading level the following day and he was going to do great on that, too! (It ended up being postponed and happened today.) Both his teacher and we have noticed a huge improvement in his reading over the past month or so, and I think he's getting that he can read to himself. 

Of all the problems that we could have with him, I don't think this one is such a bad one to have. It makes me so happy to see him with his friends, being able to interact with everyone both at school and in the neighborhood. I don't want to blame it all on being a nearly-7-year-old boy, either, but I suspect that has something to do with it. 

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About those pictures.  He got his face painted at KAH during the last snow day. 

He's in International Club this month at KAH. All of them made a passport and they "go to" different countries twice a week. This is a shot of them in the kitchen when they were making fried rice for their visit to China. 

He and I were snuggling on the couch. He'll still snuggle with me. I love it! 

Rob and Zack during a walk around the neighborhood. Somewhere I have a similar picture from when Zack wasn't quite walking by himself. I've got to juxtapose them. 

Monday, January 19, 2015

Down time


The other afternoon I was upstairs in the bathroom doing my hair. All of a sudden I heard a rustle, and I looked into the bedroom to see this: 


Even though Rob and Kelly were downstairs, Zack had quietly come upstairs, found some of his magazines, and was engrossed in reading them. 

This just warmed my heart. One thing I hope for him is that he finds the magic of reading and books, so I just love that he sought them out all by himself. I'm not sure how much he was actually reading as opposed to just looking, but its a start.