7

We have a 7-year old now. He wanted a frog cake, so I was happy to oblige. It's blue, like blue poison dart frogs. He was pretty excited about his birthday, which was low key. Thankfully, I was late in planning an actual party this year. Had I managed to plan something for his actual birthday, we would have had to cancel it due to about 6 inches of snow, and then ice. 

He's the coolest 7 year old I know. Ok, I might be a little biased, but still. He's got such personality that he isn't afraid to show. He's funny, interested in lots of things, friendly with everyone. He has a lot of friends at school and is really comfortable with the activities that he does. 

There are times that he has a little too much attitude, manifesting as sass/backtalk/stubbornness/whatever you want to call it. Like he wasn't going to do X, Y or Z because it was his birthday weekend. Or the large quantity of selective hearing that goes on. 

But then he does something so socially aware that I think he may turn out ok. For example, the other night he and I went to pick up pizza before going over to Kelly's. He went in with me to pick up two pizza's and a salad, the latter of which was in one of those tin foil containers on top of the pizza boxes. As we were walking out, he just took the salad off the top, saying "I'll carry this because it's going to slide off." Which was exactly what I'd been thinking and likely true. 

He's still doing well in school (many fewer problems with chatting now that he's not sitting next to his "partner in crime"). His reading is progressing well, and the math they're doing is definitely higher-level than we ever did in first grade. They're essentially doing basic algebra: e.g. 8 + ___ = 12. Yikes! But he can do it. 

So, as we often tell him, we think we'll keep him. He's kind of grown on us over the past 7 years and things would be a lot less interesting without him. 

He looks so innocent when he sleeps. 

Last day of being 6

All the KAH birthdays today!

He continues to amaze me.

This boy of mine continues to amaze me. When Zack and I got home today, I told him to keep his coat on so we could run some cookies over to Cessy. He immediatley said we should take Georgia with us. I was reluctant because I saw Jorge's car there, along with one other car, so I thought she might have company. But Zack was persistant--"it'll be good because Georgia gives kisses"--and I thought the other car might belong to Jorge's girlfriend, so I relented. 

How did he know? How did Zack know to bring her? As soon as we walked in and Jorge saw Georgia, his face lit up (and Georgia's butt started wiggling as fast as possible) and he immediately got down on the floor with her, hugging and petting her. Cessy was glad to see her, too. The entire time we were there (we ended up staying for dinner), Georgia followed Jorge around, totally smitten. I told him that he's got the keys to our house, that he can come borrow her whenever he wants. 

And I told Zack that he had a very good idea. 

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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.

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.

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!!!).  

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.

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. 

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. 

PJ Elf

The PJ Elf brought new jammies, slippers, and a blanket for Zack. He was so excited!

Buds

Someone's happy Daddy's back!

Grammy Leslie.

Zack did a good job of laying on the guilt before Rob and I left for NOLA. But I think things are going OK. 

(that's a Klondike bar he's wielding). 

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He's decided to be in astronomy club in aftercare this month.

My blue-tongued skink

Thanksgiving parade.

Watching Rudolph.

Dear Santa

Zack is speaking for the animals.

"Dear Santa. Jojo wants a toy. Giv it to her!"

(They're learning about punctuation in school, thus the exclamation mark.)

Long-awaited update

I know, I've been lax in talking about the boy. It's not for lack of things to say, but a lack of time to say it in. 

We had our first parent-teacher conference with his first grade teacher last week, so I figure this would be a good time to catch up. 

First, I should say that I really love his teacher, Mrs. Whaley. She's energetic and positive, and seems to really be able to control the classroom. Up until this year, she's always taught second grade--which means, as she puts it, she knows where all of these kids need to be at the end of this school year. Thanks to his school being a Title 1 school, there are still only about 18 kids in his class (compared to close to 30 in other schools). 

She said Zack is always cheerful, always wants to be there, is friends with all of his classmates, and is very social. She asked us if he had siblings, and was surprised that he didn't--she said he never comes across as an only child (I was VERY pleased to hear this!). However, he needs to work on focusing. I wasn't too surprised to hear this. During class, they work with Mrs. Whaley in small groups. When they're not with her, they have a To Do list on the board that they have to work on. Zack apparently sees this as a race and tries to finish things as quickly as possible, so that he can get a book to read (and apparently see what all his friends are working on). In doing this, he doesn't check his work. He also makes up instructions for the worksheets sometimes--it's not clear if he thinks he's remembering the instructions correctly, or if he just doesn't want to ask. Mrs. Whaley said she rarely catches him doing this because he doesn't ask, and because he is working hard, unlike some of the kids that stare blankly at the page when they're not sure what to do. 

He tests a bit below where he's supposed to be in reading, but again, she says that may be due to focusing. They're tested by reading a list of sight words that they've worked on, and the teacher isn't allowed to help them at all, or to ask them if they're sure about what they've said. She showed us what he missed and they're words he knows, he just went too fast. She said she's not worried about his reading because he's very good about sounding out words. I also added that he loves to read, and does it voluntarily all the time. 

She said that we should keep the focus issue on our radar, but that we don't need to really worry about it yet. We should work with him on taking his time and paying attention to what he's doing. She said he has a lot of confidence--will raise his hand to answer questions, will write sentences and spell the words the way he thinks they should be spelled without worrying about it--and Rob and I were very happy to hear this, particularly after hearing about some of our friends' kids who are already agonizing about doing things perfectly. She told us that she'd be happy to have another conference later in the year to touch base about how he's doing, and we'll probably take her up on that. 

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Just in general, he's doing really well, and I've noticed a big boost in his confidence socially. He's been wanting to go to KAH (his aftercare) before schools sometimes, and when I drop him off there, he is less inclined to need a hug and a kiss; he just runs off and does his thing. He doesn't wave to me from the bus anymore (sniff, sniff). He has a lot of friends, in his class, in KAH, and in the neighborhood, and he seems to be finding friends that fit with his personality. As an example: in kindergarten, he was really good friends with Naeem and Grey, but none of them are in the same class this year. He still talks about Naeem, plays with him at recess, and has playdates with him. He mentioned Grey the other night, and I asked if he still played with him. Zack said, "Sometimes, but Grey is really into sports." So he's figuring out that kids have different interests and seems to be OK with that. What is also really nice is that he doesn't have a problem playing with boys or girls. There's a girl his age in the neighborhood, Ariana, who is in his grade and KAH who he plays really well with. Last Saturday, he and I went to the park with she and her mom, then he went to the movies with them (I couldn't go), then they came over for dinner--so about 8 hours of hanging out together and no bickering, no tears, they did great. 

So all in all, I think we'll keep him. :) He's generally pretty happy with spells of attitude. He's got the funniest personality and is generally a pretty sweet kid. He still adores the dogs and wants to be a veterinarian when he grows up. 

Taking school pictures is apparently a more painful process than I remember.

Corner Pub

At The Four Corners Pub. He's planning his jack o'lantern.

I got nothing.

My boys...

...I've got a couple of cute ones.

The boy.

We got this picture while Rob and I were in Santa Fe. I think he did ok without us.

No school today...

...but there was an aftercare trip to Butler's Orchard! They had a perfect day for it, too.

Growth

These are pajamas from last winter. They were long enough, if not a bit too long, last winter.

I seem to have given birth to a weed. Albeit a rather cute one.

Beach.

We headed down to the Eastern Shore today to check out Flag Pond Nature Center. Kelly had heard about it and urged us to go and we're so glad she did! It's a gorgeous natural beach on the bay and it was a perfect day. It's known for all the fossilized shark teeth that wash up; we found a few little ones. Afterwards we went to Stoney's, a nearby crab house. We sat on the water with live blues playing nearby. It was such a great day.

First day of first grade.

It's a puzzle kind of morning.

Sand castles

Field trip to a state park today, where they're having fun in the sun and sand!

Garage.

The new look of the garage. It's a little peacock-ier than it appears Inge picture.

(Behr Peacock Tail S-H-520, because I'll forget where I wrote it down otherwise.)

Zackism.

"Actually, the moon is nocturnal"

It's hard to argue with that. 

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Another one down.

This is what happens when you have too much steamers and lobsters---you lose another front tooth.

Crustacean

Lobster for dinner. With Zack, it's an interesting combination of dinner and entomological exploration.

I think there's a little sand left on the beach...it's not all in his swim suit.

Chilling.