Wordless Wednesday: It's STILL Not Out!

Although it looks like a tooth is missing, really it's just the space that his mouth has created for the big tooth.

The crooked one has been dangling for a week


I have now resorted to bribes to get it out


Speed Stacks for a tooth




Stay tuned....

School For Aaron

I had a disappointment on Monday morning. Let me give a little background first.

In Michigan, the cut off date for kindergarten is December 1st, which means that a lot of kids who are only four enter kindergarten each year. A large percentage of them end up repeating the following year because they just weren't ready maturity wise to be successful in that environment, no matter how "book smart" they are. Michigan is also changing their school funding requirements so that only full day, five day kindergarten programs will receive full state funding starting next school year.

To counteract the December first cut off, Young Fives programs have become very popular in our state. Parents whose kids are technically old enough to go to school, and even academically ready (like Aaron) but may not be mature enough to handle the work load, enroll in Y5's programs, which are generally a pretty good mix of preschool and kindergarten.

With Aaron being a late October birthday, I have always known that I think he would benefit from the extra year of Young 5's before kindergarten. But unfortunately, because of the funding changes, a large number of our local schools have nixed their Y5's programs for next year.

There was only one left, a charter school near our home. Yesterday was the lottery to get into the school. Aaron was 8th on the waiting list to get into the Y5's class.

That seems okay, right?

I was feeling pretty good about it until I talked to the principal. The kindergarten class is full with 95 KIDS on the waiting list. The kids who made it into the kindergarten classes will all be screened in April and any one deemed "not ready" automatically gets moved into the Y5's class, ahead of those who are on the waiting list. So by the time school gets out, Aaron may be 20 or 30 on the waiting list, or even lower.

I really have no other options for Aaron next year. If I were to put him into a kindergarten, it would be knowing that he would be there for two years. And since I don't want to put up with one, let alone two more years with the teacher that Noah had for kindergarten, I am totally stuck.

So as of right now, I have no place to send my little boy to school next year. I will be doing a lot of praying for guidance in this matter.

Thanks for listening. I needed to write out these thoughts before I stored them in the back of my mind for awhile.

Happy Tuesday.

Weekend Top Five 3/9/09

I just realized that next week there will be NO Weekend Top Five because the ENTIRE weekend will be spent driving to Florida. I'm thinking a reverse to the phrase...The storm before the calm!

This weekend was VERY RAINY the entire weekend. It was a four day weekend for Noah since he had conferences. We really didn't do anything special with his days off. The boys spent the afternoon with my step mom on Thursday while I went to conferences an d on Friday the weather was beautiful and warm so they spent pretty much the entire afternoon outside playing.

5. The Great Van Swap
My parents are being EXTREMELY generous in letting us borrow their van for our trip next week. It was definitely a huge relief to us. So since we were going to their place on Saturday (see below) we decided to go ahead and drive their van home and drive it this week before we left. So we had to get ours ready, which included cleaning out and vacuuming. It is always humbling to see just how gross one's van gets over the winter months when you don't clean it as often. I actually hung a stick-up on one of the doors and also spread carpet cleansing powered on the carpet before I took it to vacuum it. BUT, not all of the carpet cleaner vacuumed up so we ended up dropping off a car with white powder everywhere...real classy!

Then on the way home, my derriere started feeling warm. Sure enough, their van had BUTT WARMERS. Nice and toasty. I may keep using them this week just because I can. You all know me and how cold I am all the time.

4. Family Get Together
Our family tries to get together at my dad's quarterly to celebrate all of that season's birthdays. So we all got together this Saturday. Ever since my dad got his Wii, Noah has been hooked. He and his cousins spent quite a bit of time bowling, boxing, and ATTEMPTING golf. (None of us actually figured that one out)

Noah is in red






3. Facebook By Accident
Ever since I deactivated my FB account back in January, I have periodically gone on Steve's to write quick emails to friends or see what people were up to. I accidentally clicked on the other email that popped up, and the account that I had THOUGHT was deactivated was right there in front of me, and friends saved and past comments posted. I thought it was kind of weird but it must be related to that new policy that FB instated. I figured I might as well keep it up since I missed being in contact with some of the people on it. I know I learned from my mistakes before and will be able to be more responsible this time.

2. Church
For some reason, I have planned my youth chimes to play on the Sunday following DST three years in a row now. So 7:00 came even earlier than usual Sunday morning, and we had practice before church, two church services, and a rehearsal afterward. The boys weathered it pretty well since Steve kept them in the youth room playing games the whole first service and had Sunday school the second service.
Between the two services, while Steve and I were singing in choir, the boys found their own little hideaway under the table to eat their apples and read library books. I just happened to have my camera with me this week, so I snapped a shot.

1. Early Bedtime
I don't know if it's the weather, vacation restlessness, or the time change, but my wonderful little boys have not been so wonderful this last week or so and my patience was at its end by Sunday afternoon. After getting out of the house for an hour to regroup, I came home and stepped right back into unpleasantness.

After awhile, it just seemed hopeless, so blaming it on the time change, the boys went to bed HOURS before bedtime, with Mommy following soon after.


I REALLY hope this whole week leading up to vacation this week gets better, because if not, I just may leave them at home and go by myself.

Sorry for the vent...I really am frustrated if you couldn't tell. Hopefully a good night's sleep will return some good cheer and get me in the right frame of mind to put the finishing touches on packing. I also need to FINALLY get Aaron in for his allergy testing this week.

Has the dreary weather affected any one else's kids in this way?please share with me your weekend...I really need to figure out how to get Mr. Linky set up again (Deb?)

Happy Monday.

Noah's Conference

Wow, what a difference a year can make. I went to Noah's first grade conference yesterday. Last year, I left both conferences frustrated in tears.

From the minute I sat down, it was like sitting and hanging out with a friend. I have kept communication very open this year with his teacher and it has definitely paid off. We sat down and she showed me the Dolche reading list, saying "well, here's the current list but you know he reads great so we'll just move on."

Then she showed me his journal and it was so much fun to see the stories that he writes about on Monday mornings about his weekends.

Here he is Wednesday morning before school...bandanna day

We talked a bit about the decision to pull him out of school for a week in order to go to Disney and she was fully supportive, saying that he could write about his trip and share it with the class for his writing work that week. Since it's reading week and they are required to read 25 books, she said it was all relative and since Noah is reading chapter books instead, he could count each chapter he reads in the car as one book so he still meets his goal for the month.

We talked a bit about how far his maturity level has come. She said she is so impressed with how he is showing better choice making when it comes to how to behave in the classroom. I told her how last year I was struggling to decided whether he was even ready to move up to first grade and she said not only, Yes, he was definitely ready, but she for sure had no worries at all about how he will do in second grade.

I remember last year reading all of the posts from moms talking about how wonderful their kids were and how perfect they were at school and being so jealous and angry, wanting to be able to say the same. It is good to be feeling so much better this year.

Noah is most certainly not a perfect child. He is frustrating, strong willed, talkative, somewhat wild, and not always the first to want to obey the rules (all like his mother).

BUT...

To see such an improvement from last year to this year is enlightening and gives me hope. I am proud to see that others are recognizing his growth and I love that, for good or bad, he wears his heart on his shoulder for everyone to see.

I do want to share one cute Noah-ism though.

During free writing time, they can write letters to whomever they want. I always find fun letters in his bag that he has written to others and that have been written to him. But this one surprised me















I actually didn't open it because I wanted to ask him what he wanted me to do with it but when his teacher asked me in the conference what it said, I finally asked him and then opened it.

I will translate for you:


Dear God My Mighty
Savior You are the
greatest







(Happy sigh)

Have a great weekend!

Thursday Thirteen: It's Almost Here

Last week I listed 13 rides/attractions at Disney World that I was questioning Noah's ability to handle. The comments I got were extremely helpful and I do feel a little better prepared.

This week I would like to share the 13 experiences that I am most looking forward to seeing the boys reactions to:

1. Character Meals ( TWO of them with different characters)

2. Dumbo Ride

3. Winnie The Pooh Ride

4. Peter Pan's Flight

5. TRex restaurant in Downtown Disney

6. Nightime parade and fireworks in MK

7. Mickey's Philharmagic Show

8. Festival of the Lion King Show

9. Steve's Birthday at Magic Kingdom

10. Kilimanjaro Safari

11. Buzz Lightyear's Ranger Spin

12. Digging in the Boneyard

13. The general awe of it all!

Happy T13!

Picky Eaters

I wanted to share a funny sight from dinner Friday night. While I was dishing up, I found myself laughing and saying "I know this needs to be blogged" so here it is.

I was a picky eater growing up. And if I didn't eat, it was bread and water for dinner...which I gladly ate on the nights of "crock pot".

Both of my boys have picky moments. I read somewhere that a new food needs to be tried eleven times before it can be liked. I have to admit ta ht in my 35 years, I probably have not given broccoli OR cauliflower 11 times.



But we have told the rule to the boys. If we have something new, they are required to eat one "no thank you bite" (I learned this term from my step-mom and love it) and they are told the 11 times rule each time.

The rule has worked. Noah has gone from hating taco night to it being one of his favorites. We are working on several other meals each weekend.

Last Friday night, Steve stopped to get salad fixins to have with our chicken alfredo dinner. For about three weeks now, we have started making Noah try a SMALL bite of lettuce, drowned in dressing.

So, here were the salad portions as served Friday night:
Steve and my bowls















Aaron the four year old (who ate it and wanted more)










Noah the 6 year old and his ONE piece of lettuce.
We'll try to tackle tomatoes after lettuce becomes more tolerable.



To his credit, it was the first week that he didn't complain...just accepted his fate and swallowed it with the help of an entire cup of milk.






Do you make your kids try new foods? What about things you know they don't like?

Weekend Top Five 3/2/09

We really did nothing on Saturday , but it was a good day where we all got along and enjoyed hanging out as a family. We did watch Jungle Book 2 for movie night before bed and I got a quick trip to the dollar store in to get the rest of the stuff we need for vacation and Steve went grocery shopping for me. (I told he was a great guy)

I'll try for five anyway.


5. Twitter Attempt
I decided to try twitter this weekend. When I disabled it at the same time I disabled face book, it wouldn't let me keep the same name so I went back to the label from the old blog. I intend to be much more responsible about it and NOT get hooked. I think it is a lot less likely I'll get hooked to twitter since it's just a quick one liner...not a full communication tool. If you would like to hook up, feel free to click on my sidebar.


4. Noah's Questionable Tooth
If you followed my twitter this weekend you sort of got a clue about this strange situation with Noah's teeth. He has had a loose one on the top right forever and his mouth has been looking more and more strange by the day. His gums must be widening getting ready for the grown up tooth because when I got to his class on Friday, the entire class (including Noah) was convinced that a tooth NEXT to his loose one had fallen out and they couldn't find it. I was surprised but went along with it.

After I got home and thought about it, I figured there was no way that a tooth that wasn't even loose "fell" out and had no blood and he didn't notice. Take one look at this shot from Friday afternoon and you can see the gap that got everyone wondering.

I am hoping that this weird looking tooth comes out in the next week before we take several hundred pictures of him on vacation. I am coming close to bribing him to let me try the string on the doorknob method. I already told him that I don't think the tooth fairy can find us in Florida.

3. A New Skill Attempt
Last summer Noah was begging for "wheelies". He was also fighting learning how to tie his shoes. A few weeks before the end of the summer, I found a pair of generic wheelies at a garage sale and they were tie laces. I bought them as an attempt to motivate him to try to tie. It didn't work. (He has since finally learned).

Saturday, he tried to put them on and go outside to "skate". It didn't work out too well for him since he doesn't really have the coordination. But I decided to let him try anyway. We ran downtown to check out an event and Noah spent the entire time trying to use the railing to try to learn to "skate". It didn't really pan out but he had fun and I think he will keep trying.

2. Church and Changes
I haven't mentioned this yet on my blog but last weekend I was asked to take over the next age children's choir, in addition to the one I already do. That would mean I would be in charge of four groups instead of three, and also be in charge of putting together the children's and youth musical next spring. I thought I was working my way OUT of the church, and I seem to be getting sucked more in. On top of that, our bells now have two PUBLIC performances scheduled; one for a nursing home in May, and the other in downtown Grand Rapids in June. Not too shabby for the first year our church has even HAD a bell choir.

2. Patrick's Birthday Party
My nephew Patrick turned 6 on Sunday so we headed to his house after church on Sunday for a party.




Patrick displaying his birthday balloon












The favorite present that Patrick got was an electric arm that everyone took turns with.












So that's it for this weekend. Pretty uneventful.

This week looks a little different from the norm. Noah has Thursday and Friday off of school, and next weekend is our last weekend home before we leave.

Let me know if you posted the weekend. And I would love to hook up with you over at twitter.

Have a great Monday.