Old Friends and New

Great visit with an old friend tonight (and wonderful to meet his wife and son!) 

J is a year or so older than the boys, but they all had a great time playing trains and tricycles together. 

Leaf Helpers

The boys helped Daddy rake some leaves today. :) 

(And yes, Mattie has his pants on backwards and Jamesie has his shoes on the wrong feet -- sometimes that's the price of doing it themselves!)

Leaf Dancing

Yep, another Parent-of-the-Day visit!

Two of James's hearing specialists happened to be there yesterday as well (the speech therapist and the person who checks to make sure the classroom equipment for his hearing aids is working well).  They were sitting behind James at snack time when he picked up two teddy grahams in one hand and said, "I have two!"  Then he picked up two more in his other hand and said something like, "I have two more!"  I asked, "how many do you have all together?" and he instantly answered "four!"  They were very impressed with his excellent counting.

One of them also told me that she has told many families about James (not using his name) as the "poster child" of how well kids can do when they get a lot of language input early (the talking close to his ears that we did when he was younger on the advice of his auditory-verbal therapist).  Wow.

Of course, that doesn't stop him from being stubborn about actually using that language!  The kids had made handprint turkey placemats for Thanksgiving (sooo cute), and Ms. S was having them each say something they were thankful for to write on their papers (phrased as "what's something that makes you happy at home?").  James just wouldn't say anything!  (She called across the room to ask Mattie, and he immediately said, "Puzzles."  Not what I would have expected, but okay.)  And then this evening we tried to get James to say Happy Birthday to Uncle Adrian on the phone, and when we gave up, he said, "I didn't say that."  (Contrarian boy!)

The last activity of the preschool day was "Music with Ms. K."  They sang a couple songs and then she passed out big construction paper leaves for them to do a leaf dance. James LOVED it!  He was the most enthusiastic one in the room, running around and waving his leaf.  :)


Mattie was excited to wear his new coat -- he loves the orange stripe.  (Even with the new coats, it was freezing on the playground!  In the morning, Mattie had asked if he could wear his new long underwear, and I thought it wasn't going to be that cold yet -- I should have just told him yes.)

On the Ball

This weekend, we took the boys out to get new winter coats. James found a soccer ball in the store, and happily kicked it all around. Then when we went to the park, he found a tennis ball, and he spent most of our walk on the trails tossing the tennis ball ahead, and then running to pick it up.

Encouragement

Mattie wanted to bring his sticker book to the playground (and ended up looking at it for about a minute before he went to play). As we were pulling out of the driveway, he said, "James, if you're a good boy on the way to the playground, I will give you a sticker! I will give you two stickers!" (James was not too interested in the offer.)

The other night, Stanley jumped up and tried to eat some food off a plate on the table. I yelled at him and shooed him out of the dining room. Mattie said, "He must be hungry for a dog treat!" and ran to get him one.  (I had to explain that we didn't reward Stanley for bad behavior, only good behavior!)

Artists at Work

 Making sure we have the best-decorated play set on the block.  :)

On the Orange Trail

Temperatures near 70 -- a perfect November day! :) Mattie and James were excited to go on their favorite color trails (orange and yellow).

Tables Turned

A few weeks ago, Mattie was the one that cared more about winning games; right now it's Jamesie. (James also is quite fond of going first.)

Yesterday Matthew came in while James and I were playing a game of Dinosaurs, and he said, "I can have second place or third place or any place. I don't mind. Why does Jamesie always want to be the champion?" and a bit later, "Jamesie, you can't always have first place. You have to share the first places!"

Self-Portraits

We had our Parent-Teacher conference today at preschool. The teacher gave us these: Matthew and James's self-portraits. I think they're awesome. :) They really do seem to capture something about them.

The teacher said she uses this task to assess persistence and focus -- apparently doing a "real" self-portrait is basically impossible for three-year-olds, so she wants to see how long they'll spend trying. She said Mattie and James both had great focus and persistence.

Overall, she said they were both doing wonderfully: they're kind, engaged in the class activities, and having fun.

We talked about James first.  She said he always participates 100%, and is a "go-getter kid" -- nothing deters him, he always has a can-do attitude.  (She also mentioned trying things on the playground that he's not quite big enough for yet -- yup, we know about that!)  She said he has a great vocabulary; his sentence structure is more limited, but correct.

She also repeated what she had told us before: one day when Mike picked the boys up, she commented that what James had done with the blocks that day was "extraordinary."  She explained what she meant when I was in the next time.  She said his skills at planning ahead to make his tower even with blocks of different sizes showed excellent multi-step planning, and then she asked him to 1) count the individual blocks, and then 2) count the levels, and he did both easily -- according to her, this is way beyond his age level (5 to 7 year old skill) and no one else in the class is doing that kind of thing.  (Go, James!)  She was very impressed, and thinks it demonstrates intelligence (and perhaps also the fact that his hearing loss makes him rely more on visual information).

She said that Mattie was very empathic and a caretaker.  :) The issue with him at the start of the year was that she had a hard time getting him to try to do things on his own -- he'd say, "I can't" and want her to do it for him.  But she says he's gotten much better and more confident, and has really blossomed over the last month or so.   She said he has excellent verbal skills (yep, we'd noticed) and very good memory for the things they've done in class.

She said the boys get along really well and and take care of each other and want to play with each other, so she has to separate them sometimes, especially when the education specialists are there to work with James.  (Quite a change from last year!) The boys resisted that at first but now go along with it.  The problem is that Matthew will answer for James, and James knows that and will sometimes just wait for Mattie to answer.  (Definitely not what we want!)  So Ms. S. doesn't let that happen ("I'm asking James right now, but I'll have a different question for you next, Matthew.")  The other thing is that when it's one of their turn, they think that it's both of their turn (e.g., to use playdoh or whatever).

She mentioned that it might be good to have them in separate classes next year (there are two four-year-old classes).  At this point, I'm not really in favor of that (unless we can't stop the "Matthew answering for James" problem), but we also don't have to decide that right away.

We also met with James's educational specialists today.  Overall he's doing well, talking a lot more, and they seem to really enjoy working with him.  They noted that he's still not speaking up to say when he can't hear something (either because of noise or because his hearing aids aren't working), and they also think that sometimes he doesn't answer questions because he doesn't want to be wrong -- so he just stays quiet instead of saying anything.

So, very informative and positive meetings!  We feel very fortunate to have such a fantastic teacher and great specialists working with the boys.

Castiglioncello del Trinoro

(Another Italy post!) On our last evening in Tuscany, we were walking around Sarteano, and a store owner recommended that we go up to Castiglioncello to see the sunset. So we did. We expected that it was just going to be ruins of a fort, but it turned out to be a tiny little town tucked away in the hills. And yes, it had more gorgeous views! There were ruins there, but they were fenced off as an archeological site. However, they did have tourist signs up, so we're guessing that they're planning to open in to the public soon.

On the way back down, we saw a sign for an Etruscan tomb, so we turned around and went back (knocking a plastic part off the bottom of the car in the process -- fortunately, it turned out to be non-essential to the car's functioning and went unnoticed by the rental car authorities).  There was a little passageway leading to a small tomb room that you could go inside (the others took this opportunity, but I did not!)  It was neat, and just a little spooky since it was getting dark while we were there. (Hooray for the flashlight app on my phone!)

We had dinner back in Sarteano, at a little restaurant with no menu -- the waitress just read off the options of what they were cooking that night, and then we sampled the pastas family style.  (They did an antipasto appetizer, and the lady cutting the proscuttio appeared to be in her pajama bottoms, which was amusing.) Yum!  Good food and an altogether fun evening.

Sweet

Jamesie woke up with a fever (we think; he thrashed his head around so we couldn't get a good read with the forehead thermometer) and a stuffy nose, so he stayed home from preschool today. But he was in pretty good spirits once we put the thermometer away.

At one point he was sitting on the bed with Mike and me, and I was singing him a song which included the line, "James is cute. James is sweet."  James protested, "I'm not sweet."  We said, "yes, you are."  He repeated, "I'm not sweet."  Then he added, "Don't eat me."  Hilarious!

After school, Mattie got to run some errands with Mike.  He went to the bank, and announced, "I've never been to the bank before!"  (When he told me about the trip, he said, "I got a sugar cookie for myself!"  Our local bank often has fresh cookies -- why don't we go there more often?)

(We think Mattie had a growth spurt -- he looked an inch or two taller this morning than he did yesterday!)

Dino Twins

 At the "dinosaur museum" this weekend, another little boy commented: "You're wearing the same shirts, so that means you're twins!"  (Yep!)

(When we were first coming in, we talked to another mom and her son who were wearing Buckeye gear.  While we were getting tickets, James said to the other little boy, who was probably about two, "I'm three!  I'm big!")

The new addition at the museum is alpacas (including baby alpacas), but the boys weren't too impressed by them.  :)  As usual, the dinosaurs were the favorite. 

Matthew was also excited to have his "map" at the butterfly house. 

We missed out on the train because they were doing make-up rides for the Pumpkin Patch Express, which had been cancelled around the time of the hurricane.  (We didn't feel that excited about paying four times the regular price to ride the train to activities that the boys wouldn't have been that interested in anyhow.)

There Goes the Neighborhood

Watch out, folks, the Tricycle Gang has invaded the 'hood!