September 12, 2010

I looked at my blackberry yesterday and it said Sat, Sept 11.  I couldn't figure out why it looked so weird to me.  But later on it dawned on me - Sept 11th was a Tuesday, and I don't think it'll ever be anything else.

Timothy has been desperate for a pair of skinny jeans.  Josh thinks skinny jeans are dumb, especially for boys.  So when Josh was in the bathroom earlier this week, Timothy slipped me some cash and I ordered them for him online.  They were delivered yesterday and he's been wearing them today.  Despite the fact that I think they are dumb too, he seems to like them and they don't look THAT bad.  Luckily they were out of his first color choice - red - and so he went for black.  Josh is not enjoying his fashion choice, which means Josh and I have spent the day arguing over Timothy's right to look like an idiot if that's what he wants (and if he pays for it).  I argue the pro, Josh argues the con.  Josh thinks the kids will call him names and that we should dress him in order to avoid that.  I think that our dressing him will not prevent that, and may make it worse!  Josh and I are not exactly models of current fashion.  Plus, fashion is sort of liking dancing - it doesn't really matters if you're any good, it only matters that you can sell it.  Actually, I guess that's like a lot of things. So anyway - next online purchase will be some herbal chill pills for Josh.  Just wait until Jocelyn's in the 7th grade!

Timothy and Morgan's CMT test scores came yesterday.  Timothy's were fine, though not as much better than last year as the grade average.  Morgan's were an adapted CMT for special kids, and he still failed horribly, except for the "access" skills, which measure a child's ability to be integrated into a normal school environment.  I guess that's something?  A couple of the math ones he did fair, and receptive language he did ok, everything else - well, he could have slept through the entire test and I don't think I would have noticed a difference in the scores.

I still can't get any names out of Jocelyn.  She says the "dark curly haired girl" is her friend that she sits with on the bus and they always wait for each other.  Josh also says there's a boy on the bus in the morning that waves to Jocelyn and she waves back.  Jocelyn says she likes gym class, but she doesn't like music as much.  I asked why she doesn't like music, and she says because she likes gym.  Apparently they got to have races like animals across the gym and she thought the crab was especially funny.

Jesse's teacher says he's doing great in school so far and is a happy participator in class.  Josh says there is a really cute little girl in Jesse's class and so Josh pointed her out and said to Jesse, "is that cute little girl in your class?"  Jesse replied, "ewww dad, girls aren't cute."

September 9, 2010

Jesse:

My day of school had we goed outside and we were swinging and we got to circle times.  And then we were gonna go home.  Oh, and we did table top too.  And then I had circle time after table top.  We readed a book.  And then we went outside.  I swinged and I slided on the big slide and on the twirly whirly and then we just did another circle time.  Then we went home.  And that's all the secrets I have, so bye bye.

Jocelyn:

I want to talk to the bus home.  What Jocelyn did on the bus home.  She talked to her friends.  She talked about gingerbreads and she likes to eat the gingerbreads all up. Ok, now I'll talk about Bus 9.  Also I'm in room 9.  When we go to our classroom, we go to the library again after and we did writer's workshop at the library instead. That's where I want to end it but it's not the end at all.  That's not just it, I just want to make it it.

September 6, 2010

All the kids survived the first week of school - yay!  The schedule goes like this:

7:20ish Timothy leaves for the bus

8am Josh takes all the other 3 down to the bus stop

8-8:15 the kids play at the bus stop, including Morgan who really likes it and the other kids are nice to him so far (maybe because they are afraid that otherwise he'll eat them)

One day Morgan's bus came first, the other two Jocelyn's bus came first, but they are generally close together

After the busses come, Josh and Jesse head home

noon - Josh and Jesse drive to the bus stop to wait for Jocelyn

When she arrives, they drive over to Eli Terry to drop Jesse off at preschool

3:10pm Josh and Jocelyn pick Jesse up at preschool

3:30pm Morgan's bus drops him off at home

So Josh is never actually alone and spends a good part of the day either waiting for a bus or driving back and forth to a school.

I think Jesse had the most fun at school.  He told me they did TWO circle times and he had something that looked like a granola bar but wasn't a granola bar for snack and he picked water.  The 2nd day he told us that Miss Dana had to tell him shush at circle time because we have to raise our hands to talk.  Jocelyn said they do that at her school too.  Jesse asked why we don't do it at home.  I said maybe we should.

Thursday morning he jumped out of bed going from dead asleep to the "I'M GOING TO SCHOOL TODAY!" shuffle in 2 seconds flat.

Jocelyn's 2nd day started a little rough because she got to school off the bus and realized she didn't know how to find the right hallway and started to cry.  What she didn't know is that the 5th graders wait out there for the kindergartners the first week and help them to their room, so someone was along quickly to help her.  Then she said the rest of the day was fine.  They had library but she didn't pick a book because "we already have all those books".  I guess we do have a lot of books!

Jocelyn knows 2 names of friends in her class - Brian and Hope.  When she says Hope, she giggles.  I asked why.  "Because Hope is something that you do!"

Morgan's week seems to have been fine and a fairly easy transition for him.  Today he got a haircut that he sat through very nicely!  Maybe the secret was the mirror as I cut it in the bathroom with him sitting on a stool in front of the mirror instead of cutting it in the kitchen up on the higher stool and without a mirror.  Whatever it was, he sat fairly still and even moved his head up and down wherever I pointed him.  He said "almost done" 30 or 50 times, but besides that, he did great.

Timothy also seems to have had a fine week.  He was so worried the first day of school because Josh told him not to dawdle getting home so he could get Morgan off the bus just in case Josh didn't get home in time from getting Jesse.  But Timothy's bus was really late and at 3:30 when Josh was out waiting for Morgan's bus, he saw Timothy running in 95 degree heat from his own bus stop 2 streets away.  He's such a good kid.  Josh told him not to worry the other days now that he knew he'd make it from Jesse's school in time, but the other days Timothy got home at the more normal 3pm timeframe anyway.

Saturday mom and dad came down to sit for the kids while Josh and I went to a coworker's wedding.  It was very nice, and nice to get out of the house!  We hit grandma up for our first (of many) fundraiser for the year - Otis Spunkmeyer cookies.

Yesterday we went to the playground in the afternoon. It was gorgeous out.  Just as nice out today - what a beautiful weekend!

I've been working on getting the old updates posted to my new blog and I'm up midway through 2005, so just 5 more years to go!  We just sold the house and went to Elisabeth's bridal shower.  I'm working full time, nursing Jocelyn all night, repainting the old house, and packing.  Morgan was biting his teachers, Timothy was upset because his teacher yelled too much.  Boy that was a stressful time!  Makes life these days seem pretty simple and relaxed.

August 29, 2010

I'm typing this from the deck, sitting up to our new patio furniture (that was on end of summer clearance at Home Depot with free shipping!).  The younger 3 kids are actually outside playing - what a novel idea!  The set got delivered this week and I had planned to put it together this weekend.  When I got home from work on Friday, Jesse was jumping up and down with his lips pressed shut.  I wondered if he was having  seizure.  He started to say something that I couldn't quite make out, but the others shushed him.  Then, with quite a dramatic flare, Jocelyn pulled the curtain to the deck open and everyone starting jumping up and down!  Josh and Joey and the kids had put almost everything together already and it was all set up.  Everyone helped and was very proud of themselves.  

I've now been asked 500 times if I love my surprise, each time with the asker practically exploding from excitement.  It's nice out here now though, and I brought all the work I had to do yesterday out here and sat most of the day listening to the kids play, so it was barely even like working!  Well, almost...

This week was my first official week in the new job, and apparently just in time as it scored me an invitation to the Aetna Leaders Forum on Thursday and Friday.  28 tables set up in the auditorium, 7 rows of 4, 7 people per table (so about 200 of us I guess), and from what I could tell, your importance was generally correlated with your proximity to the front of the room.  I was in the back row.  My boss was in the front, my peers were in between.  It was actually a pretty good agenda - lots of outside speakers.  The key note address was from the CEO of Xerox - she was hysterical!

Timothy has to make an 8x8 quilt square to bring for the first day of school.  Since I don't really sew, he picked out some pictures yesterday and we designed it in photoshop, so today I just need to print it out and iron it on to a fabric square.  We started to make it last weekend but after an hour of searching, could not locate an iron.  I know there is one somewhere in this house, but I guess one of the closets ate it.  Downside of a big house. Or maybe it's just a statement as to my organizational skills.  In any case, Josh went out this week and purchased a new one, and we've managed to keep track of it since Tuesday.

While getting the iron at Target, Josh also finished most of the school supply shopping - and what a list.  Timothy needed a 2 inch binder for every subject (which also means filler paper, tabs etc).  Morgan needed one binder and folders.  Everyone needed colored pencils.  Etc etc.  He had to elbow an assortment of other stay at home parents, but came home with everything except a pencil box and erasable pens.  One more trip to CVS by Wednesday ought to do it.  Jocelyn's tag to wear the first week, with her name, classroom, bus number, etc, came this week.  I think I'm more nervous about the kids going to school than I ever was about myself going.  I just hope Jocelyn listens...

Morgan said hi to me yesterday.  Sounds like a small thing, I know.  But it was the first time it ever happened without me prompting him.  Usually the way it works is something like this:

me: Hi Morgan

M: Hi Morgan

me: Hi MORGAN

M: Hi Miss MOMMY

Yesterday I was sitting out on the deck (reading through 600 pages of comments from the employee survey).  Morgan opened the door and stood there for a minute. He took a step outside.  I kept reading.  He closed the door behind him, I kept reading.  He walked over in front of me, I kept reading.  "Hi," he said.  I looked up. He looked me in the eye and smiled.  "Yes, you can come out and play", I said.  He walked over to the loveseat swing thing to swing.  I fought back some tears and then returned to my reading.

Josh took the 3 youngest to a play date at Shelby's house this week.  Shelby is Jocelyn's friend from preschool, and she has a 2 1/2 year old brother and an 8 year old brother.  Her older brother has a rare affliction that causes him to pass out for random periods of time, generally sparked by some kind of smell.  I'm not exactly sure of the details, but what it means is he doesn't walk very well and has some other delays with speech and such, but is generally aware and intelligent when he's awake.  

Apparently he was quite smitten with Jocelyn.  Jocelyn had gone down to their finished basement to play and he was sitting at the top of the stairs trying to get someone's attention.  Josh stooped down to see what he wanted.  "Jocelyn" he said, pointing.  So Josh put him on his back and carried him downstairs.  When Jocelyn came up, Josh went down and got him and brought him back up.  But the sweetest part of the story is that Jocelyn played with him and included him and was chatting him up, filling in some of his parts of the conversation.  She left his side a few times to go play with Shelby, but generally returned quickly, and he was so happy to see her.  Too cute!

While at Shelby's, Shelby's mom made the mistake of opening their very well stocked freezer in Morgan's presence.  Waffles, gogurts, you name it.  Morgan practically exploded from excitement and started asking for food.  Shelby's mom asked if she could give him something.  "No no," Josh said.  "Don't feed the bear.  If he starts he'll never stop and we'll have to move in."  On a related note, our efforts to slim Morgan down a little have not been successful.

Let's see, I guess that means I need a Jesse story.  Well, not a very glorious story, but Jesse wet the bed 3 times this week.  In the 18 or 20 months since he's been wearing underwear to bed, he's only wet the bed maybe 3 or 4 times before this week, and now 3 times in the same week?  No idea what's going on there.  Maybe a growth spurt?  He does seem to be getting taller by the minute, but then that's always true.  I can't think of any other Jesse stories.  Oh, he ate another stick of my chapstick this week, but then that's not really news.  Luckily I found about 25 chapsticks at Walgreens a year ago on clearance for 24 cents each.  He hasn't quick eaten all of them yet.  I think they have vitamins in them...

August 22, 2010

I know I already wrote this weekend but the kids were restless from the rainy day inside so we decided to do a Q&A session that I had to share.  I must say I type fairly quickly but it was a challenge keeping up!

Q: What did you do on vacation?

Jocelyn: Ummm, one day I goed on a float with daddy but I was too scared though but when I goed on a water walk with mommy I just got a little bit scared but when I went on a float with mommy well that was the first time I went on a float.  I goed underwater one day and then I just loved Jesse and touched his feet one day and mommy's, that was a lot of feet.  One day mommy checked on her - what's it called? oh yeah, email.  Sometimes Jesse whines.  But I like going under water.  ok bye.  But I'm not done, I want to do another one.  Tell me when I'm gonna do another one.  I did a lot of things right?

Jesse:  Last night when I was at vacation, I got super underwear.  And then I was going downstairs and then I was gonna tell you something mommy.  Then I was gonna play for a little bit and then you said we're going swimming.  And then that's it.  That's all mine.  Hey mom, what did you do on vacation?  Mom what you did? MOM!

Q:  What will Jesse do in Miss Dana's class?

Jocelyn:  Well, first he goes to table top but maybe it's outside first but he'll have more fun outside but only when it's sunny so when it's raining he doesn't go outside. He'll do what Jocelyn did.  She just cleaned a whole playground at school.  There's lots of slides.  One of them are fun like a twirly slide.  Ok we're going back to Jesse.

Jesse:  I was gonna play with the toys and then (Jocelyn breaks in: you have to do what the teacher says you know.  Jesse: when the teacher says jump I'll jump. Jocelyn: she doesn't say jump. It's not like Mrs. Gerber's class).

Q: What is your favorite toy?

Jesse: my favorite toy is everything.  My favorite toys is everything.  Mom, my favorite toys is everything.

Jocelyn: my favorite toy is, well, I don't have a favorite.  Well, my favorite toy is…  is…  is…  uh…  Well, I like my toy dresses.  Ok can I do my favorite game on computer?

Q:  What is your favorite computer game?

Jocelyn: the one who you make music so you can speed up and get louder and my other favorite game on computer is from crystal kingdom and did you know it has a flying unicorn?  Dora wants to find a unicorn and they love to find a unicorn cuz it flies with wings.  Ok that's my favorite computer games.

Jesse: uh, my favorite game is everything in the whole world.  I love everything in the whole world.  Mom I said I like everything in the whole world game.  Mom!

Morgan:  Nemo!

August 20, 2010

Well, I guess it's been a while!  So let's back track to July 30th or so and see if I can account for our time.

The evening of Friday July 30th was my grandmother's wake.  While a wake could hardly be termed "fun", it was so nice to meet all her friends (some for the first time, some not) and hear many stories of her.  One thing was constant in every conversation - the fact that every single one of her friends had seen every single picture of her great-grandchildren that we had ever sent.  Most of her friends were obsessed with telling me how much I looked like her, even though really I don't look much like her.  But we both have short hair I guess.

Friday night my cousins Brian and Lauren (and Lauren's husband and son) came back to our hotel room and we all hung out.  Josh and I had 2 adjoining rooms (one for the kids) and so the kids were sleeping in one room while we hung out (including Elisabeth, Rob, and Chase) in the other.  Much beer and many stories and laughs later, it was time for bed.

Saturday morning was the funeral.  I don't think I've been in church since my grandfather died back in 1992.  I forgot how much it creeped me out!  But I know Grammy would have wanted it that way, so there you go.  I delivered the eulogy without totally breaking out into tears, though I had hoped to hold it together a little better.  The bottom line is I love her desperately and will miss her every day.  After the funeral and burial was the reception at the Sunday School Hall where Grammy's friends' daughter Lilly did just a wonderful job of getting us all fed.  I was so glad to meet Lilly as she had done so much to help with all the arrangements and been such a good friend to my grandmother.

After the reception (hmmm, is it even called a reception?) we headed to Gray, ME, for the Mann Family reunion (mom's side of the family).  By now Morgan was getting rather irritated with being shoveled from place to place.  We stayed as long as he could tolerate it - the rest of us were having fun.  But Morgan could smell that we were near the lake and after about 2 hours he finally insisted on simply sitting in the car until the rest of us complied with leaving.

That meant it was time to drive around the lake.  We knew Morgan must be hungry and were surprised when he didn't asked to stop at Wendy's or McDonald's.  But then, around the bend, we were approaching the Ice Cream Dugout when we finally heard him speak up: "Ice cream?"

We got all checked into the cabin and Elisabeth & family were not too far behind. The next day Mandy & family and mom and dad joined us.  We had sun sun sun! Mandy and Elisabeth left Sunday and mom and dad left Tuesday morning.  For the rest of the vacation we had more sun sun sun!  Ahhhhh vacation.  It was just oh so awesome.  Beautiful weather, beautiful water, just awesome.  Mostly we just swam every day (one during sunlight hours, again in the evening when we didn't need sunscreen).  We ventured out for food, and also once for shopping and fudge. Generally we subsisted on lobster and wine.

I did have to work a little on vacation.  Right before I left my boss told me she had taken another position and so the big boss offered me her job.  Yikes!  I'm now officially a big freakin' deal and have 95.3 people reporting to me.  Because of the level of the position, there had to be a communication "strategy" that couldn't happen before I left, so I had to do some communication meetings while I was out. Not the biggest deal in the world.

While my first official day in my new job is not until this coming Monday, my soon-to-be old boss was on vacation this week, so really I started this week.  And this morning was my first big meeting where I had to have opinions in front of the CEO, CFO, etc and be questioned on such opinions by them and the onlooking remainder of our senior management.  I'm happy to report I survived the day, and even received unsolicited compliments on my opinion-delivery.  So yay!

Other changes necessitated by my new position: I bought 5 new suits and colored my hair.  Yes, the gray was finally too much.  So as of today, I am gray-free.  I went with just a shade darker than my natural color.  And apparently I have made this decision just in time because in a few weeks I will be recording a web cast with my peers to be broadcast to 25,000 people!  ack!

So I guess that's about it.  School starts 9/1 so one more week of vacation for the kids!

July 25, 2010

Less than 1 week until vacation!  My packing list is made and today I start packing. Even without all the baby equipment we used to have to bring, we still bring a lot of stuff.  Josh and Joey took everyone but Morgan to a Rockcats (minor league baseball) game today, and Morgan is occupied with the computer, so I just have to fold the laundry and find all the duffle bags.

I signed the family up for a study at the Yale New Haven Autism Research Center this week.  It's a sibling study, so the requirements are to have only one child with autism and at least one child without.  They do questionnaires and a full evaluation of Morgan, and then they take blood from each of us.  We get $40 each for the blood, so we'll use it to bribe the kids.  We have to wait until Jesse is 4, so we have an appt for 11/11.  We get a phone appt afterwards with the findings of Morgan's evaluation, but not the genetic findings, and then a written report of the non-genetic findings as well.  Pretty good deal for a 6 hour time commitment and a few minutes of screaming for the blood.  They asked questions to see if we qualify for other studies - like will Morgan wear a baseball hat and watch a movie for 20 min, but he would never sit still for 20 min unless he was asleep.  There's also a study involving an MRI, but he'd have to be awake for it in order to watch images on a tv screen, so I don't see that happening either.

Morgan's been talking about the garden at school - and he rarely talks about anything at school!  Of course, I have low standards for "talking".  Basically, when Josh is getting him ready for the bus he goes through the schedule for the day that will lead up to when he gets to garden, so we know that's what he's excited about. Josh brought popsicles in for his birthday this week, which he enjoyed.

Timothy had basketball camp this week.  He moved up an age group this year, so it was 7th-10th graders in his group.  Despite that, he won the free throw contest during the skills championship on the last day and got a t-shirt for it.  Plus earlier in the week his coach had bet him a donut that he couldn't make a half-court shot, to which he immediately responded by making a half-court shot, so he collected his donut on the last day as well.

I realized last weekend as the kids were playing in the sprinkler that Jocelyn's bathing suits are all too small so Josh went to Target this week and got her some new ones, which she has been wearing around the house all week.

Josh's parents were here for the weekend last weekend and we had so much fun! Susan sent some fantastic pictures as usual and I really to get them posted - the days have gotten away from me this week!

I just know there was something else I was going to say but for the life of me I can't remember it.  Oy, old age.  Well I need to get the laundry folded anyway - hope everyone has a great week!