quotes and kid stuff

Kevin: Mom, can you pop some popcorn for us and we'll watch a movie?
Me: Well, I don't think we can watch a movie right now because I need to make bread and wash the dishes.
Kevin: Well, how about you make us some popcorn and then you can make bread and wash dishes while we watch the movie?
Me: But then I wouldn't get to watch the movie.
Kevin: Well, that's okay.

Kevin: Mom, who is your favorite princess?
Me: Belle.
Kevin: How about you, Heidi? Who is your favorite princess?
Heidi: Cinderella (which was an unexpected response because I didn't know she knew about Cinderella)
Me: Who is your favorite princess, Kevin?
Kevin: No, I don't like princesses. I'm a boy, so I have to like bad guys.
Me: Oh, really? Well, who is your favorite bad guy?
Kevin: Um, Spiderman.

Often when Ryan is working on something (often it's blog posts) he will find a song that helps him think and listen to it over and over again. Kevin has does the same thing. He has a few songs that really help him calm down. It warms my heart because whenever he does it, it reminds me of Ryan. It also seems to help him to listen to songs with earbuds using the ipod (as opposed to just hearing them through the speakers). Some of the songs Kevin likes are Believe (Josh Groban), Oceano (Josh Groban), Bless the Broken Road (Rascal Flatts), and Down to the River to Pray (Alison Krauss). He also really likes the music on the Couch to 5K podcasts I've been using.

Heidi
Heidi is convinced that her tableware has to match her clothes. If she's wearing a pink shirt, a purple bowl will not do.

The kids have both been doing soccer at the YMCA this fall. Kevin has improved a lot since last year and is for the most part participating and listening to his coaches. Heidi has been struggling for some reason. I signed her up because last year she was so upset that she didn't get to participate, so I thought she'd have a great time. The first few practices, it took her 20 minutes to be willing to go onto the field, and she only consented to participate if she could use the pink ball. Last week she ended up crying so hysterically that Ryan had to take her to the car. She was still crying and shaking when Kevin and Ann Marie and I came after practice was over. But this week went much better. I held her hand on the field a lot of the time, and that helped her to be more willing to participate. After a half hour or so she was independently chasing the ball, and there were even a couple of times where she kicked the ball quite a ways down the field and then another teammate was able to score a goal. So I'm glad that we were able to find a way to help her feel more confident. I think she gets overwhelmed by all the girls, especially when they are playing a game with the other team.

Ann Marie
Ann Marie puts everything in her mouth (including her toes) and drools a lot. She loves rubbing her feet together and does it as much as she can. She is figuring out how to make a "D" sound.

stuff post

I don't even like Kay Hagan that much, but around here there have been a lot of ads against her. The irritating thing is that they're pretty substance-less. I almost wouldn't be surprised if someone got on the radio and called her a poopyhead.

I am astounded at the rate at which Heidi can run with a pair of pants around her ankles.

A few weeks ago I checked out the movie for Northanger Abbey. Today I finally got to watch it (I gave up a nap to do so--yes, it was worth it). Apparently nobody else in this house is remotely interested in watching a period drama. I tried watching it with Heidi, and she moaned and said, "I want to watch a movie about little girls, not big girls." Ryan wanted to watch Non-Stop (which was also really good). I hadn't realized how hard it is for me to get around to watching a movie all by myself.

I am done with red delicious apples. If I wanted baby powder I would buy baby powder, not apples that have the same texture as baby powder. I bought some from Costco because they were cheap and I thought they would work just fine for dehydrating, but they are so bad I can't even cut half of them.

I didn't lose hair after Kevin and Heidi were born, but this time I feel like I'm losing a lot of hair. Washing my hair feels like getting tangled in a spider's web these days.

I finally feel ready to move on to the Week 3 routine for Couch to 5K. I've been on Week 2 for a month. The Couch to 5K program has nine weeks, so I would probably be running a 5K already if I were following the program exactly, but I've had to take it a lot slower. It's okay. The improvements are subtle, but I can tell I'm getting better.

One day several months ago I was just idly looking at my family tree on familysearch.org, and I ended up going all the way back to some ancestor (assuming all the genealogy is right) named John Crow. At the time his page said he was born in Connecticut in 1602 (too early to have settled in Connecticut, let alone been born there), and he had twenty-one brothers who were also named John Crow. Obviously there were issues with his record. I didn't have time to figure out what was going on, but I was sort of curious to see what ended up happening, so I clicked the star to get notifications if there were changes. To my surprise, soon after that someone started doing fairly extensive work on his record. She merged all of those John Crows, added a lot of sources and a life sketch, and some other things. Now here's the sad part: About two weeks after she put a lot of work into deleting about a dozen couple relationships that were all duplicates, Family Search swooped in with their Legacy New Family Search stuff. (They have been gradually adding things from the New Family Search into Family Tree for the people who don't want to lose what they did in New Family Search, but in my experience it's mostly been clutter with not much useful information.) So unfortunately all of those couple relationships were added back again by Family Search. As humorous as it has been for me to see this entire thing unfold, I'm guessing this lady was probably really frustrated when that happened.

On Thursday we had one of those days. Kevin had an earache, so we went to the walk-in clinic early in the morning to see the doctor. Then after going into Harris Teeter to get the antibiotics, we found out they don't open until 9 a.m. So we had to go back home and then come back later, which meant I brought three kids into Harris Teeter by myself. It was sort of okay, though, because they had some really good cookies for samples. Then we came home and I spent half an hour persuading Kevin to finish drinking his nasty medicine. Who knew two teaspoons could be so much? Then we watched movies. Then Heidi decided it was fun to make Kevin mad at her and she accidentally broke his pumpkin while trying to be annoying, so he yelled in her face and I sent him to his room. Two minutes later I checked and he was completely zonked out on the floor. Then the maintenance men came and gave us new burners that actually get hot enough to boil water (everyone in Baity Hill is getting new burners). Once they were gone I took the opportunity while Kevin was sleeping to make dinner. Problem. After I finished making it I realized the kids would not like it, but now my window of opportunity for making dinner was over because the kids were going nuts and wanted to play. I had no idea what to make instead. (Maybe normally I would say tough luck, but they had eaten very little that day as it was and I knew they'd be in bad shape if they didn't eat until the next morning.) While I agonized over what to make for dinner they got even more wired playing in the hallway with friends, until finally it got late enough and I got desperate enough that I just made them some oatmeal. Heidi told me exactly how she wanted it and I meticulously followed her directions, and then she refused to even eat a bite. So after attempting (unsuccessfully, of course) to force-feed her I put her in bed and locked the door. When Ryan finally got home we ate the dinner I had made (which was fine) and then I went on a run. Ryan gave Kevin another dose of antibiotics while I was gone, and apparently there was much weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, and there is also a lovely pink spot on the carpet. As I was finishing my cool-down walk (around 8:15) I heard the fire alarms go off because of course somebody in the building forgot that we have normal burners that get hot now and they burned their food making a late dinner. Ryan had to bring all three kids out of the building by himself. Heidi had been really deeply asleep and she freaked out when the fire alarms went off. She was still quivering when we came back in. We didn't get the kids back in bed until 9:00. What a day.

un-learning how to read

I know a lot of people probably already saw my rant on Facebook, but I'm going to go into greater detail here on my blog.

Last week I was excited to learn that Kevin would be bringing home books that he was supposed to read to me. The first time he brought a book home, I opened the book and thought, "Wow, he can read words like these already?" Then we sat down to read the book. He read it in five seconds, and when I asked him about it, he said that no, he had never read this book before. I had him read it again, and when I watched his face I realized he wasn't even looking at the words. The pictures were so obvious that he didn't need to look at the words at all.

Okay, now let me explain my definition of "reading." To me, reading implies that you can decode the word (for most words, sound it out, or recognize the word if it's a sight word) and comprehend it. You do not need any pictures for this. Does that make sense?

Based on my definition of reading, Kevin was not reading this book. He was guessing based on the pictures.

We went back to read the title, which was not obvious based on the picture on the front cover. He moaned and said he couldn't read it because he didn't know what it said.

Here is an example from a similar book that he brought home yesterday.

When we got to the last page, he said, "The animals." I told him to look at the word and sound it out, and then he realized it said "the farm."

After he read the first book from school, I opened up this book that we had at home and asked him to read it. He looked at the first page and said, "A chicken." It took a little coaxing to get him to sound out the words instead of guessing, but he read the rest of the book and did a great job.

I'm upset because books like these create bad habits in early readers. They get in the habit of guessing what the words are based on the pictures. They also get in the habit of looking at the first couple of letters in a word and guessing what the word is (for example, on the page above that says, "the farm," Kevin would just need to look at the first letter and at the picture and realize the word was "farm"). When I was young and listening to some of my peers struggle with reading, and when I was a teenager and volunteered in the elementary school, I observed that this was a very common problem with kids who struggled with reading. My opinion is that it's unnecessary to start with books like these kindergarteners are reading, and in fact it's doing more harm than good. English may have a lot of exceptions to the rules, but it is still a phonetic language, and if kids are taught English like it's Chinese it's going to take them a long time to learn to read fluently, and they will struggle with reading new words. When I learned to read we started with sounding out words, then we moved on to learning letter combinations (like ow, ea, ar, ai, ful, etc.), learned to use the long vowel sound for most words that end in e, and in the midst of this we also picked up sight words.

I felt resentful that I'm being asked to be an accomplice in teaching my child bad reading habits (especially after all of the work I put into teaching him to read last summer), so I emailed his teacher about it. Apparently the point of these books is to help them develop confidence. Yay for confidence, except where's that confidence going to go if later on they are terrible readers?

The bright side is that at least I know what Kevin is "reading" at school, so now I can work with him on the right way to read at home. We still have quite a bit of the reading book left, and we also have some cute little books called Animal Antics (an example is the book about the hen above). I'll be hunting around to find more.

Up until now I have mostly been very happy with Kevin's school. His handwriting and drawing have improved 300% since he started school, and that by itself is huge to me. I prayed about it again and I still feel like this is where Kevin is supposed to be right now. At this point I don't think this is a deal-breaker, but it's definitely something I will keep my eye on. Everybody raves about how great this elementary school is, so we will see how things pan out. I realize that I'm not trained as an elementary school teacher, but I really don't see any benefit to teaching kids to guess with pictures.

unloading

There are some hard things that I have been dealing with about Kevin that probably started before he was even two years old. It was interesting because I would tell people about things that he did and they would say, "Oh, yeah, that's just boys. They're really active." But that never sat right with me. It was more than just that he's a boy, but it's been hard to put my finger on what exactly it is. I hoped that over time he would grow out of it, but in many ways it's stayed the same or gotten harder.

A couple of years ago there was a boy in the ward who, I learned, had Sensory Processing Disorder, and I ended up asking his mom to tell me about it. It was a really helpful conversation, and ever since then I've suspected that Kevin is also dealing with sensory processing issues. My friend recommended an occupational therapist, but I kept procrastinating making the call, thinking that he might grow out of it or that I could deal with it myself.

Now that he's started school I've become even more aware and concerned about some of his behaviors. He's getting a little better now, but for the first month he had a hard time getting along with peers on the playground and on the bus, and after getting a couple of notes and a phone call from the school I got really worried and decided we really should at least get him evaluated by an occupational therapist. I was ready to get some help and some answers, because I don't understand what's going on. The interesting thing was that after I made the phone call, Kevin came up to me and started crying and asked me what I had been talking about on the phone. I realized that he's aware that he's struggling with some things and it bothers him, even though he doesn't really have the resources to explain those feelings verbally.

Last Wednesday we had an evaluation with the OT. We talked about the things we are dealing with and discussed some things that we would like to work on with Kevin during therapy. It was reassuring to realize that it's not just my imagination--there really is something going on. I told her that he is constantly running away from me, explained what we go through every time I take him to a store, and explained what we have to deal with every time I have to bring him back in from playing outside, and I could tell from her response that this is not just Kevin being a normal active boy. So once we get things approved by insurance we will probably start to do some occupational therapy and get an idea of what's going on with his body and what helps him. The OT agreed that he is struggling with some sensory processing--definitely the tactile sense,  and probably the auditory and the proprioceptive sense.

Here are some of the behaviors we have been dealing with:

He runs away from me. Usually at playgrounds it's a constant battle to make him stay at the playground where I can see him. We've been bolting the apartment door since he could reach it because he would run out in the hall all the time. Even now he will get a chair and run out in the hall once or twice a day, and often more on the weekends. He doesn't stay in the bounds I set or pay attention when I tell him to come back.

He almost always throws a tantrum when we have to leave fun places like the park or friends' houses. Most of the time I have to drag him physically, and he will hit my hands to try to get me to let go of him. This is despite the fact that he actually has a hard time being in groups of people for long periods of time, which is often why we're leaving the park in the first place.

Going to stores or other places with crowds is always a huge ordeal with him. Just getting him to the car takes forever because he gets distracted by so many things, and then once we're at the store he has to touch EVERYTHING. He just can't help himself. It makes shopping trips take forever.

When his need for touch is out of balance, he goes nuts. He'll make loud and distracting noises, bounce in his seat, get aggressive, dump out tons of toys, and more. We've figured out that most of the time when it gets like that, the best way to calm him down is to squeeze him really hard. It usually makes him grin and he'll beg you to squeeze him harder and harder. After a lot of squeezing his behavior will get a little better. But sometimes, he can barely stand to be touched at all. One time he got off the bus very angrily, and when I tried to gently hold him in place to ask him what was going on, he couldn't stand for me to do that and told me I was breaking his bones.

He has a hard time gauging his own strength. He'll hug us so tight or bump into us so hard that it hurts without realizing he was hurting us. He used to hug the baby so hard that she would start crying.

He has a hard time following directions and answering questions directly. He gets distracted.

There isn't really any official diagnosis at this point. I don't think that's even necessarily the goal. I guess the closest thing is Sensory Processing Disorder. One of the most frustrating things over the past few years is feeling the judgment by some parents who don't get it. There have been babysitters or primary teachers who would try to curb the behavior by being really strict because they didn't understand that he can't help it (which caused a lot of stress for Kevin). The worst are the judgmental looks from strangers who see a kid who looks like a second grader (have I ever mentioned Kevin is really tall?) acting up and seem to think that it's a parenting problem. That hurts. I really, really appreciate the moms who have been supportive and nonjudgmental.

I am hopeful that OT will help us understand better what Kevin is dealing with and how to help him. This is really unfamiliar ground for me. What I do know is that Kevin is God's son and that he came to our family for a reason. We have the spiritual resources to help him grow and develop. Other people may be ignorant and misunderstand him, but I will never, never give up on him, and neither will Heavenly Father.

on humor

“I want to begin, strangely, with humor as an attribute of saintliness. I suggest that if you cannot laugh at yourself, and your foibles, and your small errors, you lose your dignity. The person who takes himself so seriously that he cannot smile or laugh at his own defects is, in the language of our time, a stuffed shirt. Humor, therefore, that is not ridiculing others, but good-willed about acknowledging one’s weaknesses, is an essential--I suggest--to spiritual life.”

--Truman G. Madsen, The Life and Teachings of the Prophet Joseph—Joseph Smith and the Saintly Life

A few weeks ago, I was at the playground with several of my mom friends, and the subject of showering came up. Everyone was joking and laughing about how infrequently they are able to shower and how much time they spend in their pajamas. While I could certainly relate, I was honestly a little uncomfortable about the fact that we could talk about this for at least fifteen minutes.

The memory of that day came back to me last night when I was listening to Truman G. Madsen's CDs in the car and he made this comment about humor. I realized that it's better to good-naturedly laugh at yourself over your small defects than to get depressed over every little thing you do wrong. If you can keep your morale up it's much easier to get yourself to keep trying. And I think this applies not just to our weaknesses and small errors, but also when things go wrong. When the dinner's burning and the toddler just had an accident and while you're taking care of all that another kid drew in marker all over his face and chest, you can cry or lose your temper, or you can choose to laugh at the absurdity of the situation. It's still hard, but it seems to me like it would be a little easier to handle it all if you can laugh about it, which reminds me of what Marjorie Pay Hinckley said: “The only way to get through life is to laugh your way through it. You either have to laugh or cry. I prefer to laugh. Crying gives me a headache.”

I think that's why moms laugh about stuff like how hard it is to get a shower. It's a way of staying positive even though we're often frazzled and frustrated. Maybe it's a little awkward sometimes, but it's better than having a pity party and feeling like a victim.

Late August/September/Early October pictures

This was at the beginning of September when Ann Marie was almost ready to roll over all the way. Now she does it all the time.

One day Ryan found the very hungry caterpillar hanging out on our bedroom floor. It was pretty awesome.

The sister missionaries taught us about wearing the armor of God.

Heidi says this is her favorite book.

Here are the kids hanging out while we watched General Conference.

Kevinisms

Kevin is saying the funniest things lately. I'm trying to write them all down, but a lot of them are slipping through the cracks of my memory before I get a chance.

One day we were in the car, and out of the blue Kevin reached over, shoved his thumb in Heidi's mouth, pulled it out, and put it back into his own mouth. I asked him why in the world he had done that, and he replied, "Heidi just stole my germs from me, and I wanted them back, so I put my thumb in her mouth and squished the germs back onto my thumb and put them back in my mouth."

"I have a ear confection. Actually, I don't have a ear confection, I actually just have a lot of wax."

(At the library) "Can we go to the children's infection (i.e. section) now?"

He got his hands on a little piece of sidewalk chalk and wrote all over one side of the van while I was buckling the girls in the car. When I got to him he was just finishing writing his name on the hood.

stuff I feel like writing about

I am still slowly making progress with Couch to 5K. On Wednesday I thought I would be able to move on to the week 3 program next week, but yesterday was really hard and now I'm thinking I'll be repeating the week 2 program for the third time. If I push myself too hard my calves get too sore and then I can't do anything, let alone exercise. I wish I could get better a little faster, but at least I'm doing something.

For some reason my body thinks it's a good idea to wake up at 4:00 in the morning and spend an hour or so worrying about things--some realistic, some less so. Then I have to get up early to get Kevin ready for school.  The last couple of days have been a little better, so hopefully I can break the pattern, because I'm awfully tired.

Overall I feel happy about Kevin being in school. He is really learning a lot. It's true that kindergarten is the new first grade, at least when it comes to reading and writing. By the end of the year all of the kids are supposed to be able to sound out words and know several sight words (and spell them), and they are supposed to be able to write about a book after they have read it. Some of their methods seem a little weird, but mostly it's fine.

The school has a behavior system that is based on the acronym CHOMP (Care for others, Have respect, Offer peer support, Make good choices, and Practice safety). When the kids are caught doing these behaviors they get CHOMP tickets, and when a class has gotten enough tickets they can earn rewards like extra recess, wearing pajamas to school, etc. This is a research-based program and I think it's good for the most part. The one thing that annoys me is that the rules are a little fuzzy sometimes--basically anything that doesn't fit in any one category just gets lumped into Make Good Choices. But they are usually good about understanding that these are just little kids and they're still learning the rules. It's harder for kids like Kevin who don't really fit the cookie cutter kid mold because some of those behaviors don't come as naturally to him as they do to most of the kids. Just as an example, Kevin is a very curious person. He's always observing the things around him, and if he sees something interesting he wants to touch it and figure out how it works. That's certainly a positive characteristic, but hand-in-hand with that characteristic is a tendency to get up and wander if he sees something interesting. Sometimes it feels like they miss the positives because they're so focused on making sure he's sitting down. I understand that they need to do that because if they don't tell all the kids to sit down then things will go crazy (and sitting down at appropriate times is a skill he's going to need to figure out), but I worry that they'll see the kid who won't sit down and miss that he's also the kid who's great at seeing how things work. Make sense? I don't worry too hard about it because we do plenty at home to encourage his talents and he's a confident person, but it does still worry and frustrate me.

Speaking of how things work, we've discovered the How It's Made videos on youtube, and there are a lot of cool ones. I've been letting Kevin watch them as a treat sometimes, and the nice thing is that I don't have to feel very guilty about letting him watch videos because he really learns a lot from them. We've enjoyed the ones about sugar, noodles, erasers, and chocolates, just to name a few.

I feel like Heidi is working on finding herself. She copies a lot of the things that Kevin does or says. She is really talkative at home lately. Sometimes I just have to go in our room for a couple of minutes to get a break because she chatters so much. It's cute, but after a while it can kind of wear on you. In other places she is more shy. She's obsessed with nonsense words. A lot of the time she'll just call things a "da-nya-nya" or a "gonch" or whatever else she feels like calling it and then expect you to give it to her.

We've signed the kids up for soccer. Kevin is doing a great job participating and following directions. It's really cute. Heidi is pretty shy and has to have some time before she's willing to play. Last time it took Ryan about 25 minutes to even coax her to kick the ball, and then finally in the last 10 minutes she started standing in the vicinity of her team.

Ann Marie is getting more social and more capable of grabbing things and putting them in her mouth. There was one evening this week when she was really upset during dinner, and finally I went and got her a baby spoon to play with and she was delighted. It was like she just wanted to have an eating utensil like everyone else. She can grab things and put them in her mouth.

We had well-child checkups for Heidi and Ann Marie this week. Heidi is 29 pounds and 37 inches tall, and Ann Marie is 14 pounds and 24 inches long. As I recall, they're both around the 25th percentile for height and weight. The nice thing about having three kids is that the doctor assumes that I know what I'm doing and isn't as pushy about some things. It was a rough day for Heidi. She got a flu shot and thought it was horrible, and then on top of that we found out she has an ear infection, so she also had to start taking yucky amoxicillin twice a day, which she also thinks is horrible.