Noah These Days

Let's see.  What to say about Noah these days.

His most annoying habit these days is closing any door in the house he passes that's open.

The flip side of this is that in the past week he's also started knocking on doors and saying "who's there?" or "who's home?"  I assume he picked this up at school.

Something he's been doing for a while, that I assume - and hope - is common for his age is having his favorite little things that he sleeps with and/or takes in the car with him.  It can be this little airplane toy or his glow worm or two long, blue duplos stuck together, or his Jake book.  The one good thing is that he is willing and able to go find/get them most of the time.  But, it does also mean we have to sort of at least have an idea of where they are to tell him to go look.

Remember about four to six weeks ago when we tried to put new shoes on his feet and he reacted as if we'd set his feet on fire.  Fun times.  Well, Saturday he got his shoes wet and they weren't dry by the time we wanted to go somewhere.  So, we got the new shoes, put them on his feet, and he's been happy to wear them ever since.  Woohoo.  I guess he realized they were more comfy than the old ones.

We're also fond of remembering the days when he was a nice, quiet little boy.  We listened when people said that probably wouldn't last.  It didn't.  Boy does he jabber a lot.  I'd say we're up to understanding about 40% or so.  He's constantly learning new words and phrases.  I still think part of his problem could be his brain working faster than his mouth.

He still watches quite a bit of Curious George, and a little Sofia, but now he's in love with Jake and the Neverland Pirates.

Last week I was eating a little cheese pizza for lunch and he ended up eating about 1/4 of it.  Tonight, Ching had some steam bag corn and he helped himself to a few bites.  So there is hope that he will expand his list of foods beyond 20 things.  His absolute favorite food right now is Jello.  Thankfully, he didn't mind all that much when we were out of it.

Oh yeah.  Potty training.  We have NO idea how it works.  Thanks to pre-school, he's started using his potty chair several times a day.  Mostly we have him use it in the morning before getting dressed, before and after his nap, and then before his bath.  He's getting better at pulling down his pants and pull-ups.  He's not to the point where he says, "hey, let's go potty" yet.  But, he's doing better at this point than we thought he'd be.  We just don't really know how to "move the process forward".

Our Special Ed Boy

Last Friday we finally met with Noah's special ed teacher and his new speech therapist to go over a new IEP (individualized education plan).  His special ed teacher has been working with him at his pre-school and has been giving us weekly written reports of how he's doing.  The speech therapist did a 45 minute evaluations of him a couple of weeks ago.  We feel that both of them have a pretty good handle on who Noah is and where he's at.  Now in addition to the help at school, he'll be doing 30 minutes a week of regular speech therapy. 

One funny thing he did with the speech therapist was when he was no longer interested in the task she wanted him to do, he put his head down, said "sleep" and pretended to be asleep.  Heh.  His special ed person said one time during a book reading he just very, very slowly turned around until his back was to her.  We think it's amusing how he finds nice ways to protest. 

When we started all of this before the last school year, Noah was about a year behind on speaking.  He's made tons of progress, but he's still about a year behind.  He's excellent at labeling things - saying what things are, and at repeating certain phrases we use with him a lot, and at repeating just about anything we say.  But when it comes to spontaneously speaking, it still comes out mostly in jargon we don't understand. 

Ching and I think he's better at understanding us and at following directions than his teacher might.  She said he's not so good when he's asked to "point at..." or "show me..."  but those are two phrases I don't think we've ever used with him, so I understand why he doesn't know them. 

Sometimes it's odd to realize things we don't do with Noah that I guess are common - like the point at or show me. 

He knows his colors, numbers, shapes and alphabet - but we've never actively taught any of it to him.  He's learned it 90% through videos.  We know he has a great memory.

On that front, last night we drove past the place he went to a swim birthday party last summer.  He saw it and said "water, water" and really wanted to go in there.  We had an errand to run first, but let him go in and see the other kids.  He was so upset he couldn't get in the water.  We wouldn't have guessed he remembered it, or would want to do it again.

His regular teacher says he is one of the kids in his class who really seems to want to learn things and takes interest in new things. 

I have a feeling that his language delay might be masking just how smart he is.  (Or not, it's hard to really know.) 

Of course, the biggest question we have is why.  Why is this seemingly specific part of language so hard for him.  I'm not sure there's an answer. 

Parent/Teacher Conferences and IEPs

Last Friday we had our very first parent/teacher conference.  It was scheduled for 15 minutes and ran at least 45, that was good.  A lot of that time was his teacher explaining what she does in the classroom and why.  I really appreciated that.  My lack of love and trust of public schools should be well known.  So I was happy to hear that, as it should be, this class is all about play and learning through play, and learning though routine.  Also happy to hear that she's really flexible with her lesson plans - that if the kids sort of collectively are into dinosaurs one week, and her lesson plan was something else, she'll find something on dinosaurs for them.

Noah is still so, so happy to go to pre-school.

On the days he doesn't go to school, he still wants to go to the park in the mornings.  Poor kid, he's so sad when we get there and there aren't any other kids to play with.  Add it getting pretty cold this week, and he was a little bummed out yesterday morning.  (We went to the park at 9:30 a.m. and it was 45 degrees with a breeze from the north.  Brrr!)

This morning we met with Noah's development person (not sure what else to call her, she works with him at the pre-school) and his new speech therapist person to go over his new IEP.  We feel they both really have a good handle on who Noah is, where he's at developmentally, and how to work with him.  He's still about a year behind when it comes to some aspects of language acquisition and expression.  But other than that he's a sweet, smart, social boy!

Oh, the best thing to come out of the parent/teacher meeting was learning that they line all the kids up and do potty time, one at a time, and that Noah is getting the hang of pulling his pants up and down, peeing in the potty, and washing his hands!  We knew he'd started washing his hands when he got the chance.

So this week we've started doing more potty times with him.  A month ago we didn't think we'd ever get started on potty training, and here we are!!  I don't expect a fast development, but this is a great start.  He doesn't even require rewards - he just loves to be told "good job" and to be clapped for!  It does suck that this is happening during winter with the harder to take on/off clothes.

One other fun thing.  Noah is a BIG fan of Sofia the First.  He's been listening to the soundtrack and watching the episodes for quite a while.  We decided to be nice and order him a Sofia the First storybook.  I've always said it really helps boys to read of you find a topic they're interested in.  And there's a whole genre of "fart" books for boys.  Well, for Noah it was his first princess!  He's starting to watch Jake and the Neverland Pirates as well.  We'll have to find that sort of storybook, too.

Shutdown Getaway

Due to the benevolence of Mother Nature and a very messed up government, we found ourselves with some time off, unseasonably warm weather, and cheap, off-season hotel rates.  So, we did what any rational people would do - went to the beach!

It's about a four hour drive to Ocean City, Md.  One of the nicer benefits of the shutdown (other than time off) is a real lack of traffic around here!  We picked Noah up from pre-school Wednesday at noon, finished getting packed, and off we went.

We were on the beach before dinner time!  Noah was hesitant at first, and he still won't get in the water because the waves are too loud.  There was a lovely family with five kids that Noah decided to hang out with after running up and down the beach for a while.  They had some shovels and he moved a lot of sand around.

I was smart and got two queen beds, one for me and one for Nerdstar and Noah.  heh.  He was really tired and even though we forgot his glow worm, went to sleep pretty well.

The funniest thing he's done in a long time - around 4 a.m. I just happened to hear him say, very clearly, "JELLO" and keep on sleeping.

We've joked lately that Nerdstar spent the entire pregnancy giving Noah food updates about what she ate every day.  Now, with his limited vocabulary - at least 65% of it is food words.  His teacher also said he loves to play with the kitchen in the classroom.

At 6 a.m., Noah was wide awake and repeating "water" which meant he was ready to go back to the beach right then.  I had to show him it was still dark outside and we couldn't even see the water.  (We had at least a partial view of the ocean from our balcony.)  We were at the beach around 7 to see most of the sunrise.  Way too early.

We ended up being done with the beach and back on the road about 11 a.m.  We had seen that there was a little conservation zoo on our route, so we went there.

I think it's impossible to overstate how social Noah is.  There were groups of school kids there and he totally ran off and left us to go join them!  He would walk with them to various exhibits and then get right in the middle of the group to see what was going on.  When that group went on to something else, he'd walk with us a little, and then go join another group.  Both us and the teachers were just laughing.

It was a really nice trip, especially because we never got around to doing it during the summer.

Day Two of Pre-School

Noah went to bed a little early last night.  I told Nerdstar that had me worried about how early he would  wake up.  Well, he woke up around 3:30 or so with either a nightmare or a really empty tummy.  He really wanted a cup of milk when she got up there!  Poor boy didn't have his usual number of pre-bedtime snacks.

Anyway.  He was tired when I got him up this morning.  I don't usually have to wake him up, it's not pretty when I do.  He was happy to get dressed.  Then, he didn't want his morning juice, or any snacks, or to watch George. He wanted to go downstairs and out to the car Right Then.  Well, ok, it was only twenty minutes before we needed to go downstairs and to the car.

Thankfully, there's a long way we can take to get to his pre-school.  Then, there was one of his favorite songs on the iPod before getting out of the car.

Because it had been a morning of NOs, I was pretty sure getting him into the classroom wouldn't go smoothly.  He walked away down the hall, then he hid behind my legs, and just really didn't want to go.  He came close to tears, but there weren't any.

It didn't take more than a couple of minutes though to get him into the classroom - his teacher was really helpful.

Generally, once he's re-directed to something he's happy.  But still, driving away, I was a little worried.

When I went to pick him up, one of the assistants told me how much fun he had with water colors, naming all the colors.  And he played with playdough.

Coming out of the classroom, he was all smiles and laughing again and telling me what he could about eating his snacks.

The note in his backpack said he was better today about paying attention to the teachers for clues about what to be doing.

All in all, day two seemed to be a success.

First day of Pre-School

Our boy had his first morning of pre-school today.  We've been talking to him about school, and going to play with kids, and having snack time, for a few days.  We know that until he's been to school a few times and puts it together with the words, it's hard for him to understand.  But that's ok.  Mostly he just wants to go play with kids.

He was pretty excited when we got there.  He walks through the school naming all the things on the walls.  He's not good at standing still, yet.  And he pretty much ran into the classroom and started playing.  I'm sure the other moms thought I'd filled him with his morning coffee.  He was the only kid not standing quietly by their mother.

I realized today what a "presence" he has.  He's not hyper, but his energy takes up a lot of space and the house really does feel empty without him!

After I dropped him off, I went to the grocery store and got a few things.  I came home and worked on mowing the back yard some more.  And I went to the mall to Bath and Body Works and got a lot of hand soaps.  Yes, I missed Noah.

When I went to pick him up, he would have been happy to stay and play a lot longer!  But he was also happy to see me.  He was laughing as we walked to the car.

Once home it was time for a snack and juice and a nap!

This is when I wish more than anything he had the language skills to tell us all about it!!

My Buddy

Noah starts pre-school Monday. Six weeks or so ago, I started a list of things to get done while he's at school. Things like getting the car inspected, getting an old laptop repaired.  Things he might not like to stand still for.  I have a feeling that by week 3 I'll really, really miss having him do all those things with me even though we'll still have T/TH to hang out all day.  He's been my buddy almost 24/7 for 3 years.  I enjoy having him around.  I miss him when he and Ching go run around together.  I'm happy he's going to get to be around other kids.  I hope school will be good for him.  But I'm going to miss him.