Future Vacations

Last weekend, we took Noah to an RV show.  He loved it.  He checked out almost every single one, trying all the beds, pretending to cook when there were dishes visible, and pretending to drive all the ones he could! 

I've often wanted an RV.  But the reality is they're expensive and if you're not using it all the time, you have to put it somewhere.  And really, we're kind of hotel people! 

One trip we plan on doing eventually is to rent an RV and go through all the parks in Utah, then Yellowstone and Yosemite, see the huge redwoods.  All that.  Probably a month long trip.  An RV is just much easier in all of those places.

The second trip... I realized my parents' 50th wedding anniversary is in a couple of years.  None of us has ever been on a cruise.  Hmmm.  What started this line of thought was realizing that Disney World is just too big and too expensive and too crowded for our taste.  But, a Disney cruise might not be terrible.  So, I asked my folks about maybe doing a cruise for their anniversary.  That gives us all time to save up and find a good one - maybe Disney, maybe not.

The third trip...  Any time we've watched the Tour D' France, I've always thought that a fantastic vacation would be to rent a car over there and pick any of the Tour's routes and follow it.  Again, probably a three or so week trip.

But lately, with the help of HD tv, I've really started wanting to go to Switzerland and see the Alps and all the little Alpine villages and such. 

So yeah, a month over in Europe.

The fourth trip...  Of course, at some point we have to take Noah to Taiwan.  Ching's mother still lives over there.  She would love to go eat all of her favorite foods.  We have no idea what Noah would eat over there!  What's funny is that my 13 year old nephew is still into Japan.  We've toyed with the idea of taking him to Taiwan for his high school graduation.  Noah will be old enough for such longs flights by then!

It's a good thing Noah seems to love to travel as much as we do! 

2015

Wow.  2015.  In high school that was a year I couldn't even really imagine.  It was hard enough imagining how old I'd be in 2000.  Ha.

Which means we're done with 2014.  It seems like it was a very long year.  I spent a lot of time yesterday just trying to remember the first half of it.  Last night, I finally took down the wall calendar we keep track of life on and looked through it.  January was the month of too much snow and missed school.  March was our trip to Texas.  March was Ching's heart episode.  July we got George and Peppa.  August we went to Nashville.  September Noah started at his new school.   September we got Ching's new car.  October we got married.  Wow.  December saw the year end with my adoption of Noah being all legal and done.  More wow!

It was an expensive year.  But, it was all money well spent. 

As for Noah.  My goodness.  The progress he is making is really picking up it's pace.  He talks so much more and we understand so much more of what he's saying.  He moved into his big boy bed and loves it.  He loves his school and teachers and classmates this year.  And he's finally just about potty trained.  It seems there is a on/off switch with things for him.  He won't do anything until he's ready, but when he is ready it's a done deal.  For now he's still in a diaper over night, but I'm not sure how long that will be necessary.  He's at 95% of the time telling us he needs to pee instead of peeing in his undies.  And poop, well, he has very strong control over that, but I think he's making progress.  He currently loves Sheriff Callie and Fireman Sam.  He loves music and singing along and playing his guitar and rocking out in the car.  He was more into the holidays this year.  He still loved all the Halloween pumpkins, but wasn't into getting dressed up or trick or treating.  We got a Christmas tree this year and he really enjoyed that.  He loves all the Christmas lights on all the houses. 

I have no idea what 2015 hold in store.  So here's to health and happiness. 

You Said!

The week before Christmas brake, Noah and his classmates had a gingerbread week.  They made a gingerbread house and they learned the story of the Gingerbread Man and had Gingerbread Man cookies.  So, when I got groceries and was trying to think of things to do with Noah over the break, I got some of those pre-rolled out gingerbread cookie dough packages and some cookie frosting. 

Of course, with all the sickness, we hadn't gotten around to making them yet and last night he saw the frosting in the pantry and was ready.  I told him we'd do it tomorrow.

When he woke up this morning, and Ching came up here to get him to pee and get dressed, as usual, he wanted no such thing.  Sigh.  He wanted to make the cookies. 

I came up thinking I'd be reinforcement, and he pointed at me and said, "YOU SAID." 

HA!

I told him, "You're right.  I did say we'd do the cookies today.  You just have to get dressed first." 

So that's what we did. 

Thoughts on Education From Three Perspectives

I've had lots prompting me to think about education the past few weeks. 

First, and most importantly, as a parent.  You all are probably familiar with my thoughts on public schools and home schooling.  Yet, we find Noah in a public pre-school for special needs kids.  And I am generally very impressed with his little school.  I think there are a total of 42 students that go there.  There are two morning classes and two afternoon classes.  They have a fantastic playground, a lunch room, a special area for kids to go blow off steam or energy by jumping on a little trampoline or some similar activity. 

Mostly, though, the teachers are great.  It takes very special people, with special skills and patience to work with special needs kids. 

As you know, Noah loves school.  He's not the best behaved kid, but he follows along pretty well and has fun with the other kids.  His language ability has come so far since school started.  They're also trying hard to help us figure out how to get him to eat new foods.  We send something new and they have him try at least one bite of it.  That's more than we can usually get him to do at home!  And now, even better, they're really helping us move him along in potty training.  This week he's finally wearing his underpants and not diapers.  At school they made him a sticker chart and every time they ask if he's still dry they give him a sticker and high five.  Praise really works for him.  This started last week.  We'd put his underpants over his diaper, then at school he'd pee when he got there and they'd just not put the diaper back on.  So yesterday we just started the day with undies.  It wasn't until they helped him that he started making real progress.  And I'm so glad they help us come up with a plan and help him with it.  We were really at a loss as to what to try.  Before that he'd absolutely refuse to let me put undies on him. 

So this is an area that for now is really great for Noah and us.  They have the years of experience and the tools and resources we would never have. 

I'm still not sure I'll be as impressed when he's out of the special ed programs.

Second, I'm also involved in the school's advisory council which means once a quarter to go over the goals and progress of the school.  This led to me also being on the Superintendent's Advisory Council, which meets monthly.  I've been to two meetings so far and have really learned a lot about the school district.  This is a group of 75 or so people from all of the schools that really does give recommendations to the school superintendent.  At the meetings we get different presentations.  Last one was about how the district is trying to serve the Gifted population, and then the other was on how they're teaching math at the elementary level. 

So far, I've also been really impressed with the school district.  They seem to have a good approach to things. 

But...  it's a huge bureaucratic organization.  There are FOUR curriculum people for example.  In a future meeting we'll do budget stuff.  That really interests me.  I know big budgets are hard to read.  I was thinking it would be nice to have it broken down by building - the budget and staff at each school and each administration building. 

Anyway.  It's really made me think about just how hard it is to really accomplish real change in "education".  For one thing, they're about to start making their plans for 2020.  It's taken several years to overhaul the Gifted program, and so far they've only done the middle school programs. 

Of course, in some way every teacher and every principal can have an impact - for good or bad.  But for big change it comes from "big government" - the school board, the city council, the governor.  Etc. 

And we saw what happened to Adrian Fenty and Michelle Rhee when they tried big, serious reform in the DC school district.  They were pretty much run out of town.

Third.  As you also know, I score standardized tests from home.  I read everything from middle school and high school essays to short answers.  I'm currently doing a project of high school short answers that are just terrible.  They wouldn't be passing if written by 6th graders, much less high schoolers.  Some are literally a jumble of words.  Forget grammar and spelling, they can't even understand that Lincoln wrote the Gettysburg address - it wasn't about him. 

I know a lot of people are against standardized testing.  I'd challenge any of them to find a way to read even 20 essays from students at their school.  They would be appalled. 

Sigh.  So how does it all tie together?  How can the district have all the specialists, all these people working so hard, so dedicated, and the results sometimes be so terrible? 

I know...  parents, society, economics... and on and on. 

But.  Whatever it is that's broken has to get fixed.  

Where Are Your Parents

Since becoming a parent, one thing I often find myself wondering when reading or hearing news stories is, "where are your parents?  what do your parents think of X."  When I watch The Actor's Studio or other interviews of famous people, or read biographies, I am interested in their parents and early childhood.  Are people still close to their parents?  How do they talk about their parents?  So many of the people on Actor's Studio are children of divorce it's a theme of the show. 

This naturally leads to me wondering what Noah will one day think and say about us.  What will he remember?  This is also a little complicated by the fact that we're older parents.  While I have every intention of living to 100, who knows.  Who knows how long we really have to love and teach and influence him. 

This isn't a very well thought out post.  But hopefully you get the gist. 

Fun With Pets

The cats have wanted to go outside from just about day one.  We really wanted to wait until Spring for that to happen.  Then lately, there has been puddles of pee just in front of the two litter boxes.  The other night, Ching caught Ramen doing that.  Poor old puppy.  He might have actually been trying for the box.  (Dealing with Ramen and his old age is a different post.)

We decided the most simple solution was to put the pet door back in.  We bought one several years ago that is an insert in the sliding door to the deck.  It lets in drafts of cold air and such, so we had taken it out mostly because we didn't have Silly and Little Man to go in and out anymore. 

It's been fun this morning to "teach" Peppa and George to use it and to watch them venture out, Peppa more bravely than George, into the outdoors. 

Our Special Boy

Noah's speech delay was obvious.  He makes slow, but steady progress.  It was easy enough to get him speech therapy.  No problem.

But.  Then came the phrase "developmentally delayed."  I'm not sure we've ever been very clear on what that means.  I don't think I even paid any attention to it the first year or more.  I would get frustrated with his speech therapist the year he was two because she always seemed more concerned with his not paying attention to the activities than to his speech.  (I thought the activities bored him.)  It was at the end of that year we found out she really was doing developmental therapy - not speech - because he didn't have enough speech for speech therapy. 

When he was three, we sent him to a regular, private pre-school.  In our minds, this was mostly because he loves being around other kids so much, and then, of course, it was also a good way for him to work on his speech. 

We were a little surprised at the end of that school year to have his teacher and his development person tell us they thought he'd be better off in a special needs class.  That took a while to sink in. 

We've never had someone explain to us exactly how and why he's delayed. 

Sure, we get the IEPs that tell us he's at X years and months for X abilities according to their charts.  We're never sure those accurately measure our boy.  Sometimes it's things he can do at home but doesn't do at school that are slightly off.  Or, it's things we think are mostly due to his being an only child. 

But, we followed the advice and put him in the school he's in this year.  A classroom with three teachers, a helper, and his speech therapy once a week.  There are supposed to be 8 special needs kids and four regular kids in his class.  There are a wide variety of special needs in his class.  The teacher also comes to our house every other week for 45 minutes of activities for him and is really good about answering any questions we have. 

This year we at least feel like his main teacher mostly understands him.  He had a IEP that was supposed to last until Feb. or so, and they're already amending it because he reached those goals.  I think at the end of January we all have another meeting to start figuring out what to do with him next year.  We're also happy that his goals are concrete and seem suited to where he is at now.

Our goal is to keep him on grade level and not hold him back.  But, we do know there are circumstances where that might not be possible.  We were happy to hear there are smaller, specialized kindergarten classes he might qualify for next year. 

Anyway.  All that to get to this.

He's getting closer to four and a half and shows no interest in potty training.  We have the two weeks of Christmas break coming up and I'm going to make a more focused effort and see how it goes.  For two or three months he's had so much trouble with pooping, we're afraid he's getting a complex about it. Last night we really wondered if him not wanting to take a bath was due to being afraid he'd poop in the tub.  We'd given him some poop meds for two days and it was starting to work.  He needed to poop and just wouldn't do it.  I swear he has an amazing ability to hold poop in.

He did poop overnight and was so happy this morning that he and I could just clean up him and his diaper and he didn't have to sit on the potty for poop.  We clapped and did high fives that he pooped at all.

We often find we don't know how far to push Noah and when to back off in the interest of not screwing up the future.  He is so stubborn in such a quiet way.  And he forgets nothing. 

Then there's the new NO phase, the telling us "Shhhh Quiet" when we tell him to do something.  The hitting us when he's frustrated.  The yelling we do.  The meltdowns.  It really feels like he finally hit the terrible two/three phase.  His being so tall and strong makes it harder to literally handle him than if he had done this back at age two or three. 

Is this part of the developmentally delayed stuff?? 

His teacher saw one of his meltdowns last week after school.  She and I were talking after class, everyone else left.  Then he didn't want to get in the car and go home.  I got him out the door of the school.  Then moved him along to the car.  He's saying NO over and over.  We get to the car and now I'm out of patience.  It's cold and raining and he won't get his backpack off and get in the car.  I finally get the backpack off of him and throw it in the car.  I finally yell at him, pick him up, and wrangle him into the car.  Sigh.

She said there really wasn't much to do differently.  I had talked nicely to him, offered him choices, told him he could have his gum once he got in the car (he usually loves that), told him he could watch his favorite cartoon when he got him.  None of the nice worked. 

In the car he's still crying and yelling and saying NO.  I tell him if he doesn't stop he'll have to go home and go to bed.  Four minutes later he says, "no bed", stops crying, and is fine.  Sigh.

Over the weekend he had other meltdowns over baths, bedtime, etc.  It's leaving us feeling exhausted and frustrated and horrible.  When they're over he seems fine.  But he's getting to the age he'll start remembering all of this later. 

His teacher is good with suggestions on a lot of this.  But I think Ching and I both feel alone together in this.  Over the weekend I was ready to pack it all up and move to Texas where there is at least family to hand him over to sometimes, and better food. 

Parenting is all trial and error.  It's figuring it out as you go along.  It's praying for wisdom and patience.  It's limitless love and limited patience.