We're very lucky.
Jack is the sort of child
we all assume we'll have
when we decide to have children,
and the sort of child
less experienced parents
congratulate themselves for.January and February 2004
March and April 2004
May and June 2004
July and August 2004
September and October 2004
November and December 2004
Blogs we read:
Tuesday, Oct. 24, 2006 - (Mamma)
Autumn swirls in�!
Autumn has arrived in full force. When I last wrote, there was little sign that the summer was coming to an end � and then, while Karen was here, the weather did its little Michigan dance (warm, warm and wet, cool and wet, frigid -- all over the course of as many days) and now cold weather and rain are the rule rather than the exception. Of course, today�s �cold� (~5�C) is going to seem positively tropical by February, but for now it seems quite cold enough.
Jack and I have celebrated by collecting leaves to make an autumn placemat from leaves, grasses, and laminate. He didn�t really seem all that interested - - he wanted to plop the whole shebang onto the sheet of plastic, but that would have incredibly lumpy and not very useful as a placemat and also very prone to rotting. He wasn�t pleased with me insisting that there was a �correct� way to do this � but we came to a viable compromise. He may have been being willful to impress his friend, Connor, who was visiting for the day�or maybe Mamma just wasn�t being patient. He does dig in his heels when I a being commanding.
Karen�s Visit
As Rod mentioned recently, his sister, Karen, visited from beautiful Geelong, Victoria. That was utterly delightful!
Karen and I had never met, but almost immediately, it felt like we�d known each other for a long time. Of course, some of that was just from the many e-mails and letters we�ve exchanged, but a lot of it, too, was that Karen is such a lovely and easy person to spend time with. She didn�t even seem put off when I came home at the end of the work day, I was so tired I was barely coherent. She just pitched in and took care of all the little tasks that I would ordinarily have done � laundry, dishes, and chasing Jack. It�s not often that having a houseguest is *more* relaxing than not having a house guest, but Karen certainly saw to it that she was an exception. I was and remain very grateful!
Karen also brought a CD of photos of Rod as a child and of his ancestors�that was wonderful!! Funny how, as well as I feel I know Rod after five years together, having that context for him seemed to enrich my feelings for him.
Health Chaos�
The last two months have been a blur. We were busy at home, but also, work has been extremely demanding. Audit season always is. (And Audit Season seems to come at almost random intervals, since we have three or four sets of auditors to please.)
On top of that, my health hasn�t been great, nor has Rod�s. Fortunately, Jack has been fine. The problem has been more one of middle age than of contagion. Rod�s blood pressure medicine was making him ill for six months, though as is so often the case, it took a while to figure out exactly what the problem was � mental confusion and gout-like symptoms aren�t often associated with one another. And the gout like symptoms were dwarfed by the increasing pain in his ankles and legs, which we both thought was associated with his fall last March (which exacerbated his injuries from a fall almost exactly five years ago.).
Anyway, once he was fed up enough to take the mixed bag of symptoms to his brilliant young doctor, his medication was identified as the culprit and he started on a new prescription almost immediately. Within days, he was clear-headed and able to walk around without extreme pain! It will no doubt take time to recover fully from six months of enforced inactivity, but it�s so good to have my sharp-witted, energetic beloved back!
Trying out �classroom learning� �
Jack continues to make satisfactory progress with his schooling.
Lately we have noticed him verifying his perception of pictures by reading the associated words. I guess that means that not only is he reading he�s also gaining in confidence.
A few weeks ago, we tried taking Jack to a class at the community center across the street. That was, shall we say, not wildly successful. Jack is, for the moment, just too out of step with what�s expected of a three year old in our neighborhood.
The class was called �Storybook Cooking�, and given that Jack loves to cook as much s he loves to read, that seemed like a perfect place to start with exposing him to the idea of organized classes.
Bad call on my part.
The class was aimed at 3-6 year olds, but the books selected for the stories were definitely �baby� books. They were severely cropped versions of stories that Jack is used to hearing from books with 8 or 9 pages with one or two small drawings. There were very few details, and the author chose short, imprecise words. Jack was bored.
I thought the cooking might be better, but the class was set up so that half of the children did a craft while the other half �cooked, and then they were supposed to swap. Well, Jack�s manual dexterity is improving, but he was completely unable to do the craft on either occasion. And the �cooking� was pretty disappointing � the first time, he was given a tongue depressor full of blue frosting from a can and a stale packaged cookie. He was supposed to �frost� the cookie. He wasn�t even convinced it was �food� until he had watched several of the other kids eat it. The second time, he was supposed to �chop� apples with a plastic knife. That was hard for the adults to do � Jack wasn�t even interested in trying. Jack is used to canning tomatoes and baking cookies and making pancakes and all kinds of other real cooking projects � these baby projects were not his idea of �cooking� and he simply wasn�t interested.
And then there was the whole �transitions� problem. It seems that most of the children in this class were experienced �school� (or daycare) attendees. There was an assumption that they knew the routine for making classrooms transitions. Jack didn�t get it � he wasn�t emotionally mature enough to make so many transitions in such a short time (four �activities� in an hour) and he didn�t catch the signs the other kids did. Not only didn�t he see the cues � but he was annoyed with me for trying to guide him from one activity to the next. We ended up leaving with him in tears both sessions.
So, we didn�t go back for the last four sessions. It wasn�t worth the grief.
A few weeks later, we tried a dance class � but when Jack saw the classroom situation, he announced that not only didn�t he want to go in, he �never want(s) to go back there again!� We�re not quite sure what that was about � but of course he won�t be going back.
When he has matured a bit more, we can try again � maybe at 5 or 6 he will have the emotional maturity to make those transitions and focus on the teacher in a crowd of kids. And then again � maybe not. It certainly made me glad that we�re homeschooling. Watching him amongst his peers showed me that he is further ahead that I had realized in some ways � and correspondingly far behind in others. At home, that�s no problem. He is one child and we are two teachers; we can adjust to his developmental needs in any direction it makes sense to do so. In a classroom with one teacher and 24 kids, that�s simply not possible.
Going to the dentist
Jack�s first visit to the dentist went much, much better. I wasn�t able to be there, but when I went to the dentist a few weeks alter, I heard all about what a charming little guy he is. Between that and the fact that Jack has asked to go see the dentist at least once a week since then has let me to believe that his experience was the polar opposite of my childhood experience. I also saw Jack�s picture on the �No Cavities Club� wall! Hurrah, Jack!!!
Scouts �
Jack has joined the scouts! He has attended one meeting and so far he loves it! Not the boy scouts, of course. I find them objectionable on so many grounds. Jack has joined the Spiral Scouts � an organization designed specifically with kids of minority religions in mind.
At his first meeting, the circle consisted of five boys and two parents. The Mom of the two older boys was a very old friend whom I have known since 1989 or so. The Dad and the younger two boys were people Jack is familiar with from running into them other events. They were all considerably older than Jack, but they were so welcoming and gentle that Jack fell right in with them! He can�t wait for the next scout meeting!
More soon � I hope
There�s a lot more to say � but I should have been home an hour ago. I hope to find time to update the blog again soon�
