30 Days of Gratitude: Day 14 & 15

Day 14: I'm thankful for Surprises! Like Christmas morning OR being proposed to on Christmas morning out of a nesting doll that's composed of many hedgehogs! Surprises like when you do laundry and find more than pennies and sticky wrappers or band aids in the pants pockets. Surprises like when you pick up the phone to call someone and they're already on the line (do we still can them phone lines?). Surprises like having just enough wrapping paper for all your gifts or just enough eggs to make cookies without a trip to the store. Surprises like being wrong when you really hoped you were. Surprises like kind strangers in a busy store. Surprises like waking up to an avalanche of balloons on your birthday! Aren't they wonderful? I'm so grateful for surprises.

Day 15: I'm thankful for Isaac! I only had one pregnancy, but I have two children. Isaac and I met when he was 5yrs old. In some ways it's astonishing that we don't actually share DNA! He's very social and incredibly emotional and dramatic, but I promise he came that way. He never ceases to surprise me with his singular perception and interpretation of the world. He has always been a source of entertainment for sure.

More important than the ways we're alike though are the ways he's so very different than I am. The ways he challenges me as a parent and a person to perceive/communicate/cope/engage/teach differently than I normally would. He forces me outside my comfort zone in a good way. He is part Mike, part me, part alien from another planet. He composes and invents in his head all the time and only shares glimpses of it with us now and then.

He's eleven today. I can't believe it! I was just teaching him to swing by himself and tie his shoes. I know that any minute now he'll be too cool for me and I'm so grateful for the movie nights, puzzles, trips down the nature trail, traveling and adventures we've had together. There isn't another kid like him on this planet.

Fourth Grade Complete

I stole the brilliant idea to start taking a last day of school photo from one of my mommy friends. Isaac loves traditions and tangible proof that he's growing up. He was all for it. Here is the first and last day of fourth grade. He came home with a science award, reading award and straight A's all year!! Way to go, buddy!

I can't believe there's only one more year of elementary school! It has flown by. I missed the beginning of Isaac's life, but I have been present for every single first day of school. He always seems so static to me just completely unchanged and then I look at a picture and I'm stunned. To be fair I'm also comparing him to a much younger child who is growing by leaps and bounds still. From the beginning of this school year to the end wasn't a huge change, but when I looked at the first day of third grade I was amazed. Going back to kindergarten it's hard to believe it's the same kid.

I have high hopes for the summer and for his final year in elementary school. I hope he's stays excited about learning, expands his social circle and tries lots of new things.

Squid-tastic Birthday Party

Not pictured: Water balloon fight, silly string fight, the hot dogs the kids ate, red faced kids attempting to inflate tentacle balloons or the glow-in-the dark frisbee match.

Happy first decade, kiddo.

Double Digits!

The Set-Up

I decided blue, green and yellow were squid colors. We put streamers up while he slept (it's tradition now)starting from his doorway. My mom found awesome "Isaac" balloons too.

Breakfast

Cinnamon rolls with orange icing (by request, of course).

New Clothes

New shirt from Mom and Dad. "He's a beast, he's a beast he's a big hairy beast!"

Presents

Computer games, a t-shirt, a board game and a plush squid!

Meet the Teachers

Normally, one of four local libraries has Lego Mania on Wednesday afternoons, but today was the fifth Wednesday so the our library had a puppet show. Now, there are two kinds of puppet shows at the library: 1)The ones based on books (ex: Rainbow Fish) and 2)The original pro-library puppet shows the staff makes up. This one was the latter, it was called The Princess and the Pirate. Three guesses what the "treasure" was. It was cute, but it could've used a bit more action. The puppets looked great though. My kids certainly enjoyed themselves.

I did very much enjoy the pop-up book they read before the show. It was The Castaway Pirates. Mike is especially a fan of a well illustrated pop-up book and I appreciated that this one has lots of action. It's on my list of things to get Miss Roo for Christmas. Speaking of books, Isaac has finally grown into some of the books we gave him two summers ago. He just finished Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest and really enjoyed it.

As it turns out he was the only student in his grade to complete his summer reading list. They even featured this tidbit on the morning announcements last week. Exciting stuff. For those of you who don't remember he only completed 4 battle books all school year last year so this was a dramatic improvement. This evening we went to open house to meet Isaac's teachers.

Mrs P. is his homeroom teacher, she does language arts. He has Mrs. S. for math and science. I liked them they had clearly both been teaching a long time. They were very grounded and seemed pretty unflappable. This was a huge relief to me since some newer younger teachers have been overwhelmed by Isaac in the past for various reasons. I could tell things would be handled in a swift and effective manner in their classrooms. That being said neither seems excessively stern of cold in the least.

Mrs. P's got Isaac's number and it's only week two. She said "He's VERY curious about many, many things. He's a sweet boy, but he gets his heart set on something and if it doesn't happen ..(she make a hand gesture and sound effect to represent a rapid deflation)". Um, yup. Captain Entitled, that's him. If you point out how his bratty behavior is negatively impacting others he usually reigns it in though. Isaac tested his teacher that very afternoon. Do your kids always act up before open house and conferences too? Every time. Anyway, she handled it the way I would have. No warnings or coddling just an appropriate set of consequences and move on.

I hope he has as much fun in fourth grade as I remember having. It's good to be one of the "big kids". Fingers crossed all our work this summer paid off.

Lego Mania

Isaac used to do tae kwon do after school in 2nd grade. During that school year we moved and the commute to his class became inconvenient, but we stuck it out. It wasn't until we realized how little our Mr. Know-It-All was listening and engaging that we pulled the plug. It seemed like a good thing for him to do to get his energy channeled and learn a discipline, but once he knew basics he just stopped trying. Last year we took a break from extracurriculars because between regular work and gifted he had plenty on his plate.

Over the summer we went to a gymnastics birthday party and I thought that would be great for Isaac. Anything that gets him moving he's become far too sedentary. It would be high energy and fun, but the consequence of not listening would be injury so he'd have to tow the line. They gave me a coupon for a free class and I did some research. It's comparable to what we pay for Riley's dance class and the schedule works too. The problem is it's not close and I'm afraid to commit him to anything until the dust settles on 4th grade.

In the meantime my mom brought me a flyer about the library's weekly Lego get together. It took me, brain surgeon that I am, a while to figure out the alternating libraries deal. It is unfortunately never at our library either. However, it's free weekly social interaction outside of school. I figure it'll be a good way to test the waters for whether he's up to after school commitments yet. Today we drove 20min in the poring rain for: Lego Mania!

So many Legos! Divided into bins randomly. Everyone gets a bin and an area of floor to build on. They also had a selection of Lego building inspiration books.

It was a very small group between school starting and the horrible weather. The plus side was that she gave everyone two bins of bricks since there was only four kids.

Isaac was incredibly polite for the most part. Poor guy was the only boy today. That may never be the case at this event again. They had some really delightful old Lego pieces in the bins. Neat M.C. Esher style doors and even a Lego pterodactyl. I imagine some of these end up leaving in little pockets from time to time, not today though. The small group and number of adults kept everyone honest. I told Isaac to start thinking about cleaning out his Legos and making a donation to the library.

Isaac built a toy store. See, it has a display window in front and customers milling around. There's toy droids from Star Wars and pelicans among others. It also looks like he started building the bakery? or maybe diner? next door because I see a woman cooking.

It was a lot of fun if Isaac could scare of a group big enough I could see hosting an event like this at the house monthly. It's like a sewing circle, but for 10yr old boys.

Operation: Fourth Grade, First Day!

Last week at science camp Isaac seemed to really enjoy himself. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect today, but I was too tired to worry too much. Riley was up every hour or two from midnight until 6am with tummy trouble. It was very rough. In the morning Isaac sprang up bright eyed and bushy tailed. He chose a shark t-shirt and dark blue shorts. He looked like a 4th grader, when did that happen?

He'd packed his lunch the night before in his new Lego Mini Figure lunchbox. We got it earlier in the summer (when all the school supplies were buy one get one free) so he'd given it a test run at science camp already. I sent a three pack of awesome monster tissue boxes right away because that always ends up being the item on the supply list that's gone when I get to it. Not this year! I'm a nerd. I digress, Isaac was very focused and almost mature today. He was very excited all morning until I explained that I couldn't walk him to the crossing guard because his sister was sick. If it had been any other day of the week Mike could have stayed with Riley or walked with Isaac. Stupid school starting on a Monday, what the heck? He teared up a bit at the news.

It wasn't that he was upset about walking alone. It was because it flew in the face of our first day of school traditions. I missed a lot of early milestones with him, but I have been here for every first day of school Isaac's ever had. I felt teary too. On the first day you have to get your picture taken and I get to walk you at least to the corner, at least until middle school. Sigh. Anyway, I promised to meet him at the crosswalk after school and assured him that he'd do great.

Off he went. Breaking the dog's heart...

Us girls hung in there without the boys around. I was dog tired and Riley seemed on the mend so I let her destroy my living room while I supervised from the comfort of the couch and counted the seconds until nap time. We were well rested and in better spirits by the time we met Isaac at the corner that afternoon. He seemed pretty energized for the end of his first day.

He came home with a "Great Day!" note from his Language Arts teacher and a smiley face from his Math/Science teacher. Not too shabby. So I let him have a cupcake for a snack. He also had a bunch of paperwork for me (of course). He was full of tales of treasure boxes and Skittles rewards. He said it was almost an identical group of kids with 4 or 5 exceptions. I thought that was good because the transition will be smoother for him and I know the class last year was formed based on academic ability, also good.

Future Grandkids

Mike told me as I was dressing Riley this morning that he dreamed about "our house" last night. I distractedly muttered something along the lines of "that's nice" but his expression made me curious. "Was it this house, honey?" I inquired. He informed me that is was not. It was in fact a bigger, two story house near a lake. He said it wasn't always two story that we had build on. This was all interesting, but I didn't see what the big deal was.

Then he said that it had the "right floors", wood floors. Oh! You see when we first got together we both had dreams about the same house. It had wood floors and lots of sunshine. He saw himself rocking in a rocking chair with a little girl. I saw myself on the floor assembling a crib. When we told each other about the dreams it was the same house. I've actually had distress over the years because of those dreams. When I was pregnant with Riley and still in Mike's tiny two bedroom shoe box of a house I was distraught because it wasn't "right." I was supposed to assemble my baby's crib in the house I saw in the dream. Even looking at our house now (which I love) it came up that the floors weren't "right."

Here I was starting to believe those dreams were just a coincidence without any meaning at all and Mike has a new theory. He dreamed about rocking Isaac's daughter, our granddaughter in that house. Whoa. He says we had the timing wrong. Maybe I was assembling my grand daughter's crib on the floor. Hmmm... Whoa.

So, I'm digesting all this on not a lot of sleep and all emotional about kids having kids on the way to drop Isaac off at camp this morning. I told Isaac that Dad had dreamed about his daughter.

Why does that make you sad, Mom?
Oh, it's not sad that you'll have a baby one day really, but I feel sad to think of you being a grown up with your own family.
(silence)
I won't have one for a long time.
Good. Choose their mother very carefully, when you do. Ok?
Ok. I already have their names.
What?
My kids names, Hubble and Pandora.
(His tone was completely serious and excited)
Well don't forget that their mother will have strong opinions about names too. You may not get to use those.

On the drive home I called Mike laughing to tell him our grandchildren would be Hubble and Pandora. Wow. I think I'll try to persuade him to use those for future pets instead. I think Hubble is a great cat name.

"Lorraine I Am Your Density"

After two weeks off (one for behavior issues and one for Science Camp) Molecular Monday returns. Let's be honest for a moment, I was all gung ho when summer started, but now I'm counting the days until school starts again like everyone else. I'm burning out on all this one on one with an angst almost 10yr old. Less than prepared to start this week I picked up a book of Isaac's called The Way Science Works and flipped through it until I found an experiment that didn't require a trip to the store or a big clean up. So "The Effect of Heat on Density" was the winner.

Water Volcano

Materials

• Large Glass Jar/Vase
• Smaller bottle
• String
• Food coloring
• Tap Water

As usual I found the experiment directions incredibly vague. They simply tell you to fill the larger vessel 3/4 of the way with cold water. So, our first attempt we did just that. It was a flop. It needs to be full enough that the smaller bottle is completely submerged.

Once you've got the larger vessel filled with cold tap water to a level that will submerge your smaller bottle fill the small bottle with hot tap water. Dish washing temperature is perfect. Than secure the string around the bottle and drop in some food coloring. We used yarn and red food coloring. The string is the handle you use to lower the bottle to the bottom of the vase. The food coloring makes the effect visible.

That's all there is to it. Be careful not to tilt your bottle lowering it in. The hot water will escape upward erupting into the bigger container. It slows down and stops as the temperature equalizes.

Why it works:Cold water molecules are closely packed together. They do not have enough energy to move far. As water heats up, the molecules gain energy. If enough heat is applied, they will fly off to become water vapor. The colored hot water rises because it is less dense than the surrounding cold water. The Way Science Works