October

We've had a pretty busy month here.  Stephen's grandparents were here visiting, helping out while I was very busy with school stuff, and occasionally leaving to do a little traveling on their own.  While they were here, Stephen's school had a day to kick of their "Read At Home" campaign, and the kids were supposed to dress as their favorite book character.  I don't know if any other kids in Stephen's class dressed up, but Stephen made an appearance as Captain Underpants!

We also had our annual class trip to the pumpkin patch/farm.  I love this picture because Stephen is just so short compared to his classmates.  They were looking at some pigs and piglets here...

We also spent some quality time at the amusement park, especially on the teacup ride, which is still Stephen's favorite.

This past Monday, we took Stephen in for another sleep study to see if we can get to the bottom of his early waking issues.  He managed pretty well until they had to put splints on his arms to keep him from taking off his breathing monitor - Stephen continues to hate having stuff on his face, so this was really hard on him.  It took him about 2 hours of crying "Bi-eeee" to fall asleep after that.  He wanted to be able to put "bitey" in his mouth to calm down, but he couldn't bend his elbows.  Apparently Mommy wasn't doing this well enough for him, bu I tried.  We did get enough information from the times that he was asleep, and should know in another 10 days or so what the results are.  In the meantime, we are going to visit with a sleep psychologist to see if he has any suggestions.

More stuff

We had Stephen's first Parent-Teacher conference 2 weeks ago, and he is doing really well - better than we were anticipating, actually!  As expected, it is hard to determine what Stephen is actually retaining due to his expressive language delays, but he has made a ton of progress already, especially in areas that we know he is struggling with.  His coloring and drawing are really coming along, and we brainstormed some ideas to make holding the writing utensils a little easier for him, as well as how to get him to work on tracing his letters (which he will do at home, but not at school).  His social skills have progressed the most (more on that in a minute), but the biggest surprise for us has to do with math.  Stephen has been working on drawing shapes (a math skill), and can correctly identify numbers 1-100 (!!!!) with about 45% accuracy.  Stephen is one of 3 kids (out of 8) in his class that are working on 1-100 vs. 1-20.  We are EXTREMELY proud, especially considering that Stephen has previously shown very little interest in his numbers.

Now, about those social skills.  We have always worried about how Stephen is going to develop and maintain good friendships without the ability to really speak to other children.  He is learning to use the iPad program more and more at school, but we still have a long way to go with it.  Well, it appears that we don't have to worry about it.  Stephen frequently seeks out 2 specific boys and one little girl to play with at recess. He LOVES to play chase, and is very good at taking turns being the chaser and the chasee.  His teacher was surprised that Stephen doesn't play with these children outside of school since he seeks them out to play with them so frequently.  We are very excited to watch out little guy grow.

Swimming continues to go well, as you can see.  Sorry about the blur!  He was using the noodle to give him a little extra support as he came up for breaths, since that's still an occasional struggle for him, particularly when he's tired.

Kindergarten

It occurs to me that I forgot to blog about Stephen's first day of school! Sorry - this picture was taken before I took him to school. Normally, he rides the bus in the morning, but my mommy heart just couldn't take NOT walking him to his classroom on his first day of Kindergarten. And I totally didn't cry!

It has been a month since Stephen started school, and as expected he loves it! He is playing with the other children, and enjoys the addition of P.E., art class, and music class. This is not to say, however, that this has been a smooth transition. For the past 6 months or so, Stephen has been waking up early with increasing frequency. And by early, I mean 5am, and sometimes earlier. For the record, a 5-6 year old should be getting 10-11 hours of sleep in a 24 hour period. Stephen is sitting on 9 most days. This started to become a daily issue over the summer, but we were hopeful that all-day kindergarten would wear him out enough to sleep longer, as he is really suffering from being so tired all day. We finally had enough, and took him to the pediatrician about this, and she suggested that we give him melatonin, and try to keep him up later. This is easier said than done - Stephen is ready to go to sleep usually between 7 and 7:30, instead of the 8pm that the doctor suggested, but we are keeping him up as best as we can. Sadly, this has affected his behavior at home and school, as well as his school performance, but we are all working proactively to help him as much as we can.  We now have an appointment for a sleep study in October, which will hopefully reveal the underlying cause for the sleep issues.  In the meantime, we're all just plugging along as best as we can!

Despite the sleep issues, Stephen's teacher reports that he is really a wonderful boy, and a joy to have around. That's what we love to hear!

One last hurrah!

We had one last Family Fun Friday at Frontier City before our big boy heads off to Kindergarten tomorrow.  We had a really good time, and the temperatures were pretty mild!

We've been kind of taking it easy this week, enjoying our last few lazy summer vacation days.  Stephen and Erik enjoyed playing in his tent, pretending to camp.  After this photo was taken, the tent was attacked by a ferocious dragon, only to be fought off by the brave Sir Stephen and his trusty Bitey.  It was hysterical!

Tomorrow morning, I'll drop Stephen off at his new classroom for all-day kindergarten.  I think we're ready, and more importantly, HE is ready.  Stephen was so excited at his Meet the Teacher night tonight that he practically dragged Erik to his classroom.  Unfortunately, Stephen went to his OLD classroom, but luckily, his new one is next door.

Michigan

We went up to Michigan to cool off for a week.  We had a lovely visit with Grandpa Rick and Kim, and got to see Aunt Erin, Uncle Adam, and cousins Zachary and Caleb too!  Stephen got to enjoy his favorite activities - swimming and a boat ride!  On our way up there, we spent a day in St. Louis with some family friends, and spent a few hours at the Magic House childrens' museum.  So, here are some photos from our super fun trip!  (P.S.  Yes, Erik and I DID try some tubing at the lake - it was FUN!)

Olympics!

We were very excited to be able to share the Olympics with Stephen this year, and so far he has been interested in watching swimming and the bike road race (of course, it's only Sunday, so not much has been on yet!).  Stephen was very intent on the swimming...

He has also been very intent on adding new words to his vocabulary.  I can't remember all of them (I really SHOULD start writing them down when he says them), but we've heard "eye weem" (ice cream), "a-eee!"  (happy, while singing "If you're happy and you know it"), and "gwee" (green).  On their own, it would be pretty had to figure out what he was saying, but in the context, it was pretty simple.  He's trying SO hard!!  On the agenda for this week, though?  Sign language!  Stephen has been very interested when he catches parts of the show "Signing Time," so I checked out a bunch of DVDs from the library - we'll see how it goes!

Not much to say

I don't really have too much to share right now.  We're just enjoying our summer, going to swim lessons, and playing outside when it's not TOO hot.  Stephen is ready to go back to school, and heads back August 17th... to KINDERGARTEN!  I still can't believe it. 

Stephen has been trying to swim the "butterfly" stroke at swim lessons.  It's not what we're going for, but we continue to work on other strokes, and let him do this too.  He's really FAST!  We are all very excited to watch some olympic swimming events over the next couple of weeks.  Maybe it will encourage him to try something else new?

And check that out!  Stephen figured out that rock wall a lot more quickly than I thought he would.  He still slips sometimes, but that usually has to do with the fact that we only go out there in the mornings, and the lawn makes his shoes wet.  He actually likes climbing up the rock wall better than the ladder!

Our pressure-free summer seems to be working out pretty well for our boy.  He's using the iPad to communicate a lot better than he was 3 months ago, and is attempting much more speech than we've ever heard.  He has also been "singing" along with different songs that he hears.  It's pretty fun!