School has kept us a little busy!

School has kept us busy, but not too busy for play! Stephen decided today that some of his buddies needed a nap, so he put them into his bed. He had the Count, Grover, Elmo (that's the BIG red one), Camel, Hawney (that's what he calls the sock monkey - the orange argyle guy), blue bunny, tiger, and Lightening McQueen. They stayed in bed until he got home from school, when Stephen decided they were done napping, and they all "jumped" to the floor.

Stephen lost one of his top front teeth right before school started, and since then, we'd been drilling it in to his head that he needed to try not to swallow another tooth (because the one next to it was loose already), and if it came out at school, to give it to a teacher, or a parent at home. I guess that worked, because one morning last week, we woke up to this:

And I found his tooth in his room. So we FINALLY had a tooth to give to the Tooth Fairy!

Unfortunately, this happened while Stephen was home sick. He got his first "school cold" and missed 2 days last week.

He was pretty pitiful, but he has recovered well, and was back at school today. And today, our big boy COLORED at school. And he didn't just color, but he surprised his teacher by coloring EIGHT pages in his work book on his own. As soon as I see it, I'll post pictures, I promise. He has also been walking up the stairs at home without holding on to anything, and he has been saying all sorts of new words! We are so excited to see our little man's growth lately!!

The BUS!

It only took a week, but the school district finally got their bus schedule straightened out so that they could pick up Stephen for school yesterday. We had been reading a bus book for about 2 weeks, and he loved it, and we managed to find a small school bus (Match Box style) this weekend, and Stephen was very excited about this new venture. He became a little anxious when the bus finally arrived at our house, but according to his pre-k teacher, he liked riding the bus quite a bit.

I still pick him up in the afternoon, so I can talk to his teacher if necessary, and because I

don't want him to have to spend a lot of time on the bus AFTER school. This is just the latest step in Stephen's journey towards becoming a big boy. *sigh*

First day of school!

This is the only good picture I have of my big boy on his first day of Pre-Kindergarten. He is one of 5 special needs in a class with 10 typical kids, so we expect that he is going to learn a LOT this year! It is a typical academic curriculum, and he'll get extra help with speech, OT, and PT also. He loves it already. He was waving good-bye to me before I was ready to leave him both days.

You'll notice that we don't have any pictures of him getting on the bus for the first time... well, there have been some issues with getting him set up on a bus route, but I have been assured that he will be riding on Monday. Stephen is VERY excited about this! We have been reading Bus books for the past 2 weeks to get him ready, and I think this will be a lot of fun for him.

Five Fingers

Stephen loves to practice "Five Fingers" (using all of his fingers independently on the piano) with his Daddy. Not so much with Mommy, but since he fancies himself Daddy's "mini-me," he'll do pretty much anything that Daddy does.

Just an update

This week has been a bit different for us. I had to have minor outpatient surgery to remove an icky lipoma (fat cyst) from my left shoulder blade area, so Stephen and his Daddy have been having some quality male bonding time.

This picture was taken right after Stephen was demonstrating how his Daddy showed him to play the piano with each finger.
This is something else they've been working on. So far, it's not going well - he just wants to sit. But we'll keep at it, and I'm sure he'll decide to stand up soon enough. Oh, and coloring - the COLORING!!!!! This picture doesn't show it, but today, he held the marker BY HIMSELF, and colored - BY HIMSELF!!! This is huge - HUGE! Hopefully it was all of our work with tracing this summer that helped him, but whatever the reason, we are quite pleased.

Stephen starts school on Thursday. There was a little mix-up as to what class he was supposed to be in, but after several hours of phone calls yesterday, I finally heard from the school principal and we got it straightened out. The last hurdle is to get a revised transportation request in to the bus department so he can take the bus to school (I'll still pick him up).

We were gone again!

This time, we headed to Edwardsburg, MI, just 30 minutes from South Bend, IN, and where Grandpa Rick built his new house. It was a good 2 day drive, but our little road tripper was up to the challenge.

I asked him to smile, and he just made goofy faces...

Oh, and he lost another tooth the day before we left.

One of the really great things about Pa's house was it's close proximity to Aunt Erin, Uncle Adam, and cousins Zachary and baby Caleb. The boys had a GREAT time playing together!!

They played ball often, and chased each other a lot. Don't be fooled - they also hugged quite a bit too! I just didn't catch any pictures of that...

At Grandpa's, Stephen was set to sleep on an inflatable bed, but the first night, he found the body pillow on the floor to be MUCH more comfortable!

We went shopping one day, and convinced Stephen to wear his sunglasses outside. Once he figure out how to take them off and fold them, however, they haven't been back on his face for any measurable amount of time.

One afternoon, we all took a boat out on a lake. Stephen loves boat rides, and decided that "driving" was the way to go!

He and cousin Z loved standing in the front of the boat when it was moving.

And Stephen went in the water with Uncle Adam.

He also had what appears to be a meaningful chat with Aunt Erin...

Cousin Caleb came along on his first boat ride at just 2 months, and enjoyed some quality Daddy time.

One day, we went to St. Joseph, MI, with the intention of playing on the beach at Lake Michigan... Unfortunately, however, it was raining for several hours, so we spent some fun time at the Curious Kids museum.

Stephen learned about dinosaurs and volcanoes...

And he ran a television studio pretty well.

He also launched a space shuttle, even positioning himself correctly for a proper take-off!

This was the vacation where Stephen discovered driving. He LOVED driving the fire truck, and would have spent our entire museum visit there if we had let him.

There was also a carousel, which he got to ride twice - once with mommy, and once with Pa.
Finally, it stopped raining, so we walked down to the beach. Stephen enjoyed the sand in his toes, and didn't ask to be carried even once! He ran in to the very cold water, and back out again a few times, before deciding it was just too cold.

Continuing the driving trend he also got to drive Pa's tractor. I think he was able to do it 3 or 4 times during our visit, and enjoyed every bit of it!

We were SO thankful that Great-Grandma was able to join us for this visit. She had broken her pelvis 2 months ago, and we weren't sure how her recovery would go for her to make the flight from ID. BUT, she barely even needs a cane now, which is a miraculous recovery! All 3 of her great grandsons were thrilled to spend time with their GG.I don't have any pictures of how good looking we all were at Pa's wedding this past weekend. Hopefully when I get some pictures, I'll be able to post them. It was a really nice occasion to be able to visit with new and old family members and friends.

Stayin' Cool

As some of you know, here in Oklahoma, it has been hot. I'm from southern Arizona, so I know hot, but this? This is hot. So we've been spending a lot more time indoors, and trying to stay busy.

Stephen has a great fondness for his letters, as most of you know. Each day this week, he has chosen a letter pair to carry around with him - an uppercase letter, and the lowercase. I think in this photo, he was deciding between the U and the O. And check out that pointer! That has been a MAJOR victory of late - Stephen has always gestured at things when he wanted them, or when we asked him to identify something, but isolating that index finger like this has been one of those fine motor skills that he struggled with. He still goes back to his old method sometimes, but does it the right way with a quick reminder.

We've also spent time doing our best impression of Tom Hanks in "Big." This provided a LOT of fun this weekend!


Erik has helped Stephen to begin his baseball card collection...

I'm sorry this photo is blurry, but I wanted to post it, to prove that Stephen actually IS enjoying this new activity with his Dad. They found the card for Erik's favorite Twins player in this pack, too!

And of course, we are using the iPad. Stephen uses it to tell us that he wants to play on the computer (meaning the iPad), and then we exit out of the "talker" for him, and he selects either his Elmo app, or YouTube, which is set to open on the menu with his favorite videos. He's getting pretty adept at using it! The Elmo app is really cool - you have to trace the letters of the alphabet, and then you get to choose between 3 videos to watch that are related to each letter.

And this is today's new activity. Grandma Deb's piano has come to live at our house, and Stephen has been upstairs frequently, playing.

We've also spent a little time in the sprinklers. This was the first time we've tried this, and I think it was a success. It wasn't as fun as swimming, of course, but I think it will probably be a daily activity.
Stay cool!