Brown Boy Scribbles

Friday, September 23, 2011

Sick boys

Alexander is in one of my shirts in this picture because wearing oversized clothing just seems like the thing to do when you're feeling pukey.

I swear, these boys have been fighting back to back germs for months! Couple months of coughing and runny noses. Then strep, more colds and now a 24 hour stomach bug. Alexander goes to preschool and practically brings home the plague - weekly. I'm kind of hoping that they've gotten everything that's going around now and they'll be immune for the rest of the year. Hey, I can dream can't I?

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Water rules!

I left the water in the tub running (just a trickle as you can see) on purpose yesterday because the boys love to play in running water.

Jacob loves to try to get a drink (doesn't usually work)

While Jacob was hogging the faucet, Alexander decided to combine a cup and a plastic frog to make his own waterfall setup.

So proud of himself.

Wednesday, September 7, 2011

Alexander update

Jacob and I went to visit Alexander at preschool today. It was awesome seeing how happy he is in that setting. He's grown so much in the past few weeks. I don't think he'll actually be talking any time soon but he's definitely progressing in the communication department. It was motivating to see how consistent his teachers are in helping him express himself and be a little more independent. He doesn't like transitioning between tasks (e.g. moving from playing with cars to snack time, etc.) and he doesn't like really participating in circle time (e.g. putting pictures on the board of what the weather is, doing motions for the songs, choosing what toys he wants to play with later, etc.) but the level of fit that he throws during the process has lessened significantly. Of course, his teacher doesn't even call it throwing a fit because, compared to other fits she's seen in her career, Alexander would be considered extremely mellow. Those are really the only two things he struggles with; he loves center time (playing with toys) and outside time (playing on the playground) and table time (more playing with toys) and art time (he painted with apples yesterday). I guess we can throw breakfast time into the challenge section but he's doing better with eating too so that's good.

One big thing that he's learned at school is going peepee on the potty! He almost never wets his diaper during the school day anymore and today while we were there he almost went poopy on the potty too. I haven't been on top of things at home so he hasn't done it on our potty yet but that's in the works. We might have a fully potty trained kid in a couple of months if I can just get on the ball.

Another thing that I discovered just today was how many kids are in his class. *Drumroll* THREE! That's all! I am happy with this discovery because that obviously makes the student/teacher ratio nice and low. One teacher and one parapro for three students, plus the speech therapist who comes in for a little while to work with Alexander. Awesome! I thought there were seven kids based on the snack calendar they sent home and I was fine with that number but four of those students are actually in the afternoon class instead. Alexander's teacher did say that their class will probably grow through the year and they might have as many as eight kids in the morning class by the spring but for now Alexander is getting a BUNCH of one on one attention and when they need to work on goals that require more peers (sharing and stuff) they just combine with the 4-year-old class next door.

I forgot to take a picture of him actually in his classroom but I promise to post some soon. I'm also planning on scanning in the artwork he's been doing so I can make it into a book and I'll share it on here too. Stay tuned for more updates to come! :-)