Somehow all of October got away from me. Where did it go? I know i had a birthday in there somewhere and i remember it passing it me by. Getting another year older is really not a big deal to me, age is just a number and to focus on it is silly. However, i really do mean to blog and jot down parts of my day. I am never going to remember them any other way. I really must get better about it.

Since i was last here, Devin has started crawling. So sad and happy at the same time. Being that he is the last baby all of his milestones are a mixture of that. I do want more kids, but M doesn’t. However, i think he is open to adoption which is something. All the boys are doing well and it amazes me every day just how much they know and how much they like to learn. I hope that they never lose that.

I have been doing a lot of homeschooling type stuff here and now that the scanner is working i am going to be trying to share what we are doing here with everyone in hopes that others can get something out of it. I work full time like a lot of moms and while my schedule may differ from most, i do want to be a part of my boys education. I have spent a lot of time looking at the schools curriculum and while i think that they are doing a good job, there is a lot being left out. I know that there are only so many hours in a day and my first grader comes home exhausted from school with all that he is struggling to learn. He has a learning disability though and this makes the school day much much harder for him. I understand what makes it easier for him to learn and he is like me and is very much a hands on learner. He will remember more from an experience then from a paragraph in a book. So while i am working on him with his homework, i am also helping him learn things here at home as well as his brothers.

Ahh the baby is up and i must run…

Guilty Pleasure

I have a guilty pleasure and no it isn’t that i eat peanut M&M’s in the pantry so that i don’t have to share them with my husband or kids (sadly they already know about it), no it is that i am addicted to watching “Wife Swap”. It is the craziest thing. Half the time one of the families make me so upset about how they run, but it is also a really good tool to show me just how happy i am in my life and with my family. Could i ever be on the show, absolutely not! I understand that one of the draws of the show is to pair up complete opposites for the most drama and i personally would be freaking out. The episodes that really bother me are the ones where the moms are never home and they go to a home where the mom is home all the time and then put the kids in day care for their rule change.

Does this mean that i believe that women should stay home all the time? no it doesn’t, in fact i work full time, but i chose (key word) to do so at night so that i don’t miss any time with my kids. Does this make me crazy because i have no free time or barely any yes, but i know that this time is fleeting. My babies are growing fast and my youngest is crawling and sitting on his own, soon he will walk and you know i was there for every one of their steps and falls and i am blessed to have that opportunity. Not everyone gets that chance, i understand that there are moms that either have to work or chose to work. I don’t disagree with that, but i don’t chose that lifestyle. Watching the show helps me see that i am not perfect and shows me that others aren’t perfect either. It is always good for a laugh since i know that the show probably exaggerates certain parts of their lifestyle (and in some cases i REALLY hope that they do).

Is there a show that is a guilty pleasure for you?

I seem to have a lot of school related things on my brain lately. I will be the first to admit that i am not a math person, numbers can literally confuse me on sight. J brought home a math worksheet for homework the other day and i had to get help on it. How sad is that? I am not smarter then a first grader in math? I at least thought i would have the Elementary School years before my kids found out that mommy is definitely lacking in certain educational areas.

Apparently not.

First Grade (Part 2)

At the end of Kindergarden, J went through the testing for the IEP and qualified for services in speech which is the only area that he is lacking. This IEP enables him to get extra services for the areas that he is lacking. The only other thing to do was label him and i hate that term “label” because it will be with him forever. However it needed to be done we had to determine if he would be “Developmentally Delayed” or “Learning Disabled”. Both of them will get him services that he needs, however the “Learning Disabled” label will limit the services that he receives to just those outlined in the IEP whereas the “Developmentally Delayed” will allow him to get whatever services he needs within the time frame. A child can only be labelled “Developmentally Delayed” until they are 8 and then if they are still having issues and needing an IEP then they will be changed to “Learning Disabled”. Having gotten the IEP in place for the start of the school year was a big help, however either i didn’t listen or they didn’t make it clear that not only was J to get speech assistence he would also be seeing a resource teacher and that would be every day. I have gone over my notes and i know that i didn’t get that anywhere.

First grade has been an adjustment for J, he is in a class with a lot of students with IEP’s and i am not sure that is a good thing. The teacher is great and has experience not only with students handling delays, but a variety of grade levels and really is the type of teacher i had hoped J would have last year.

J’s schedule is tough and he comes home exhausted at the end of each and every day. It makes getting the homework he has to do hard because he is so tired and i swear there are days that i hear his brain say “STOP!”.

It is hard as a parent to know that your child, while they need this assistence, is constantly struggling to do the work and retain some of the stuff that they are throwing at him. There is such a constant push on the teachers to get the kids taught and a push to get them all ready to take the EOG’s (End of Grade Tests) starting in third grade that school is more like a boot camp.

I have a good team of teachers though and am able to communicate with all of them my concerns. I am keeping up with his schedule and am giving him some time to adjust to all the work being expected of him. While i know it is tiring for him, i cannot stop encouraging him to try to keep up with the work. I cannot storm the school and demand that they change all the rules just for my son, as much as i want them to. I cannot expect that after a summer of easy times that his first weeks of school will be easy ones, since so many things come hard for him. I know that he is trying his best and is being challenged every day.

First Grade (Part 1)

It has been a few weeks now and we are getting into the swing of things here at school, i am noticing that first grade is SO MUCh harder then i remember. Ok i don’t REALLY remember first grade, but i certainly don’t remember this amount of work being put into it. Maybe i don’t remember it because first grade may not of been as hard for me as it is for my oldest, J.

Many of you may or may not know, that J has suffered from a Speech Delay since forever, really since he should of been cooing say at 6 months but really didn’t. Somehow that whole hearing thing is really important in that sort of development. Well medical reasons aside when we finally got him to a point where he could now hear at 100% around the age of two we started him in on the speech, occupational and cognitive therapy to help him catch up to his peers. He still hasn’t caught up and i will tell you that i am fine with that. Don’t get me wrong, it breaks my heart to see him struggle, really struggle with conversational skills and just get completely frustrated with his inability to communicate even after 4 years in speech therapy. He has come such a long way though and we have done everything we could get our hands on to get him here.

At the end of Kindergarten last year i was able to finally get him back on an IEP (individualized education plan) since having his lapse when the public school system didn’t have speech therapists avaiblable even though he qualified for the public school program. Our county is really struggling in this area and they couldn’t fit him in. So i paid for him to see a private speech therapist to continue his therapy because i was just not going to let his progress lapse and we have great insurance that picks up 60 sessions of speech therapy a year, just enough to get him to Kindergarten.

In Kindergarten i really fought with the teacher to get him put back on an IEP (if you do not remain with the state provided program even if there is no one available and you get outside help your IEP will lapse) and she just kept telling me to wait that a switch will turn on… *sigh* I understand the need to be optiimistic, i do, i want nothing more than J to be more like the others, but he won’t ever completely and i knew that he needed this plan to get assistance. It came down to my getting the principal involved and this was after the New year and then things got moving. The speech therapist had already known about him and was helping him once a week without the IEP as a favor to us and i know that we needed that IEP to get him more time with her.

PTA another group I can’t break into

For me participating in my son’s school activities is very important to me. I want to be as involved as i can in his and when the others are in school their classrooms as well. I make it a point to volunteer for field day and any other school activities that i can and that i can swing getting someone to watch the other boys for. What i don’t understand is how to break into this apparently elite group, the PTA. I pay my dues and am a member, go to meetings, but i tell ya, i have a better chance of snagging a date with George Clooney then getting someone to notice that hey i am trying to get involved over HERE!

What do i need to do to get them to notice that i want to be an active member of the PTA? I have 4 boys and am just beginning this school journey so i think that i will be with them for a long LONG time.

Any clues or hints from you moms out there?

I spend a vast amount of time picking up toys. Anyone else out there have this problem? I often wonder why women walk upright as we spend i bet 80% of the day picking up the various toys that are scattered like breadcrumbs throughout the house. It isn’t as if i will lose them if they don’t leave this elaborate trail, but they feel the need to leave it nonetheless. You times this trail by three since technically the fourth one just leaves a trail of slime and baby food…aahh the cutting of teeth what a joy you are.

I will never fully understand the love that my boys have for each day coming downstairs and systematically taking apart every toy chest that we have. I am also amazed that this meticulous ability does not transfer over into picking up the toys and putting them back. You see this action seems to not work. I think it is genetic as their father exhibits a similiar trait in the area of his socks and the floor.

So my day involves going around to the various piles and screeching to pick them up only to met with looks of confusion each time. One day i will get through or i will snap and they will see a cubix full of Matchbox cars hurtling through space. Mark my words folks, i will not be picking these things up forever… I won’t right?

Et tu Vacuum?

Today was hot here, i mean super hot and muggy. These are the days that the boys normally want to spend outside while i wilt in the oppressive heat and moisture, however today they were happy to stay inside and play. That might be due in part to the bribing with stickers, i can’t say for sure.

My Dyson vacuum that i love above all other vacuums has succumbed to the vacuum curse that lives in this house. We have the canister model and the hose that travels from the canister to the back of the handle has pretty much torn off. I have no idea how this happened and am not super excited about it. I vacuum pretty much every day, with boys it is the only way to stay ahead of the game. So after much harping on my end, M has called Dyson (as the oh and holy Best Buy does not offer a warranty for this product ~that is billed as guarenteed not to break HA~, but Dyson offers a full warranty for 5 years) and they are sending us a new hose. YEAH I was worried that it would be like the Best Buy deal on vacuums, where you take them in to service and hear nothing for weeks and are then told they can’t fix it come in and get a new one and repeat for the next several years. Hopefully it doesn’t take long, we are going out of town to the in laws on Friday and i haven’t been able to vacuum in two days. I am SUFFERING people. The boys need to live in bubbles so i can look at them without thinking of the dirt they are tracking through the house.

Blink and you miss it!

I cannot believe that at this point summer is almost gone! In less than a month i will be sending J off to first grade. There is so much to cram in before then! I have just been drowning in so many things lately and have barely been able to form a thought much less form a decent blog post. I am working on trying to get my craft area organized and get some stuff ready to sell on my etsy store so that i can earn some extra money to pay off the nine gazillion dollars that we owe in medical bills. I have also been dealing with J who has decided that i am a mean mommy and he doesn’t want to be around me, D who has declared war on #3 to the point of causing some serious injuries to #3, #3 who i snow dealing with a torn ear drum from D during some “play” in which daddy was “watching” them and #4 is just growing up so fast i can’t stand it.

Can you believe that Michael’s has their Halloween stuff out already? I mean totally random thought here, but any earlier and we will be taking down the Christmas trees and they will be promoting Halloween!

Enjoy your day everyone and remember to take the time to appreciate your loved ones and show them you care, each day with them is a gift!

School’s Out

With school being out most of us are faced with summer days full of kids running around and quite possibly if they are anything like mine, whining about having NOTHING TO DO!!! They only have forty million toys and every book known to man, yet are faced with a summer of nothing to do, endless boredom. OH THE HORROR! So in an effort to stave off the mind numbing “We’re bored!” and “What is there to do?”, I picked a theme for us to focus on and base activities off of for the summer. Are you ready? The theme for the summer is: The Ocean. I know big surprise and totally original.

My sister, my niece and my cousins (mom and daughter) come over an average of 3-4 times a week and so the activities i have been planning involve them as well. First we started off with the sun and i cut triangles out of yellow and orange paper and glued them around paper plates. The boys then painted on them what a sun looked like to them. I wrote the word “Sun” on mine (again so very original) and we practice reading the word.

Next i had some 12×12 blue sheets and some sand colored sheets that i taped to the wall making the water and ocean floor. From this point on we are just working on different crafts to fill our ocean. It is learning without all the boring lecturing and they are learning something. Each one has kept a little piece from everything we talk about.

We are still doing all the fun things that summer involves pools, sprinklers, lots of water things, playing outside, riding bikes, riding scooters and skateboards, cooking outside, eating icees, everything that one thinks of when they think of the summer. We haven’t gone to the beach yet, but it is on the list we just have to find the time. I find that the boys have a better time when they have things to focus on instead of just meandoring around. They like learning and who am i to not encourage that?

What are you doing this summer?