Halloween Preview

Thanks to Kelly and her talent with duct tape, the boys get to be exactly what they want to be for Halloween, Lego Batman and Lego Robin. I'll take more pictures on the actual night.

Fall Fun

These pictures are from last weekend, we went to a fall party and the boys had a great time. Dawson wanted a red sword with spikes and River wanted a green alien painted on his face. They loved the pony but Dawson will probably be too tall next year. I asked the girl leading the pony if there was a weight limit and she said no but there was a height limit. Dawson was really good at cooking the marshmallows perfectly!

I had a conference with River's teacher on Friday. We talked about the goals they are working on with him right now. They are pretty basic but really important. His teachers noticed as David and I have that River only looks at you when he is talking to you if you tell him "Look at me River." There are some other speech goals they are working on with him too. He has an incredible vocabulary but some of the basic speech isn't there, he can't answer, "How are you?" or "How old are you" His answer is always River. His pencil grasp is something else they are working on.

Dawson has an ARD tomorrow and I will give you an update of that. The main purpose of it is to talk about a Behavior Intervention Plan. He gets up and walks around the classroom and bumps into kids a lot. He does some other things but it is really important to get a plan in place to help keep him focused and out of trouble.

David has the boys this weekend, they are about to come back home, I am a little nervous about the visit because he had swine flu last weekend but I have been assured that all symptoms are gone from the house.

This has been a cleaning, relaxing, and Twilight weekend for me. I finally watched Twilight on Friday night from Netflix. I have been boycotting that whole bandwagon for a long time (sorry Colleen...I now understand everything you were saying before completely!) Less than 24 hours later I can now say that I read the first book, all 500 pages and I am hooked. When you work at a high school and that is what all of the 14 year old girls are reading, you think twice about picking it up. I am now hooked though. When I was in high school, I went through a vampire phase when all of the Anne Rice novels started coming out, but I think I am going to like this series much better.

Pumpkins!

Here I am at 3, it is fun for me to see the resemblance. I just asked River who this was and he said "Uh, uh, River?" I told him it was baby mommy, and he asked, "baby mommy has a diaper?"

The boys were really excited to choose their pumpkins from the pumpkin patch this year! I can't believe we are here again in October. I am really looking forward to all of the holidays this year. Kelly, the amazing person she is, is making Halloween costumes for Dawson and River. It turns out they want to be the same thing as Isaac and Aaron. Lego Batman and Lego Robin, these are not characters you will find in the store. She is making them out of Cardboard boxes and duct tape! I was just going to buy them some other costume because those costumes don't exist anywhere. Thanks Kelly, I so appreciate it and the boys are going to love them, you are so creative! (Interesting side note, Dawson now weighs 78 pounds, River weighs 35 pounds!)

Here is Dawson's 3rd spelling test, 100% this time! I have implemented the Herman Method here at home and it is really helping him a lot to be able to read and decode words. I am very optimistic but I know I wish the progress was faster. Last year at this time he could only trace and relied on a teacher to hold his hand while he wrote and so this is awesome.

We also took a trip to the Lego store this weekend as a prize for Dawson allowing his teachers to give him a hearing test. There are two Lego stores in the Dallas area and they are like heaven to boys like Dawson. It was pretty cool, his first visit.

Dawson is being referred to a center for testing to see if he also has Central Auditory Processing Disorder in conjunction with the autism. His SPED teacher said that in her 10 years, she has never referred a student to get evaluated for this. It was first brought to her attention by the behavioral specialist who was observing Dawson for the Behavior Intervention Plan for his IEP. When he was 3, ECI told us that he had it but school systems always want their own evaluators to do the testing and they like to wait until kids are much older to test. This will likely be added to his paperwork soon, I am positive that it is another problem that he has.

Touch a Truck

Yesterday was a really fun day, so fun I am still trying to recover from it! First we watched Isaac in his soccer game! Go Titans! They did a great job! Next, we took the kids to McDonalds and then we went to "Touch a Truck" for just $3 dollars the boys explored all kinds of trucks. They had so much fun, it was all to support the Princess Alexa foundation. I texted Crys later on that day and she said they were able to raise over $1500 dollars, unbelievable!

Life has been beond busy for us, the boys are doing well in school. Dawson is picking up reading, writing is still a major struggle. I'll try to do better updating!

Second tooth!

I took this picture last night of Dawson right after he lost his second tooth. It was hanging on by one thread and it started twisting a little. I asked him if I could wiggle it once before we read a story and he agreed. It popped right out! Anyway, the tooth fairy made another stop to our house last night. Dawson is very proud and the second time was much less traumatic than the first. Having the missing teeth have given Dawson a slight speech impediment, makes me think of the song, "All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth." It's really cute!

First Day!

The boys were very excited to go to school. Here they are waiting for the bus, yes they are both riding the bus. Both of their teachers gave good reports for the boys. I can't believe how big they are getting! Dawson in first grade and River in his first year of Pre-K. Dawson is about to lose another tooth on the bottom. It was almost laying flat on his gum but he doesn't want to pull it out. I am tempted to go in while he is sleeping and helping it fall out. I am afraid it will fall out while he is eating lunch.

My first day went well too, I miss having my own students. I do really like my new position too though. One bad thing is that the district froze the thermostats and so we are unable to manually change the temperature, and it was really hot and muggy in the school. It is a measure to save the district money but our principal is trying to get someone out to fix it, it was pretty miserable in some of the classes.

Updates

River got his hair cut at Cool Cuts for Kids, it is the first time he has had his hair cut professionally. I have always cut it in the past but I think he is going to start caring about that soon. It looks realllllly cute! We are going to meet his new teacher on Friday. We had a really great time on Saturday during River's birthday party. He always loves playing with cousins.

Rebecca came into town on Monday with her kids, they are leaving tomorrow. Dawson is going to be really sad. He and Julian are inseparable. We are going to meet Dawson's teacher on Friday. He is going to have Ms. Scarborough, Ms. Adriana, and Ms. Salzman again. They are all moving up to 1st grade :). I think that all of the familiar faces will make the transition back to school a little easier. I think another one of Dawson's teeth is about to fall out soon, he told me it was itching and I can see him wiggling it with his tongue.

I attended the first advisory committee for the UNT Assistant Principal conference. I am so excited to be a part of it and I know it will be really great experience. The coolest part was when we were talking about possible presenters and I told them about my dad and what he does and now he will be presenting at the conference!

This week has been extremely busy for me, things aren't going to slow down for awhile but that is just fine. I am already getting a lot of good experience in my new position. The best news came on Monday, we voted two years ago about whether we would like to get incentive money for raising test scores at our school. I will getting a little over $1,300 on my next paycheck. Can you believe some schools voted against it? The reason why some schools voted against it was because not everyone would get the same amount, Math/Science/English teachers all receive 1,800 but counselors and aides don't get anything. This will help pay my tuition, it couldn't have come at a better time! :)