Dawson is 6!

It's official! Dawson is 6 today. I uploaded pictures to my flicker account from his birthday. We had a great time celebrating it at Dave and Busters with all of his Dallas family. We will be traveling to Austin this weekend to celebrate with everyone down there. I can not believe how old he is!

Excited to be 6!

Yes, Dawson is sleeping with the birthday card he got in the mail today. He was so excited to open his first birthday card, it's from his great-grandmother Chambers. He took it up to the bath with him, I put it on the counter, and then he told me that he wanted to sleep with it. I had to take a picture, he sure is easy to please!

David bought him a pet snake. Ewww, it eats baby mice, double ewww! He loves it, he said it's name is Hairit, but it might be getting a new name. Hairit lives at David's house :)

River is now kissing his own owies, it's really cute!

Dawson is learning all about bodies and recently told me that he has dinosaur bones in his body! :) Cute, sweet boys! :)

Why I love Plano Schools...

Dawson and another class member have been having some problems. The other boy is autistic, and throws things and does inappropriate things. Dawson can't just ignore him, if the boy throws something on the floor, Dawson has to run over there, pick it up, and tell him not to do it. This boy writes on Dawson and runs around the class. Dawson's special ed teacher has been discussing this problem with me for awhile and has been discussing possible scenarios. While the other children can ignore this disruptive behavior, Dawson can not.

This is why I love Plano schools, today the principal called me and asked if it would be alright for Dawson to switch classrooms and that she would only approve it if I said it was OK. She said the other boy would have a harder time transitioning to a new class. She also reassured me that Dawson would have his aide that he loves, Ms. Adriana. Ms. Adriana loves Dawson too, she bought him a star wars ship and blocks for River for Christmas. Mrs. Salzman will come in as well to work with Dawson. Then the principal told me that his new teacher, Mrs. Neid was making a book for him. She took pictures of herself, bathroom, lockers, books, tables, and a lot of the things he was going to need to know. Then she printed out the pages, wrote a story describing it all, laminated it, and bound it into a book. Then the principal told me that she would deliver it to the school where I teach. Dawson is excited for his new class, I made it sound like a really exciting thing. He does pretty well with new situations and the book helped a lot.

Cute things my kids do: Dawson recently heard me tell someone that we live in a town home. So now when we drive into the complex, he says this "This is Dawson Town, and this is my home. Look at all of the houses in Dawson Town!"

I love that River tells me when he gets hurt, then holds out his knee (or whatever was hurt) and waits for me to kiss it. Then it's better, it's cute!

Ever wonder where Dawson got his awesome hair?

I took this picture right after I gave him a hair cut on January 1st. I can't believe he is almost 6!
This is my dad when he was 12 years old! Here is Dawson and River with their Canby cousins. River loves Cereal!

Feliz Año Nuevo

I am hoping for a really good 2009!!!! I am really grateful that Dawson and River are healthy and progressing well. In September at Dawson's first teacher conference, Mrs. Scarbrough gave me a list of things he needs to know by the time he leaves Kindergarten. I am confident he will know all of his TEKS by the school year's end. It is truly amazing how much he has progressed in just the past few months. His next conference will be in February. River's ECI coordinator went to visit him at his school and she told me that River is looking really engaged and follows one step directions and routines at school really well. She gave me some good hints on how to help him learn to follow two-step directions. She said that because he loves numbers so much I need to say things like. Give me two crayons and three blocks. He really is doing really well. I still freak out a little when I see him walk on his tip-toes (usually only when he is barefoot) or looking at his fingers in the car. I just want him to keep progressing and learning as he should. I feel good that the ECI person is looking after him. She seems to know what she is doing more so than the one Dawson had in Austin. The one in Austin was a recent graduate of UT. Shelly, up here in Plano has been working here in Plano for about 15 years. She is great and is the same person who came out when River was about 6 months old to help him with crawling.

I also start back to school in a few weeks and my mom got a really flexible job close by. That is a huge blessing to me because she will be able to pick up the kids easily and care for them for a couple of hours on Monday and Tuesday nights. I also was awarded a $1,000 scholarship for this semester which will pay for 2/3 of the tuition. I have been asked to be Spanish department chair for next year. I work with really great people and am developing close friendships with them, which is something that I really need right now. While many things are not perfect in my life right now, I still have a lot to be thankful for.

Now on to getting the kids back on their sleeping schedule. They really liked the El Paso time zone! They have been going to bed late and waking around 9:00! Monday is going to be painful, Dawson has to be at school between 7:30 and 7:40. Hopefully I can get everyone, myself included back on schedule. I have really liked sleeping in too!