I being God!

Anna spent the weekend with Grandma, which meant she went to Sunday school. While not a religious person myself I am more than fine with my in-laws taking either or both kids to church with them as long as it’s something the kids want and right now, they love it.

So apparently at Sunday school Anna was taught something about thanking God for things, I wasn’t paying attention, lol. But I gave her her dinner and she yelled, “Thank you, God!” then in a deeper voice she said, “You’re welcome!” Then proclaimed, “I being God!” haha She cracks me up.

PDY Sock Club, June Shipment

(stitchmarkers and candy not visible & photo borrowed from club member, Karen, thank you Karen!)

Second pkg for PDY’s Dead Poets Sock Club featuring poet Edna St. Vincent Millay.

The colorway, Little Ways, was inspired by the poem The Spring and The Fall.

More on the shop front- PDY is one of the sponsors of this years Summer of Socks, yay! From now till the end of SOS (in Sept) you can get 15% off all orders by entering SOS2009 when checking out.

Happy Summer and Happy Sock Knitting!

Also, PDY will be one of contributors for the August Phat Fiber Sampler Box (and future months). This is a fun way to try out different vendors, hand dyed yarns, handspuns, hand dyed fibers, markers and other assorted goodies.

schtuff

Eli has his third Occupational Therapy app tomorrow. He only gets 5 during the summer so I’m hoping to spread the last two out over July so he has less time with no therapies before school starts. I am starting to get that unreal “I can’t believe my child is starting Kindergarten” feeling, not mushy though, just kid of wow, it’s that time finally. Plus I worry so much for that boy, so so much; I already lay awake at night thinking of all possible scenarios adn problems adn ways to deal with them, etc. I spend the day trying to get him excited about it though, telling him once he starts big boy school he’ll get to do speech therapy AND occupational therapy and both AT the fun school with the giant bell. He kind of gets it. Anna definitely gets it and is already crying over not being able to go to kindergarten with E-I. I told her she’ll go to a new preschool and she can take a dance or gymnastics class too (if that place in town is open, I gotta call them)! I asked if she wants to do dance or gymnastics, she wasn’t sure what gymnastics was so I said, “Um, jumping and bouncing and running.” She jumped up and down and proclaimed she wanted gymnastics, fingers crossed the place is open and that they have classes during the day when Eli will be in school.

oohhhh, Eli had to have a cavity filled last week. We weren’t sure how that would go and we figured that would kill his new found love of the dentist. The women next door said her kids have to go to wheeling (40 minutes away) because that dentist uses gas, our town dentist does not. Ben was convinced Eli would freak out as soon as he either saw or felt the numbing needle. I was convinced that Eli would freak out once he realized he couldn’t feel a good portion of his face. Turns out, we were both very wrong. He did great! He handled it wonderfully! Even the dentist was impressed. We were so proud that Ben bought him a happy meal and took him to the store to pick out 2 new toys Though because his lip was numb for like 3 hours he bit it up adn had a fat lip for a few days.

Anna’s first dental visit will be in August or September.

I feel like I’m rambling. I also feel bad I don’t talk knitting much, I talk about it so much on rav that by the time I think to blog I have forgotten about the knitting stuff cause I already covered it elsewhere.

Edited to Add- Jennah reminded me of what Anna said. Anna had been gone when ELI went to the dentist and when she came home and saw Eli’s lip she told me that daddy punched ELI in the face and broke his lip. holy crap the things kids say! I told her NO he DID NOT adn do NOT say that again, lol.

Happy Father’s Day

That picture is almost 2 years old, but it remains one of my favorites.
Ben is at work, he got his gift last night.

He’s a wonderful father I hope one day soon the kids realize how lucky they are to have him.

I wonder

As I was tucking the kids into bed I started wondering about my mom.

I have lived in Ohio for almost 10 years now. I have 3 other siblings who live within an hour of my parents. I sometimes wonder if after 10 years of only seeing 1 of your children once a year on average if a parent starts to feel like they only have 3 kids?

Kindergarten Screening

So today was the Kindergarten screening. It took an hour and they shuffled Eli from station to station: body awareness, concept mastery, form/letter identification, general information, gross motor, memory for sentences, number skills, phonemic awareness, verbal associations, visual discrimination, visual memory, visual-motor integration & vocabulary. Eli scored “significantly below average” 10 out of 13 and “below average” for the other 3, though he was close to “average” for gross motor. I didn’t know what to expect, I didn’t realize there’d be so many different areas he’d be “tested” in, but I knew whatever they were going to do he wouldn’t have “good scores”. When the woman was tallying his results she told me they see results like this a lot because some kids are more shy and just wont answer the questions or they just do not like to “perform” for other people. Eli is like that, he’ll tell me the alphabet, point out letters, numbers, shapes, but in the last preschool assessment card his teacher marked that he could not recognize basic shapes, the only letter he recognized was F and that he did not recognize any numbers (I wont go into that preschool, I wish I had pulled him from it after hearing the occupational therapist review of him there his last week and Ben saying he had thought maybe we should switch him but not telling me that till AFTER preschool was done).

Now we wait till August for the Parent Meeting to learn more about Kindergarten and the school in general. I got to meet his teacher for next year, she seems nice.

Also, something cool, his speech therapist for next year sent a school “story” to review and read to him over the summer. “This is my School.”, it’s about 14 pages long and each page has a picture and simple description under it. The school, where they line up in the morning, his teacher/his classroom, the kindergarten bathroom (which is odd to me because it has the sinks on the outside, like in the hall), the cafeteria, the playground, the Office, School Nurse, Art Room/teacher, Music teacher, Gym/teacher (1 gym teacher for K-4! small town living is still cute to me), Library, his Speech Therapist/the speech room and the special ed folks.

I hope school is a good experience for him… well, for all of us…

the start of an OZ fan

I started reading The Wonderful Wizard of Oz to Anna at bedtime last week and she likes it so I brought out the movies. She loves The Wizard of Oz. Eli has no interest in the book but loves the second movie (which is my fav of the two also), so we’ve had a little Oz-fest going on over here.

Anyway, a woman form a random acts of kindness group (on Ravelry) sent Anna this Oz card and between getting mail addressed to her and finding the scarecrow and the lion (her favs) inside, she was one happy as hell kid.

She’s shiny because she was playing with lipgloss when the mailman came.

out with ST in with OT

Eli gets Speech Therapy through the school. His current Speech Therapist feels he does not need extended ST, meaning that Tuesday was his last day of ST as the school year ends this week. He will pick up again when school starts in August with the speech therapist for the school (he was seeing a traveling ST for the district). At the meeting the other week the Occupational Therapist who examined him, watched him at preschool and talked with me recommended starting OT during the summer so that when he starts school he wont be overwhelmed with new things/situations. I jumped on it. Sadly it wont be at the school, it will be a short drive into the next town but it’s only 5 times this Summer.

Once school starts he’ll start ST again with the school speech pathologist once a week and OT with the school occupational therapist once a month. We also talked about the results from the social-emotional forms we filled out and his preschool teacher filled out and the school psychologist examined. They’ve decided that there is enough of a drastic difference in some areas between what we reported and what the teacher reported that they’ve made a note of possible concerns in his IEP but are not going to plan any sort of intervention at this time. Having the results and concerns in his IEP, however, will allow us to jump into action quicker once he starts school and his Kindergarten teacher reports problems/concerns with his social and emotional issues.

Everyone was very helpful and thorough and listened to my concerns and desires and I still feel like these are people who really enjoy their jobs and really care for the well being of their students.

I registered Eli for school the other week and the 1st is the Kindergarten screening. Before I know it this kid will be in school, woo! And no, I’m not at all emotional about it, I am just not that kind of mommy I guess. Excited and nervous for other reasons but not at the thought of him starting school.

Great Lakes Fiber Fesitval

I attended the Great Lakes Fiber Festival in Wooster, OH on Sunday with a couple of women from my knitting group. It was lots of fun, I always enjoy hanging out with the ladies from the group, I enjoy the company of each and every one of them. Plus, what’s not to enjoy about looking at lots of beautiful yarn, fibers, crafts and adorable animals!

I was drawn to the crafts at this festival more than the yarn. If I had a bigger house with more wall space or a dedicated craft room (sigh, one day) I probably would have bought a ton. But instead I came home with this beauty (wistful from Briar Rose Fibers) to make Springtime Bandit

3 buttons, a sheep magnet, a sheep pin for a FoP and some unscented goat lotion to try on Eli’s eczema/dry skin. Chris from Briar Rose also gave me a couple of free stitchmarkers for pointing out that she had yarn marked as free on her site a few weeks back very sweet. I also had a simple and yummy roast lamb sammich. I think it might be the first time I’ve had lamb, honestly. On the way home we stopped at the Dalton Dariette and I had a giant and fabulous chocolate marshmallow shake. All in all an extremely hot but fun day.

10 years

10 years ago in January I met Ben online. 10 years ago in April I confessed I was falling for him. 10 years ago in June was the first time I flew out to visit him and confirmed that yep I was in love (he too). 10 years ago in October I moved in with him (from CA to OH).

10 years, wow. It goes by so quickly. It’s been a wonderful 10 years, we had a few rough patches, like any relationship, but they only drew us closer together and made us stronger individually and as a couple.

This year will be our 8th wedding anniversary, but I’d like to do something to mark our 10th all around anniversary. However, between all the travel we/I have done and are going to do, I just don’t know if we can swing it or if Ben has any more time off. I think I may see if MIL will watch the kids for a few days some week and maybe we’ll just rent a hotel room with a jacuzzi tub in it and do nasty things to each other for a few days.

And hope is like love… a ridiculous, wonderful, powerful thing.
~ The Tale of Despereaux