I know a lot of you read this blog to follow along with Nicholas’ story and sometimes I need to write stuff down just so I can keep it straight myself. 

He has made an amazing amount of progress this year. He is (mostly) potty trained and will be graduating out of his play therapy next month! He is doing much better managing his anger with everyone but me (although that is improving) and seems to be genuinely sorry after an outburst.

It seems school will be our next challenge.

Ahh, kindergarten. Why must you expect so much out of five-year-olds these days?

Academically, Nick is not doing well. At all. He does make a decent effort, but he struggles with letter recognition, number recognition, writing, pretty much every pre-kindergarten skill. He is improving, but he is still at the bottom of his class. His biggest struggles are with attention and motivation.

He was tested for kindergarten last week and the results were low. More than three standard deviations below the mean. (That’s an IQ level below mental retardation in the non-verbal category, in case you are interested) You can spend three seconds with him and know those results aren’t accurate, but they couldn’t get him to focus enough to try to do well. There’s a huge gap between performance and ability and it’s earning him all kinds of labels to qualify for special services, but with a score that low now I’m concerned that we’ll need to fight to keep him in the general classroom.

I’ve talked with his teachers about holding him back, but because he needs so much structure and he receives so many services, they feel he would do better in the public school 5 days a week than in his current private school 3 days a week. Not to mention that public schools are free and private schools cost money. I was happy to hear that because I was hoping to send him on to kindergarten anyway.

Homeschooling is not an option for us because his attachment issues with me make me the worst possible choice to be his teacher.

We’ve decided to send him to kindergarten and if he needs to repeat it next year, then fine.

He’s been working with an occupational therapist weekly to improve his fine motor skills and help him learn to write. 

We do what we can at home. We have all the fancy dry erase boards, LeapFrog letter recognition toys, flashcards, we read everything and anything. I bought him Lego books to try to pique his interest. We play the SuperWhy letter games on the PBS kids website. I can go on, and on, and on…He just isn’t interested and when he’s not interested in holding his attention for more than two seconds just won’t happen. Period.

We’ve tried the gluten-free diet, no red dye, Omega 3 (that kind of did help), growing an organic garden…diet doesn’t seem to make much of a difference for him.

He’s gotten into golf, which is good for practicing patience. I’ve been in touch with an instructor about getting him lessons.

I’m also looking into music lessons for the same reasons.

I always said I’d never drug my child (put him on Ritalin, etc) unless his hyperactivity was severely affecting his academic performance. It is. I’m still not sure I want to do it, but we’re kind of running out of options.

I’m also worried about his hyperactiveness and lack of thinking through is going to start getting him ridiculed by his peers.

Apparently, he went into the kids’ choir room on Sunday and announced to everyone that his “hiney was very red and we needed to put lotion on it because there were a lot of germs down there.” Everyone finds it hysterical now when he blurts out with that stuff, but it won’t be so funny in another year or two. He’s going to be the weird kid.

I’ll be talking to the pediatrician next week.

I guess we could always try it and take him off right away if we’re not happy with the results.

I still think ADHD is way over-diagnosed and most of the time it’s just little boys being little boys, but if ever there was a child who had it, Nick is it.

I always tell Eddie he’s going to grow up to be just like Ty Pennington, he’s so exuberant, but he is just off the wall with crazy energy and it affects the way he is performing in school and the way he relates to people.

Have you ever put your kids on behavior modification medicine? What did you think of the results?

Hope you all had a great Easter Holiday! Ours was great but went by fast!

Eddie’s mom was here with me last week and it was so nice to have the help. We are caught up on laundry and dishes for the first time since….um, maybe ever.

We dyed eggs, I got to run a few errands, and we had a lot of fun. Now we’re back to the daily grind (Come back, Nana!) but my sister will be taking my older kids to see the Lorax movie this afternoon so I’m hoping to get some more stuff accomplished.

We just seem to get so busy this time of year. We spent all day Saturday cutting our grass at the new land and planting some baby trees from the Arbor Day Foundation, 2.4 acres sure takes a while to mow! Especially when everyone, including mommy, insists on having a turn on the new tractor.

We spend Easter doing a lot of running around. We were disappointed that we couldn’t make it to the Easter service at our church because we were traveling to see family, but we did an egg hunt with our Resurrection eggs and went over the story a few times. The kids were really into those eggs this year!

Then they got to have 2 more egg hunts later in the day. We also finally took a picture of the five of us together.

We stopped by my dad’s house, my mom’s house, and spent time with Eddie’s family at his Uncle’s. The weather was perfect and I hope the kids made some nice memories. I loved having the girls in matching dresses for the first time.

I might not be blogging much, but I hope I’ll remember to track our progress. We are in the permitting and financing stage of building the new house.

I’m back to work part-time.

I have a lot to do to prepare for tomorrow’s end of the year brunch for our Mom N Me group.

Nicholas is having all kinds of tests for his kindergarten placement this week and will be graduating out of play therapy in May. (Yay for his progress and our checkbook!)

The kids seem to be going on 8 million field trips for school.

My friend Lauren & I will be surprising Abby with a trip to the American Girl Store and possibly a Peter Rabbit Tea Party at the Ritz-Carton for her birthday! (Nicholas got to play a real round of golf with Daddy for his birthday)

We will also be planting our veggie garden this month.

Is spring a busy time for your family?

So…normally (with the exception of children’s books and board games) I am like the opposite of a hoarder. I’m a purger. I like to giveaway tons of clothes several times a year, have yard sales, throw old junk away, etc.

But I do have one collection that’s getting slightly out of hand, and I have no intention of stopping anytime soon. I love them. They are amazing. They are the best dishes ever.

Yes. I’m obsessed with dishes.

It’s a product sold on QVC (I’m not a huge QVC shopper, except for this brand and 2 Cottage Farms plants) called Temp-Tations. It’s affordable, hand painted stoneware that’s oven safe to 500 degrees & freezer, microwave, and dishwasher safe. Plus pretty much all of the bakeware comes with baskets, glass trivets, and plastic storage lids. I am in no way being compensated for this post (although I wouldn’t mind a few free pieces if you’d care to send them, Tara.)

I ordered a few new products the other day and Eddie was like “How much of that stuff do you already have?” Ummm…crickets. I have no idea. So I decided to take inventory.

Wanna see? So far I have all of the following. I mostly collect the black, but now I love the brand new cream color, so….. I also have some yellow & confetti pieces & one magnolia & some heritage. I’ve only ever had to return one piece because it arrived broken, but it was replaced right away.

All of these images are from qvc, some of the products are retired so you can’t get them anymore sorry.

Here we go…

I have this set in black

And this set in black
and this guy in yellow (to which Eddie may or may not have come home and said something along the lines of, “Did you really just pay money for a huge c**k and then expose it to the children?” Sometimes we revert back to 12-year-olds.) PS. Even though I’m not that into the rooster motif, this piece is a really good size and it’s less than 20 bucks right now, so it’s a great item to test run.
and I have these guys in black
and this in confetti

and two of these, one black and one yellow
and this guy in black
and these
and these in black (from the PA outlet, woot woot)

this tray in green (one of my all time favorites.)
and I just ordered this in the new cream color
and I have this in black, which I LOVE (sorry it’s retired)
and these guys in blue. They remind me of my mommom because she used to always give a bluebird of happiness as a housewarming gift.
This lovely lady in yellow holds my utensils next to my stove. She’s retired too, sorry.

and I have these in yellow, also retired.
and these in confetti. I think they might be retired too.
and these bowls in a pattern I think is called heritage.
And 2 sets of this dinnerware in black.
and last but not least, I have this set (probably the one I cook in most often) in confetti.

I love them. I chipped my pitcher the other day, completely my fault, and I almost cried. We’ve been using the dinnerware as our everyday dishes for about a year and a half and so far (knock on wood) not a single one has chipped or cracked and I’ve accidentally dropped them a couple times. I’ve also replaced all of my glass baking dishes with these and nothing has ever stuck. Not one thing. Ever. You really can just clean them with a damp paper towel.

I literally mix batter or whatever I’m making for dinner right in the 9×13, bake in it, serve in it, then put the lid on (almost all of the bakeware comes with plastic lids, unless they are already covered dishes) and put it in the fridge, then it can go straight in the dishwasher. I’m totally spoiled and now it annoys me if I have more than one dish to wash from preparing dinner.

Ok, I’ll shut up now. But there, now I know how much I have. I have the bluebirds on display as more of a sentimental piece, and I’ve only used the mini oval bakers a few times, but other than that, I use all of the other stuff on a daily basis.

I highly recommend it.

And if you’d care to buy me some more I’d be ok with that too. In the new cream color, please.

Nicholas, you are turning five today! We’ve been blessed to have you in our family for almost 4 of those years. Today we are taking mint chocolate Oreo pops to preschool and today Daddy stayed a little late to have breakfast with you and give you your present, a pair of roller skates. Right away you handed one to your little sister and now you and Abby are scooting around the kitchen, each with a roller skate on one foot. You like to share anything except your trains and airplanes.

You love airplanes. A LOT.

You also love to eat. Sometimes you have 3 different breakfasts. You need all that food to fuel you because you never stop moving. Sometimes you start doing spontaneous somersaults. Sometimes they are in the hall at church on Sunday when hundreds of people are trying to walk.

Your favorite foods are scrambled eggs, sloppy joes, and meatball subs.

You like to cheer people up, and you always do. Well, almost always. 😉

You love to talk. To everyone. All the time.

You have so much charisma that I can’t count how many strangers have said the first time they meet you, “That’s some boy you have there. I bet one day he’s going to be the mayor.” Sometimes they say President. Sometimes they say a pastor. Always a leader.

You love sports. Especially golf. (Who knows why) It rarely discourages you that you can be clumsy or if you aren’t the best on a team. You just love to play.

Sometimes (often) you test us. Especially mommy. We’re working on it. We’re also working on the potty, colors, letters, and thinking before you act.

You remember an amazing amount of the lines you see in movies. You can still quote a movie six months after you see it.

Everyone who knows you loves you, and you seem to know everyone. People I don’t know come up to me all the time and say, “Oh, you’re Nicholas’ mom. We just LOVE Nicholas!” No matter where we are, church, the mall, Panera Bread, it’s always…

“He is so funny.”

“He has such a genuine love of life.”

“He is a joy to be around.”

Or your teachers

“He was struggling today, but he tries SO hard.”

“He didn’t want to do the work, but he is just so funny it’s hard to get upset with him.”

When I make appointments for your sisters at the doctor’s office, the staff always ask if I can please bring you too.

Friends always ask if Nick has said anything funny lately, and there is always a new story.

Maybe one day you will be a pastor or the mayor or the President. Or a pilot. Or a stand-up comic. As long as you are a stand-up citizen, I really don’t care.

Until then, it will be fun to watch you grow into the man you will become.