Rocket Ship

M came to ask me to come see his rocket ship. He dragged 2 chairs into his room and somehow managed to stack them to make his spacecraft. We played on it for a few minutes and I became a little worried because of its complete instability especially as he wanted to remove his shoes while aboard.

Later, we painted, and he wiped purple and green on his sheets and cords when I went to the other room.

Waking Up Blind

Do you remember the first time you ever woke up with your eyes glued together with sleep? M had his first experience this morning. I remember thinking, "I'm blind!" He was pretty good about not panicking, but he did not enjoy the gluey crust removal.

Falling

After falling out of bed at midnight, my boy had a good, long, loud cry.

I feel like whatever they think downstairs can wash over me now. If you can't relate to the pain of hitting your head and waking from a deep sleep, too bad.

My husband is now serving on the board of the complex of condos where we live.

Uncle Bear's Visit

As you can tell, Uncle Johnny was fun to have around. Marcello is still talking about him--he has asked at random times "Who was visiting?"

life is fragile, why

I wish I could live bicoastally.
I wish I had not slept in today because I felt sick.
I miss my brother already.

Why is M asking about going to a house at 68--I am not sure where he is getting that address. Why did a random woman add me as a friend on Facebook?

Why the eggs?

M is fascinated by them. Hatching them, cracking them, and, now, painting them.

What is it about eggs?

Uncle Johnny in the house

So far, one of the sweetest interactions was M running down the hallway happy to see Uncle Johnny. Also, he asked him, "Are you Uncle Bear?" They did a series of bearish things together like growling and nose butting.

I can't wait for breakfast because we were all so tired last night. We head out to Queens to see the family midday, so I am making coffee and letting them all sleep in.

Maybe Uncle Bear can model some potty behavior! We are not any closer these days except for dressing every stuffed animal around in underwear.

interning somewhere, potty-training someday

I am looking into a number of different non-profits for a paid internship for next year and have got a lot of ideas. My first priority is to make it something that will impact children's languages and literacies. I hope to get some idea this week before my brother gets in on Thursday for a long weekend.

More on the saga of potty-training soon.

suberb party, chocolate cake

The party hit it's high point during and after the complete focus on the chocolate cake. Potty humor and various ingredients of the cake were bantered including blood and bananas. There was much hitting of balloons and some crawling under the table as part of the unsanctioned fun.

M's reading of Wolves

There is a good children's book called Wolves that tells the story in pictures more than the written text, which is the words to a book that rabbit checks out called Wolves. So it is a book within a book that the reader gets to see. As the rabbit reads, he ends up wandering onto a wolf's nose.

M basically thought that the wolf was the rabbit's mommy. When a small boy in a story is not pictured with a mommy, he will ask where his mommy is. Also, the man with the yellow hat is read by him as curious george's daddy.

I'm not sure about this imposing of my reading, but I told him that the wolf and the rabbit become best friends (the alternate version of the ending where the wolf is a vegetarian, and they enjoy a jam sandwich together).

At this juncture, M is rooted in his family and wants to know where characters' parents are. It is certainly from his point of view and experience of the world that he reads this way.

How is the wolf like a parent (threatening to destroy or being a friend--is this how he experiences me?!)? Definitely, the wolf is shown as the powerful one. The rabbit is the lesser experienced one. There are not other characters in the book, so it is exclusively about the small animal and the big one.

But I wonder about: Why is the big one the threatening, but really also gentle one? Isn't the wolf darker and more urban looking with the hood on? How does the alternate endings play with the idea of subverting the dominant discourses on wolves or not?

theory into action

I was talking last post about our dissatisfaction with M's afternoon program in a public school pre-K with services. Unfortunately, to get your child help you end up hearing and seeing people pathologize children. Instead of seeing M's fascination with letters as a tremendous jumping off point it states in his recent IEP that he "fixates" on them. Well, yes. And no.

Last night, he was so tired, but I had to read him Green Eggs and Ham (from Uncle Johnny, AKA Uncle Bear) and One Fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish. He is starting to read the words. That is, he has to know how to spell words now and tracks the words on the cover, for example, with his finger. He stops to ask "wh" questions constantly. He is inferring during stories like the Big Hungry Bear.

So, as with all children, if you look at what children can do or are attempting to do you can see where to go next. For us, it may be saying no thank you to services for next year.

A coffee covered bear?

So I pulled M's apples out of his backpack, and they looked very dirty. His wax paper bag with crackers also had lots of (what I thought was) dirt in it. I reached in to pull out the rest of the things crammed in there and found what--yes, you guessed it--a coffee covered bear. Some adult had neatly cut out, glued eyes and a boy to a bear, oh, and sprinkled it evenly with coffee. Clearly not the work of my child.

Who would want such a thing? I will try not to rant too much here, but I am on a roll. Bears was the theme last month, picked arbitrarily. Marcello told me nothing about it. This month they are talking about houses. They have to bring in some photo of their house inside or outside. These themes are executed year after year at the same time. I know because last year I visited at this time.

Dropping him off today, I witnessed an especially awful interaction where an assistant teacher yelled to M to look in her eyes and then asked him to make a choice also yelled the two options. M winced (I have never actually seen him do this) before telling her his choice.

I think there is a cost to having M in this program now. I thought we were trying to do the right thing even if it was hard by giving him access to speech services. Now Mariano thinks we should pull him immediately out of the program. The teacher is rarely teaching the class, and the assistant teachers do not model greetings and conversational speech.

There is a real paradigm problem in my opinion. When one looks for deficit, it is easily located. If you search for resources and treasures, those can be found as well. "His rote skills are age appropriate." Not exactly what you would call recognizing and building on strengths.

We just read the book No, David. The first thing he wanted to do was spell the title and then many other lines of the book. I believe that it is my job to look for this excitement and tap it. Bridging the two paradigms no longer seems to be the right thing to do.

big boy

After M got home we said good-bye to nursing. It went something like this: the first night, he didn't want to nurse. The next morning he tried to find my breast, and I was evasive and redirected him. That was not working, and putting castor oil or something felt weird to me. So I lifted him onto the counter and looked at him eye-to-eye and said, "You're such a big boy now, and there are a lot of things you can drink--juice, chocolate milk, agua, lemonade--and you don't need mi mi anymore." Then he said, "I don't want mi mi anymore." I could not believe it.

Later that night, he did want it but settled for hot chocolate. We are almost at a couple of weeks now. Old habits die hard, but this has been easier than expected.

Alexis & Evan's pad

Click on the last one to check out the smile on Ophelia Pearl's angelic face!