Piya's Perspective

It’s almost 1am. I should be asleep.  Kids will be waking me up around 6am.  Instead, I’m messing around on the computer.  Waiting for my eyelids to get too heavy to keep them open.

I apologize for the lack of updates.  I think last I wrote was about Caitlyn.  And while much has happened even with her, I shall spend this post about Simeon.

Passover: Back in March, I believe I posted (even if shortly) about reading to the kids in Simeon’s class for Purim.  A few weeks later, I worked with his class again to share another Jewish holiday tradition.  It was a very fun and messy time making matzoh.  After the kids went back to their classroom for lunch, I finished baking the mini matzoh and cleaning up.  They got to eat their creations for dessert and as I was saying my goodbyes, one by one, a few of the kids got up and gave me big hugs.  Made my week.

Bathroom Breakthrough:  Simeon has been getting much better with the whole potty thing.  A few weeks ago, I noticed Simeon was not only waking up in the morning dry, but he was waking to go to the bathroom at naptime then going right back down.  So, when I came back from a trip to Kansas and Simeon was asking again to skip Pull-ups, I said ok.  And he was dry in the morning!  It’s been a couple weeks now.  He’s had a couple accidents, but we’re diaper/pull-up free with at least one kid.  Woohoo!

Teacher Conference: When Simeon hit the 6 month mark in his current class, we met with his teacher to see how he’s progressing.  He’s doing great.  The teacher is really impressed with his math skills.  He can recognize numbers in the twenties, count up to and down from 20 and even do some basic math.  He’s also really good with his letters and can read a few words.  Though he’s not always good about sounding out words – he generally recognized the letter pattern and knows the word from memory – but it’s still great to see and sounding words out will come in time.  He’s able to compare groups of objects and determine larger/smaller and the motor skills we were worried about when we had our 6 week conference seem to be coming along. 

Some of the items of concern seem to stem from his size.  He’s small for his age and I really didn’t think size would come into play for awhile.  However, with his math and reading comprehension at the higher end of the class, he is grouped with the older kids and thus wants to play with them as well.  The older boys play rough, so Simeon wants to play rough with them and winds up at the bottom of many piles.  He’ll scream to get up, but he’s like those toys that get knocked down and jump right back up.  Getting heard by the older kids is difficult unless he screams, at which point the teachers make their presence known (even if not actually getting involved) and the other kids just don’t want to deal with it.

This may also be part of the reason for his recent ‘sneak attacks’.  He’ll lean on somebody or elbow them, then act as if he hasn’t done anything.  But once the kid responds in kind he screams bloody murder.  We’ve noticed this a bit at home with Caitlyn too.  She’s fine.  She walks near brother.  She’s on the floor and upset, but you haven’t necessarily seen him do anything.

Speaking: His diction has gotten much better and he’s much more understandable.  Most of the time anyway. 

I’m sure there’s more, but I’m finally getting tired again and should take advantage of it.