Mama, Where are you?

Tracy and I are sick right now.  Very sick.  We both slept all day yesterday.  I turned off my alarm this morning.  Rhys came in, as usual, curled up with Tracy and, not as usual, fell back to sleep.

At 0715 I heard Owyn's door open and close.  Both boys close their doors to keep the cats out.  Owyn walked out into the hallway and, clear as a bell, said "Mama, Where are you?" 

This was not only quite funny, but also something of a milestone.  It is a good sentence.  It was very clear, no slurring or blurring or leaving off sounds.  It was something we have not been trying to teach him to say.  Tracy and I were both just laying there, amused.

"Mama, Where are you?"  "In here Owyn".  "Oh, OK."

SSSSTop!

Rhys tends to get frustrated at therapy, especially Occupational Therapy.  When he gets that way he tends to get mean, hitting, screaming, standing in the corner and screaming for five minutes.  It's rather unpleasant.

We have been trying to teach him to say "Stop!" and use the sign for it, which is your left hand held flat with the palm up and your right hand coming down, vertically in into it, like a karate chop.  When he says "Stop!" it comes out as "Bop!", which is not always easy to understand when he is angry. 

During speech we work on one letter for two or three weeks then move on to another one.  Estelle (OT) suggested to Sarah (ST) that she teach Rhys leading S's.  "So he can tell us to STOP!".

Nesting

Rhys is an early riser.  He has been for years.  I get up at 0500.  He usually beats me to the day.  If he comes into our room in the middle of the night I will take him back to bed.  If he comes in after 0430, Mama will let him cuddle with her.

Rhys has come up with a new solution for those times when he is not sure what time it is.  He pulls a blanket up and makes himself a little nest on the floor at the foot of our bed. 

He has scared the dickens out of me a few times.  The alarm goes off.  I get up.  I head towards the stairs to let the dogs out and I hear "Hi Daddy!"  As chipper as can be.  The adrenalin helps get me going in the morning.

Packing lunch

 We were given a step stool by a neighbor and Rhys decide that it belonged in the kitchen.  We are ok with that since it is better than him pulling a chair around on the hardwood floors.

Tracy was packing her lunch, in the morning.  Rhys was in the kitchen. She was standing at the refer pulling out her food.  Rhys pulled his stool up to the island, by the fruit basket.  As Tracy loaded her chow into her lunch box Rhys handed her some fruit, "Mommy, you need these too."

At least it was health food.

Spank, spank, spank

Tracy was getting the boys ready to go to school.  Rhys was being a turd.  She looked at him and said, "If you don't hurry up you are going to get a spanking!"  Rhys looked at her, turned his butt towards her and spanked himself while giving her an evil stare.

Ingenuity

The boys are a constant source of surprise to me.  They have been playing together a lot more lately.  They will often even do so without fighting.  When they play together they expand beyond the limits of the their toys.

They destroy rooms, occupy furniture and rearrange their world.  Rhys has a small trampoline for physical therapy.  It has two elastic straps to hold onto while you work out and some kind of counter, mounted on the side.  The other day they had it turned over so that it was laying on the bouncy part.  They had stacked an impressive pile of toys on it and each had taken one of the straps.  They were pulling it around the house so that they would not have to make extra trips to get all of the toys.  Brilliant!  Not ok with Mama though.  They were forced to put it back.  I failed utterly to get a picture of it.

Yesterday I walked into the family room.  Owyn was watching TV.  A picture is worth a thousand words.

 

Ooowy!

All parents will be familiar with this one.  You are standing in another room.  You hear a crash.  Silence.  You wait for it.  The sound starts.  It begins low, like an ambulance in the distance.  It builds into a wail.  "Mama, Daddy!".  The pitter patter of little feet running towards you.  They show you where they hurt themselves.  They ask you to kiss it.  You do and, magically, they feel better.  "Are you ok now?"  "Yes".  And off they go.

Reading

Rhys read his name this morning.  It is the first thing most kids read, apparently.  We are quite chuffed no matter what.

Swimming

Today we took the boys to the pool.  I have been taking Rhys every Tuesday and Thursday after therapy for the last two months.  Owyn has not been swimming since Rhys' birthday party. 

We arrived and Tracy and I each took a boy to get ready.  I grabbed Rhys since we have our routine down.  Once we were all ready we headed out to the pool.  Rhys marched confidently along but Owyn was not at all sure what was going on.

There is a back story here too.  Yesterday, Saturday, I took Owyn along to Rhys' swim lesson, for the first time.  Tracy had a Dr appointment so it was boys day out.  Owyn loved the pool and desperately, desperately wanted to swim.  He was devastated when we left without him getting the opportunity.  I promised him that we would go to the pool today.  Two year olds do not hold promises for tomorrow in high regard.  He was not impressed.

When we got to the pool Rhys marched right in with his goggles and his weighted rings.  The rings sink to the bottom but stand vertically so that they are easy for small boys to grab.  Owyn was not at all sure that he wanted to be alone in the pool, though he wanted to be in water.  He was glued to me like a Limpet.

Mama and Rhys played and swam.  Rhys got to show off all of the skills he has been developing, and which Mama has not seen in action yet.  I just concentrated on getting Owyn comfortable in the water.  It did not help that the water was cold.  His lips were blue by the time we left.

As Owyn got more at ease I started working with him a little bit more.  I was keeping him close to me, to keep him warm and feeling safe, but I would dunk him under, on the count of three, every couple of minutes.  He was not impressed by this but took it in stride.

Once he was starting to feel pretty good about being there we all moved over to the deeper part of the pool.  Rhys can not touch in this part.  It is "beyond the rope".  To start with I had Owyn in front of me and just walked across the pool.  When I got to the other side I would say, "Ohoh, here comes the wall".  After a couple of times Owyn got in on the game and would warn me when we came to the wall. 

The next step was to give him a choice, when we reached the wall.  I would ask him, "Do you want to go under water or jump off the wall?".  He chose to jump every time.  I showed him how to climb out of the pool on his own.  He got it on the third try.  Once he was up he would look down at me, smile and hold out his hands.  As soon as I grabbed them he would dip one little foot into the water.  I would pull him down and we would go back to the other side.

The longer we played this game the more confident he got.  By the time we were done he was tired enough that he had a hard time pulling himself out, but he was still plugging away at it.  He would actually jump, instead of stepping off.  I would always make sure his head went under when he jumped and he never let it bother him.

Half way through this game Rhys got in on the action too.  He would cling to my back and kick his legs as we crossed.  Kicking is one of his weak points in swim class so we were very pleased that he was doing as well as he was. 

Once we got to the other side he would climb out and jump back in, the same as Owyn.  Since that was going well, no hand holding or anything, I suggested to him that he jump in, turn around and grab the edge.  He missed it the first couple of times but then it clicked for him and he was getting it every time.  Then, sadly, his confidence got the best of him and he started jumping so far out that he was two or three feet from the wall when he came up.  He can not swim that far yet.  My favorite was the trail of bubbles as he headed, slooooowly, to the wall, underwater.  Mama had to rescue him on that one.

We finally pulled the boys out after forty five minutes.  It was a lot of fun and they both learned a lot and did things they had never done before.  Every time I have taken Rhys to the pool he has done something new, but today he did several things and Owyn was off the hook.

We are going to make this part of our Sundays.  The boys loved it and it gave us a good chance to play as a family.

Man the Barricades

I picked up the boys today after work. When I got there, the end of the center that they are usually in was empty. They had some flooding and the kids were all at the other end. The door was shut.

When I walked in I noticed that there were art tables pulled across the entries to two of the classrooms. The art tables were three feet tall and two feet wide with all kinds of stuff in them. They completely blocked the entrances.

The way the center is laid out, you walk in the door and the classrooms are all open. There are two right in front of you, with a wall coming almost all the way to the door. Each has another classroom beyond it, with a wall but no door.

Owyn was to the left, which was not blocked off by the barricades. I walked over to his room and was met by the center director and one of the two male teachers (who are both awesome). The two of them proceeded to fill me in on the day that my eldest had had.

It turns out that the barricades were in place to keep Rhys contained. He had been all over the center. He bit someone on the back of the neck. He ran amok. There was some sort of incident with scissors. They both were talking to me at the same time. Even when they noticed that the other was talking, they couldn't stop, there was so much to tell.

I got Owyn, who was pleased to see me. We went to the other side of the center to get Rhys. We got through the first barricade without challenge but we were stopped at the final wall by a three foot tall gate warden. He pulled the trash can across the small entrance, which had been left in place. He looked at me sternly and said "Rhys has NOT had a good day. He was bad." After passing on his message he allowed us to pass, eying me angrily, as clearly I had failed as a Daddy.

Rhys, of course, was in a great mood. He was happy to see me. They already had his coat on him. They never have the kids coats on them unless they are outside. Hmm. Rhys' teacher came over to talk. He looked frazzled. This dude deals with twenty screaming kids all day long every day and remains cheerful, and he looked frazzled.

We discussed some ideas for reigning in the Terror. I told him about 1-2-3 Magic, which has worked really well for us at home. We let the center borrow the book. Teacher said he had read most of it and would finish it this weekend. As we talked Rhys and Owyn were disassembling a kitchen and phone in a classroom which had been cleaned already.

This morning Tracy took Rhys in for his five year appointment. They had to sit in the waiting room for an hour. No exaggeration. Sit in our waiting room for an hour, what could go wrong? Rhys got five shots. FIVE shots. FIVE.

As much as all of that is made of pure suck, I sure hope that is why he was such a wretched little monster all day. It's good that it is Friday and the center staff has two days to go home, drink and think to themselves, "It couldn't have been that bad, nothing is that bad".