Growing up fast

It has been a while since I last posted.  Most of the little things that the boys learn now I end up putting straight into a facebook status update and never get around to writing about the bigger picture.

Bevan is 4 now.  He had a party at playcentre and a lego theme for his invitations, cake and games.

He quite likes lego and I’ve been pleased with how he follows the instructions for new sets and can find the correct pieces and place them correctly.  He does also build things from his imagination sometimes too.

He is now an “Eagle” at his preschool, which is the term for the four year olds.  They do some work each day seperately from the younger children.  He had a special Montessori celebration to mark turning four.  I was so pleased to be able to come and watch.  The child holds a globe and walks in a large circle around another child holding a candle – one orbit for every year alive.

He is at his preschool 3 days a week and then he comes with Christopher and I to playcentres on the other 2 days.  He isn’t actually at our regular centre anymore as I’m off at quite a few centres now helping with the supervision.  Both children seem well-adapted to the variety of centres.

We’ve still been having problems with Bevans toiletting although it gets a little better over time.  We’re seeing a pediatrician at the hospital about it.  I just hope he is reliable within the next 10 months before school starts.  We’ve been given a bill of health for his speech and hearing which is a relief.  I will still keep listening out for any developing issues though, as his grommets grew out and so the glue-ear problem could reoccur.  He had a four year old check with the plunket b4 school team and he did well for them (and behaved!) and built the tower, named the colours, did the counting, balanced on one leg… His eye-sight test went fine too.

He’s signed up for nursery rugby next month.  Michael is going to take him.  He is also doing Suzuki violin, but I’m finding it challenging as he gets shy in the lessons and stops participating.  He certainly thinks it is cool though but you can’t tell that in class when he isn’t even watching.

We think that “Our Lady of the Rosary” is the school we will enrol him in.  It is a Catholic full primary school and it is around the corner from Shine  so that will make it an easier location for pick-ups and drop-offs for Bevan and Christopher, not really walking distance though.  It is a nice size – about 250 students and playing fields, access to a hall and a nice library.  We went and had a tour with the principal and I was happy with it. We aren’t sure if any of Bevans friends will be attending though, so that would be a shame.  The ERO report is here.  Of course I’ll wonder if we are making the right decision – there are some other schools closer and other schools with good reputations that he could attend.  Christopher will naturally be following along after 2 years so it has to suit both of them.

His physical skills are coming along.  He can ride a bike with no training wheels now and he has gone up a bike size.  He rode a 12 km fun-ride on a trailer bike behind Michael last week – in the rain – and they came first!  Perhaps he could still use a bit of help with things like swimming, catching/kicking, and dangling.  He hasn’t had formal swimming lessons and was a bit scared for a year or so.  He enjoys the pool now but just mostly splashes around.  His pen grip for writing is pretty good and he can write his name partially – the EVA bit looks good but the B and N aren’t really readable.  He can read some small things, recognise a few words by sight such as the names of the people in his family), he recognises and can name most letters.  He is pretty whizzy on the computer and loves to log on to my laptop and find the videos I’ve saved from my cell-phone – revisiting those experiences again and again is a favourite activity.

Whew – that is probably enough about Bevan for now!  Christopher is a wonderful 2 year old now.

He had a racing car birthday.  Michael drew a lightning mcqueen mural with chalk on the garage door and I decorated with chequered flag bunting and made a car cake and themed hand-sewn goodie bags.  It was a lovely party – the kids belted up and down the racetrack aka the driveway on their bikes/trikes/cars/scooters. 

His speech is coming along beautifully.  He has lots of words and can put together some short sentances.  The contrast is quite marked between how Bevan was at this age( with glue ear) and how Christopher is. 

He is showing some interest in toilet training and with encouragement will sometimes sit on the toilet and do a wee.  He seems to be reasonably in control and aware of his bodily motions.  Hopefully that means he’ll be out of nappies in the not too distant future.

He enjoys playing with Bevan.  His other interests are trains, Maisy mouse, riding his ride-on, swinging, duplo, play kitchen, play shops.  He doesn’t peddle a trike yet – I’ve thought for months that he was on the cusp of learning it.

He is not very keen on being put down for a day nap now.  I can usually only get one from him if he falls asleep in the car and then transfers to his cot.  And at night time he is sometimes climbing out of his cot and turning the light on and then crying.  He is going through quite an aggressive two-year old stage too, where he will push other children around – I’m trying to keep my eyes on it but it can be tricky if I am supervising all the children at playcentre for example.  He’s also impossible these days to take to the supermarket as he will escape the trolley seat and try and run away.

I’m hoping to enroll him to Shine Montessori preschool next year on a full-time basis so that I may start working, but it will depend on job availability I suppose.  He is a bit jealous of Bevan being at Shine and he often asks if he can play there with Bevan.

poo progress

Bevan is making some progress with his toileting. He is now able to keep dry as long as he is taken regularly to the toilet.  The wee accidents only really happen when he is playing and forgets all about his bladder.

He is able to do some poo in the toilet when he chooses to.  He is pretty impatient on the toilet but he is sometimes able to get a small amount out.  I’m really happy that he is getting better control and understanding of his muscles in his bottom. 

It is slow progress but it certainly seems to be improving and I’m not stressing anymore that we’ll have a 5 year old I have to home-school !

Growing reading skills

Bevan is improving his prereading skills. He spells his own name out loud and can type it and can put it together with alphabet fridge magnets.  He can do the same with the word “lego”, I guess because he really enjoys playing with lego and has had lots of exposure to lego recently as we’ve been buying some and visiting the toy shop.  He recognises a few other words too such as “toy” and “Chaucey” and “no”.

He recognises most letters.  He hasn’t been hand writing them but he does have a new toy which might help him to gain confidence with it, it’s a leap pad scribble and write thingy and letter shapes light up on it for children to trace over with a stylus.

Recently I’ve noticed that Christopher seems to be preferring his left hand for drawing, so I think he may be left-handed and Bevan right-handed.

Kits spoken words

kit, words spoken at 20 months

hello
Mum
stop
off
That one
cat
dog
car
ball
quack/duck
yuck
stuck
no
bottle
ee ee ee (monkey noise)
dog
frog
all gone
cook
hot
socks
shoes
roar (lion/bear sound)
wow
teddy
"mwah" (kiss)

(edited because I thought of a few extras)

Little boy

Christopher is growing up fast.  He isn’t getting much bigger, but he is maturing. He is 2 inches shorter and 3 kg lighter than his big brother was at the same age – quite a difference!  On the plus side we are getting good wear out of the clothes and he is light to carry around.  He seems in some ways like a baby and in other ways like a little boy.

He is getting his upper canine teeth coming through now and has 14 teeth.  He is relying a lot on a dummy, but I’m not too concerned about it – at least he isn’t doing the finger sucking that Bevan does which will be (eventually) a much harder habit to break.

His speech is coming along. He has been trying very hard to say Cocoa pops – sounds a bit like cok-coc, but it is clear what his meaning is by the way he tries to get the Cocoa pops out of the cupboard at the same time.  Otherwise, Bubble and Car seem to be favourite words.

He has some fantastic facial expressions for when he is grumpy. He screws his face up and grabs for something to throw on the floor to show his unhappiness.

He’s just been getting over a cold.  He’s been slightly more wakeful at night and out of synch with his daytime routine because of it.

Bevans progress at Shine

Bevan has been doing well at his preschool. On Wednesday I went in for a Parent Interview.  They seem to understand his strengths, weaknesses and interests the same way I do, so that was reassuring.

I was surprised to see some recent examples of his artwork that seem to be of a much better quality than his usual output.  It seems that when he is asked to draw something in particular he takes the time to do a good job of it.  Whereas if he is given paper and pencils he just scribbles his drawings and they don’t resemble much.

You should be able to see how detailed his Sun picture is though. He has drawn an oval with rays all around and two eyes, a nose and a mouth.  The other works are a flower, a metal insert work, a straight lines practice piece, and a triangle cut out practice piece.

He recently bought home another rainbow picture. This one was a steeply arched rainbow with A DOOR HANDLE. He said it was a rainbow door.  I was so curious what could be on the other side of the door.  He’s also been saying to me that he is drawing dolphins.  I guess the Dolphin interest must have come from Shine as  haven’t shown him anything with Dolphins in it.

overdue updates

It’s been a while since I last posted.  Somehow I don’t get around to mentioning all those little things that the boys are doing because it just seems like they are consolidating their learning rather than doing something new.

Christopher has more words now.  He does some parroting of words if you say something he thinks is interesting to say. His more frequent words are Hot, Car, Cat, Stuck, All gone.  I think he probably says quite a few other things too, and makes himself known with his body language – so sometimes it is hard to tell if he actually said something or whether I’m attributing it to him because he said "*something* whilst acting appropriately.  He quite clearly copied me saying Frog the other day, and that was nice to hear that beautiful G sounded out.

Bevans speech is giving his speech therapist no worries.  He went through the 3 1/2 year old test booklet the other week and he did fine.  His F’s are said like B’s quite often but not always eg bish for fish.  She asked him to describe what was happening in some pictures and his use of pronouns wasn’t fantastic, and neither were his verbs, for example he said “its” instead of “his” and that sort of thing, although not every time.  He also said “doing” a lot instead of being a bit more descriptive like “the cat is doing the mouse”, rather than “the cat is chasing the mouse”.  I expect he knows the right things to say, but that on that day he wasn’t really minding about getting it right.

We’ve been sorting out Bevans poo problem lately. We’ve been so stressed over Bevans failure to poo toilet train. I went to a different doctor and he arranged to have an x-ray done, and it turns out that Bevan has a constipated, impacted poo.  The symptoms he had of mushy poo are actually the new poos oozing out around the blockage. This could have been a long-term problem – maybe even some of the “toddler diarreah” could have been this same problem.  I guess I’ll never know.  I’m relieved to have a diagnosis, but a bit cross that it took to now to figure it out.  Had we known earlier then we wouldn’t have nagged and cajoled Bevan to try and toilet – we had so many arguments where we were begging him to try to push out a tiny poo, and then disappointments when the poo came shortly later in his pants.  The poo problem will mean that he has no control over when poo escapes and also gets no signals from his body about needing to go.  Probably didn’t need to go through that 3 weeks no-dairy trial the doctor recommended either!

Anyway… so we are using medication to try and get the blockage cleared up. Hopefully that’ll work soon.  Then we have a while of medication to keep the system moving quickly so that the muscles can re-tighten and control can come back.

The boys have been busy learning new skills.  Bevan and I have been using Lego’s and he is so clever with following the building instructions methodically and matching the positioning of pieces correctly.  He’s learning size, shape and colour discrimination, fine motor skills, counting to get the right positions, and then he is using his imagination to play with the finished toys.  He is also pretty good at creating his own models and telling me that it is a plane or a boat or whatever.

Christopher can go up and down steps upright when I hold his hand, so no more wet knees from crawling on stairs.  He still likes trains, duplo, teddies, dolls prams.  (Both boys like teddies now actually – pretending to feed them, giving them shoulder rides etc..)  He is quite keen on small babies too – he is a bit rough though, so I have to watch him to prevent poked eyes.  His fine motor skills are coming along really well. We have a toy with a set of toy keys and he can do the unlocking and locking.  Both boys like to do play cooking and also be involved in real cooking.

I often find now that Bevan goes and raids the pantry and then shares the spoils with Christopher.  At least when he is naughty he is being considerate!

There is plenty more I could say, but I’ll leave that for next time.

1 August 2010.

Artwork

Bevan did this picture at Shine a couple of weeks ago.  I was amazed at the level of detail he put into the people and how he had actually drawn a scene.  The teacher talked it through for me and explained how they get these great results from their bible programme art stuff because they talk about a topic for the drawing and the 4 year old sit in with the 3 year olds.

My handsome Bevan

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Isn’t Bevan a cutie?  These photos were taken by a very talented photographer who did school pictures at Bevan’s preschool.  

Reading

Bevan has been working on some reading skills.  He is using a website called www.readingeggs.com , which is Australian based and does Phonics and some sight words with lots of guided activities.  He enjoys it, I think he thinks it is a game and so he often asks to play.  He does sound proud of himself when he reads something like “I am a cat”.

Often he’ll be sloppy and answer wrongly , but some skill and recognition will be sinking in anyway.

He is wanting to use the computer so often now that I am getting an old one fixed up for him to use so that we don’t have to share one with him.   He is quite savvy with the pc, and knows how to mouse.  He can even type out his name in lower case, spelt correctly, with no help from me.  He hasn’t tried to hand write his name yet.