Stuff...

I'm getting to the point where I'm trying to be careful about what I put out into the publicly accessible digital universe about Ben. My blog is not currently passworded, so I've tried to be particularly careful here.

It's just that... well, he's going to be NINE this year. He has friends with e-mail accounts and IPod Touches and cell phones ... friends who actually access the internet. Now, most of the ones I know are playing Minecraft or Coolmath or looking up MarioKart Youtube videos. And I don't actually think a 9-year-old would google Ben and stumble onto my blog and find all of his embarrassing baby stories... but it's not out of the realm of possibility in the near future. Kids can be pretty cruel.

So I'm not sure how to continue documenting the things I want to document... I tell a lot of funny Ben stories on FB, but they are only open those I choose, a relatively small list of people.

Maybe the answer is to go back to the google sign-in. I don't know. Have to give it some thought.  Any other parents of kids this age pondering this?

In other news...

Simon has some kind of sore throat bug. I am a mean mommy and sent him to school Thursday and Friday anyway since he didn't have a fever. But Friday, he also had a headache, so I told him to go and I'd pick him up at 12:15 after Jonathan's school was over. I would have skipped Jonathan's class if I thought Simon was really all that sick, but once he had some Motrin and the headache ebbed, he was bounding all over the house, so off he went. He was actually fine when I went at 12:15 to get him and I asked if he wanted to stay... but what kid in their right mind is going to take that option? (except for me, because apparently I was the only crazy kid to like school that much!)  He was happily eating pizza in the cafeteria... so fun to see him doing his thing there. :) He's super cute at school!

Later at parent pickup for Ben, I found out from the teacher that one of his little friends was out sick with a stomach bug. I REALLY hope that passes us over. Hoping the three-day weekend will be enough time to let that one fizzle out from the class virus pool.

Also at pickup, Ben emerged for the third day in a row without his heavy coat. I marched him back down the hall to his locker to retrieve it and figured while I was there I would dig through and see what else I could find. While I was standing there, in shock and aghast, at all the missing items that suddenly appeared before my eyes, his reading teacher, who had been standing a little ways down the hall talking to another teacher, came running up to me. "I'm glad I found you! I wanted to let you know that Ben and I did a little cleanout of his folders and desk today. We found his reading calendar!"

"Really?" I replied? He brought that to school two weeks ago!

"Well... it never made it to me. We found it in the science folder. Strange! We found a bunch of other things we'd been missing too... OH and here are the books from the Christmas book exchange, even the one you sent in. (it was still wrapped). We also found a couple birthday invitations."

As she continued with the laundry list of things they had come across, I reached down and pulled a pile of gloves out of the bottom of the locker... FIVE pairs of gloves to be exact. Also his winter coat, another jacket I had not realized was missing and some other child's jacket.

Sigh.

She told me she's going to do a weekly shakedown of his folders with him. I thanked her profusely. I don't know what Ben would do this year without the teachers he has watching over him. They have really helped us SO much. I can organize him and make him checklists all I want on my end, but if there is no one on the other end to help him out, it's pointless.

Things have gone a bit more haywire than usual this past week with his homeroom teacher (who is also his math/science/social studies teacher) being out on medical leave.  She had taken him on as a bit of a special project and we had a great system going. The longterm sub, while wonderful in that she seems to be inspecting his backpack every afternoon because he is suddenly coming home with all the books he needs... doesn't seem to be as on top of the other details like his folders.... argh....

Somehow though, in the midst of this organizational chaos, and with his absolute hatred of all things school-related, Ben is  managing to get As in all of his classes, at least last time I heard.  I'm not really sure how this is possible, but we'll take it.  He's a puzzle, for sure!

And in still other news, preschool registration for next year is this coming week. Hard to believe my BABY will be going to 3s preschool in the fall. That's wacky. Especially when I consider that that was Ben's first year there and at that point, I had just had Simon and Jonathan was another three years away from even existing. It's actually kind of consoling to me that he'll probably spend an extra year at preschool... I'm not ready to be that close leaving that place yet!

Oh and one more thing! The reading specialist came up to me at pickup Wednesday to tell me she had been in Simon's class Dibeling kids that day and that he blew her away. This was the first time she had done the nonsense word part of the test and she told him he only had to give her the letter sounds for the nonsense words, but that he just went down the list and sounded them all out! Go Simon! I told her that was great to hear because he doesn't always let me know what knows and that I still had a hard time figuring out how his reading was coming along. I will say though, that at the advice of my friend whose son is also in the class, (who she thinks the teacher has kicked the reading lessons up a notch because her son has really taken off) I pulled out the Bob books and sure enough, he could read them relatively well all of a sudden! Love this stage... love love love! So proud of him!

Anyway, so there's a post! A nice substantial one too! ;) Happy weekend!