Update Time....

...before too much more time passes.

Jonathan:
Potty training is chugging along! Haha... get it? TRAINing... chug... yeah, anyway. He's getting it. Tells us when he needs to pee pee now, unless he's distracted. Yeah, we're in THAT zone. I don't let him go downstairs to play anymore unless he has recently gone because it's almost always a recipe for wet pants. And then when I call downstairs to ask him if he needs to go, he freaks out and yells "No! Don't come down here!" It's his tell. ;)  LOL!  Truly though, never thought we'd even be THIS far in the process at this point, so I'm THRILLED. He has expressed a teeny bit of interest in doing the more complicated potty process too, and, although I have encouraged, we are not delving into that until #1 is down pat.

He MAY even be wearing big boy underwear to school today for the first time. I am almost positive there will be at least ONE accident, because he still needs so many reminders. But I think it will help to be 100% consistent with the underwear. He has been wearing a PullUp to school up until now and now that's he really getting it, I'm thinking that's kind of confusing.

**update** Nope. No underwears today. He was all off kilter this morning and upset about school again, plus he peed his pants on the way out the door, so I made the call to just bag it.  Maybe next week. :)

Also, today is picture day. :) Unrelated to the potty thing, but I'm pretty excited for his first school pictures. (he wouldn't do it last year)


Simon:
His teacher told me he has jumped up several reading levels just since the start of school! He also knows all of his sight words (though he will, apparently, only share this knowledge when she makes him do it one on one... this is an issue) She has some concerns about his handwriting/fine motor and is sending him back to the school OT to have her check things out. But when I asked about reading, she said things are great! She also said he's really doing well in math and really, really "gets" math. So that's pretty neat. He has some things we need to work on but that's a whole other post. Wanted to share the really neat, positive things for now. :)

Ben:
All around good, easy, wonderful, confident right now.

Oh, but here's a funny story...  so last night, he was doing his math homework. He got a few problems in and I noticed he was looking frustrated, near tears even. They are doing double digit multiplication. I thought this was a little odd because he has truly never struggled with math!  So I asked him if he needed help and he started to cry, "I just don't get this!! I'm lost!!!"  I asked him if he had been lost in class too and he said yes. Yikes.  So I looked at his paper and there were only answers (wrong ones) and no work.

"Where's the work?" I asked.

"I used mental math." was his reply.

Seriously? Mental math for double digit multiplication? I looked at the problems and tried to do one in my head and my head almost exploded.

Now, I don't know if mental math is what they were SUPPOSED to use? (you never know if Ben quite heard all the directions accurately) But it clearly wasn't working. So I showed him how I do double digit multiplication. I have NO idea if it's how they teach it now (probably not because everything now involves rounding and grouping and mental math and drawing ridiculously complicated pictures of cubes but whatever.)

So I showed him ... he watched a couple times and I could see things were clicking... and he had a eureka moment and proceeded to do all twenty or so problems in the span of about ten minutes the way I showed him and got them all right.  I have to wonder how they teach it if not this way... it's so simple. (and I can say that because I am a math idiot) Was he just not paying attention because he thought he could do it in his head? I may never know... but I'm sure glad I noticed he was struggling!

Now, I think it bears repeating that I am a MATH IDIOT.... Another couple years and Ben's math assignments will truly be beyond the scope of what I can help with. So I was pretty happy I was still able to come to the rescue this time. I just hope his teacher doesn't get annoyed I showed him my way. Honestly, does it matter how you do it as long as you get the right answer?

I guess we'll see!

Tom and I had a dating anniversary yesterday. We have officially been together longer than we haven't. That's kind of fun. No time to celebrate yesterday. Maybe this weekend. :)