Easter 2014....

We kicked off Easter with our traditional Good Friday dinner and egg hunt at Grandmom and Poppy's house.


The picture of the boys turned out fabulously, as usual...

After J's front yard hunt, the big boys had a hunt out back where they had to find special eggs that contained the combination to safe!  Aunt Debbie is awesome. ;)

This is Simon telling my mom that he just hasn't found the right egg.... 

They eventually found their way to some pretty cool loot!

Here is J's egghunt book Aunt Debbie made for him. All the boys have one from when they were little. Well, actually, Ben has two. Shhh....

Here's our "before church" shot.... not too bad this year!

After church, we went to Nanee and Pap's house for their egg hunt. 

 Here, J was ticked because Simon took an egg he saw.... ay ay ay....

Simon counting his eggs....

Found one!

The boys and two of their cousins after the hunt.  Ben got to hold the new one. :) He was so excited. (this is just a bad picture of him... but I promise, he was psyched!)

This is right after Ben lost a molar to a tootsie roll. LOL!

SImon didn't lose any teeth, but smiled anyway... ;)

All in all Easter was busy, but wonderful. We also went to a birthday party in there on Saturday for our niece who turned three. Crazy weekend! The kids love being with their cousins though, so it was the good kind of chaos. :)

Happy Easter!

Easter Post will Go Here!

:)

Easter Bonnet Parade....

Third time around for the Easter Bonnet parade. Actually, might be only the second.... because I think I remember Simon was sick for his. He was ALWAYS sick when he was three. He even missed the last day of school that year.

Anyway, we threw together an Easter hat at the last minute last night. I actually assumed Jonathan wouldn't even wear it. He wanted nothing to do with it last night. But he surprised me and wore it for the duration of the little parade.

TOO cute. :)

Science Fair....

The much dreaded science fair was last night. Ben was in SUCH a bad mood because, earlier in the day, they had displayed their projects for the 3rd grade. (Third grade walks through to see them because they will have to do it next year. )

Ben said one of the kids told him his project "sucked". Apparently the same kid also told Ben's friend Tommy HIS project "sucked".  Lovely. Lovely child you are raising there, mom, whoever you are.

Anyway, so Ben came home dejected and annoyed at the whole thing. After much reassurance that the kid in question is a probably a less than intelligent creature with low self esteem, (and also the kind of kid we are trying to avoid a high concentration of in our hunt for a middle school), we headed back to school for the actual fair, along with all the other 4th and 5th graders and their parents.

AY ay ay. So many people.

Mercifully, it only lasted an hour and we just wandered around to see the various projects and hear the kids' little schpeals about them. Some were awesome. Some were hilarious. (I'm thinking of the kid who did one on whether healthy stink bugs stink more or not)  Ben, who hadn't cared much about the project at all, suddenly declared he wanted to win 2nd or 3rd place. (1st place has to go to the county competition, which he definitely did NOT want)  He did not win, nor did he win honorable mention. I wish I had known he was going to care, I would have helped him choose a more unique idea!  But back when it all started, I could hardly get him to even get involved, much less care about the topic.

Now, I think he's just glad it's over!

He did not want his picture taken. In fact, before I got THESE pictures, he was actually sitting UNDER the table. (sigh)  They had to stand with their project the whole time and he absolutely hated that. (as would I!!)   He was just a mess of anxiety and self-consciousness the entire time. Poor kid....

Monday, Monday....

I am happy to report that the "off"ness Jonathan was having was just a sniffle. He has a runny nose still but was happy and fine all weekend.  YAY!

Simon was fine too.... not sick at all.  Also YAY!

We had a great weekend.... got a little bit of yard/garden work done, swimming lessons, ate out on Saturday and even finally made it back to church on Sunday. The weather was so nice. It's amazing what a little sunshine and warmth can do to lift your mood and get you motivated again.

Onward with the work week....

Dropped Simon off at cello this morning. Getting ready to take the other two to school and go work a library shift.  I love my Mondays! :)

In Limbo....

When I went to pick up Jonathan from preschool this afternoon, his teacher told me he had been a little "off" all day... low-energy, easily frustrated. She said two kids in the class were out sick. One has a stomach bug, the other has a cold/fever thing. She wondered if maybe he was getting sick too. GAHHHHH... I hope not.

I brought him home and he honestly seems completely fine. I took his temperature. We snuggled and watched Super Why, which is what we usually do right after school so he can kind of decompress a little. He said he was hungry and asked for noodles, which he wolfed down in no time flat.

I guess if I had to choose, I'd go with the cough/fever bug. But who knows what, if anything it will turn into. Hoping he was just having an off day for no reason whatsoever. LOL.

Oddly, I was also in Simon's library class today and he seemed SUPER spacey, quiet, and out of it. I asked him if he was feeling okay and he said he was. I hope he's not like that all the time at school.... this was actually the first time I have actually seen him in a class. It was a little disturbing, to be honest!
They had a sub for library and I'm hoping that just threw him off or something.... he's always pretty shy/anxious/quiet in new situations or with new people... so maybe that was it.

I asked his teacher at pickup how he was today and she volunteered that he was, in fact, a little quiet and isn't always like that. She added that the kids in her class are dropping like flies from both the stomach bug and the cough/fever thing.

Sigh. He seemed okay when I picked HIM up too....

Ah well.... all I can do it wait and see!

Oh, in other news, Jonathan's teacher did tell me that he read "Goodnight Moon" to his class today and they all high-fived him. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall for that. So sweet. :)

J-Man....

Just a cute picture of Jonathan from while we were waiting for his playgroup to start yesterday.

Group starts at exactly 1:30, NO earlier... (believe me, we've tried... they quietly freak if we come in even two minutes early) So we do a lot of hanging out in the car.

Funny story, for awhile, their clocks were set five minutes later than the rest of the world, so they would buzz us in and declare us early when we really weren't, so then we'd have to sit in the car until we were late/on time. Thankfully, they have fixed that, so now my car, phone, and their classroom clock are all in the same time zone.  ;) Sheesh.

Despite the time issues, group is awesome. He has made so much progress there and LOVES going. Loves it! The teacher is wonderful with him and actually, though his favorite is the actual teacher, the assistants are great too. He even was completely unfazed yesterday by the main teacher not being there. (she had a meeting, so it was a sub and one of the regular assistants) I was impressed!

I love the little notes they write at the end of every class. This one from Tuesday made me laugh. It's funny... but actually a pretty big deal. This sort of thing is something that, two months ago, would have sent him into a freakout and he might have even hit the other person involved. I heard him initially yell about the animal going down the ramp, but get it together, use his words, and eventually accept it even if he didn't approve. ;) Awesome!

Hello, Cello!

Simon is two weeks into the cello lessons at school and he LOVES it. He saws away on that thing up in his room for an hour at a time only to come back to it an hour later and play some more.  He will play one note over and over again in the rhythm of a song -- "Listen! I'm playing 'Let it Go' from Frozen!!" ;) Cracks me up. 

So far in class, they have only learned pizzicato (plucking the strings), so I am making him practice that too. 

He didn't bat an eye when I told him it was time to go the first week. Up to school we went and I walked him in. He ran right into the unfamiliar classroom with the teacher he didn't really know and sat right down like he had been doing it all year long. LOL! This kind of thing continually surprises me with Simon because his big brother would do no such thing.  I should stop being surprised and just go with it, but I truly may never get used to this difference in my kids. HA!

He came out of the parent pickup line that day with his cello and he was beaming from ear to ear.

Came right home and posed for this picture. 

There was a bit of a mixup with his book, where the teacher thought he gave him one and Simon just assumed that was true and he had lost it (poor kid, how sad that he just assumed that!!). In actuality he never got one. But we have straightened that out now and he is in possession of both cello and book. ;) 

I'm excited for him to learn how to hold the bow and play a couple little songs. They have a recital in June and I think it's going to be adorable. His little class is basically all first graders,  maybe a couple of second graders, which is SO cute. There are two other cellos and the rest violins. :)

If he really likes it, I was thinking of signing him up for lessons over the summer at the music store near our house. So we'll see.... :) Otherwise, school will offer lessons again starting in the fall. 

Will this be his thing? I'm hoping so! :) 

Middle School....

I can't believe we are even at the point to be considering middle school. I wish 6th grade were part of elementary school like it is in so many other places. But, so it goes....

We are working through several options. The first of these is our districted middle school, which is an okay school. The talk amongst the parents is basically that if your child is in the higher level classes, it's great. That was true of my public middle school too, which has near identical demographics.  And yes my GT classes were wonderful.... the problem came in that that you had specials with mixed groups and you still had to deal with riff raff in the hallways. The things I saw and heard in my first year in public school (8th grade) were pretty awful. There were fights in the hallways sometimes. There were people you knew not to make eye contact with. There were 7th graders in my French class who talked about having sex. There were kids in my general music class (which I was in because I came in too late to join chorus) who outright challenged the teacher.  There were days I had no one to eat lunch with and I was always anxious about where I'd sit and if I'd have anyone to sit with.

Ben would go into that school in a better position than I did. Many of his friends will be going there, so he will know PLENTY of people and likely never have the lunchtime situation I did. But I know him well enough to know that the hallway dynamics and other things he will see and hear and possibly deal with will not sit well with him. I envision his anxiety coming back full force. He is already very worried about the transition to middle school as it is.

Option 2 is the other public middle school, which scores significantly better and has a much better all-around reputation. He has friends going there as well, less, but plenty. So I wouldn't feel like I was separating him from everyone he knows.  Problem is that it's not a sure thing whether he could get in. It would have to be via special permission transfer, which might work, might not. And also, we won't know for sure until JUNE of next year.  (Hence why we are also exploring options 3 and 4.) My gut tells me though this is the answer and the fit we are looking for.

Option 3 is a private school that is absolutely perfect convenience-wise. It's five minutes away and the schedule works wonderfully with our current drop off / pick up schedule. We visited and were blown away. Ben probably would have stayed for the day if we had let him. There was LOTS I liked about this school in spite of myself. (didn't want to like it because it has a bit of a reputation for parents with snooty attitudes) I could see where Ben could thrive there and part of me wished we had pursued it before we became entrenched in his current school.  No way would I move him out of JES at this point.... but if we had never started there.... maybe it would have been a possibility.  But, as much as  we all liked the school, there are things that are not so great -- 1) it only goes to 8th grade, so another transition would be coming three years from now... and not like the one from public middle to public high... where friends go with you. It would be all new kids all over again.   2) It's $$.... but we'd be willing to sacrifice to send him there if it were a perfect fit   3) I'm not sure I want to step into that realm of private school parents. Most of them are not my people and I'd feel out of place a lot, I think. Again, would sacrifice my own social comfort if it were a good fit.... but my gut tells me the fit is the other public school.

Option 4:  Private school that goes 6-12th. This one is such a longshot. First and foremost, it would mean Ben would be on a shuttle for an hour every morning and every afternoon. He wouldn't get home until after the little guys. AND I'd have to go right from picking them up all the way into Owings Mills (via Hunt Valley) to pick him up from the shuttle stop. That seems like too much of a stretch right now. Maybe high school.... but right now, that just doesn't feel like something we need to be doing.

Like I said, my gut thinks Option 2. I just hope it works out.... just not sure where to go from here. It's a really tough decision. Plus, we also have to consider Simon coming up behind him.... (Jonathan too, but Simon more immediately....) What's a good fit for Ben may not be a good fit for Simon at all. Also, I'm positive if we had to make our districted middle school work for Ben, we could.... it wouldn't be ideal, but it would be doable. Simon would absolutely, positively, be lost lost lost there. NO way can he go there....  not a chance.

UGH. Parenting is HARD.