Lego Club….

Lego Club yesterday for Simon for the first time in WEEKS thanks to snow and ice.

I love Lego Club and HE loves Lego Club… but, he's kind of a show-off and I have to figure out how to rein him in just a little. The whole time the dad who teaches the Scratch part is talking, Simon will interrupt him with things like, "Like this? I made a project that does THIS." or "I already know how to do that!" OMG. It's embarrassing. I have to hover over him in fear of what's going to come out of his mouth.

(In his defense, he does usually already know how to do it as they are working on basics right now and he spends so much time fiddling with it, that he has figured out almost all of that stuff on his own.)

It's a fine line between encouraging your kids at something they truly have a knack for and turning them into prideful, obnoxious little monsters.  We ran into this with Ben and swimming a little bit too with some braggy-ness and sore loser, poor winner behavior, though I think we have finally gotten to the point where he mostly understands how to be both respectful, gracious, and a good sport at meets.

In addition to the fact that humility and tact is a learning curve for pretty much ALL kids, it REALLY doesn't help that my kids don't pick up on social cues easily. So when Simon interrupts the teacher and says, "I can already do that, it's easy!" I say, "Simon! Shh! That's really rude!", he looks at and both thinks and SAYS out loud," "WHAT? Is IS so easy!"

(facepalm)

Kids. Who knew the easy part was actually when they were non-sleeping newborns? No one tells you this!

Busy Weekend....

Our weekends just get busier and busier. Even with one activity per kid at the moment (and not really, because Jonathan doesn't have anything yet!), it feels like we just run from one thing to another.  Such is life during these years, I suppose.

Anyway, so Saturday started off with a basketball game for Ben. Simon and Jonathan save up screen time for this and spend the entire game playing in the corner with their devices.

It was a great game! Ben was starting at a new position and coaches Tom, Clayton, and Pap had a new strategy for the team.  It resulted in our first win of the season and Ben scored three baskets! (the most ever in a game for him!) He was on cloud nine!

See the coach behind Ben?  He's actually a major league pitcher who currently plays for the Pirates. (that's his son with him, A, who was in Ben's class at JES)  Anyway...so here's the funny thing about this. He's a pretty competitive guy, right? You'd think? Pro baseball player and all....? He spent part of the game yelling in Tom's direction, "It's JUST A GAME!!! Settle down!" LOL. In fairness, Tom is an intense coach.... it's NEVER just a game. He is SO LOUD. (I sometimes cringe on the bench and pretend I don't know him)  So the major league pitcher is less competitive in rec basketball than my husband. Holy cow.  That's scary.  Who knew?

I didn't notice the woman holding her ears in this photo of the final score until I uploaded the picture. I had to laugh... because there is a decent chance she is holding her ears because of Tom's aforementioned loudness. (Tom is black sweatshirt, left) LOL!

Anyway, so that started the weekend off nicely. :) After that, Tom reminded me there was a big football game on. (I assumed it was Sunday, not Saturday, because I pay zero attention to these things) He hates watching the big ones alone, which I understand....  but I was SO tired and had kind of a long to do list. I rallied though and went to the grocery store for dinner ingredients.... so he texted his younger brother.... called his parents... and I texted my other sister-in-law. (trying to give her a fighting chance at her husband NOT dropping what he was doing around the house. LOL)    Two out of three came and, much to Ben's excitement (our little house extravert), we had a house full of people for the game.  It went ok... everyone enjoyed dinner and dessert and Jonathan didn't have too many tussles with his cousin. So I really can't complain.   But I am glad football season is finally over for the Ravens.  The constant football stuff grates on my nerves. (not the having people over…  just constantly hearing about football in general)

Sunday, we headed off to church, then out to lunch. Home for some chores and, you guessed it... more football. (so much football this weekend.... gahhhhhhhhh)

I helped Simon out with his cello practice and he cooperated and did really well! He's learning to read the music a little and can play all three pieces reasonably well that they are working on right now. (two are just pizzicato... which I really hope they move on from soon!) We also worked on piano. He gets really impatient with this, so I'm trying to take it slowly. But he can find middle C now, and all the other Cs on the keyboard, and can play the first two basic pieces in the little piano book I got.  I feel like he's starting to get a little confidence with it, but it's very challenging to overcome his resistance to anything that requires effort. It can be done... (as I have seen with cello) but it has to be carefully and slowly or he gets frustrated.  He definitely has an aptitude for this, so I am determined to keep it up and build on it a little bit at at time.

At 5:00, Simon had his first Lego League meeting. We were invited by another mom, but it's this super small, new little group and she had to get approval from the mom who runs it. She said it was okay for us to join and it sounded right up Simon's alley. They spend the first 20 minutes learning Scratch programming and the rest of the time building Legos with a theme/challenge. One of the dads is a programmer and teaches the Scratch part, and the mom who runs it does the Lego part.

The whole time the dad was talking and explaining what they could do with Scratch, Simon could barely even stay in his chair, he was so excited. He finally blurted out, "I can make a GAME with this!!! Like MINECRAFT!!!"

It was really neat to see him among kids who are like him.... none of them really play sports... they were all SUPER into this programming thing and just wanted to talk about Minecraft and Terraria (which is a game Simon doesn't even know about yet!) During the Lego building part, they all got a little off track, but all in the same way... building robots and armies. The mom let it go because they were having so much fun.

I realized that I think this is the first time ever I have seen Simon really fit in with a group....

To say he loved it would be an understatement. He came home and spent the rest of the evening working on Scratch and basically had it all figured out by the time he went to bed.

Came home from that.... dinner. Simon played Scratch the rest of the evening and Jonathan joined in. (we are seriously needing another laptop around here these days.... I hate sharing my computer!!) Ben happily did some homework he had left.

And this morning we have a delay (and possible closure) for ice! YAY! (no, seriouslly YAY! I am still in jammies!) ;)