Basketball

Jacob is in the middle of basketball season.  He loves it - and unlike soccer (where he simply laughs when the ball happens to come to his feet) he seems to have a sense of where to be and what to do.  He's playing with his old friends from daycare - Kaden and Matt - whose parents are also the coaches.  Kaden's mom is the health sciences professor at UWFox, and so knows what she's doing teaching the kids to play.  I just love to watch because it's incredibly cute.

 Offense

Defense

It's not easy being green....

Graphs happen when your mom is a nerd. 

In addition to celebrating birthdays, we also took Allison to the doctor last week for her annual checkup.  She's grown 3/4 of an inch since June and gained a pound.  It's actually quite the growth spurt for her.  Usually, those are the numbers we see in a year.

However, she's not growing enough (as was evidenced by the vast height discrepancy between her and every other kid at her birthday party.  Why are we concerned?  Well, the average kid would be the blue line, a 50th percentile.  Perhaps you are simply destined to be small.... you would be on the red line.   You're making similar progress but not keeping up.  However, you're not falling behind.  rather than 5 foot 6, you end up as 5 foot 2.

Then there is the green curve.  This is the curve of "not only are your not keeping up - the lag increases the farther we go."  This is the curve of "perhaps you'll end up being 4 foot 6, if that."  

Since Allison started out small (always under 25%, and hanging out near 3-5% for a long time), we weren't sure if we were on the red curve or the green curve.  Sometimes you have a "constitutional growth delay," which is that your body thinks it's 4 years old when really it's 7 year old.  This is not too bad because that means that rather than stopping growth at aged 15 or 16; you might still be growing a little at aged 20.  This gives you a little more time to catch up.

Given that she's been lagging since kindergarten now, there's a pretty good change we're on the green curve.  Not only have we fallen off the chart (there aren't percentage lines that apply anymore), we're barely trending upwards.  (while 3/4 of an inch was great - it should have been about 2-3 inches at her age.)

So, time to investigate, and investigating sounds like not a lot of fun - blood tests (thyroid, hormone), bone scans (density and age), and trips to see the specialists in Madison.  Potentially more decisions about controversial medications.

But sitting in the doctor's office, I thought about how much we measure against things like we do with growth curves.  There's math and reading proficiencies, social skills benchmarks, fine and gross motor skills.  We're always measuring against something.  With Allison and her all-elusive "non-specific developmental delays," we pay more attention to these measurements.  We always hope for the red curve; and sometimes find ourselves on the green.  This is followed by more decisions about when and how to intervene - more therapy, different therapy, will she re-qualify for assistance in school?  And you make all these decisions with no idea what the rest of the curve looks like.  For the scientific mind, there's no control group - no "hey look, this is where we'd be if we hadn't XYZ."  Really there is only one curve, a pink one that's just Allison, and it's full of swirls and loops.

So, we'll investigate this growth delay and see where it take us.  Nowhere but up.... literally.

Turning 9

Allison had her birthday party yesterday (a week late).  Seriously, I think with her birthday (11th), party (18th) and Christmas - she's just going to expect  presents to open on Sundays.

 

She had her party at this swimming lesson place.  They are all dressed up in mermaid tails that they could swim with during the party if they wanted to.

 Michael, Grace, Isabella, Eli, Melanie

Brooke, Allison, Alyssa

I have, of course, become a huge fan of having a party "not at our house."  The kids swam for an hour (private party, so we were the only ones in the pool), then ate pizza, did presents, then had cupcakes.  It was just the right amount of time, plenty of activity, and the kids had fun.  Also, Allison wanted boys and girls this year (plus with Jacob and his friend, we had kids in 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grades) so swimming was nice and gender/age-neutral.

This is Allison on the previous Sunday (her actual birthday) enjoying her birthday cupcake, self-decorated with Oreo frosting.

Will catch up soon

Somewhere there are pictures of Allison's birthday that will be posted.  There may be musing about holiday parties, retention letters, endocrinologists, doggie lymphoma, and all the other things swirling around.  For now - it's the last day of classes for me and I am HAPPIEEE!  Yeah - that's with an "ie" - I combined happy and yippee. 

BTW - my students hate me right now.  They are currently cursing my name as they prepare their final presentations on how the university can actually MAKE money by putting up a windmill (they are dilusional).  They hate deadlines, group projects, presentations, and long papers.  I gave them all of that in one big whopper package.  It's called "Revenge of the College Professor."  Yeah, sure, there's pedegogial reasons, and things they are learning, and applying, and it's just like the "Real World."  The project is assigned at other campuses where the same class is taught and totally vetted by the Powers that Be.  But some students spent the better part of the term texting under their desks and failing to turn in thier homework on time..... coming to class late and asking "Did I miss anything?"  (of course not, the world stops when you aren't here).  So, seeing them actually have to do "work," things that you cannot memorize, cannot copy from one another, and cannot do at the absolute last minute does my heart good.  All the things that I used to curse my own college professors about. 

Of course, the last laugh does come back on me because do you know how long it will take me to grade all that stuff???

A boy in his underwear.

This is the story of how Jacob ended up in his underwear in the car (heading to school) and I finally give up the Mother-of-the-Year goat.  Oh, wait, that happened like in January.  Never mind.

So this morning we got up late, as has been the case  every morning this week because the sun goes down at 3:30pm and comes up again at 9:30am.  Ok, I'm exaggerating (a little).  This week has been a battle to get ready for school.  Clearly the novelty of earning 15 more minutes of video games for getting dressed and out the door has worn off.

Child 1 (who cares not about video games and will dress herself in only velvet dresses if given any choice) was compliant about allowing me to slip on pants (gasp!) and a t-shirt at 7:50am while distracted by TV and sipping a yogurt smoothie (breakfast of champions!). 

Child 2 (who due to the totally unfair forces of nature is required to dress himself in the morning) yelled something to the effect of "these were NOT the underwear I wanted mom - GO GET ME NEW UNDERWEAR."  Well, if there is a sure fire way to make me NOT do something - it's that.  "Um, excuse me, but if you would have asked nicely, I probably would have gotten them for you but since you yelled and demanded, I think my answer is No."

The morning then proceeded like this:
"Mom, you have to get me new underwear!!!"  "No" x 10 - lasting about 5 minutes.
"I DON'T HAVE ENOUGH TIME TO GET DRESSED!" (7:58am, deadline 8:00am)
Me: "How much time do you need?"
"5 minutes" - the irony of the earlier 5 minute fight can be inserted here.
"Ok - 5 minutes, I'll start the timer"
"DON'T START IT NOW - start it at 8:00am"
"Ok."
"No, wait - START IT AT 8:01am."
"No, you said 8:00am, then 8:00am - I'm just doing what you asked."
"AAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH!" x I don't know how long, but the timer was started at 8:00am and the wailing lasted several minutes.
"How much time do I have left?"
"1 minute 49 seconds"
"IT'S NOT ENOUGH TIME!  AAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH"

Me: "We're leaving and you are going in whatever you are wearing."

Allison meanwhile  has put on her coat an says "Mom, this is the best morning ever!!"

OMG.  So I gather up backpacks, supplies, clothes (not including the underwear that was deemed unacceptable - he can wear the same pair today, I don't care) and deposit them in the car.  I return to the house to find Jacob standing at the kitchen door "you forgot these, mom!" and chucks the underwear at me.  Okay.....

So I gather up boy currently in yesterday's underwear only and carry him outside (30 degrees) and deposit him into the car.  Time to go.

This is the point that I begin to take a little pity and we actually sat in the garage while he put his clothes on (new, totally unacceptable original underwear included) and headed off to school.  Allison pipes up again "That was totally awesome." followed by "Mom, Jacob hit me with his glove!"

Yes, happy holidays - TGIF!

Remember learning language?

I don't.  It's like one of the most fundamental elements of our daily lives and I rarely recall picking it up.  When was the last time you used a word incorrectly or spoke a word incorrectly?  (we'll give everyone - myself included - a spelling and grammar pass.)

So I've been helping with Jacob's class by writing out the word wall word cards (a set of index cards that kids get each week with the words they are learning).  There are twenty kids in Jacob's class.  After writing the word "they" twenty times, you begin to wonder why would anyone (who didn't already know) would assume that the "ey" is pronounced as an "A"?  Or Allison's spelling words this week were "oy" sounds, which are sometimes oy - like employ, and sometimes oi like noise.


And it's not just reading but listening too, especially when your parents tend to use long words - like "recommended."  This one came up in the car last night when Jacob asked if it was impossible to swim across Little Lake Butte Des Morts ("b' you da more" - speaking of impossible pronunciation) and I said that it was not impossible but probably not recommended. 

Jacob - bless him - turns around and tries to use it in a sentence: Cartwheels are not recommended, that's why you have to practice.

Ah.... "not impossible" interpreted as "difficult."  More explanation into the definition of the word "recommended."  Jacob's revised sentence: Cartwheels are not easy, that's why you have to practice.  Ok - it doesn't use the word "recommended" but we'll go with it anyway.

Earlier in the day, we spend a long time with the more difficult concept of "extended family."  That was a long one because language is also nuanced (a word that we'll probably have to define sometime too).  BTW - the kids were sad to learn that Lauri's sisters and their kids were not going to be in Springfield for Christmas.  On a different note - Allison thought that Mackenzie would be a great candidate for president one day (that discussion happened later in the night as I was explaining why there had been no female presidents yet and we couldn't vote for a female president this time because the only one running was, well... crazy - so we were trying to think of good women who could be president).

In addition to the subtle points of definitions - there is the overwhelming challenge of hearing a word once and then trying to repeat it.  This offers some of the most amusing (from our perspective) elements of learning language, but we have to remind ourselves sometimes not to laugh.  For example, Jacob took to calling Oklahoma the "Alcohol State" (likely derived from Oklahoma State football).  How do you not chuckle at that?

Not a happily drugged girl

Allison had a cavity (actually two, with a few smaller "areas of interest.")  They are all in baby teeth, but at the rate she's losing baby teeth, the dentist figured she'd have these until she was about 14.  We're actually still waiting for the 6-yr molars to appear.

So, we decided to fill the cavities.  This required a numbing, which required a needle, which required sedation.  So, we picked up a tablet of valium at Walgreen's yesterday and gave it to her at 7am this morning. 

Since her appointment was at 8am, I dropped Jacob off at Allison's friend Melanie's house (right by the dentist) so that he could ride to school with her.  Apparently the joy of a day off of school vegging on the couch watching TV was not sufficient to balance the injustice of having your brother get to hang out with your friend for 10 minutes before school. 

Allison was in the backseat just wailing about how much she misses Melanie and why can't SHE go to Melanie's before school.

"It's not FAIR MOM!"
"She's MY friend!"
"I want to see Melanie!"
"I would call her but I don't even know her PHONE NUMBER!!  I only know MY phone number!!  AHHHHHHHHH!"

She was still wailing when we arrived at the dentist's office, much to the chagrin of the other parents in the waiting area.  Upset about the dentist.... nah.  Upset that little brother gets to ride with friend to school while she spends the WHOLE DAY at home.