Week 136

Thanksgiving.

This was another good week for Ryan.  Actually, it was an Outstanding Week for Ryan.  He only had school on Monday and Tuesday and for both days he came home with Outstanding certificates.  We could not have been happier with Ryan at school and I am glad to see that his teachers recognize his effort.

On Wednesday we had Aunt Anne, Uncle Chris, Megan, and Kate come in from Pittsburgh, PA as well as Grandma.  We are not going to see the Pittsburgh crew for Christmas so we exchanged presents on this trip.  One of the presents Ryan received was a small Cars Lego set.  He sat down and put the entire set together with very little help.  He sat down at the kitchen table and followed the directions.  He did a great job putting the set together.

On Thanksgiving day, we packed up and went to Nonna and Papa's house.  All the cousins had a great time playing together.  Ryan even participated in a small performance for all the adults in his Thanksgiving hat.

On Saturday, we had a baby shower to attend at Aunt Marg and Uncle Jim's house.  Phil's cousin is pregnant and instead of a traditional baby shower they decided to make it an after Thanksgiving family gathering.   Our only reservation about going to the party was the dogs.  They have two dogs.  Aunt Marg texted Dawn pictures of the dogs and we had been preparing Ryan for them.  For those that have forgotten, Ryan is afraid of dogs and wants to know when we go to a new house if they have a dog.  Aunt Marg and Uncle Jim kept the dogs outside and Ryan even ventured outside to throw the dog toys to the dogs.  Granted, he stayed behind the invisible fence so the dogs could not get to him but he did have fun throwing the toys to the dogs.  They also had a room set aside for all the kids to play in and both Ryan and Julia spent most of the time in this room playing.  During this party we learned that Ryan has a new skill.  He learned how to open a soda can and when he was finished he crushed it with one hand!  He told me that when you finish a can you had to crush it!  When I asked him where he learned that from he told me TV.  Not to be left out, Ryan shared his new found knowledge with his sister who was very happy to learn how to open a soda can.

Jack turned four months this week!

On Sunday, we decided to get a jump on decorating for the Christmas season.  The kids were very excited to help decorate the Barbie tree.  Dawn has been collecting Barbie ornaments for years and now has enough to fill a whole tree.  We also welcomed back our Elf on the Shelf, Andy (named after Andy from Toy Story).  We have caught Ryan going up and talking to Andy quietly about what he wants for Christmas.  It is very cute.  They are all very excited for the Christmas season!

PC

Week 135- Our Little Volunteer

This was another busy week for Ryan.  On Thursday we had his teacher conference to go over his first report card.  His teachers had really great things to say about him and his love of learning.  They said that he is always excited to learn and always ready to speak in class.  What they did not mention was the comment that they placed on his report card...he has difficulty handling conflict.  This is something that we worry about him at home.  He has a difficult time understanding that not everyone is going to listen to him and follow his instructions.  This was demonstrated this week with yet another bus incident.  Another boy was talking about guns on the bus.  Ryan told him to stop talking about it and the other boy refused.  They got into an argument and Ryan slapped the other boy across the face.  The bus driver did not see the incident but another boy and Julia saw what happened and they told us.  We made him apologize the next day and we never heard anything about the incident again.  But this is something that we have to be mindful as he gets older.  The only other area of concern that they pointed out was his reading. His reading level is below grade level.  However, they showed us that it is just below where he needs to be so we are not worried.  He went from a non-reader last year to someone that loves to read.  At the end of the conference they gave us his first unit test in Social Studies and he got a 100%.  Overall we are pleased and he has made great progress with the full day of first grade.  His teachers are great and really seem to understand Ryan.

On Friday I was able to witness how far Ryan has come in his gymnastics.  The owner of the gym was working with a small group from his class on the high balance beam.  Ryan was able to climb up, balance himself on the bar and attempt to catch a ball and throw it back to owner.  It took him a few tries to keep his balance but he did not give up.  After three tries, he was able to complete the task several times until the owner told him to get down and let someone else give it a try.  The old Ryan would have had a difficult time getting up on the beam, balancing, and would have given up after the first fall.  He did a great job and really seems to enjoy the experience.

This past Saturday was a very busy day.  After his religion class he had his last soccer game of the fall.  While he did not score any goals this season he did a nice job playing the game.  He is still a little afraid of the ball when it is kicked hard at him but he is getting better.  I am not sure if he is going to stick with the sport.  The level of competition is getting more competitive and they are just passing him by on the field.  He loves being part of the team and he has a lot of fun with the other kids on the team.  We will have to wait and see what happens during the spring season.

We also kept busy this week with the collecting and sorting of the back packs. Below are some pictures of the event. Dawn and her friend Donna, with the help and support of family, friends, and Mahopac students, collected 140 backpacks for the victims of Hurricane Sandy.  Ryan had a lot of fun helping with the week's events.  They even started to call the front room the "donation room".   And when Ryan saw Dawn and Donna counting money donations to purchase supplies he took out his wallet and handed them $7 and some coins.  Such a generous, caring boy!

Helping to sort the back packs

The finished product

The cousins enjoying time together on one of the half days of school this week!  

Helping unload the back packs at the Belle Harbor Yacht Club

Having fun with his cousin Frankie

It was a good week and we count our blessings with Ryan.  He was so excited to help with the donations and was a big hit with some of the ladies at the Belle Harbor Yacht Club.  He has come such a long way and we are all extremely proud of his progress.

PC

Week 134

With this being Veteran's Day and schools closed tomorrow, today didn't feel like a Sunday.  Here it is after 10 pm and I realized I didn't post a blog entry today.

Here is my sweet boy proudly displaying his first religious education test.  He scored a 95.  He explained to us that he only got one "x" and it was for question #17.  He didn't answer the question.  It was a unit test covering 7 chapters in his textbook.  We studied a half an hour the night before and another half an hour the morning of the test.  He was patient and willing to put in the time.  And his hard work paid off!  We made a big deal about the test and praised him for his hard work.

The kids had off from school on Election Day, and we had a great time playing together.  Here is a video of the dance party we had.  Jack was thrilled to sit on my lap and watch his brother and sister dance around.  Sometimes it is the silliest things that bring the biggest smiles :)

Dance Party

I hope you had a good laugh watching them.  I watched this video over and over again; it is hysterical! I can't get over what a ham Ryan is and how sophisticated Julia is.

Update on Julia... She continues to dance and sing during any free moment she has.  Ballet, Irish Step Dancing, free style, tap, she does it all!

Here's a video of her practicing her Irish Step Dancing.  Irish Step Dancing

Also, Julia scored a hat trick in last weekend's soccer game and did the same in yesterday's soccer game.  Ryan seems totally fine hearing praises to Julia for her excellent work on the soccer field.  I think if it was last year, he would have been upset because he wasn't scoring goals.  But this year he is not jealous of his sister and he isn't upset that he isn't scoring goals.  He is a better defensive player and he seems to accept that there are some players on the field that are there to score the goals and some that are there to prevent the other team from scoring goals.  We're so proud of him!

And an update on Baby Jack... We think he is teething.  He had a rough few days this week but seemed to be handling things better this weekend.  Jack loves to watch Ryan and Julia and is intrigued with the world around him.  He is three and half months old and about 16 pounds already.  I'm really enjoying my time home with him and sad that it is going by so fast.  When I sit and play with him, his smiles and giggles melt my heart!

We've been involved this week with a collection for the children impacted by Hurricane Sandy.  I'm collecting backpacks with supplies for the children in some of the hard hit areas.  So many friends and family members have been donating brand new backpacks filled with school supplies and other items.  We're hoping to collect 100 backpacks and are close to our goal.  I will post a picture next week of all of the backpacks before we deliver them.  We turned one of the rooms in our house into the "backpack" room and Ryan and Julia have been helping me organize supplies.

Within only 2 days of spreading the word about the collection, we received a dozen backpacks! We now have over 30 and are expecting about 60 more, most of those coming from a collection done at Mahopac Middle School.

It is nice to know that there are so many generous and caring people in our lives!  I'm proud to have so much support and that we can do something nice for those kids.  And I'm so glad I can involve my own children in this learning experience called humanity.

DC

Week 133- Hurricane Sandy and Halloween

Week 133

This has been a trying week with Hurricane Sandy.  We lost power around 9:30 PM on Monday night and did not get it back until around 8:00 PM on Wednesday evening.  We were extremely lucky that we only lost power considering all the damage that the hurricane did to the tri-state area.  We are also lucky that Uncle T and Auntie B had power and were willing to take us in for the two days.  It would have been extremely difficult to have Jack in a house without any power and water.  Ryan handled the situation extremely well.  Both he and Julia were excited to have a sleep over on a school night.  They were also excited to take the school bus with their cousins.  He did a nice job with all the changes.  What was very cute was when we returned to our regular bus, Ryan hugged the bus driver.  The driver took it in stride, patted Ryan's shoulder, and had him take a seat.  But this is something that we will have to work on with him.  While it is cute now, in a few years this will not be socially acceptable  and he may not understand why this is not okay.

Halloween!
This was a very exciting Halloween for the kids.  They were able to go Trick-or-Treating with their cousins in their development.  We usually hit about 5 to 10 homes in our development and then call it a night.  In their cousins' development, we hit 10 homes in five minutes.  Ryan had a great time but wanted to talk to everyone.  This included people as they were trying to give out the candy, people walking through the development, and the people coming to the door.  He had to know what people were dressed as when they came to the door.  He was also obsessed with winning a contest at school.  A local dentist offers to throw a party for the classroom that turns in the most Halloween candy.  Ryan insisted that he turn in as many bags of candy as possible.  On Friday afternoon, he came off the bus all disappointed that his classroom did not win the contest.  He handled it well but he was still disappointed all weekend.

A Pirate and Merida, the Princess from Brave.

Jack's First Halloween!  

Jack loves laughing at Ryan and Julia.  Ryan also loves making Jack laugh.  Below are some pictures of the two of them laughing at each other.

Dawn found a found GF biscuit mix at Walmart and Ryan loves them.  She caught him stuffing a whole biscuit in his mouth!

A difficult week but Ryan made it through with few difficulties.  We just have to focus on teaching Ryan to read and understand social cues.  Like we have stated earlier, these are cute now but soon they are going to be socially unacceptable and we are not sure Ryan will understand why.

PC