Disappointment

This morning, Sarah and Mateo were in the middle of their routine fighting over toys. I was very disappointed in Mateo's behavior because I know that last week's lesson in Primary had to do with sharing/getting along with siblings. He went into explicit detail about the picture he saw of the two girls fighting over a toy, that makes Heavenly Father and Jesus very sad, yadda-dadda . . . . And then of course he had NO PROBLEM yanking Sarah's beloved Barbie doll out of her arms so he could play with her. He doesn't want to play with Barbie . . . he's simply messing with his sister and trying to stir things up a bit.

The greater disappointment of the morning wasn't that big brother Mateo was provoking his little sister, but that speech-delayed Sarah opened up her mouth and said this: "Mateo, I told you don't take it the Barbie! Pow-pow Teo." She has her 6 month speech re-evaluation coming up in two weeks. For those of you that don't recall, last time she was getting tested, she busted out with "Where Papi go?" Which on the testing scale was a very solid sentence string that a 3-year old would use . . . and it disqualified her for getting speech services. Granted, Sarah didn't need to say "it" and also "the Barbie" to describe her subject this morning . . . but word-count for that demand/sentence is 12 . . . Maybe I should go ahead and cancel her re-evaluation right now and sign her up for the 5th grade Oration contest which will take place in the Spring. She will have plenty of time to practice. What do you think?????

Adjectives

There are some mornings when I am having a bad hair day or bad face day, etc. (what's up with the sudden outburst of adult acne??? I never had issues with this before.) Right when I am starting to feel really down . . . Mateo will come up to me and say "Mami, you are SOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL." Then, I actually start to feel so beautiful. Mateo then proceeds into the kitchen and exclaims with a lot of enthusiasm "Wow, those scrambled eggs are SOOOOOOOOOO BEAUTIFUL or Look at those beautiful chocolate chip cookies we made last night". My moment in glory . . . and feeling "beautiful" . . . RUINED.

On the same note, yesterday I took Sarah and Mateo to Burger King after teaching Silver Sneakers. P.S. I can't stand Burger King. YUCK . . . I am not a BK fan. Anyway I actually let them eat their lunch inside and play in the kiddie area yesterday. Talk about GROSS! Sticky floors, ketchup smeared on the table, smashed french fries on the chair . . . Mateo looked up at the play structure and said "WOW, ISN'T THIS PLACE ABSOLUTELY AMAZING?" Amazing?????? ABSOLUTELY AMAZING???? YIKES! Mateo starts pre-school next week. I think I am going to give his teacher a heads up that he needs to be instructed in the proper use and not so proper use of adjectives. Ya just gotta love that kid.

Silver Sneakers

Silver Sneakers is a federally funded exercise program for all medicare eligible participants. The average age of Silver Sneakers class participants is between 80-89. I teach the Silver Sneakers: Range of Movement and Muscle Strength class at Bally Total Fitness on Thursday mornings. I was also certified a couple of weeks ago to teach Silver Splash (water aerobics). I am having so much fun! Next week I am going to take my camera to class so I can get pictures of my students. They are too cute. I LOVE teaching this class.

Unclaimed

On Wednesday, there was the mystery of the pellet poops in the toilet. I asked Mateo if he had pooped and forgot to flush the toilet. "Nope, mami I already flushed it down". I asked Sarah if she had pooped and forgot to flush. "I dinn't do it mami . . . no, no, no" is what she replied. Finally, Mateo said very matter of factly . . . . "I know, I know, I know mami. The toilet did it. The toilet made those poopies and forgot to flush". Fair enough. It wasn't until later on in the day that I noticed Sarah had big skid marks in her pull up. Mystery solved. Sarah did it. And yes, Sarah is now pooping on the toilet ALL BY HERSELF. Now if she can just claim it so I can help her wipe. YEAH SARAH! She is ALMOST potty-trained.

Walker

For 3 years now Tino has wanted to be a "walker". And for 3 years I have told Tino he could be a "walker" when he was in the 5th grade. It seemed so far away . . . and something that I wouldn't have to commit to for a very long time. (Kind of in the same category as Pokemon. Tino wanted to start watching Pokemon on t.v. when he was 4 years old and I told him he couldn't watch it until he was 7 years old. You better believe that the night before his 7th birthday, he reminded me that he would now be able to start watching Pokemon and all of the other Y-7 shows on t.v.) Anyway, back to the walker story. Tino is now in 5th grade and he wants to be a walker. Even though Tino is in 5th grade, there is still the very busy and very dangerous Lee Vista Blvd. he would have to cross . . . which I am not ready to let him cross by himself. So that means, if Tino is a walker, I am also a walker. Mondays we walk alone, Wednesdays with Mateo, Sarah, and our next door neighbors, and Thursdays alone and/or with Mateo/Sarah. Tino is a very quiet and reserved guy. But, when he is ready to talk, he talks and talks and talks and talks. I am looking forward to our walks in the morning because along with the walks come the talks. In order to not jeopardize the confidentiality, I will just list the topics that we talked about . . . I mean that Tino talked about and I listened to this morning on our way to school:

• Little League World Series and the size of the players
• Writing paragraphs in 5th grade
  
• New pest control product from Ortho that will keep the bugs out of our house. (Tino saw it on a commercial and wrote down the information so I can go to Home Depot and buy it. Yes, we have been having issues lately with creepy crawly things entering our house. YUCK!)
• What Tino wants for his birthday and what color with 1st, 2nd and 3rd choices of colors. And he wants a new one and not used from E-Bay. (My track record for buying leapster, gameboy, DS Lite, and other electronic stuff from e-bay is about 0 for 3 now. 0 for 4 if you count the pirated version of Pokemon Ruby version that I got from Hong Kong.
• Pony baseball sign-ups in the Spring/Conway Little League in the Fall.
  
• Left handed catchers in MLB.

Backpacks

Can I just tell you how CUTE Tino is? And can I also tell you he has no idea in the whole entire planet that children get new backpacks every year before school starts? Here is his backpack history: Preschool 3, Preschool 4, Kindergarten: Thomas the Tank Engine backpack 1st grade: little red teeny tiny backpack that didn't fit anything and was used for the 2 weeks he was in 1st grade and then given away to Goodwill 2nd grade: Scooby Doo wheel backpack 3rd grade: Scooby Doo for a couple of months until it broke and then Cristian's Eddie Bauer backpack he used in college 4th grade: Cristian's Eddie Bauer backpack from college 5th grade: Why would Tino need a backpack if the backpack he has been using for the last 2 years and the backpack his papi used for 4 years is perfectly fine??? He feels more "comfortable" using his old backpack and a new backpack isn't "necessary". (Words in quotation marks are Tino's words he used this morning while trying to convince me that we wouldn't need to go after school today to buy him a new backpack.) I don't know how many more times this backpack can hold up in the washing machine. We'll give it a try for another year.

NO UNIFORMS!

O.K. I'm in a little bit of distress here. You know me . . . last minute gal for almost everything. What's a little bit of procrastination here and there? And P.S. how can I have my act together and be all organized when Mateo and Sarah keep me busy with all their "travesuras"? So there is one thing that I LOVE about all the schools that Tino has gone to so far. They have all been uniform schools.

The whole go to the mall and buy school clothes thing has been a completely non-existent issue. The yearly routine goes something like this: I show up to school the Friday before school starts for "Meet Your Teacher", buy 6 uniform shirts and 3 "Spirit" t-shirts and call it a day. Easy as pie. I have done this for . . . . 2 years of pre-school, Kindergarten, 1st grade, 3rd grade, and 4th grade. The only reason I didn't do this 2nd grade is because that was Tino's "1st grade" year and he bumped up to 2nd grade 20 days into the school year. Imagine the HORROR and complete DISTRESS that entered into my life on Friday afternoon at 4:30 p.m. when I went to go buy uniform shirts at Tino's "optional uniform" school, only to find out that there ARE NO MORE UNIFORMS! YIKES! So, needless to say, we hit Old Navy on Saturday which was about 1 week later than the rest of Central Florida hit Old Navy to buy school clothes. The store was CLEANED OUT! And being the absolute mall lover that I am (NOT), I refused to check that scene out. 3 collared shirts, 3 t-shirts, 4 pairs of boxer briefs, 6 pairs of socks and WAY TOO MUCH $$$$$$$ later, we are "ready" for at least the first week of school. You all know how I am a little over the edge when it comes to searching for bargains, shopping only the sales, and coupon clipping. Can you believe I didn't have ONE Old Navy coupon or discount AND that sales-tax free days in Florida ended about 1 week ago?

Tonight I told Tino to go pick out what to wear, he pulled out a piece of paper and pen. He told me to go ahead and make a list of what he should wear each day of the week, because he didn't want people to make comments if he wore the same clothes more than one day in a row. I told him he was going into 5th grade and he has been choosing his own (uniform) clothes for school for years now. His reply: "Mom, I might be going into 5th grade, but I'M ONLY 8 YEARS OLD. Kids that are 8 years old don't know how to choose good matching outfits to wear to school." YIKES! And can you remind me again why it is that some parents and children actually like going to non-uniform schools???????

I already have a big giant headache and the school year hasn't even begun! There's a lot to be said for navy, gray, white collared shirts and khaki or navy dockers.

Selective mute-ism ?!?

O.K. so first of all, I don't know how to spell that word . . . but I'm starting to wonder if Sarah just chooses not to speak. These are some of the things I have caught her saying the last couple days, when of course she doesn't know that I am within earshot.

"I not a baby, Teo!"

"Esto es mio "piggy". (This is my piggy . . . referring to her favorite stuffed animal).

"I o.k. Don't worry."

"I go to the parque. And the Wheeeeeee. And ride the bike. " (Sarah went to the park. She went down the slide. She rode her bike.)

O.K. Heather Danielson Mrs. Special Education Extraordinaire . . . what's up with inserting "and the" whenever she is explaining what she did? Also, what's up with using sound effects instead of labeling the object?

I'll continue to spy on her and write down the other things I catch her saying.

Sarah's Adventure

So, Sarah had quite the eventful morning on Monday. I guess she figured since her brother loves to push buttons on the alarm keypad for his very own personal firefighter and police visits to our house . . . and since her older brother has ridden in an ambulance . . . it was "her turn, her turn". She had a seizure Monday morning. Freaky, out of the blue . . . seizure. Since she is only 2 years old, the pediatrician's office told me to hang up and dial 9-11 immediately. (Apparently I have issues trying to figure out what is considered an emergency and what is not an emergency . . . since every day in my life feels like an emergency. ) Anyway, firefighters came (who of course remembered us from their previous visits) and then EMTs arrived on the scene. Sarah was transported to Arnold Palmer Hospital for Children.

After 3 attempts to do a CT scan and being unsuccessful because she was moving too much even after being strapped down in the straight-jacket looking X-Ray vest . . . she had received the maximum amount of radiation recommended for a child her size and age . . . so she was sent home. Now I just get to watch her very carefully . . . and then of course take her to a pediatric neurologist for further testing. Needless to say, I canceled one of my Kindermusik classes. I just emptied my plate, but Sweet Little Sarah seems to be wanting me to fill my plate again. She, sufficiently regressed since March . . . and now it looks like we get to visit a new kind of specialist.

My Kindermusik business is going well. Fall Session classes begin next week. I continue to have fun (NOT) trying to troubleshoot and fix the bugs from my web page: http://heidiramirez.kindermusik.net

I'm Back!!!!!

So, I am so happy to say that our computer is finally FIXED! Almost 3 weeks with no computer . . . computer access only when I could slip away from the house and go to the library (WITHOUT KIDS), or when Cristian would come home from work and not have a million and one things to do on his computer. Now I've got several pictures to upload, lots and lots of stories to tell . . . but can't find the stinkin' cord that hooks into my camera for the uploads. So, I guess I'm out of business.