Can this count as 4 posts?

A couple weeks later and here we are. This is what has been happening.

EVERLY:

• has started calling her brother "Cotlan" instead of "Totlan."
• wore jewelry to school three out of five days last week; one of those days, she got her necklace taken away because she wouldn't stop playing with it, even when her teacher asked her repeatedly not to. She's not allowed to wear that one to school anymore.
• changed her clothes three or four times this morning before leaving for school. Ultimately, she wanted to wear a sweater. As soon as we got to school, she took it off anyway.
• has been getting out of her bed regularly at night. I finally told her that I am going to start marking down how many times she gets out of bed, and there are going to be consequences if she gets too many marks. (I have yet to figure out how many is "too many.")  Last night, she didn't get out of bed until 11pm, when she woke to go potty. (She won't get a mark for that.)
• loves cutting and gluing, is very good at recognizing her letters and letter sounds, and is very motivated to learn.
• thinks that she can spell, because she keeps randomly spouting off letters and asking me what that spells. For example: "Mommy, what does 't-t-t-t-l-p-l-r-y' spell?." Usually, I sound out what she spells and then tell her it isn't a word. Once, though, she said, "Mommy, what does 'e-a-r-l-y' spell?" I had to give that one to her. Cortlan was amazed she could spell "early".
• doesn't care much about saving things. When she is done, it can be thrown away.
• started gymnastics and loves it. Though, she needed to be sure to have the ponytail holder that matched the leotard she wore.

CORTLAN:

• laughs and says "You kicked me?? No you didn't!" when his sister clearly means "tricked." He calls her on her mispronunciations all the time...maybe that is why she has started to say his name right.
• was on "yellow" three out of five days last week at school when we picked him up. This isn't as bad as red, but he should be on green. His teacher said, "He was being way too silly with his friends."
• has been doing a great job at getting himself dressed in the morning. For the most part.
• seems to be taking advantage of his color blindness (for John's benefit: his color vision deficiency). Several of the worksheets that he has had lately have required him to correctly identify colors. For example, he was to color all of the pictures that rhymed with "boat" blue and the ones that rhymed with "jar" red. Other worksheets had him using as many as eight or ten colors. I asked his teacher how he has been doing with those activities. She said that his friends help him tremendously, giving him all of the crayons, telling him what color they are. "Here, Cortlan, this is the brown one! This is the red one!" I can just picture it.
• went to the allergist in August and found out that, among the things for which he was tested, he is severely allergic to grass, ragweed, two other weeds that I can't remember, oak, and cat. He did not show a response for crab, lobster, or shrimp. He is on a nasal spray, a liquid allergy medicine, and eye drops. Yesterday, at the follow-up appointment, we found that he may have to get his adenoids removed. An ENT appointment is up next to find more information about that.
• must save everything. It is driving me crazy. Every piece of paper. Every bottle cap, paper towel tube, even the used dixie cups he drinks water out of at school. He sobbed when I told him we were going to have to throw some of it away.
• started soccer again. He got a goal in the first game and was thrilled! The second game didn't go quite as well, but he did seem to enjoy it. He is really liking gymnastics.

JOHN:

• has been working hard and doing a great job at what he does. I am proud of him...it isn't easy to deal with as many people as he does with the grace and respect in which he does it. He is very appreciated at work and at home.
• has been able to experience the "gymnastics thing" this year which involves listening to a whole lot of moms chatting away in the viewing room. He is driven as crazy (or crazier) than I typically am.
• washes dishes like nobody's business.

I:

• have been wondering how I got such a high maintenance daughter.  Seriously. 
• can't believe that I spelled kindergarten incorrectly in two posts. And my mom had to call me to let me know about it.
• have been running regularly (though half the time not getting home until after 9pm) and finally was convinced to sign up for my 3rd half-marathon.  I have a running buddy that I get to run in the evenings with most days, and I have been loving the opportunity to chat and have some social time while exercising.  Often, it is the only socializing I get to do.
• have had some very stressful days at work lately, but I am kind of proud of myself in how I handled them.
• am somehow calmly appreciating my life.  I have alone time (kind of); I have time when it is just me and the kids; I have time when it is the four of us; I have time when it is just John and I...and I appreciate and enjoy all of those times for what they are.  I realize that I need all of that, and that it is all good.

Playing with buttons

Monday was Presidents' Day and though many had off of work and school, our school had an in-service day.  The problem was that my kids' daycare/school has two in-service days per year and Presidents' Day is one of them.  With Grandma able to come to watch them at 11:30, that left us without childcare for the morning.  So I took a half day off of work. 

I rarely take off of work, and am always reluctant to do so, even when I am sick.  On days that we have students, I find it is typically more challenging to prepare for a substitute and recover from missing the day than it is to be there.  On in-service days, I don't want to miss the professional development and chance to interact with my colleagues (and go on a lunch date with my husband since dinner dates are a true rarity).  But I wholeheartedly enjoyed my half day off on Monday.

I think the best decision I made was to wake up early, before the kids woke.  I was showered and ready to go, drinking my coffee and peacefully reading my book (the third of The Hunger Game - love that series!), when my cuties groggily made their way into the living room.  We had a great breakfast and spent the next hour or so reading stories and playing on the floor.  At one point, I got the idea in my head to get out all of the buttons that I had collected over the years from shirts that come with extras attached.  I opened the bin that I always blindly shove them in and was amazed at how many I had.  I told the kids we were going to do an activity with the buttons, and you would have thought I told them they got to have a huge bowl of ice cream.  (Clearly, I do not do these types of things often...there is definitely something to be said for novelty.)

The first part of the "activity" was simply taking all of the buttons out of the bags.  We decided to sort them in muffin tins into four piles...a huge, a teeny-tiny, a medium-big, and a medium-small pile.  The kids had a great time with this, and were quite good at discerning which pile the buttons should go in.  I was impressed with the sorting of two medium piles, by Everly, in particular.  In the end only two buttons needed to be switched, and the kids were able to figure that out by themselves. 

Cortlan then had the idea to sort them by color, as well.  They had to make the decisions about what buttons should go together to make three different colored piles of each size...interesting considering Cort's color blindness. 

Along the way, we counted, compared, and discussed our reasoning.  Finally, Cortlan thought it would be a great idea to line up the buttons and measure them with my measuring tape.  We measured each pile, wrote down the measurements, and then put the piles together, ultimately measuring a long line of buttons. 

 As a grand finale, we counted all of the buttons - there were seventy total.

Why am I writing about this?  Well, first, I have to say I was kind of proud of myself for actually coming up with an educational activity that could be adapted for each of my kids and that they thought was fun...despite the fact that I am a teacher, early childhood stuff is quite out of the box for me.  Second, I was amazed at how much my kids love to learn and explore in a structured environent.  They love imaginative play and I love to see what they can come up with on their own, but with just a little bit of guidance, they really did a great deal of learning through playing with buttons.  Third, while sitting with my kids at the counter, I experienced that rare Kairos time that I so cherish...my kids and I talked and laughed and played with buttons for an hour; time slipped away and yet stood still and I couldn't help but thinking of how I would love to hold onto the feeling and the moment forever.

Yes, taking the half day off was well worth it....and there is something to be said for novelty.

Through his eyes

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other's eyes for an instant?

~Henry David Thoreau

"Do you see anything in this picture that you could trace with your finger?" the woman would ask. 

"No.  Just dots," he responded.



One of many "dot pictures" they use for the test for color vision deficiencies. Click here for a few more.



It has actually been well over a month since I sat in the exam room of the opthamologist with Cortlan, watching him quietly look at page after page of images and numbers that I could clearly see, but that just looked like dots to him.  As I mentioned before, my dad is colorblind, and I knew that Cortlan had a 50-50 shot at having a color vision deficiency, as well, as the gene is passed through the mother.  Different incidents had given me pause and reason to suspect that Cortlan was indeed colorblind, but the test results left no doubt.

As far as genetic anomalies go, a color vision deficiency is really no big deal.  It is not terribly uncommon, and people with the deficiency lead perfectly normal lives, of course.  But, as a mom, I couldn't (can't?) help but to feel for my little guy.  He will never know what colors look like to me, and I guess that is ok.  He has his own "normal."  But, perhaps more bothersome to me is that I will never know what colors look like to him.  I wish I could see the world through his eyes, see what he sees.

I knew quite a bit from my dad already, but I have done tons of research since Cortlan's diagnosis.  The basic idea is that the cones in his eyes are not all sensitive to the same range of frequencies of light that mine are.  There are many different types and degrees of color blindness, depending on which of the three cones are affected and by how much.  As there is no easy way to see what he sees, I have to learn through observation. 

Recently, Cortlan was eating some colorful goldfish:

Cortlan, holding up a fish: It's the one I was looking for!

Me: Which one?

Cortlan: The one that matches the picture!

Me: And what color is that?

Cortlan, pausing, searching for the best answer: Black.


The dark red goldfish "matched" the dark green one on the carton.  Not the best picture, but I think you get the idea.


But later that same day, he asked, "Which one does Mommy use?  The red or the green?" referring to the exercise bands that were on the floor.

Cortlan has learned to correctly identify brighter shades of red and green, though he does not actually see these colors as I do.

There are other incidents that have shed some light on what difficulties Cortlan may have.  Drawing with sidewalk chalk on the driveway, for example, made it clear that he has some trouble with some other colors, as well, as he drew apples on a tree.  To me, the apples were brown and the tree was turquoise.  Put those colors on a cement grey background, and to Cortlan, you have have a perfectly normal looking apple tree.

I think that Cortlan has a pretty good idea that he sees things a little differently.  At the very least, he knows that sometime colors can be tricky for him.  But he has also learned to cover well.  Not long ago, Everly wanted to color with markers.  I gave Cortlan four to give to her, and I told him to tell her the colors as he gave them to her, so she can learn them.  One by one, he handed them to her.  "This one is yellow.  Can you say yellow, Everly?  This one is blue.  Say blue.  This one is a green one."  And then, as he reached the one he had saved for last, "Do you know what color this one is?  I am not telling you.  You have to guess."  That one was a dark pink color.

We have tried to communicate with Cortlan about the fact that he may see colors differently than other people and that sometimes learning different colors can be hard.  When subtle shade changes actually represent entirely different colors, it is bound to be challenging. What I don't want is for him to feel stupid, or frustrated.  Unlike my dad, who didn't find out that he was colorblind until he was a preteen, we are lucky in that we were able to identify this color vision deficiency early, and can work with him and his teachers and understand the situation from the start.

Maybe Cortlan will encounter difficulties at times.  And perhaps someday his wife will have to help him pick out his clothes.  But he has assured us that he sees "lots of pretty colors."  And he is perfect in my eyes.

Some interesting references:
http://www.webexhibits.org/causesofcolor/2.html
http://colorvisiontesting.com/what%20colorblind%20people%20see.htm

Ahhh, Genetics.

Welp, it took a while to get the appointment, but last Thursday was Cort's annual birthday visit to the pediatrician.  I might actually say birthday present visit, since my children enjoy going to the doctor so much.  (Seriously, they do.  Not sure what that is saying that going to the ped's office is a definite highlight for them, but Cortlan also truly looks forward to going to the dentist.)  The visit went well.  Here is what we found out:

1.  That our little guy is a little guy.  Not that it is all about numbers, but he is staying right on that growth trendline that he has always been on: 25th percentile in height and 10th percentile in weight. 

2.  He has great hearing, speaks well for his age, and can touch his nose and then the doctor's finger, then his nose, then the finger, then the nose, then the finger quite well.

3.  He might have a "color vision deficiency" (i.e. there is a chance that he is color blind).  We have to get additional testing to be sure, but I have actually been suspicious of this for a while.  Having a dad who is color blind, I have grown up aware of the sometimes subtle difficulties that arise from such a deficiency.  Having some knowledge of genetics, I also know that I am a carrier of the gene and that Cort has a 50/50 chance of inheriting it.  The simple test that the doctor gave (identifying a black, green, and red stripe on the eye chart) did not go quite as well as hoped (his response: black, black, orange).  Maybe it was the lighting.  Maybe he was tired of answering all of the questions after a long exam.  Maybe I gave him a bum x-chromosome.  In any case, no big deal, but off to the opthamologist we will go just to double check.  Even though there isn't really anything that can be done about it, we can at least be aware and make his teachers aware. 

4.  The doctor did a good job.  This I know because she earned a sticker.  From Cortlan.  He brought one for her and gave it to her at the end of the exam.

Next up: The dentist. We are all pumped!!  ;)