Happy 6th Birthday Ethan!

     Dear Ethan,
I can't believe it's been 6 years since you blessed us with your presence. You have come a long way from being preemie and 3lbs 9oz. I have gotten to watch you crawl, walk, run, learn to talk. I watched you not only become a big brother but a wonderful big brother. Finlay couldn't have asked to have a better brother that you. Last year I took you to preschool and watched you turn from a toddler to a little boy. This year you spread your wings further and started kindergarden. You have shown us how smart you are and made new friends. Now today you graduate kindergarden and turn 6. Tomorrow you will leave kindergarden and prepare to enter into 1st grade. One adventure ends and another one begins. The best part of it is getting to watch you on your journey. You are my wonderful, smart, sweet little boy and I love more with each passing day. Happy Birthday baby boy, may all your wishes come true.

     Love,
     Mom

Conferences!

So we had our first Parent/Teacher conference today with Ethan's teacher. It went really well! At this point he can write his first name, is working on his last (he keeps wanting to leave out a letter lol), can count to 59 consistently, knows all his letters lower and uppercase, he knows the sounds of 14 of the 26 letters, can read 6 of 9 sight words, can recognize numbers 0-10 (and then some), he is improving with rhyming words. As far as behavior goes he is improving. He completes his homework but needs to complete the work he does in class. His biggest issue is focus. He has a hard time focusing on what he needs to do and stop worrying about what others are doing. This goes in conjunction with completing the work he does in school. They are now working on doing work independently and Ethan tends to pay more attention to what others are doing instead of focusing on his own work. To help make that issue better she has him sitting with 3 other kids who tend to keep more to themselves when they are doing school work and that seems to have helped some. She also has come up with a paper that will help Ethan see how well he is doing or not doing on focusing more on his school work.

A few weeks ago we had received a letter in the mail telling us that Ethan is not on track with his reading skills and that if he continues at the pace he's at he will be set up to fail the 3rd grade. We brought this up with his teacher and she said we need to disregard that letter. They were forced to take this test in the 2nd week of school. They had to sit on the computer and answer 29 questions. She said most of the kids struggled just with using the mouse. She was not happy that they were being tested so soon into the school year when so many of them were still having adjustment issues and they hadn't even begun on working independently yet. She assured us that Ethan is doing just fine in reading.

He has been having a bit of a problem with a boy in his class who is a bit of a bully (in my opinion). We have been working with with his teacher to resolve the issue as peacefully as possible. I was unaware that there was a problem until a couple weeks ago. Ethan has never made mention of it to us. A couple weeks ago I was walking Ethan to school and we crossed paths with the kid. When Ethan refused to say hello (I am aware he does not like this kid and does not want to be friends with him) I just explained that he should always say hello back when spoken to. That's when the kid began bad mouthing Ethan to me. I gave him a warning that he was being very rude then I gave him the same tone that I give my own children when they speak to me disrespectfully and told him that my children don't get away with it and neither will he. When I got home I sent an email to the teacher letting her know what had happened. Ethan doesn't want anything to do with this kid so we are doing what we can to keep them separated. If he approaches Ethan at school Ethan will just tell him that he does not want to be friends with him or that he is not allowed to be around him. We had a second incident which was handled. We talked about it with the teacher just to be sure that all seems to be quiet between the 2 at this time. She says she doesn't need to intervene much that Ethan is very good about keeping his distance from this kid (he really doesn't want to have anything to do with him) and that he is very straightforward in telling the kid he wants nothing to do with him. So it appears that the issue has been resolved.

She also let us know that she has been taking extra care to read labels to any snacks that come through the classroom to make sure that they don't have an fake sugars in them. There are 2 other kids with allergies in the classroom so she takes the time to make sure that any brought in treats are OK. She sent home a letter at Halloween asking parents to please not send any treats that have fake sugars, eggs, or milk. One parent sent in sugar free jello so she just gave Ethan an applesauce in place of the jello. She said Ethan is very good about sticking to what we pack in his lunch that he has no interest in what others have in their lunches. He helps pack his lunch each day.  He tells me what kind of sandwich he wants and then he choses between applesauce or yogurt and he gets to pick out his special treat. I usually pack an chocolate almond milk for him to drink. He's eating exactly what he wants so naturally it's all he cares about LOL.

So over all I am very happy with the report we got. He is doing well and is continuing to move forward. We are very proud of how well he is doing.

Here is Ethan's school picture. He is so handsome!

Loving school

School is going fairly well for Ethan for the most part. He is still having trouble at times following directions. Last week he was on green all week. If you're not familiar with the color system green means he had a good day, yellow means he broke 2 rules, red means he had a time out, and blue means that we need to expect a call home or a note from his teacher. So last week was a good week. This week he was on green Mon and Tues, then Weds he was on blue. His teacher sent a note home. He was just not following directions and not doing his school work. Yesterday he was on green so a much better improvement from Weds. He loves his teacher and he seems to be making friends fairly well. I've only met 2 of his friends in passing when coming to get him at school but they seem like they get along well. Ethan tells me how funny they are.

He is still doing gymnastics and he loves it. He's moved up into the kindergarden class so he has a new coach this year. I really like the way she teaches the class. When Ethan acts out to get attention she will turn her back and go onto the next kid instead of feeding into the bad behavior. His last coach would raise his voice and put Ethan in time out which never had any effect on the behavior. The ignoring the bad behavior seems to work better. He responds much better to her way of teaching as well. She takes the time to work with each kid individually if they are struggling with a certain exercise. Ethan responds well to it. He's doing new things this year and it's amazing how quickly he picks up on the new work outs. He has no fear and takes everything and anything on. He is an amazing little boy.

Ethan has his Halloween costume all picked out already. He was all about wanting to be Iron Man a week ago and then while shopping at Costco last weekend I found the coolest Fireman costume and showed it to him and now he's going to be a fireman for Halloween LOL. I was looking for an Iron Man costume but they didn't have any in his size. I found the cutest SWAT costume that would have looked adorable on Fin but they didn't have it in his size (that's OK I might find one on EBay for a lot cheaper). Ethan will get a lot of use out of the Fireman costume since he loves to dress like a Fireman then drive his firetruck around so we will get our moneys worth out of it LOL.

Happy Birthday Ethan!!

5 years ago today at 5 in the morning we were heading to the hospital in labor 10 weeks early. At 10:02pm a beautiful little boy named Ethan arrived into this world weighing 3lbs 9oz. Now that tiny little baby is turning 5. In the fall he will start a new journey in life as he starts kindergarten. I can't believe that 5 years has gone by already. He has grown up so fast! In honor of him turning 5 I made a video that covers the last 5 years. I tried my best to keep it under 15 minutes but it was impossible too many cute pictures. So when you've got 27 minutes to kill take time to watch.

Watch Ethan's Journey in Family  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com

Ethan's birthday party was Saturday and he had a great day. A couple of his friends from school were there and he was absolutely thrilled to see them. Ever since school let out he has just been missing his friends and teachers like crazy! It's been a rough adjustment for him. It was a total blast he had no problems going to sleep last night. Thank you to everyone who came out and made his party a great time! I will post pictures from it later.

A Preschool Graduate!

It's official! Ethan is a preschool graduate! He finished pre-k on May 15, 2013. He is officially a kindergardener! We got him registered for kindergarden a couple weeks ago. It's hard to believe that he is entering kindergarden already. It was a very bittersweet feeling when I took him to preschool for the last time. It kind of felt like it did the day I dropped him off for his first day. Only this time I didn't cry LOL.

In less than 2 weeks Ethan will be turning 5. This year he is having a construction themed birthday party. Which is funny because his preschool graduation was a construction theme. A perfect fit for him. He is very excited because he invited his friends from preschool. At this point I know of 2 who will be coming but I'm sure more will be there. He will be so excited to see his friends again!

Ethan has had a hard time with accepting that school is over and that he will not be going back to that school. We will be playing outside and he will just suddenly get very sad. I will ask him what is wrong and he tells me that he doesn't want to leave Miss Tiffany and how he just wants to play with his friends. It quite heartbreaking really. He made some good friends this year and he just adored his teacher. I'm hoping that I can get phone numbers and addresses from the friends that come to his party so that I can get him together with them over the summer. One of the girls that he played with actually lives just about 5 minutes away from us so I will definitely be making sure to get him together with her. I try to give him things to do to take his mind off what he is missing but it doesn't help much. It's just not the same. He will make new friends in kindergarden next year but they won't replace the ones he made this year.

I was working on a little movie for him for his birthday and was hoping to have it done by his party but unfortunately my computer died. The hard drive finally went bad. All my pictures and videos were on it. We took it to Best Buy and they are going to attempt to retrieve my stuff. It's going to take some time though. Hopefully they can succeed and I can get it finished up. I was going to post a ton of pics on Finlay's blog as well as I've been horrible about it (my bad) but I will have to wait. So cross your fingers that Best Buy succeeds.

I did however video tape Ethan's graduation program on my phone and that was never put onto the computer so I have fixed it up a little bit and uploaded it to YouTube. I will post it at the end of this post. My videographing was pretty bad due to a Finlay trying to climb on me LOL. So forgive the horrible moving about.

Ethan is still doing gymnastics he's got a couple more weeks until they let out for a couple weeks for summer break. He loves his classes so we will continue him with summer classes. They start at the end of June. They haven't opened up registration yet for summer classes but they should be doing that soon. So I don't know what day he will be going. He will be moving into the 5/6 year old class and they usually have a slightly smaller class. He will still be in the preschool gym though until he is in first grade then he will move to the other gym. He's come a long way since his first day in gymnastics. He used to need help on the bar to flip forwards and now he can do that without any assistance. Last week they were working on flipping backwards and he was able to get halfway over before needing a little assistance. A month ago he couldn't even get his feet folded over the bar. Gymnastics is the perfect place for him to be because he is such a monkey at home. He has taken to climbing the doorways and can get to the top. It took him 2 weeks to figure out how to do it. Miss Heather, one of his preschool teachers, was telling me that when they take the kids out onto the playground that he is impressive on the swingset rings. He does things that most kids his age can't do. She asked me if I had him in any kind of sports so I told her about his gymnastics class and she thought it's a good place for him to be. As long as he continues to enjoy gymnastics we are going to keep him in it.

Here is the link to view the video of Ethan's Preschool Program.

Rough Month

Poor Ethan has had a rough few weeks! A couple weeks ago he was all excited about the "P" party they were going to be having at the school that is his school's pen pals. He had been talking about which pajammas he was going to wear (it was a pajamma party). Then he woke up around 5 in the morning saying that his head was hurting and he was running a fever. He was given some Tylenol and put back to bed. I let him sleep in as late as possible and checked his temp. It was normal. I checked 3 times. He woke up wanting to go to the party so bad. I let him go against my better judgement. I figured since the fever was gone and all he was complaining about was a headache he'd be OK but I was expecting a call from the school, I never got that call. When I picked him up and got him in the car he was saying that his head hurt but he had a good time at the party other than not getting a chance to hit the piñata. I picked up some Sprite on the way home and checked his temp again, normal. Not even 15 minutes after getting home he was sick to his stomach. That lasted 12 hrs then the next day he was just a lump on the couch. I let him lay in the toy room watching Netflix (Finlay couldn't get in there to bug him) all day. By the next day he was acting like himself. Later that night he was complaining that his ear hurt but said nothing more that Saturday. But Sunday the fever was back and his ears were bugging him so Matt took him to Urgent Care and he had an ear infection. He was put on antibiotics for 10 days. He finished that last Tuesday. Then this Weds while having lunch with Matt he was practically crying that his ear was really bothering him. We took him down to audiology and they took a peek and his right ear was angry red. So called his Dr and they were able to get him in right away. I was told that the previous antibiotic helped but wasn't strong enough to completely clear it up so he was put on something stronger for another 10 days. He hasn't been complaining the last few days and he is acting like his normal self so hopefully this round will knock it out.

He's loving school. Getting him out of bed in the morning to get around is a chore but once I got him dressed he is looking forward to getting to school. He told me that today they were putting acorns on a scale to see how much they weighed. Monday they will be doing paper airplanes and measuring how far they go when thrown. That was supposed to be done today but I guess they didn't get to it. From the conversations I have with his teacher when I pick him up he's doing very well and is ahead in class. He's a smart one!

Ethan has been a awesome big brother. He has been helping Fin learn to walk (see Fin's blog) and he has so much fun playing with his little brother. He is always asking me when I pick him up from school  if Finlay missed him while he was gone. When I drop him off he always has to give Finlay hugs and kisses and before I can buckle him into the car the first thing he does is hug and kiss Finlay and tell him that he missed him. It's just so cute and I love it! At home they have fun having lunch together and after lunch playing with the cars. It's fun to just sit and watch them play sometimes.

Doing Well

We had a conference today with Ethan's teacher, Miss Tiffany. She had nothing but praise for him. She showed us how he was writing his name in the beginning and it was pretty much nothing but scribbles and now only 2 months later he is writing his name with very little to no help at all. She said he has a tendency to make his T's gigantic or to add an extra line to his E's but overall he is doing very well with it. They are working on getting him to count to 20 and at this time he is able to count to 15 so he's almost there. She does an activity with him where she will have him pick 10 blocks from the bin. After he picks out 3 she will stop him and ask him how many does he have and he doesn't recount he tells her 3 and continues and then at 5 she will ask how many does he have now and he will instantly tell her 5 and give her a look like "Why are you stopping me?" The point of the game is so they don't just straight count it distracts them a bit and makes them think a little. He knows all his colors and shapes and does matching very well. His cutting is well he is capable of following the lines. When it comes to his letters he gets confused on the lower case letters and only seems to recognize 9 of the 26 lower case letters but he knows his upper case well. She said that over all he is excelling quickly, he is moving quicker than most of the kids. He should do very well in kindergarden as long as he has a teacher who will continue to push him. Socially he is doing well. He has his days where he is a little shy or stand offish but he warms up once they do news time where the kids get to share their news. It's his favorite part of the morning. So it was a good meeting. We will have another conference around April when the schools will be getting ready to do the kindergarden readiness test.

On Tues the 20th the school will be doing their Thanksgiving feast. They will be dressing as the Indians, the preschool class will be dressed as Turkey's, and their pen pals from Happiness Is (right here in the point) will continue the tradition of coming as the Pilgrims. The kids will be doing a little parade and they each will bring their favorite food to share with everyone. They are making their costumes during class time. It will be interesting to see if Ethan actually wears it. He's having fun making the costume but he wants to go as Captain America LOL. He isn't getting that this isn't the same thing as Halloween. They are learning all about the Pilgrims and how the Indians taught them how to live off the land. They even have a teepee in the classroom for the kids to play in.

Don't forget his fudge sale ends on the 26th. If you are interested in buying fudge from him refer to the post I made about it. I need to have the money in hand by the 25th for him to turn in on the 26th.