Ethan – Page 16 – Andelin Adventures

I have cub scout!

Ethan went to his FIRST cub scout meeting tonight! He was so excited (he’s been looking forward to scouts for the whole past year since Tyra started in girl scouts) and even though his birthday is tomorrow, they said it would be alright for him to come tonight. 🙂

Hopefully we got the uniform mostly right. I didn’t have the council patch or the den numbers on his shirt and the pants came un-hemmed (and since I don’t know anything about sewing that’s how they were when he went to his meeting…) He was still super cute!

RAD Kids Graduation

At the school the second graders participate in a program called RAD Kids, where they have a police officer and some helpers come teach them about self defense against ‘bad guys’. You know people that go around picking up kids that don’t belong to them? I don’t know very much about the program actually, but Ethan’s teacher called me last night to invite me to the ‘graduation’. So I took my 3 little kiddos and went to the school to see what I could see. The helpers had set up a bit of a course with three points. At the first stop the kids had to block these big soft things as the helper tried to bonk them. Then at the next stop they kids had to beat up on a dummy. The last stop was the most tricky. The police officer was all dressed up in red pads from his head to his feet, and his job was to try to ‘attack’ or stop the kid from getting to their teacher. The kids then had to do whatever self defense moves they could to get away from him. The kids went through the course one at a time and there was actually only one that got past the officer without him catching them. I thought it funny that it was a little girl.

Before going through the course the kids had to get all geared up with helmets, gloves, knee pads and elbow pads. Ethan was doing just fine sitting and waiting for his turn. But as soon as it became his turn he just seemed to become limp and didn’t want to do it. Here he is getting geared up and REALLY not looking happy.

So they didn’t make him go through the course. Here is Ethan’s whole class after they all went through the course. Ethan is still not looking happy….

Chicken Pox :(

Well we’ve made it 7 1/2 years as parents and have never had to deal with chicken pox before (aside from when we had it as children of course). Ethan came to me after putting pajamas on a couple of weeks ago saying “Mom, I have a whole bunch of bug bites that weren’t there this morning. They happened while I was at school.” My first thought was WHY would a bug be crawling all over just YOU at school? So I asked him to show me. When I saw them I instantly thought “Chicken pox!” Now the last time that I had ANY exposure to chicken pox was more than 17 years ago, I’m no expert at what they look like or diagnosing it, but really that was the only way that I could explain so many spots appearing in such a short time. I called the after hours doctor, and spoke to a nurse. She told me that based on my description of the spots that they didn’t sound like chicken pox and there really wasn’t anything they could do about them. OK FINE!

The next morning, Saturday, I had Kyle inspect the spots as well and I insisted that Ethan go to the urgent care to have a doctor actually look at them and tell me what they are. Well they WERE chicken pox. Ethan has had both the chicken pox vaccine and the booster shot so his case was very mild. We missed stake conference, Sunday then he missed school Monday, but all of his spots had broken and were scabbed over by Tuesday morning so he was good to go back to school. Then life was good. Or so we thought…..

This past Saturday we were at Granny’s house, and while Kyle was holding Chloe, Granny pointed out a spot on the side of her head and said “oh she’s got a zit”. One spot no big deal, it could have been a zit, or a bug bite….

Sunday morning Kyle went to get Chloe out of bed and brought her into our room saying “I wonder why she’s breaking out.” She had more spots on her face, then he unzipped her jammies to change her diaper and there were other spots on the rest of her body too. Dang it! It’s gotta be chicken pox! Only thing though, is that Chloe has NOT had the vaccine! Her doctor was being lame and I decided not to go back there and I haven’t made an appointment with another doctor yet to take her in for her vaccines that she should have got at 12 months (Bad mommy! I know!). The varicella vaccine would have been one of those shots. Chloe has been coming up with new spots every day since. It makes me feel horrible to see her like this, knowing full well that had I actually just taken her in she wouldn’t have a full blown case of the chicken pox. 🙁

But in a way I guess it’s good that I got to see the difference between chicken pox with the vaccine and chicken pox with out….. Ethan only had a few patches on his belly, his back and neck, a few spots on his face and a few on his arms and legs. Chloe has them everywhere! All over her face and scalp, and all over her body and arms and legs and all over her bum. 🙁 SO SAD!

Washing her face and hands after a meal is so hard. Normally if there is a bump on her face it’s food that is stuck there and I get to pick it off. Right now I have to be careful about what I’m picking off her face.

At least I know that if any of the other kids get it, they’ve all had the vaccine so they won’t get it this bad. Thankfully.

First Day of School!

Ethan and Tyra are both in school all day now! Ethan was SO grumpy to be going back to school. The picture I got of them before leaving the house he refused to smile. He was still mad at me for agreeing to switch his class. He REALLY didn’t want to go to the new class. I just had to keep reminding him that I asked HIM if he wanted to be in that class, and he said ok.

Tyra was so excited. Just excited to be going back to school, and be with her teacher, Mrs Jaque. Excited to get to eat lunch at school. Excited to get to play on the ‘big kid’ playground. And she was excited to get to wear the dress she picked out for the first day of school, and the bows that I made to match the dress.

It was so quiet through the day with two missing children. But it was nice. 🙂 Dinah and Jeremy seemed to have a good day too, except when Dinah was determined to be grumpy (but I think that was just because I have to wake the kids up at 6:30 am to get them ready for school at 8).

After school, Ethan was telling me that Mrs Washburn’s class is so much fun! So I asked him if he was done being mad at me for switching his class, and he said yes. 🙂 I’m SO relieved that his anxiety over the class switch is over, and that he is happy with his class, and his new teacher.

Tyra lost her sandwich box today. First day of school and already she’s lost it. Hopefully we’ll find it soon. But other than that she had a great first day in first grade.

Second/Third Grade

I got a phone call today from Mrs Webb, the second grade teacher that was to have Ethan in her class. I couldn’t imagine why she would be calling me personally before school starts, but she had some news of an exciting opportunity for Ethan. The principal, Mr Conley, had decided to hire two more teachers, one of which was to teach a second and third grade combined class. And they had a meeting with the kids first grade teachers from last year, to pick which kids would be good candidates for the 2nd graders in this class. Ethan was chosen, and they were calling me to see if this is something that we would want him to be a part of. I spoke to Ethan about it for a moment and he said that he’d like to do it. So I told her that he’s fine with being in the class, and I asked if this would mean that if Ethan gets bored with the second grade work would the teacher just give him some third grade work to stretch him? She wasn’t sure, since she has never taught a combined grades class before, but she said she was sure some intermixing of the grade work would end up happening, considering there would be second graders and third graders in the class at the same time. It’s not like the teacher can teach something third grade level and have the second graders NOT hear it….

I’m excited about it though, because Ethan was quite bored with first grade work. His poor teacher was at her wits end trying to figure out how to make it fun for him, but really I think it was just too easy and therefore, he saw no point in doing the work. At one of our parent/teacher conferences, Mrs Peterson was telling us about a math assignment she handed out for the kids to do during class. Ethan sat there for literally half an hour and only got the first line done. She had to keep him from going to music time to finish his assignment, and he still just sat there. Until, she went out into the hallway to sharpen a pencil. She wasn’t gone more than a minute, two minutes TOPS and in the time that she was gone Ethan had finished the assignment. And it’s not like he just slapped some numbers on the page to call it done either, the answers were all RIGHT! So I really think the work was boring to him because it wasn’t a challenge at all.

My only real concern with this class is, if second grade work comes easy to him and he gets bored and spends the majority of the year doing third grade work, would he be in third grade next year? Or would they allow him to skip to fourth? I really don’t want him to end up doing a lot of third grade work this year, then be stuck doing it again next year….we’d then end up with the same problem we had last year with him being completely bored…. So that’s something that Kyle and I will have to talk to his new teacher about.

After I got off the phone with Mrs Webb, Ethan suddenly cried to me that he had changed his mind. And now he is really upset about the upcoming change in his class. Ethan has been one that has never liked change. I’m glad this change happened now, and not AFTER school had started, because he has the next 4 days to warm up to the idea! He keeps telling me that he doesn’t want to do it. Is it bad that I’m more excited than he is????

I’m SURE that he will warm up to the idea and that it will be good for him. I’m so excited that he will be pushed and stretched this year, after all you just can’t learn if it’s too easy. 😉