Ty’s Weblog

When we put Mira to bed at night, part of the ritual is, of course, hugs and kisses. She has a place she likes for Kate and me to stand. She gives Kate a hug and a kiss, and then comes over to give me a hug and a kiss, and they she lays down and we tuck her in for the night.

Tonight, I picked her up to let her turn off her light, as usual. When I picked her up, I happened to bring her face close to mine. She quickly gave me a kiss. She then backed her face away and looked at me for a second. They she said, “Not yet, Daddy!” Then she wiped her hand across her lips and then did the same thing to mine. Kate and I looked at each other and could hardly keep from laughing. She was “undoing” the kiss, because she’d done it at the wrong time. She’s all about her bedtime routine. We turned off the light and then put her in the crib. She gave Kate her hug and kiss and then gave me mine and was much happier about it this time.

Xander’s birthday party was today. We had it at My Gym. Xander loved his classes there over the summer, and Mira loves going there also. His old babysitter works there now also, and she was one of the teachers for the party today, so he enjoyed that as well.

He invited his whole class from school, and 17 out of 25 of them were able to make it, so we had a good crowd. The kids had a wondeful time. My Gym does a great job with the kids. They played a lot of games, and had time for free play on the equipment as well. Then we had cake in their party room. He had a NASCAR cake again this year. We took him to Target last weekend and let him pick it out himself.

After that it was time for more free play and then a ride for all the kids on the zip line. They all seemed to have had a fun time. Several of the parents seemed to have enjoyed the party as well, and were thinking about having their kids party there later in the year.

Kate did a wondeful job getting everything together for the party. We had goodie bags for the kids, of course. On top of that, she had snacks for any parents that decided to stay. It was less work than having a party at home, but she still did a fair amount of work and deserves credit for it.

We brought the presents home and opened them, so Xander has quite a haul of stuff now. It should take him quite a while to work his way through it all.

We all had a great time and Xander finally got to have the big party that he wanted. He’s happy, and that is what matters the most.

Today was Xander’s 6th birthday. All of us when to his school this morning to watch them celebrate his birthday. Mira was very good for the whole thing and she showed us that she really is ready to start school in September.

They had Xander take a globe and walk around the sun, represented by a candle, 6 times. After each time around, his teacher would talk about what he had done that year (using a sheet of info we had given her) and show a picture of him from that year.

After they were done with that, Xander passed out the pumpkin bread muffins that Kate had made for the class. They seemed to be enjoyed by at least most of the class. Mira joined the class for this, and did a great job sitting nicely and waiting for everyone to be served before eating.

After that we left and let Xander have the rest of his day at school.

Once he was home, we opened presents. He let Mira help him, and they had a great time opening things up.

He seemed to be pretty happy with the presents he got.

For dinner we had salmon at his request, since he really likes it. And we had a pumpkin pie for desert, another one of his favorites.

He loved getting phone calls from the family wishing him a Happy Birthday, especially since we were letting him answer the phone.

He said he’d had a great day. He’s very excited about his party this weekend as well.

6 years already. It doesn’t seem possible it could have gone by so fast.

NASCAR is back! The Daytona 500 was today, and we, of course, watched it. It was a so so race this year. The weather made things a little weird. I’m not a big fan of restrictor plate racing in any case. Xander was thrilled to have racing back though. We’re looking forward to California next weekend.

My parents visited us this weekend. It was nice to have them able to stay for a little while. They came up Friday and were able to stay will late Sunday morning. The kids had a great time seeing them. They were very excited about them coming up and had a wondeful time playing with them.

Measuring in the front yard, we got about 12″ of snow this time. It’s still coming down a little bit, but it doesn’t look like it’ll amount to any real additional depth.

We were able to build a snowman! It wasn’t the best snow in the world for it, but it stuck together well enough that we could make a snowman about the size of Xander. Mira was happy to finally be able to make one!

According to a NWS spotter in Leesburg, we had 12″ of snow this morning at 6:30am. We’ve not been outside yet, but that’ll be happening soon. It snowed hard all night. I couldn’t see the stop lights from our living room when we went to bed last night around 11:30am. I did take a quick trip out last night to knock the snow off the dish so we’d get our Olympics recodings overnight. When I did that, it was a beautiful snow, perfect for snowballs and snowmen, so hopefully we’ll be able to build one today. More later.

Today was the Dad’s visit day at Xander’s school, something I always look forward to.

We were the first ones there this morning. about 8:30am. Xander insisted that I take my shoes off, since that’s what all the children do. He put on his slippers and I walked around in my socks.

The first work he wanted to show me was the bead tweezing. They have a little heart shaped template and he uses a pair of tweezers to take plastic beads and put them on the post. He worked on that for a few minutes before he decided he wanted to show me something else.

Next up was the blind addition fingerboard. It’s a 9×9 grid of squares. The top and left side of the grid have the numbers 1 through 9 on them (with a 0 in the upper left corner). First Xander takes out all the numbers from a box. They range from 2 to 18. He then arranges them from lowest to higest in a kind of bar graph. One 2, then two 3’s and three 4’s and so on. He ends up with a normal distribution on the table. Then he pulls out a strip with a problem on it from the stack. He puts his fingers on the two numbers. Say 7+8, he puts one finger on the top 7 and one on the 8 on the left side. Then he moves his hand down the board counting “8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15″ until his fingers are on the same row. Then he takes the 15 from his stack of numbers and puts it on that square. After that, he writes the whole problem (”7+8=15″) into his book. We did those till he’d finished the page in his book. After he finishes a page, he goes and get’s the check board. This has all the problems from 1+1=2 to 9+9=18 written out on it so he can check his answers.

After that, we went and had our morning snack. The class had made us fruit salad to eat. Xander told me that he had washed the grapes. We had that, and a muffin and some orange juice, which Xander poured for me.

Next up was the addition strip board. We did this work on a mat, which Xander showed me how to roll out, and when we were finished, showed me the proper way to roll up. For this work, you have two sets of strips numbers from 1 to 9. Each is as long as it’s number. You chose a problem, and then place the two strips for it on the board. Then you look to see which number you have created by using the grid at the top of the board. Then he writes this down in his book. After filling a page, the check board comes back out and we check his answers.

Once we were done with that, we moved on to the movable alphabet with objects. Xander takes the objects out of the box and places them below the movable alphabet box. Then he takes letters out of the box to spell the names of the objects. He makes a best effort phonetic spelling of them mostly. After he has finished, he checks the cards that were also in the box to see what the correct spellings are. Then he corrects his spellings with the movable alphabet. I was amazed had what a good job he did. He had only a few errors.

Next up was the orange juicing work. They have a little hand orange juicer and some oranges sliced in half. First Xander goes and washes his hands. They he takes an orange and juices it on the juicer. When he is done, he pours the juice into a cup and drinks it. After that, he throws away the used up orange and the paper cup. Then he takes the juicer over to the sink and cleans it up and then puts it back on the shelf.

Next Xander showed me the division bead board. Yeah, he’s going division now. Normally, his teacher would write him a page of problems in his book, but today, I did that for him. They do problems from 1/1 all the way up to 81/9, so they aren’t messing around. They even do remainders, but his teacher had previously told us he wasn’t fond of those yet, so I didn’t put any of those down this time. So he takes a problem, say 21/7. First he takes 7 “people” and places them at the to of the board. Then he counts out 21 beads. He then places one bead under each person. Then he places a second bead under each one, and then a 3rd. Then he counts the beads to make sure they are all there. Then he counts the number of rows and writes the answer in his book. I was quite amazed.

Next we did the trinomail cube. At this level, this work is a puzzle. It’s secretly getting him ready to understand the terms of the equation (a+b+c)³. I was amazed at how fast he could reconstruct the puzzle once he had taken it apart.

Next he showed me the Judy clock, which is a little clock which they work with to learn to tell time. I’d say he has that pretty much figured out.

Next he showed me one of his old favorites, the screwdriver work. It’s simply a block of wood with some screws in it which he removes and replaces. I was impressed to see how much better he was at it this year than last year.

About this time, it was nearing 11am and Xander’s teacher got our attention and asked us to get ready to leave so they could have circle time and do their sound bags for the day. I gave Xander a few big hugs and thanked him for taking the time to show me some of his work. We’d had a wonderful time and I was very grateful to have a job that was willing to let me be there for the entire time. So many of the dads could only be there for an hour or so, I was really glad to have been able to stay the full 2 1/2 hours we were given. I went and got my shoes and coat on and then gave Xander one more hug before leaving.

I’m constantly amazed at the level of work Xander is able to do. He’s in kindergarten and doing divison and spelling works like “umbrella”. I’m so proud of the work he does and the effort he puts into it.