First Day of Preschool

Sunday morning Kaio woke up at 9am in bed next to Mari and said, "Papa, my pinto (penis) is growing."

Mari, "yeah Kaio, papa has that problem too."

I seems our little boy is turning into a man before our eyes.  This week he started his new preschool program.  Despite my reservations, we decided to go ahead and put him in the county's morning Special Education program, and team that with a Montessori school in the afternoon.  Here he is on the way home from his first day in the public education system.  We decided this because the outdoor Reggio Emilia school that I loved, was just a little too out of the way to choose it over the very close and cheap options next door.  

Side Note: My ultra-conservative Tea Party brother *loved* hearing that we were taking a hand-out from the government instead of financing our kid's education with our own money - just because the government was offering. 

 If we are still in the area next year, then we'll probably send him to the Discovery Woods Reggio Emilia school.We loved it!

Well now, he is a big boy.  We went shopping to try to find a Thomas the Tank Engine backpack, but no local stores seem to sell backpacks after back-to-school week.  I had to order one off Amazon.  

The school bus is going to start picking him up this week, but today I had to drive him.  

I went to pick him up midday to take him to the Montessori, but I must have got there late because the teachers put him on a bus to the school.  I frantically hauled my butt to the Montessori, really hoping that I would beat the bus there. I did and he was so happy to see me.  We walked into the hectic preschool, lots of kids were getting ready for nap and this scared him.  Inquisitive kids hovered over him, repeatedly asking us questions, "Why doesn't he want to lay down?  What's a new place?"  "Why does he want to go home?"

I could tell that he was getting very nervous and anxious.  I asked him if he wanted to take a nap or go in the classroom. He wanted to go in the classroom and so we did.  There were older kids siting around a mat for story time.  Kaio sat on the mat but turned away from me.  I told him I would be back after work.  He did not even say goodbye.  He was mad at me for placing him in such a frightening situation.

I went back to work and fretted about him the whole time.  

After picking him up, I learned that he ended up opting for the nap eventually.  He seemed to really like the place and the kids.  Then in the car ride home he acted so much more mature than usual.  After I took this picture of him 'smiling' he asked if he could see the picture, so politely.  Only the first day - but it seems that moving out of the hectic daycare, and into the preschool with kids his age, is what he needed.

No Sugar?! What?!

So I took the kids to a holistic doctor yesterday to see about detoxing heavy metals out of their system.  I've been feeling so great since getting the metal out of my mouth that I though they might have some residual mercury accumulated in their system from their time in the womb and nursing.  I had a lot of fillings: 9.  And a couple of them were cracked while I was pregnant.
So I went to see this doctor that my dentist recommended.  She had planned to hook the kids up the Asyra system to scan their bodies for chemical imbalances, but the kids were afraid of the metal rods.  Nala wouldn't touch them and Kaio wouldn't hold them long enough.  So then she starts muscle testing me to come to the conclusion that Kaio has liver problems and this all boils down to too much sugar in his diet.  The key to them detoxing is to take the sugar out of their diets so that their livers can function properly.

I was like, 'What? seriously?'  We eat really healthy.

I had given the kids little snack packs of Annie's Fruit Gummy Treats to keep them occupied while we talked.  She showed me the back of the pack - 10 grams of sugar - "That is too much."

Ughhhhhhh.  I was pissed.  I couldn't hide how pissed I was.  I kept thinking, seriously I'm paying $200/hr to have this doctor tell me that we have to take another thing out of our diets.  I think that these doctors just come up with some really impossible unattainable thing so that they can blame you for not following the regiment if it doesn't help.  Like, lets take out the gluten, then the dairy, then the sugar, then the starch... what's next? Oh your bath water is not filtered.  it never ends.
and the muscle testing.  I just don't get it.  Really? - Pointing that machine on my hand is going to tell you something diagnostic about my kid over there?  It just seems like complete quackery.  So when she brought out the muscle testing and told me to take the sugar and starch out.  I was mad.  I was ready to leave.

But I decided to stay and argue a bit.  My kids eat so much less sugar than other kids do.
1. Why should I alienate them from the rest of their friends, who are doing just fine eating tones of sugar?
 - it is all about accumulation of toxins.  If the kid's body does not have other toxins that it is dealing with then it is able to process the sugar.  But if it has been exposed to other toxins (like metal fillings, vaccines, mold, etc) then the kids will get sick more often.

2. I ate lots more sugar than my kids do when I was growing up.  My parents used to give me M&M's.  I turned out fine.
- Things were different back then and children are exposed to many more pollutants in the environment.  Now-a-days children are born with over 200 different carcinogens in their blood.  Their bodies have a lot more to deal with.  Also the vegetables we eat are not as nutrient rich as in the past.  Now, with the use of fertilizers, vegetables that grow lack the variety of vitamins that existed in mineral diverse healthy soil.  

3.  But they love fruits, and fruits are raw.  That has to be good for them.

- Eat seasonal fruits in moderation.

4. If I keep them from eating the snacks that the other kids have at daycare, they think that they are being punished for something.  At daycare they eat yogurt, rice crispy treats, cookies, and pretzels.  Even healthy substitutes have sugar, like those Annies Organic Fruit Snacks
- Give them healthy, but similar options as much as you can. Focus on totally taking out the sugar at home.  That way they can easier detox it when they get it at daycare.
- Try it for 2 weeks and see what happens.  You will notice a change I promise.

So I can't argue with that.  It does not hurt to try it.  "Ok, I can try taking the little-bit of sugar that they have in their diet completely out for two weeks."
And that's what we are doing.  I called my mom, and talked to Mari.  They are both on board.  Although my mom gave me a lecture about all the wacko doctors I frequent!  "I don't understand why you are always taking them to these crazy people.  They are not real doctors."  But she quieted up as soon as I pointed out that our kids are the healthiest on the block.  Nala has never had to take an antibiotic in her life.  Kaio, only twice, and he probably would have been ok without them (but I was a scared new mom).  Kaio has not been sick at all with more than a quickly passing cold since we took him off wheat and dairy.  The kids are incredibly healthy compared to the kids of our mainstream friends and coworkers.  Kaio had a friend, the same age with the exact same coughing problem two years ago.  They were both prescribed nebulizers and inhalers.  For Kaio, we identified the carpets as a trigger and replaced them with cork. We took out the wheat and dairy.  Now he is fine for a whole year not coughing.  The other child has been hospitalized three times already.
So I know that we are doing things right.  But I also recognize that Nala has started acting odd and complaining of things hurting at night.  I was worried about her contracting Lymes, since she has been bitten by 3 ticks (one deer tick).  This doctor said that she is really nutrient deprived because all the sugar she eats is preventing absorption of vitamins from the healthy food. "She may eat tons of healthy food, but her body is not absorbing the minerals.  She is vitamin starved.  Take the sugar and starch out and she will improve."

Ok so we are trying it.  But with Halloween coming, I think this is going to be really freaking difficult.

The Magical Connection of Very Young and Very Old

A snap shot of a photograph printed on a plate.  My mom recently took this picture on he trip to Romania this year to visit family.  The woman on the right is my Great-Grandma, and the little boy on the left is my mom's brother.  He had Leukemia, and they both died together in a fire when he was three years old.  It is pretty tragic.  And I feel a little bad writing about tragedy on this blog because I'm sure everyone has enough to deal with and no one particularly wants to hear another sad story to bring them down.  But I need to get this off my chest and chronicle the family history in a safe spot.  So ignore if you please.
My mom says that Kaio reminds her of her brother; so animated, sweet, and happy.  And that her grandmother loved her little brother so much.  They were inseparable.  When the fire started, he was playing by her feet in the kitchen, which is where he always stayed.  They say that she tried to dowse the cooking fire with oil.  Totally what you are not supposed to do.  But my Great-Grandma predicted that she would die with him.  Or said that she didn't want to live without him.  So it turned out to be a self fulfilling prophesy.

And here is my grandfather, Tata, at a graveyard in Trenton, New Jersey.  This is where he is buried, where his wife is buried, and where his bothers and sisters - who died as children - are buried.  Five of his siblings died of childhood diseases during the short period that they lived in the United States.  That was in the 1910's.  They moved back to Romania in 1920, when my Grandfather was five years old.  Only he and one younger brother lived into adulthood.
At then here are the two brothers, Easter 2006.  The last Easter before Sabin passed away.  My grandfather followed in 2008.
As Tata's health began to dramatically fade in 2006, I prayed that he would hold on until Kaio's birth.  He made it, and lived for a year and a half longer.  Seven of those months we lived in the same house together.   They had a cosmic affinity for each other from the beginning.  Since the day Kaio was born, he brought life and love into Tata's aging soul.  I remember that Tata would just look at him and laugh at everything that baby Kaio did.  He would give him his pacifier if he dropped it.  he would come to help if he heard him crying.  One night, when Kaio was 4 months old and crying in his crib, Mariano and I were obviously too sleep deprived to wake up, Tata went into Kaio's room and somehow was strong enough to lift him out of the crib and rock him back to sleep.  I came into the room later in the night and Tata was still holding him.  It was so sweet to me, but it frightened Mariano because Tata was suffering from dementia and shouldn't be holding Kaio without supervision.
Actually Tata didn't know that Kaio was my baby.  He always called him Mikey, referring to my little brother Micheal.  And if both Micheal and Kaio were in a room together, Tata still didn't get it.  He would just brush his hand at the thought that the baby was anyone other than baby Mikey.
Kaio would crawl to him, sit in his lap, kiss him, and play with him.  one day when we visited Tata in the hospital and Kaio saw him in pain, well that was the most upset that I ever saw baby Kaio.  I feel blessed that they were able to connect.  And although Kaio was too young at the time to remember, and Tata too old to understand, there was something profoundly magical about the connection they shared together.  The connected in the purest possible realm of existence, where their spirits danced and no words or actions were needed, only a look, a laugh, and maybe a tickle.  Witnessing this is what drives me to believe that children and elderly need to play together.

All About Teeth

A holistic dentist removed the last of my Mercury Amalgam fillings last Monday, in a treatment way cheaper than my conventional dentist had quoted.  The process was also very different.  He gave me supplements of charcoal and chlorella to take prior to beginning.  He created a balloon dam to protect my mouth and throat from flying particles,and he had a vacuum sucking the air in front of my face to catch any further air born particles. The vacuum was lined with little grey spots.  I asked him if those were Mercury, "Yes, they are evidence that this thing works."  

Once they were done, he gave me a kiwi rinse, which is like a magnet for any remaining Hg particles.  To my amazement, even after all the precautions, little pieces of Hg showed up in my rinse spit.  I couldn't believe it.  I had had 5 fillings removed by my conventional dentist, and she did not use any of these precautions, although she assured me that she would get 'everything' using the vacuum sucker and this was the safest way available.  Now I doubt that.  Man, I was even nursing Nala at the time.  Imagine how much Hg I must have ingested and inhaled!  At least I did not feel any noticeable effects following the filling extraction done by my conventional dentist, so hopefully the pieces just flushed right out. 

This time I did notice some extraordinary things.  Like, I have been headache free for the four nights since getting the metal out!  

 For the last 4 years off and on and for the last 2 months straight, I have been waking up with headaches.  Chiropractic care really helped make the headaches go away.  Vacations , yoga and being pregnant also helped :).   Changing pillows and changing beds only makes them worse.  So we have a memory foam bed and pillow, those along with chiropractic adjustments and yoga keep the headaches away.  

But I have not had the chance to visit the chiropractor much this year since his office is very out of the way from my new job. 

So now, magically they are gone!  I don't really understand the relation between metal in my mouth and headaches in the morning like I understand the relation between pinched neck nerves or structural problems while sleeping and headaches.  So I was not expecting this at all.  What a bonus!

I still have three years of dental treatment scheduled.  I'm getting a ALM piece to fix my bite and TMJ, braces to keep the teeth in place after the bite work.  It's pretty expensive stuff.  I was expecting the headaches to resolve after the TMJ work.  What a bonus that they seem to have resolved already!

I'm looking into Mercury detox programs for the kids now.  

Be the Cause

to have a bigger purpose, don't think forwards. think backwards. see, feel, understand the effect you want to have - and then be the cause. - Umair Haque


That quote came from the twitter feed of a business advisor, but it has been sticking in my thoughts as guidance that needs to apply to all our lives.  I noticed, that I've been 80% reactionary, and only 20% proactive in my family's life.  Like, we have made some conscious decisions: move to DC to get better jobs, have kids, and change my schedule to have more time with the kids.  But most of the other circumstances (changing jobs, changing daycare, moving to my mom's house to save money, and looking for preschool) have been reactionary, based on trying to find the best approach to the situation that we landed in.  I think that even the big decision to buy a house was more of a reaction to the fact that we had jobs that paid enough we could afford a house, than a fulfillment of the dream of home ownership.  
Perhaps it is time to step back and think about 'what is the life that we want to lead?'  And then be the cause.  That is the type of 'planning' that we have not been doing.  What exactly do we want our life to look like?   What environment do we want for our kids?  Then take that vision and fill in the steps to make that happen.  I think that could send things on a different trajectory entirely. 

a twist of fate perhaps?

So things are actually looking more hopeful this week than last week.  I think that the stress of the Special Education (SE) process combined with the post-vacation come down were making me depressed.  It also helped that I got a call from the admissions director for Discovery Woods school.  She had seen my post on the Natural Families NOVA yahoo group asking about Reggio Emilia schools in the area.  I love the school but had believed they were full for the semester.  It turns out they have one spot left, and Kaio would be the perfect age for it!  I spent an hour and a half on the phone with her explaining Kaio's personality, strengths, and the SE ordeal.  Everything she said about the school sounded perfect.  Actually everything she said sounded exactly like things I have said or thought.  Like that little boys this age should not have to sit at desks, that kids should be outside playing with nature and using their imagination instead of indoors with toys, and that a small loving home-like environment makes kids more comfortable.  Just to name a few.
 I was just smitten and energized.    So I really hope that Kaio likes the school and that they think he will fit with the community.  The kids eat grass fed beef and veggies from the school's garden for lunch!  how cool is that? We are going to an open house on Friday afternoon to see the school. The open house is for one of their homeschooling classes, but she said that I can still get some info and meet them.   Mari, Kaio and my mom are all coming.
So that's cool.  I did go back to the SE office and complete the IEP with some modifications to what was written.  I'm comfortable with the goals now and I think that it could be good for him in tandem with exposure to kids his age.  But I let them know that if things work out with Discovery Woods, I will probably change the IEP again.  They said that was fine, no hard feelings.  They were also really excited about the school.

Obsessing over Preschool!

I spoke the unspeakable today.  The phase that I believe every mother thinks in their head at some point and then quickly pushes into the trash away from memory and the world, imagining that nothing ever happened.  I told Mari that I wish I wasn't a mother.  Boy that was harsh.  What an awful thing to say.  It stung to say it the way that it must sting when a kid screams 'I don't love you!'

I've been depressed.  Mus be from the mix of readjusting after a long road trip and dealing with the special education process.  I didn't do anything at work this week!  I mean that I did the absolute minimum I could possibly do to tread water.  I probably worked a solid 4 hours all week.  Pretty pathetic considering I won an award for being so extraordinary last year.  But my boss was out for a wedding and surgery, so it was easy for me to not work hard.  

Every day last week I was either visiting the Special Ed program or visiting a preschool.  I have not stopped thinking about Kaio and his future all week.  I'm obsessing and it's draining.  Nothing seems right.  None of the schools seem like a fit for him.  And I can't help but worry that there is something wrong with him, even though he seems ok to me.  I don't know what any of this means in the long run.  Will he grow out of it, or is he crazy?  Will he be disadvantaged if I do A or B or C?  Why don't the 'professionals' agree with me that he is fine?  If the system finds him as 'special,' then maybe I don't want to be a part of the system?  I'm so freaking confused.

I went to the best and most expensive school in the area: Nysmith School for the Gifted.  It is a wonderful place filled with natural light and programs based on discovery and creativity.  But their preschool program seemed heavy in the arts and crafts.  The math and science activities were painting and mixing with colors and counting windows on a bus.  It seemed like they were incorporating learning into fun activities.  But, I'm just not sure that Kaio would consider those activities fun.  I would much rather see him out in the real world counting butterflies or times that a rock skips across a pond, dropping sticks and leaves into the water to see what floats.  I just don't jive with the craft activities.  I want the kids to be outside.  

Nala has a book with feel and touch baby animals: fluffy chicks, rough baby elephant ears, furry gorillas.  what's with the book?  I want them at the zoo, touching the animals.  And that has really been the basis of my two days at home with them: let's get outside and see the world.

Kaio will tell you all about how bees make honey by pollinating the flowers and going back to their hives.  He knows that the honey is sweet and he eats it.  He knows that the flowers come from seeds, water and sun, and that birds like to eat the seeds.  He knows that caterpillars turn into cocoons and then butterflies.  Birds come from eggs and make nests.  He knows when people are happy, sad, mad, surprised, etc.  He knows how to interact with the natural world around him.  To me these things are more important than spending hours sitting at a table cutting and gluing.  

I've been reading about the Reggio Emilia preschool approach.  Where children direct their learning, teachers are the co-learners, and nature is the third teacher.  The philosophy, built on sensory exploration and discovery, seems ideal to me.  It seems so in tune with Kaio's personality.  He is always moving, touching and feeling.  Once he figures something out, he is on to the next thing.  If he is challenged, he persists.  Like today, we learned about pulley systems by taking a string attached to a tree branch far away and draped over a nearby tree branch.  He learned that when he pulled the string down and up it moved the tree branch far away left and right.  I attached fallen branches to the string to show how the string moves on both ends.  He and Nala both were so into it.  We also took a video of his Thomas the Tank engine while he narrated.  It was really fun. Mari took the good one, but didn't save it.  Here is a short preliminary one:

I just can't imagine him sitting still at circle time in a classroom with the other kids.  And I don't think that I want him to have to do that.  I know that teachers keep saying, well he'll have to do it when he goes to school.  But then maybe I don't want him to go to school.  Seriously, I look at those desks all perfectly aligned and I think of some communist culture.  Why do kids have to line up in a straight line to walk to the lunch room?  There is nothing natural about that.  We are creating a submissive society.  

Sure I have problems with authority.  I think I'm above the law, the rules, the process, I don't have to read the instructions, etc.  I am constantly finding ways to stand out in the crowd and it really hasn't turned out so bad for me.  I think it is part survival instinct and I hope that Kaio inherits it.  I think he has.  It must have come from my grandfather, one of the few who escaped from communist Romania.  He and Kaio had an unspoken connection in the year they spent together.  

I know that I am sounding completely crazy right now.  But I'm really getting a dirty feeling about school.  I'm also just freaking out because I don't know the 'right' thing to do.  I wish there were more Regio Emilia style options in the neighborhood.  The one school that I know of is full.  All this worrying about how bad his life will be if i don't get it right is really eating at me.  

The Continuing Special Ed Saga

We had two more events today in the Special Education saga.  This morning we visited a Montessori preschool close to  my work.  Kaio was very intrigued by the classrooms full of kids.  He wanted to peek through the windows and crack open the doors to see what the kids were doing.  The school seemed huge to me.  It had 5 classes of over 20 students each.  I could tell that he really wanted to be with the other kids, but was nervous to talk to them or enter in the classrooms.  He is very outgoing when there is just one kid around.  But more than one kid and he becomes timid.  We left the school and I felt like the signs point to him wanting to join a preschool, but not that one.

After the Montessori visit we went to the Walker Nature Center in Reston for a walk in the woods.  Kaio remembered immediately that this was the same place he had rode his bicycle before and he started begging for his bicycle.  I was able to calm him down by explaining that it didn't fit in my car, and this time we don't have a bicycle, can we still take a walk without it... etc.  We took a walk to touch and see nature.  The kids both liked picking up interesting rocks and acorns.  Nala started filling up a little purse with acorns, and Kaio asked if he could take some rocks home with him.  I think next time I'll bring some little bags for them to stow interesting finds.  We has a fern tickle fight, and Nala hugged her first tree.
In the afternoon I went back to the Special Education office for their recommendations on where to place Kaio and his Individualized Education Plan (IEP) while the kids napped.  As I predicted, they recommended that Kaio attend a minimum 3 days a week in the mornings.  The problem that I am still struggling with is how the class does not have kids his age.  Even when they will get 'normal' model kids from the community in November, those kids will be 3 years old, not 4 years old like Kaio.  The idea of free daycare is really enticing.  But I keep thinking of how Kaio reacts to being pressured to learn things.  He ignores the questions and tries to get out of the situation.  I observed this when we visited the classroom.  He was playing with a train set and the teacher kept pushing trains in his face and asking him to pick the yellow one.  I know that he knows his colors but he just didn't want to answer her because he was not interested in the question.  I think that he understands that people are pushing him, and he rebels from that.  I was the same way as a kid.  When my grades fell in school I remember feeling like I wasn't satisfying my parents.  When they started sending me to psychologists to figure out what was 'wrong' I resented them for not trusting me to be me.  Public School classes did not interest me.  I used to read books under my desk during class.  It's not that I was a bad student.  I did really well in college, and now I do great at my job.
When I asked the SE teacher about how he would meet his goals on socialization and communication without peers to socialize or communicate with, she said that most of his goals are measured through adult participation and prompting.  So adult coaching will help him and he can play with other kids in settings outside of the SE class.
I am contacting a Farm School that has afternoon preschool to see if that is something that he can do in tandem with the SE.  I think that is the only way that I will feel comfortable with this change.  But even then, I keep shuddering as I picture that teacher pushing the trains in his face and saying. "Which one is the yellow one. Kay-o?"  As he is peacefully constructing his railroad track and talking about the train scene.   Shouldn't I just let him be a kid?
When I started this whole process, he was at a place where he seemed sad, withdrawn and slightly vacant.  But now-a-days he is so happy and social.  He is progressing with speech in both English and Portuguese.  Today we went to the gym and he walked into the kid's play area without fight.  He took his shoes off and went to play with the big room full of older kids.  I peeked in a couple times and he was constructing legos with some other kids and talking to them.  So I just don't think there is anything wrong with him.
Until I start comparing him to other kids.  Then I see that his sentences are not as perfect as there's are.  I see that he erupts with frustration and cries more frequently.  But I'm not supposed to compare to other kids, right?

Catching up on the last couple weeks

OK We are back from our two week family road trip and life much improved from my last post.  I think that acknowledging the difficulties helped me switch gears to Carpe Diem.  That particular day did get worse before it got better, as we discovered that I accidentally left Mari's wallet in a gas station in Mulan, Idaho: three hours behind us!  That would equal an added 6 hours to the trip, which is over a half day of driving.  Luckily with today's smartphones I was able to find the phone number of the station, call, and convince Joe of Joe's Station to mail us the wallet.  That made Mari feel a little better.  We took turns driving at night for the next two nights and ended up having time for a couple decent and fun pit stops along the way.

One of my favorite stops was at the Kohl Children's Museum.  Who knew Chicago had so many cool things going for them?  The kids loved it!  They played like crazy straight through nap time.  All of the exhibits are hands on interactive.  There was one exhibit devoted to music with a number of multi sensory toys, including a room with music playing that projected your image with trails on a giant projector.  It was exactly the kind of multi sensory situation that Kaio normally runs away from.  But being in the kid's museum amongst so many fun activities he did give it a try with some coaxing. The whole family shook out booty to the beat and watched the pretty rainbow patterns morph to the rave music.

There was another exhibit made up like a pretend grocery store.  Nala went in and packed her cart with fruits and vegetables.  When Kaio went in, he B-lined for the bakery and filled his cart with every bagel and bread product in the store.  What does this obsession mean? Is it because we are repressing gluten from his diet?  I've not sure how to interpret this.
So then we made it home happy and healthy.  I think the kids really liked having all the one-on-one time with us in close quarters.  We got along well.  There were a few difficult times getting the kids to stay in their seats and follow directions.  But we would of had difficult moments no matter where we took the vacation.  I will try to post later with more highlights from places that were successful with the kids.
Since we have been back Nala got kinda strangely struck with a vaginal itch a couple nights ago.  She couldn't sleep until 3am because she was itching up in 'there'.  But no rash or discharge.  I couldn't figure out what was wrong with her.  It didn't seem like a yeast infection, or a UTI, and no sign of worms.  Finally she fell asleep on my belly at 3am.  She has been fine since then.  So odd.  Please let me know if anyone out there has any ideas.  I googled but found nothing.
Today we had an appointment to visit the Special Education Pre-School that Kaio might attend.  I'm still not sure what I think of all this fuss over his latent speech development.  When we got there he was talking up a storm to the teacher.  He took her hand and pointed out all the things that he was seeing around the school, "owl! wolf! look kids!"  The teacher said, "He seems really different from his file."  Yes just another mixed signal that I'm getting about whether he really needs 'special' education.  Sure he talks a bunch sometimes, but he rarely responds to direct questions.  Actually Sunday was a first when I asked him to tell Grandma Helen what types of animals we saw on our road trip and he actually responded by naming animals.  Sure the first one was 'elephant' (which we didn't see) but maybe he did see one somewhere.  The rest of the animals were in line with the trip: deer, elk, buffalo, a cricket.  So I was really impressed that he answered a question about something in the past that was not related to trains.  It was a milestone!
He learned how to use a computer mouse and for the last few days has been doing Thomas activity games on the internet, like coloring and matching games.  My mom got him tangrams, which he figured out immediately.  So he is pretty good at spacial thinking.  I'm just not so sure what to make of all of this.  I don't think that I want to put him in that Special Ed preschool.  There are only two other girls in the class and they are both younger than him and gross motor skills challenged.  I know that he will get tons of personal attention from a professional special education teacher, not to mention FREE pre-school.  But I just don't know if he will be happy in a class without peers.  I want to explore Montessori and other preschool options to see if maybe a different learning approach would be better for him than the in-home daycare that he is at now.
I also went to a cranial dentist appointment today where the holistic dentist gave me the results of my biometric exam: x-rays, MRIs, measurements of my facial alignment, jaw range of motion, and tooth molds. My teeth curve inward instead of outward like everyone else's because my childhood dentist removed four of my permanent  teeth to prevent overcrowding before braces.  This is causing daily trauma, and also makes my bite so screwed up that my teeth don't touch when I close them.  Really, other people's teeth touch?  apparently so.  I put the $2K down payment on a piece that will begin the process of correcting my bite.  I'm also getting the rest of my mercury fillings removed in two weeks.  I am so excited about this!  It is a major financial decision.  But hopefully insurance will pay back some of the cost.  And I have faith that it will resolve my neck pain.
So basically I have been out and about this whole day, even though I was supposed to be back at work.  I better get a lot done tomorrow to make up for it.  In surprisingly good news, I found out over the vacation that I won an award at work for doing such an excellent job over the last year.  I can't believe that they are giving me an award when I feel like such a loafer taking off two days a week to hang out with my kids.  I guess they really do like me, and it is nice to feel like I'm good at something even though it isn't exactly what I want to be doing with my life.  Isn't it ironic?

our family roadtrip cross country

day twelve of our fourteen day family roadtrip.  things are starting to get ugly in this dash   to get home as soon as posible.  tempers are short and the space in our vw jetta small.  games are getting old and there is no time left to stop at roadside attractions. lets hope we make it home happys