Tomorrow is the last tennis clinic before starting play on our club's bantam team. Monday is likely to be an emotional day for Walter and Ollie, since it will be their first time playing competitively, and they can be hard on themselves. But if the weather cooperates, we'll get some court time this weekend. That is, between my singles tournament matches and the playoff match for my 6.5 combo team. I have a feel my time will be heavily spoken for.




What a wild week. And today was evidence that yeah, every day is going to be packed. It was nonstop. Deal with the returning Southwestern at home sales boys bright and early, drop off Rutledge at preschool with his newly completed health form, the final training session and debriefing about test results from Learning RX (have I mentioned again and again how far away this is and how hard the hour of driving was each day we went!), then a quick lunch out for a variety of people with a variety of dietary needs, which of course meant a variety of stops. Then pick up Rutledge, drop everyone at home, run off to my dr appointment, run home and scoop out the final dead fish (yes, we have exactly zero fish right now--a bacterial infection seems to have picked every single one of them off in the past week) and a water sample, urge a bit of math, stop at the fish store to test the water, buy a water test kit for at home, and bring the dead fish in, then rush over to Lego League, which required some whip cracking to keep everyone on task to get the ramps and obstacles built. Get barely through the door at home and my sister in law was here to pick up Frances for the weekend. Whew!

The great news from today is that Walter has really, really improved with all his work over the summer. He showed an average of about 3.5 years of improvement in the 13 individual areas that were tested. Only one subtest went down instead of up from the time he was tested back in May, and that was one where he simply missed one more question from last time and it was the one that was most heavily based on prior knowledge (it involved identifying things in pictures). Realistically, even if he has had a huge amount of improvement in basic cognitive skills, he's not going to necessarily have added vastly to his knowledge base using these new skills in just a couple of months, so I'm not concerned. But some areas showed massive improvement, and perhaps none more so than processing speed, where he went from rock bottom to well above average and even into the 90th percentiles. Processing speed is the one area that is reputed to be hardest to improve, so it really shows how much work he put in. He also went way, way up in all of the visual processing areas, some of which were his weakest areas before. I'm just so, so pleased. This whole process has felt very worthwhile. He looks better on paper now, he has so many more skills under his belt and is dragged down less by his less strong areas, and we've already noticed a tremendous change in his spelling. Also he is cranking out his math now and has gone from an average of 5-7 wrong per problem set to almost none. Math has always been a huge gift area for him anyway, but now he's enjoying it so much more and is quicker. I'd still love to see him read a novel-type book for pleasure without force, but perhaps that will come. Admittedly, I'm married to someone who doesn't read fiction for pleasure, either, so I know that there are people of above average intelligence who just don't choose to spend their free time this way, even though it seems really freakish to me. What's cool, though, is that Walter now loves to be read to, something he had a hard, hard time with before. He went beyond just fidgeting or jumping on the bed--he genuinely was not comprehending or listening at all when I would read...if he remained in the room at all. Now, though he still claims to hate history, he's participating with some connection in our history reading, and he has been begging for more and more and later and later with out nighttime read alouds (currently _Skellig_, a book he is loving).



The sad part of the day was watching my cardinal fish die. This is the third time I've had to watch the dying quivers and labored breathing of a fish in its final 30 minutes. It was excruciating. This was Frances' favorite fish, and it just confirmed that something awful was going on in the tank. They all had definite signs of fin rot, had loss of color, rapid, labored breathing, listlessness, a darkening of the scales around the dorsal fin, loss of appetite, and this one had a long white poop coming out of it, suggestive of intestinal parasites or infection. With no fish hosts left, hopefully the tank will clear up. Our nitrates were up a bit today, but they weren't earlier in the week, and it could be a result of all the death that has gone on in there. What's amazing is how fast the hermit crabs know there is something to eat--they were on the fish body like flies within minutes of death and had already taken apart the back of the fish by the time I got him out. We are doing a 30% water change today, adding in garlic and Vitamin C, and letting it sit without fish for two weeks before introducing anyone new. I'm going to have to consider what would be a good combination, since we're starting fresh. In the meantime, I did bring home a sea urchin who looks so very cool (he looks like a Halloween decoration because he is black, spiny, and has a big orange hole in the middle), 3 new snails, and a peppermint shrimp who I'm convinced is going to die, if he hasn't already. They are all supposed to help clean the tank, which is definitely something we need right now. The mild rise in nitrates has also initiated a little algae bloom, though the water change should help with that. I suppose you are not really a real reefkeeper until you've had some devastating episode where your whole tank dies on you and you're out hundreds of dollars in fish. Now I'm legit.