My goal for the summer is to focus on doing the things that we most want to do and not succumbing to whatever it is that makes us crazy busy during the school year. Part of this is taking time to just be with friends. Last Wednesday we went for a very short hike (short because we didn't go far) to a park that I had never been to or heard of before, Larus Park, which is right near Stony Point Shopping Center and the Chippenham Parkway, which we could hear through the trees. It was a beautiful park and a hidden gem in our area. It reminded me so much of Shenandoah National Park, with its boulders and streams with rocky beds that are perfect for wading through. Here are my boys, some friends, and the accompanying dogs. Bilbo didn't make it into the picture, but Abby and Bentley did. I miss Shenandoah so much--we used to go hiking once or twice a week when we were at UVA and just had Hokie as our baby. Though our walk was short, the time outside was well worth the trip, and we're planning more hikes on summer mornings.

Over the weekend, my Dad was at his timeshare in Old Town Alexandria, so we went up late on Thursday night after the dive meet to spend the weekend. The timeshare was perfectly located for getting right on the King Street Metro, and this made it easy to get in and out of D.C. several times. We went to the Air and Space Museum on the first day, which unfortunately was a day that got off to a rocky start. Frances was tired and didn't want to go to this museum--she wanted to go to Natural History. So there was some crying and foot dragging. After the museum, we went to find lunch, then set off on a trek to the Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, and the Vietnam and Korean War Memorials, which I had not seen before. Though we made a pit stop at a CVS en route, it got very, very hot, and I started overheating. It's really not pretty when I overheat, and it happens frightfully often now since I had heat exhaustion last summer while playing tennis. Something was going on at the White House, so security was very high and about 7 blocks of streets were closed, as well as the whole right side of the Washington Monument, the Ellipse, and some access to the Mall. This made what felt like a death march all the worse, and I kept wondering whether I was going to need to stop one of the cops and ask for assistance or an escort to air conditioning and more water, but with some help from Ollie in pushing the stroller, we made it to the lobby of the American History museum, where we could rest and rehydrate. That evening we ordered in dinner at the hotel and spent a few hours in the swimming pool, where the boys played a lot of very energetic keepaway type games with a teenager they met there.

On our second day we went to two fabulous museums outside of DC: the National Marine Corps Museum, which was excellent and spot on for Ollie and the Udvar-Hazy Air and Space Museum in Chantilly, which was also just breathtaking. It was a perfect day with just the right amount of activity. In the evening we met my Dad and Patsy for dinner and then Kerry, Ollie, and I went for a walk in Old Town, though most of the stores were closed at that point.

On our final day, we went back into DC and spent some time in the mammals and ocean galleries of the Museum of Natural History, then headed over to the newly remodeled Ford's Theatre, which Lincoln was shot, and we finished up with a late lunch at ESPNZone, which was close by. There comes a point on every trip where you rather suddenly just want to click your heels and be home, and this was that point for me. We had a super trip, but it was suddenly time to be back in our house, getting ready for the week. After enduring the typical large amount of non-moving traffic on I-95, Ollie arrived in time for the awards ceremony for his baseball team and got his trophy, and Walter got home in time to do some of his Learning RX homework.
Last night was our first swim meet of the season. All three kids swam, and Walter and Ollie had a new breakthrough--they got to swim in a relay at the end of the meet. They really gave it their best, and their team came in 3rd, which is a pretty good showing for swimmers new to the scene. Walter and Ollie swim freestyle, backstroke, and breast stroke, and Frances swims only freestyle and backstroke. They all had a fabulous time, but I think no one had more fun than Rutledge. Rut was out running with a gang of boys and, as they put it, "bare-back wrestling" with a 6 year old on the team from the moment they arrived until the moment they left around 9:30 p.m. He has become so gregarious and outgoing, and he finds people everywhere to talk to, play with, and to dote on him. This morning it was a teenager at the pool who played volleyball and soccer with him for an hour. Tonight it was another teenage girl at the indoor pool. He has never really met a stranger that he didn't start chatting up!



Here he's looking a bit grumpy. The new hours that we wake up because of dive practice at 8 a.m. aren't entirely agreeing with everyone yet. We're those freaks who usually wake sometime between 8 and 9, though Rutledge and Frances had starting backing things up toward 7 within the last few months, and I feel like I should have been adapting over time better than I have. I get very knocked out by late afternoon, which is not a feeling that I enjoy. But I do appreciate the immense sense of promise a day has when it starts before, oh, say, 10. I feel like I accomplish so much more before the day sprouts legs and escapes me when I am up at a reasonable hour.

Rutledge even has his own first activity--swim lessons with Ms. Erline. Erline has been teaching swim lessons since 1944. That's a long, long time! She is very gentle with the children, but they trust her, and she pushes them to go beyond their current limits and try new things. Rutledge is doing far better than I ever expected--last Thursday he went about 20 feet dog paddling across the pool. He is still nervous about putting his head back to float on his back, but he is willingly going into the water now for his lessons and holds on to the side, jumps (in his own special, cautious Rutledge way), and swims out to her with support. I'm confident that he'll be swimming by the end of the summer, and hopefully well before. Right now we just need to get him comfortable enough to go into the baby pool or wade up to his knees in the mushroom pool.

Tomorrow evening is our second dive meet, and it looks like all three kids will be diving in this one. Walter was not ready with his four dives last week, so he, like about half of the team, had to sit it out. Ollie has gotten down a new dive--a front flip 1 1/2 with a half twist. This is a bit up in difficulty from his previous dives. Frances has gotten down her back dive and her front tuck, so she is ready with a higher degree of difficulty as well. And Walter is doing much better with his back dive, so now he has four dives, which is what is required of his age group this year. Dive is still the favorite of the summer sports for everyone.

And last, but not least, we have some new pets. This sounds like a good thing, but it's never quite clear whether a new pet is a good thing in our household! Already, our sweet and cute new hamster has had his cage door left open and had traveled out of the bedroom he was in, down the hall, and under my bed, where he was finally stalked and caught. And we have a very, very cute turtle, Turtellini, who has a habitat in an old aquarium. Originally he was only supposed to stay for a day or two, but now we seem to be making plans for a longer time with us. We're still learning how to best feed him, but he is quite the new family member. And finally, tonight when I went to buy more salt and fresh water at the fish store, I came home with a new buddy for our fearless foursome. His name is Scooter Blennie, which I think sounds like the name of the kid who sat two desks behind you in 3rd grade, but we're going to go with the obvious and just call him Scooter. He's very interesting so far--he has these cool little leglike things that he runs on, and he has a propensity to repose on the rock and look dead, then dart off at lightning speed when he gets wind that someone is looking at him. It remains to be seen whether he will "disappear," Bermuda-Triangle style, as some of our other newly introduced smaller fish have done. He seems like someone who could hold his own, but you never know in the fish eat fish world of the saltwater aquarium....

I have been doing my best lately to become a morning person. I actually really like getting up in the morning...when I actually feel rested after a night's sleep instead of begging with every ounce of my being to burrow further under the covers. I'm not sure why that was happening, but in the past week or two, I've felt much better in the mornings and less crashing in the afternoons. Maybe that's just what happens when you have a long history of waking after 9 and suddenly are regularly getting up around 7.

Today I have a USTA match, and I think I'm finally out of my tennis slump. I was wishing away my earlier matches this season, hoping for rain to postpone (I knew it would never really get rid of them!) my matches because I was doing so terribly. My head has just not been on the court at all, and my sense of obligation to get things done with the kids at home and not be running around from morning until night like a crazy person made me really not need another 3 hour activity that requires conplicated child care arrangements. Thankfully, many of our matches have been consecutively at home, which relieves a lot of stress. And then I also started winning. The pressure is a bit on if I want to be moved up at some point, and that means playing singles or playing at position #1 or #2 as often as I can and winning. So far, I've had two wins with my 3.5 weekend team (alas, I was playing 3.0s, which doesn't help as much, but still, at least they are stronger 3.0s) and a win with my morning 3.0 team. My own personal goal is to be a 4.0 by the time I am 50, which I think is attainable with some diligent practice and a commitment to clinics and lessons in the future.

The boys are finishing up their tennis lessons tonight, assuming it doesn't rain, which it looks like it will. The progress they've made is finally quite palpable. They can rally balls for short periods of time. They can serve with some regularity. They were able to play their first tournament this Sunday. It was frustrating for Ollie, since some of these kids have been taking lessons for a few years and had more control over the ball, and he doesn't like to lose. He also can get very anxious when he is having trouble with something, and then he defeats himself by clamming up, pulling his muscles in tight, and just not fully trying. But he did very, very well for his first time and he had some great points, and he even won one of his round robin matches. Walter also did really well, and he had a great attitude about it. He manages to have fun even when he's not winning and to be gracious when he is. We are planning to have the kids stick with tennis for a while because it is so convenient, close, and the skills can be used for a lifetime.

Baseball and soccer season are also wrapping up, though not as fast as I'd like. I feel terrible for saying things like this, but there's a turning of the seasons and there's a point when everyone is just done with what they're currently doing, the things that have a finite life span, and they're ready to move on, and that's just where we are right now. I'm excited about the things that are coming up next and can't wait for real summer to begin.

I wonder if everyone's life looks like mine. I kind of hope not, because then I have cause for optimism about our own future being different.

We're in Transition Week. One of a couple. The time when summer pushes back on the spring stuff that isn't finished and then you toss in a couple of high-intensity special capstone events for good measure. Add in a little Clendenon craziness, and you get the picture.

Here's today, and yes, it's still a schoolday on top of all this, not that anything got done:

Orientation and first training session at Learning RX
Drop off leftover conference books at St. Joseph's Villa
Practice play lines with friend
Dive practice
Swim practice
Tennis practice
Dance recital rehearsal

What we skipped: baseball game; picking up flowers for Frances's hair for recital

Tomorrow is another Learning RX session (way across town), play practice, band practice, flute lesson, Cub Scouts, dive practice, swim practice. I'm exhausted just writing it.

Though we have a lot going on, probably the biggest time consumer that is both exciting and stressful is the cognitive training that Walter is doing. This program, PACE, requires 3 hours a week in the center for 12 weeks working one on one with his trainer, Andrea, and then we need to do at least three more hours at home with him on the off days. Tonight's first assignment is to have Walter watch the Karate Kid, which we're doing right now (yes, that's right, it's after 10 p.m. and the kids are still up) to learn the lessons of wax-on/wax-off and sand the floor and kicking like a bird. Walter's assignment is to try to figure out what Daniel learns from all his exercises, what the wax on, wax off has to do with karate, how practice and concentration in one thing that seems unrelated can carry over into other areas of your life. We also did some training, even though he wasn't necessarily supposed to tonight. The first thing they learn is the names of all the presidents forward and backward in order, and they are timed on this and must meet certain benchmarks. Walter has it down, but he doesn't have the time thing covered. He's getting stressed, but he's working on it. He managed to get a "gold" in the 10 and 20 categories, but not on all 44, which is where he started crying with the stopwatch going. He also worked on attention arrows, which is a variation on the old say the name of the color when the word name of another color is on the paper. Again, he is timed on how fast he can say the names of rows of colored arrows or say which direction they point and has to say the color of each arrow on the beat of a metronome at various speeds. It is cool to see the gradual improvements. For each task, he gets points, so he has incentive to work harder. My motivation is high now, and I hope it will stay that way for the next 12 weeks. It's intensive, but finite, and hopefully this will improve his auditory and visual processing and his processing speeds, which should carry over into his reading, listening, attention and other skills.

At the conference, I also picked up a new wordbuilding/vocabulary program that I'm dying to start. I'm second-guessing myself for having gotten a level that may be higher than what we should have started with, but I am hoping that this will help break down vocabulary to help with both spelling and understanding longer words. What I'm seeing is a shift as we had into summer. We'll finish up Saxon math one of these days soon--about 12 more days left or something, but then we'll focus on this brainskills stuff, doing more of the Critical Thinking Company books that I've collected over the years, playing games, doing this vocabulary stuff, and helping Frances learn to read. I'm pretty impressed with her progress over the last month. She has been working through Headsprout Reading, which is an online program (yes, I'm spending more money on "education" than I thought possible now) that has her completing one 10-15 minute episode a day and claims to get her reading at the level of an average 8 year old by the end. We'll see if it's true. I still haven't seen the real "click" that tends to happen with reading. She's still laboring through the short words like she always has, but there's bit by bit change, and her fluency is going up. I'll try to remember to say how it's going in a few weeks. She's near the end of the first 40 episodes right now, and I'm not sure if we'll be able to pay for the next 40 right away. Rutledge is doing it, too, but he's moving slowly. Amazingly, though he is delayed in many areas, he is starting to read some short words and knows quite a few sounds. He's not exactly breezing through or understanding everything, but slow and steady wins the race, right?

And Spongebob School, as we call it, is nearly over. He has been doing speech therapy for almost 3 months, but unfortunately, there have only been about 5 sessions so far because of holidays and then us being gone last week. Now he only has one more before the schoolyear ends. It's a little frustrating, since a delay in such a short life is significant and 3 months is a long time to wait to get on the issue again, and so far he hasn't gotten to material that is challenging or works on his problem areas (specifically, one of his age-inappropriate areas is that he can't say "k" and g" sounds at the beginnings of words). But he has had a lot of fun, he has learned all of his sounds taught so far, and he performs them like a little trained monkey. I'm wondering if there's something I can do to further the process over the summer. I hate the feeling that I need to become an expert in someone else's professional area, but I guess that's what parenting is, when it all comes down. We are the experts. We are at ground level and know what our kids need, and then we endeavour to find out how to meet those needs, no matter how far flung from what we thought we were experts in they might be.

Oh my goodness. I can't believe my kids are still up. Especially with a physical day like they've had (dive, swim, tennis). We're all working on getting up earlier, particularly now that I have this running ambition and program I'm trying to follow. Who knows? Maybe tomorrow will be rainy, which will eliminate some of the things from our list of to-dos, but I'm excited about the changes toward a more outdoor lifestyle that the impending summer brings, I'm excited about wrapping up some of our regular year stuff, and I'm ready for a bit of change.

Nancy

Digging out from under total insanity, here I am again.

I have been on hiatus from what feels like everything. I think in a sense I'm lonely, maybe doing too much of things I don't really want to do for reasons I don't really understand. I'm really busy, but feeling pretty alone at the same time. Maybe I'm simply moving too fast. Maybe everyone I know is moving too fast. Maybe we all need to slow down. Who knows.

We just got back from a week in the village of Hatteras on Hatteras Island on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. This is the second time we have stayed in Hatteras--the first was three years ago at this same time of year. And there was a lot in common between these two trips. Rain and gale force winds, a television full of warnings about rip tides that kept us from the water for days. Not that you'd want to go in while it's in the 40s and 50s in the air, not to mention the water. Well, amend that. Actually, kids will go in just about anything, if given permission.

The first trip we took to Hatteras was salvaged by the miracle of letterboxing. There were at least 25 letterboxes back in 2006 in the Hatteras Island/Ocracoke area. Though it was cold and we were underdressed, we did get out and about into areas we never would have seen without a list of vague clues to guide us. We learned about and hiked through maritime forests with trees stunted by the salt wind we were so familiar with firsthand. We saw at least 5 snakes in 5 different environments--historic graveyards full of downed sailors, hollow trees in the Buxton Woods, in the Pamlico Sound, on a forested trail on Ocracoke, and guarding a letterbox with its life.

Unfortunately, this year when we were looking for an afternoon activity, we discovered that the placers of many of the letterboxes on Hatteras had made most of them private or by invitation only. This seems to me to violate the spirit of the communal activity of letterboxing, open to all. We did attempt to revisit one that had become overgrown, so the trail was no longer visible, but we gave up on it in deference to the snakes who doubtless called the spot home. While there, we visited the "Graveyard of the Atlantic Museum," which is fascinating and full of information about the dangerous shoals and long history of warfare and shipwreck off the Atlantic Coast. We also had fun poking through another old graveyard tucked into a condo and giant sound-house community linked to a popular shopping area by a boardwalk over a vibrant salt marsh and found a letterbox under the fourth step down off a gazebo.

Finally, on the fifth day of our trip, things were looking up in the weather. It was sunny. Our day on Ocracoke, always a favorite, ended in drizzle turning to genuine rain, which was a shame since we had just unloaded our bikes and were ready to head out into the nether reaches of a very cute place. We managed to visit a few shops (to get some blessed relief from being pelted by wetness). On the plus side, we found a super coffee shop that had perfect climbable trees, and Walter amused the many guests sitting out under the trees with his tree-shimmying skills. Rutledge, of course, made friends with many, many dogs, some of whom were searching for another friend and some of whom were offended by very short people who aren't always gentle. There were the two French Bulldogs at lunch at the seafood restaurant, wearing their life preservers because this breed can't swim. There were the two dachshunds on the beach who didn't like children. And the hyper beagle puppy who came by shortly afterward. Then there were the coarse-haired Portugeuse Water Dogs. And the chihuahua on the sound when we semi-trespassed onto land for sale on the sound. The westie on the way to the pizza place. While on Ocracoke, we also shopped at our favorite little shell and trinket store, visited the ponies descended from the ones supposedly brought on a Spanish ship way back when, and climbed the trees in the cemetery and read the names of the British who perished in an attack by a German U-Boat during World War II.

On my final day there, it was sunny, and we were able to fly the very cool kites we bought on the second day of the trip, the kites that didn't appreciate the 35 mph gusts from the early part of the week. Ollie had a red, white, and blue airplane which, when all is told, was really a delta in disguise, Walter had a Red Baron plane, and Frances had a poison dart frog on a classic diamond. We got sunburned without realizing it. The older three kids played for hours in a rather cold ocean that most sane people stayed out of. We got mahi-mahi, steamed shrimp, and bay scallops right from a local boat. And we played yet more Set, a game that figured very strongly in this vacation. We did almost all of a 550 piece puzzle (no, I haven't forgiven the others for not putting in the last 25 pieces of plain blue sky that I left off when I went to bed after midnight).

Leaving was the hard part. I had to physically peel myself away. It was as if a magnet was holding me back. The day was gorgeous, the weather warm, and I wanted more than anything in the world to (a) become very irresponsible. I had volunteered a long time back to organize the used curriculum sale at a statewide homeschooling conference. Suddenly, I wanted to just flake out, to not be where I was supposed to, to say that my mental health was such that I just *had* to stay at the beach. And that made me kind of slow getting out. It felt like there was lead in my feet keeping them from pushing the gas pedal of the car. As I was going over the bridge off the Outer Banks, Margaritaville came on. I'll admit, this isn't a song that I have ever completely understood. But at this moment, the appeal was undeniable. The life of just kicking back, shirking all responsibility to anyone else, and just drinking for the rest of the day, week, maybe month or year was calling my name. But I kept driving. For the (b) above, I also thought about just driving right on past the conference and on across the country. See "being irresponsible" above.

But I went to the conference, the book sale was successful. I wish I could have seen more of the conference itself, which i didn't feel like I experienced because I spent more or less the entire time except for a brief run for lunch and an hour out for one session on a topic that wasn't all that pertinent to me (preparing high school transcripts). But overall, it was a good experience. Just not as good as the beach would have been.

Oh, and I'd be remiss not to mention our kayaking adventure. We were eco-explorers. The Outer Banks is full of these "Eco Tours" by kayak--whatever that really means. We had brought our semi-new kayak that we bought last fall and were determined to use it. Considering the crazy wind and choppy seas, it wasn't much of a possibility until close to the end of our trip. On a bikeride with the kids (which, like everything else, involved a lot of graveyard with a wide variety of years on the stones), I had scoped out a good place to park and put in our boat in a salt marsh area. When we went back a few days later to show it to Kerry, wouldn't you know it...there was a big old snake slithering through the water. I take these things as signs! So we decided, on our last night, to go out to the Sound and put in at a public access. I was pretty sure I had seen kiteboarders here at one point (almost no one was out this week!), but I hadn't seen any other kayaks there. Now I know why. When I say shallow, I mean shallow! Ollie and I loaded up with our life jackets and were pushed out, and about a minute later we ran aground in water so shallow that Ollie had to push me and the boat away. Then Walter walked out about 500 feet and helped us to get back in; he was in water up to his ankles. Meanwhile, being Walter, he was also collecting more wildlife than the aquarium sponsored class we skipped could ever have expected. By the time we left, he had clams, multiple hermit crabs, had seen a rabbit, and who knows what else he picked up off the bottom. No matter how far we paddled out, it was still shallow, shallow, shallow, and getting dark. And it required a lot of effort to drag the kayak across the sandy bottom and we didn't want to be stuck too far from home. So that was the end of our eco-tour.

All in all, it wasn't enough vacation. We did a lot of at-home things--played a lot of Set, Monopoly, chess, mancala, that dreadful little word game from Cranium that Rutledge plays (you fish for letters with a little rod and a totally useless plastic polar bear sits on a piece of cardboard watching), Go Fish, Uno. We read a Nancy Drew novel. But the beach time wasn't enough. I needed more, longer, and warmer. I was plotting my return, maybe spontaneous, for a night, with a tent, as I left. Who knows, maybe I will follow through!

I have become the world's most pathetic blogger. It's pitiful, really. I don't even know what I'm doing. I think I'm just losing interest in the things we are doing because there are so, so many of them, and I don't have time to enjoy any of them because I'm juggling so many balls in the air at once. Almost every single night of the week I am finding that we have to choose among many things and let some go as we prioritize because people can only be in one place at one time (or two parents can only be in two places at one time...). Some evenings, especially Wednesdays, can have up to five things at once. It looks like tomorrow, the Wednesday about to happen, won't be so full, but that's an anomaly....

Frances is playing soccer (I know, picture!). Ollie is playing baseball. Frances has ballet three nights a week. The boys have Cub Scouts. Ollie is doing tennis lessons. All three have music lessons. We have this play practice. I'm helping with a conference. I'm playing in tennis tournaments and two leagues, I have LLL meetings this week. Soccer has no practice tomorrow, Cub Scouts is on two off weeks, and some of the kids seem to have strep, so we may not be going much of anywhere tomorrow. What's interesting is that though Walter tested positive for strep, he showed no symptoms of anything other than a mild cold. Some coughing, a bit of a runny nose, and that's it. In fact, he was at the dr's office for a totally unrelated old piece of news (he's skinny, really old news), and by chance she picked up on a spot that looked like a bruise on the roof of his mouth. Ugh. Rutledge has an ear infection, which I normally take a more naturopathic attitude toward, but since he has speech issues, I'm finding myself choosing the path of least resistance (and hopefully fastest clearing). Again, I wouldn't have known about it if I hadn't taken him in for his excessive coughing, which has been keeping us awake at night for six days now.

We will get through this with relative grace and lack of disruption. I think there's always this glitch week in the fall that challenges us just when we think we're heading into the home stretch!

Today was the day that Walter had testing done with the psychologist. I've been wanting this type of testing for years--a clarification of developmental questions, cognitive testing with interpretation, more information about auditory and visual processing and memory, and collation of aptitude testing with achievement testing.

I don't have information yet. It's driving me crazy. My type-A, need-to-know-now self is going absolutely crazy. I couldn't read the psychologist at all when I went to pick Walter up. It sounded like he did really well with math, but I wasn't sure if that implied (and I'm not making any assumptions that it did...) that he did less well on other things or that this was some outlier. I'm trying to hang tight and wait until I see the results in a week.

I wish that Ollie was also getting the full workup, but right now we seem to be using Walter as the guinea pig and then turning to Ollie later if it makes sense. As his teacher, principal, and mother, it's making sense to me right now. I want to know as much as I can about whether the funky test results from a few weeks ago were anomalies or whether they speak some kind of truth, however inconvenient. I was just explaining to Kerry that I'm not finding myself to be a medicator or an accomodator; I'm an ameliorator. I believe that if there are cognitive deficits, processing deficits, memory deficits, that these aren't fixed values that one must work around, but that they can be improvement with training and rewiring and sustained attention to improving the weakness. And if there's any pronounced weakness, I want to address it, not reduce expectations or simply try to take away the side effects of it. But right now, as I said, I know nothing.

Our co-op today was awesome. The boys got so much out of it. They talked about Afghanistan, the history of recent wars and conflicts in that area, and did exercises from the Time for Kids curriculum. Although Ollie had originally said this isn't what he wanted to do, I heard no complaints from him after their class today, and this is exactly the kind of engaging, current material that I think they need to be talking about and starting to delve into now. They were also able to work on some map skills--creating a paper for determining distance with scale. And they produced some writing, however labored, about a TFK article on preschool obesity, and I'm always a fan of writing opportunities within context.

Frances and the younger girls started an Ancient Egypt unit. They were all into the hands-on part of our day--making a model of the Nile River to demonstrate the fertile effects of the yearly flood. But after we created deltas out of aluminum foil and planted grass seed in our dirt, they were somewhat ready to focus on coloring pictures of shadufs and grass boats while listening to the Magic Treehouse book on Egypt. Frances is so into this now. We started our chicken mummy tonight, something I haven't done for several years now. The older boys were way into Egypt when they were around her age, maybe a little younger, and we did Egypt activities until we ran them into the ground. So it is exciting to be coming back to this with Frances, who was so young the first time around and who also deserves to make a sugar cube pyramid.

Then Ollie had a tennis lesson tonight and Walter wandered around until he found himself with two new friends who just happened to be the children of Frances's piano teacher. On his self-concept rating battery this morning, he rated himself a 4 out of 5 on making a lot of friends. Now he's calling himself a 5, which I don't doubt. This kid picks up new friends everywhere and falls in with a group or starts leading one pied-piper style wherever he goes. So he jumped on a trampoline until he was bright red in the face while Ollie improved his serve. Next time around, though, Walter is going to tennis lessons, too--I can't stand not to develop built-in partners and opponents, and Walter needs to be doing more physical activity. Ollie's passion for tennis at the moment is contagious, though. He is ready to move toward being on the Woodlake bantam team this coming fall, and I'm just happy that he's doing something right down the street because if the truth be told, baseball season is running me ragged. Even if he played tennis 3 days a week, it would make a world of difference if he did it a 5 minute bike-ride or walk from home.

And I'm playing hideous tennis. I am looking forward to improving things tomorrow when Michele and I play again together--I'm feeling slightly bad about doing so poorly at singles (though the person who took my place had no better luck on Monday, either...), but I have a private lesson planned for Thursday morning and I'm playing in a mixed doubles tournament started Thursday evening, so there's hope for me. It's a heavy tennis weekend between the mixed doubles, my weekend league where I'm finally in the line-up, and then entertaining Ollie, who can't get enough.

I think life with four kids must be just a swirling mass of calendar chaos. At least mine is.

Spring just seems to be bursting a bit more than usual with things going on, and I add to the mix inadvertently by finding yet more things to explore.

Tennis season is now in swing, and the pun is intended. Alas, there's just so much to do. We had a makeup match at Westwood this morning, and I finally seem to have broken out of my atrocious playing streak. The first three matches of the season went poorly for me--I've lost 1-8 each time, which is embarrassing and leaves me wondering if I should take up golf or adopt reading as my sole hobby. Today Michele and I lost 10-8, but we put up a big fight and we were playing well, if not at the top of our game. I had a good time, it was energizing, and I don't feel like a total tennis failure now. I am supposed to play in a mixed doubles tournament this weekend, which reminds me that I need to sign up. Oops.

I am definitely not doing a good job of making lists, and with as busy as we are, this is the kiss of death. I'm forgetting all kinds of things, I'm sure...not to mention the ones that I know about. Tonight Frances had ballet, flamenco, and soccer. I had a Spanish lesson. Ollie and Walter had bagpipe lessons, a playdate, and then Ollie had a baseball game. Rutledge had an early morning speech session.

IN addition to our regular weekly stuff, I also have gotten myself into a bit of a nervous situation with cognitive testing with the older boys. It's rather complicated to explain why I felt I needed to get this done in the first place, but I have wanted for quite a while to get a basic battery of tests so that I can better understand their strong and weaker areas and to help me put into extinction any questions about Asperger's Syndrome or auditory processing problems. My attempt to get answers really only raised more questions, so tomorrow morning, Walter is going to be having a broader battery of tests, including one that I hope we'll be able to use for his end of year evidence of progress. I feel bad that he has gone to bed late tonight (Ollie's game went late and kept everyone up) and that I perhaps haven't done much to prep him for this test. I hope that he'll also be able to relax and not feel singled out, since I'd like the test to reflect his best efforts. If things go well with his testing, we'll move on to Ollie.

Frances has started working through Headsprout Reading. I am hesitant to pay for programs online, especially when the price is a little steep and it's hard to see where the material covered meshes with what she already knows, but so far I am very pleased. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily seeing a huge change in her fluency (which is just about non-existent) or the variety of what she can read, but I do see her getting exposed to lots of blends and sounds that she will hopefully make automatic in the near future. I have started working with her using Reading Rescue 1-2-3 as well, especially after seeing yet again that the older boys have issues with phonemic awareness. All of them are doing better with this now, but I feel like we need to make it a daily activity for quite a while. I find it challenging to figure out how to best work with the boys when they can already read almost anything. At the same time, I have seen that they lack fluency and some patience with phonological skills, and these might be part of what keeps them from reading more for pleasure. People don't tend to do things that are difficult or that tire them out, so I feel like before I just accept that reading isn't their choice of how to spend free time, I want to be sure that I'm not overlooking some skill gap. So I have been introducing some general phonics strategies: covering up all but the first two letters and then making your mouth ready to say them, looking for smaller words in the larger ones, and "using the other vowel." At this point, while Walter's vocabulary seems weaker compared to Ollie's, I'm having a rough time finding words that he's not familiar with in regular writing to practice on. I think this is a good sign!

Rutledge is preparing for preschool in the fall, though he has not yet gotten a spot anywhere, and we still have a few places left on our list to check out. After Second Pres in Roanoke, it's hard to find a place that meets my standards. I know they do exist, but I'm not willing to drive 30 minutes or more each direction to get this, as much as I'd like to. And the places closest to my house are the ones I'm least impressed with. I believe we've found a good situation for him, but right now he is 7th on the waiting list for 3 day and 11th for 5 day, and if I had my druthers, I'd have him going 5 days a week. For now, we just wait and see, and hopefully around May 15th we'll have more information about whether he has a spot. This means the heat is on with potty training. Right now, he's doing pretty well. This week has seen enormous changes--the first ever poop in the potty (though 3 poops in his underwear, which is gross...). Whole days with no accidents, as long as we remember to take him every 30 minutes, since he still never takes himself or initiates. This has meant that he can use the Power Wheels jeep that a friend gave us a few months ago. I replaced the battery and he has been zooming through the yard and down the street since yesterday, which I truly hope will be a reinforcer to keep up with the new skills. It just may be possible that he is going to grow up after all.

His speech therapy is going so well so far. He added two new sounds this morning, and though he has a terrible time remembering them, he is still very eager to practice and have other people ask him about his homework. He is doing a popcorn sound, an "M" blender sound, a "b" bunny sound, a "t" tick-tock clock sound, and "d" raindrop falling sound. He is very cooperative with the speech therapist, which makes things easier for everyone, and he loves to play her games. Today they played Penguin Pileup while he made his sounds and then he made pizza with a pizza topple game after using his new sounds. There is a lot of emphasis on counting objects while he's there, which isn't his strong suit, but perhaps that will be an added perk of straightening out his articulation problems--a better number sense.

So we are moving along these days. Waiting for summer. Signed up for swim team. Preparing for our end of the year proof of progress. And spending as much time as we can outside.