Rockin' Some Semantics

Alex's classroom has a Rockin' Behavior Chart.  It's a guitar that has different levels of good and bad behavior.  Example:

The way it works is the guitar is cut out and hung on the wall.  Each kid gets a clothespin with their name on it, and everyone starts out each day on green, a.k.a. Let's rock 'n' roll - You're ready to learn.  Then, throughout the day, each kid can "clip up" or "clip down" as a result of different behaviors.  At the end of the day, everyone colors in a star on their star chart that corresponds with the color on which they ended the day.  Obviously the goal is to be on red, which is completely counter intuitive to me, but that's neither here nor there.  I like that it is a fluid behavior monitoring system, but sometimes a rough time right before the end of the day can give a skewed result of an otherwise good day.  But then again, if you have a good enough day to be up to red, you would REALLY have to screw up to get down to a bad ending point.

Anywho...Alex did really well with this system.  Did really well.  Until the new teacher took over.  The teacher he had for the majority of the year had a baby, so now they have a long term sub for the remainder of the school year.  She is nice and an accomplished teacher, but she is very different.  She has the same expectations of the kids, but as every person is different, every teacher teaches differently.  And my little monster isn't a huge fan of big changes; can't imagine where he gets that from.  Needless to say, we haven't seen many days of ending up on red.

Last week was a rough one in particular.  He started the week with a green, a purple, and a blue.  Wednesday night I told him his goal was to end each day on green or higher.  He said he understood and would do his best.  Thursday I picked him up and asked how his day was.

"Good!  I landed one notch below blue!"

...

One notch below blue?  So you landed on purple.  Purple.  Or if we're going to play this little semantics game you've started, one notch above pink.  You know, the one you have to go to the principal's office.  One notch above that.

Ya know, I thought this kid was going to be a mechanic or an engineer.  I've changed my mind...he's going into PR.

Ew.

Upon completion of cleaning both bathrooms, I have realized a couple of things:

1.  I do not understand how that much pee misses the damn bowl.

2.  These fools best get better aim or sit their butts down, or they are going to be on bathroom duty.

Booooo.

It's been a long week.  My shoulder/arm is all wonky and sore again, and Sam has been working on a cold so he has had to stay home 2&1/2 days.  K, those are my excuses for not posting.  I leave with a cute picture as a plea for forgiveness.

DIRT BIKE!

There are some dirt bikes at my parents' house and Alex has been longing to ride them for quite some time.  After proving himself on his regular bike, and Grandpa being nice enough to get the bike out of storage, Alex got his chance on Sunday.  And holy guacamole was he happy.

Grandpa took him slowly down the driveway, without the bike turned on, and walked next to him making him stop every 10 feet or so until he learned how to use the hand brake.  He had it figured out by the time they were to the field, so they turned it on, and away he went.  I was up at the house, but I could see, and more importantly hear, him.  From the moment he took off, all you could hear other than the hum of the little electric motor, was Alex creating his own soundtrack of motorcycle sounds through a smile you could see from space.

After tooling around in the field for a bit, he ventured back up the driveway so he could show me up close what he had accomplished.  He came zooming up, skidded to a stop in front of me, planted his little feet, yelled "DIRT BIKE!" and took off again.  All with an expression of such of joy on his face, you just couldn't help but smile.

Three.

Three nights.  Three.  That's how many nights in a row Sam slept through the night after finally giving in and employing Cry It Out.  Which, if I'm totally honest, wasn't actually that bad.  The first night he cried for 20 mins 4 different times, and each subsequent night was a little less until Thursday night when he made it through the whole night without a peep.  Same thing Friday and Saturday night.  Sweet sweet silence.

And then yesterday he got all congested.  Wanna take a stab how well he, and in turn I, slept last night?  I'm grumpy.

Never Stop Growing

Up until two nights ago, Alex refused to figure out how to use a swing on his own.  He would just pathetically sit there whining about needing someone to push him until Travis or I caved.  We have both spent a fair amount of time shouting, "Out!  Back!  Out!  Back!" in a coaching effort to get him to swing his legs at the appropriate time to get the swing moving.  I.e. "pumping" his legs.  Every one of our efforts was met with the most minimal effort from Mr. Alex.

Cut to last night when he ran outside to swing, and I looked out to see him swinging as high as the playset.  I went out there to tell him I was proud of him.  Beaming, he responded, "Well, I just thought that I needed to improve myself, so I figured I'd start from the top."

Oh?  Is that all?  Ok then.

T.R.O.U.B.L.E.

These two are nothing but trouble together.