Thursday, February 02, 2006

Don't Leave Home Without It!

I am not talking about my Amex card...

Rule # 1 of parenthood, and one you should never, NEVER forget!!!! Do not leave home without a diaper bag, not matter how short the anticipated trip. I learned this yet again when I took Keegan to the urologist on Tuesday.

The last time we went there, we were in and out in 10 minutes, so, considering that he had just made a trip to the potty, and had a fresh pull-up on, I figured we were safe. Um...no. Our appointment was for 4:30. We did not get in until 5:30!!!! And, Murphy's Law being in constant effect, 10 minutes after we arrived, Keegan gives me a look of distress and says, "Uh-oh Mommy! My bum!" So we ran like hell down the hall to the bathroom. (It gets a bit gross here, my apologies...) So I plunk him on the toilet where he has a massive diarrhea attack. It is then that I realize that we didn't quite make it in time, and his pull-up is quite beyond re-use. And, of course, having not bothered to bring a diaper bag, I am now screwed. So the poor kid had to spend the remaining 45 minutes of his office visit with a wodge of toilet paper padding his butt and crotch, with his mother saying every two seconds, "Do you have to go potty? Tell me if you have to go, tell Mommy!" We survived without further incident, but jeez. And due to the over-run of the appointment, Keegan had to miss his swimming lesson.

I sent Mark's dad down to call Mark and tell him to go without us. About 5:50 pm, I get a call at home from Mark at the pool, telling me that they will be late, because Phoenix swallowed a litre of pool water and barfed it back up into the pool, so they had to drain it, but they said he could stay for the 6:00 pm lesson in the big pool. So I guess it was fun times for both parents that night!

Had a nice visit yesterday with my Dad and my Auntie Joanne. Well, abbreviated visit, actually, since Keegan's pre-school consultant arrived shortly after they did and ate up most of their visiting time. But the kids had fun with them. My poor aunt probably has a complex now, because everytime she would look at Ty, he would burst into the lip-quiver tears. I told her that is baby language for "you should visit more often!"

I mentioned the other day that I would tell you about this program that Phoenix has been accepted into at school. It is called "The Learning Coach Initiative" and is offered until June to SK and grade one students. Basically, it is an intervention programme that supplements a student's reading, writing and counting experiences. It motivates and engages early readers. In this programme, the students participate in fun, individualized language and math activities to complement the classroom programme. This includes chants, rhymes and songs, story retellings, letter names and sounds, reading strategies and counting activities. The role of the learning coach is to supplement the student's reading, writing and counting experiences by working one-on-one directly with students, in and out of the student's own classroom, and they closely monitor the progress of the selected student.

So Phoenix had his first session with his coach on Tuesday. He said it was fun, and that they did a rhyming match game, where she would say a word, and he would have to say one that had the same ending sound, like "cat" and "hat" or "big" and "pig". So he is to have these sessions every day that he is in school, for about 20-30 minutes at a time. He has another assessment in March, so hopefully this programme will have made some improvement by then. I have to say though, that he is making great progress at home. He is constantly spelling out words, and sounding letters out in words he does not know.

Until you have to break down a language for a child, you don't realize how difficult it is. How do you explain to a 5 year old that the word one is pronounced as wun, and not as on-ee? Um, well dear, the English language is full of contradictions like that, so deal with it...Jeez. Poor little kids. It's a wonder that any of us can spell or read at all!

Tomorrow is a PD day, so Bun will be home. (My mother used to say that PD Day stood for Parental Disturbance Day, or in the case of PA Days, Parental Aggravation Day). Hoping to go out for a play date, but it's calling for rain, so we may not go.

My kettle is calling me to enjoy a cup a tea, so, tah tah, darlings!

1 comment:

Susan Dore said...

So as I was reading the part about Keegan having to miss his swimming lesson I thought "that may be a good thing, since diarrhea and swimming pools don't make a good mix" then I read further and thought "oops, looks like Phoenix looked after that!" Never a dull moment!