Finishing Winter

Wow, it's been two months since I posted!  I'll try to do a roundup.  I even discovered an old blog post I began and never posted.  Stay tuned for a series of three catch up posts to get us done with winter, to Hawaii, and beyond Easter.

Winter ennui has not been bad this winter, as we didn't have the weeks and weeks of pouring rain of the past two years.  There was rain, and it was cold, but there were also rays of sunshine.  In February we took our first visit to the Point Defiance Zoo & Aquarium in Tacoma.  Since I didn't grow up here, I had never been there.  It was a bit of a drive, but that can be part of the adventure.  Zane enjoyed seeing new stuff, and the Tacoma Dome was pretty exciting to pass.  First we spent a bunch of time in the kids' play area, and then had some lunch.  This zoo has many water creatures not in the Seattle Zoo or Aquarium, so we set off to see those.  On the way we saw wolves, musk ox, reindeer, and arctic foxes.  Then we got saw the polar bears!  One was swimming with a toy right next to the viewing window and we got a great close-up view.  Those are big beasties!  Then we wound through the aquarium and got to see walruses!  They were so rubbery and blorpy in the water, and then when went topside to see them out of the water, they made the funniest, rudest sounds!  Zane actually didn't like the noises, but I thought they were funny.  At the end of our visit we saw South Pacific reef fish and sharks.  I thought the sharks would be a big hit, but I think Zane was getting pretty tired out.  I let him have a big disgusting lollipop thing on the way out, and then he passed out on the way home.  All in all a great adventure!

Zane's been having some great adventures with classmates, too.   Izzy had her birthday at Fox Hollow Farm, where he got to play in kid-sized two story play houses, a bouncy castle, had his first pony ride, a train ride, and best of all electric cars with a stick shift that Zane drove all by himself! His good friend Evelyn is in a soccer class next to Zane's section, and they often play after class.  We also went over to help Evelyn dismantle her new house and then had Evelyn over for awhile to give her parents some more time to work on the house.  We also had Ryder over one afternoon.  Zane has been having a little bit of trouble sharing his toys, but I hope he'll get over that.

His focus has really improved with art projects, which really makes me happy.  He's been asking to use the real needle and thread rather than his big yarn and holes sewing cards, so I set him up with a button and a piece of felt.  At first he had trouble wrapping the thread from one side to the next, but once I showed him how, he quietly sewed and sewed.  I was so proud of the result I saved it in his art box!

A favorite activity at school is the bead work.  Zane loves to do it at school, and is very pleased that he has had lessons on the big beads with string and also the little beads with plastic elastic for bracelets.  He's got a bit of a hoarding problem with the beads, but we decided if he puts them on a string, he can bring them home.  Now we have a big tea-can full of various strings of beads.  Sometimes he'll cut them all off the strings and make new necklaces.  We also have our own bead kit, so there is no shortage of supplies!  One day he combined the sewing cards with thread and beads and made some lovely beaded stars.

The parent-teacher conference was really interesting again this time.  It's so wonderful to get feedback from people who know your kids but are not family or friends. He's doing really well, and his only behavior problem seems to be an over concern with rules.  He will go up to other kids and try to intervene rather than get a teacher.  Now, where we he get such an anal trait from?  I wonder ...  I like that better than some kids who have more severe behavior problems!

At home we've been having behavior issues with some "deafness."  He just doesn't listen when I say no!  Very aggravating.  I find myself saying "I said NO!" quite a lot. He's also been working on getting just a bit sneaky, but he's really way too naive to pull it off.  One day after being genuinely sick, he said he was still too sick to go to the grocery store, but when kung fu time came he perked up and suddenly got well.  Hmmm.  We didn't go to kung fu.

This is the time of year for nasty colds, but so far we had avoided those.  For some reason, though, Zane had really regressed on his toilet skills.  Every day I was bringing home bags of wet clothes from school and doing laundry every night.  Poop never went in the toilet.  When we had our parent-teacher conference in March I asked about this, and they said it was normal, and they would try sitting him on the toilet after lunch to encourage a bowel movement.

Health-wise, I also began massaging Zane.  He knows I go to a massage once per month and wondered what happens.  It has really helped a lot with getting him sleepy for bed.  He kept asking to go for an official massage, so I took him in February.  He managed to hold still for a little while, but mostly he was interested in all of the cool stuff in the massage room.  Karen managed to teach me a few more techniques for him and Zane even tried some massage on me!

I had been having problems with my back and leg which were diagnosed as sciatica.  Many months of physical therapy had reduced the pain, but it just wouldn't go away.  Then one day Zane and I took advantage of some beautiful sunshine to go to a nearby playground.  While holding him and going up some stairs I tripped and fell.  I twisted to one side to not squish Zane, and my neck and head got smooshed against a wall.  I heard a series of crunches in my neck.  I rolled it out and kept playing, with the idea that I wanted to keep my muscles loose and warm.  The next day I was very surprised that I was only a bit sore in my neck -- the crunches must have been a positive adjustment!  However, my lower back soon began to ache, and in retrospect I can see I re-injured the disc in my back that is causing my sciatica.  The pain got worse, and I finally made another doctor appointment and was eventually referred for x-rays and an MRI.  I turns out I have a bulgy disc that doesn't need surgery, and may well take several years to heal.  Sigh.

Well, I leave you with a batch of chocolate chip cookies we whipped up for Rob at the Train Store, and the promise of another blog post to come about going to Hawaii!