Weekend at Grandma's

We had an awesome weekend at Grandma and Grandpa's house.  Dex is tall enough now that he just barely touches, on his tip-toes, in the pool.  Grandpa keeps his pool hot, so Dexter can stay in there and swim for lots longer than at the Y pool.  Plus, there's no cool fountains to play with at the Y.  And no cool battery-operated fish swimming around the pool.  Dexter loves Grandpa's sandbox and tries to shove every toy he owns in to it.  And Mr. Cranky Pants was kind of a pain in the ass at the zoo on Sunday with Aunt Jeanne, but he really liked watching the penguins, especially when they fed the penguins.  So I suppose it was worth the trip.

Dex is spending a few days at Camp Grandma while John works and I organize the basement this week.  I slept in, watched SportCenter while eating breakfast, and haven't had to touch a train all day.  Heaven.

Here's a few of my favorite pics from the weekend.

I am so glad he finds things fun.  Sometimes I wonder about him.  He's so damn serious.

Not so much jumping.  More falling.  But still fun.

I think John MIGHT have some sore arms today...

Buddy, bless his heart, is going to be a little out of sorts this week with his brother gone.

I have an eerily similar picture from around this time last summer..

Swimming on his own, under the fountain

Grandpa and Dexter "squirting each other on purpose"

Penguin!

Hopefully at the end of the week we will have an exhausted child who will sleep for days, and a much cleaner basement.

Fish

Wait, who is holding on to that child??  Ah, that's right.  Mr. Fish has suddenly learned how to swim.  Just in, like, the last two weeks.

He has been totally capable of doing this for a while now, but every now and then his confidence gets shaken and it takes a few months to recover.  Yes.  MONTHS.  Dear lord.  But he's had an awesome swim teacher this session who has somehow built his confidence and gotten him to swim the entire width of the pool.  As he giggles and smiles the whole time.  Perhaps if he learned to giggle less and keep his damn mouth closed while he is swimming, he wouldn't swallow so much water and he wouldn't get scared.

But then he wouldn't be nearly as cute.

Click below for Fish Video:

American Pickers (and other random assortments of randomness)

It was berry season early here, and the season was kind of short.  So we've been picking berries like mad the last few weeks to try to stock the freezer, and our bellies.  Ooooh.  Speaking of freezer, I believe I still have 2 sheets of strawberries sitting in the freezer downstairs, waiting to be bagged.  Lemme go check on those...  OK.  Strawberry crisis averted.

So here's some pictures of strawberry picking, and rhubarb picking, and raspberry picking, and some other assorted randomness from the past few weeks.  It doesn't even include the awesome Memorial Day parade, or the equally awesome summer BBQ we hosted here last weekend for our Movie Night girl friends and their families.  There's too many pictures of those things.

Dexter and his friend Bryce picking strawberries.  Dex lasted about 5 minutes.  Bryce lasted about 8.  Somehow we still managed to pick a good number of berries.

Dexter spent the other 25 minutes I picked doing this.  Not exactly complaining, but also not so much participating.

He was, however, an excellent bag holder for rhubarb.  Which I had never picked before.  New adventures.  Also new?  Picking strawberries while pregnant.  I do not recommend.  Strawberry picking already sucks.  Add in a baby belly and it sucks way more.

Thursday I went back to pick more strawberries by myself, while Dex was in school.  Far more productive that way.  But Friday Dexter came with me to pick some raspberries.  Or however you say what they spelled on that sign...

The little man is far more excited by raspberry picking.  He lasted a good half an hour.

He put exactly two berries in his basket.  And about 279 in his belly.  I also just noticed he's wearing the same shirt that he wore three weeks previous, when picking strawberries.

I never really imagined that the child who would run away screaming when the beaters turned on would one day be asking if he could do the beating.  Of course he got to lick the beaters after.

Our flower garden, made of flowers picked entirely by Dexter from two Amish farms down the road.  Aunt Jeanne helped us plant them.  She thought we had too much pink.  What can I say.  The boy likes pink.  And purple.  And also flowers.  He likes to sit on the back steps and watch them grow.  And he knows the names of all of them.  Especially the ones I told him incorrectly.  So he shall forever think that pansies are impatiens...

We went for a nice little hike a few weeks ago.  Dexter likes taking Buddy for a walk.  And Buddy, bless his heart, is usually pretty good about not pulling the child over.

We found a place to get in to the little creek.  Dex and John looked for rocks.

Buddy spent a fair amount of time doing this.  It's his "Bite me, I'm not going in there, it's too deep" look.  Now - the water was MAYBE 6 inches deep there.  But when your legs are 2 inches long, I suppose that seems pretty deep.  This?  Is NOT a water dog.

Checking out the minnows

Someone fell in a couple times and required a change of clothing.

John was pounding in a few nails on the deck before our BBQ.  Dexter was tremendously helpful and ran in to get his own hammer off his work bench so he could nail, too.

How's that saying go?  Many hands make for light work?  Totally not at all the case here, but we'll pretend Dex was helpful.

Dex shows off his cool ketchup shirt that Aunt Maria gave him.

On the teeter totter with Daddy.  Somehow I don't think this is going to work.

Crazy-ass storm front that moved in, with some GhostBuster-like clouds.  The storm didn't amount to much, but it was cool to watch the clouds.

Longwood Gardens with Lara and Annabel.  Who, sadly, are moving to Iowa next month.  We'll miss them!

Resting at Longwood

Going down the big big slide at Daddy's company picnic.

Fun with bubble guns

Last day of Soccer Shots.  I only had to yell at him twice for not listening.

He got a very cool medal that he took to Show and Tell on Thursday.  Holy hell.  TWO MORE YEARS I have to do this Show and Tell BS on Thursdays.  TWO MORE YEARS.  Shoot me now.

We are dog-sitting Maggie for a couple weeks.  Dexter calls Maggie his kitty, and loves taking her for walks.  He checks to see where she is, and wakes her up in the morning to get her to go outside.  He'll be sad when Maggie leaves next week.

The Swimming Machine and I went to the outside pool at the Y this afternoon for the first time.  After 30 minutes straight of jumping in to the pool, not having me catch him, swimming over to me, and then swimming by himself back to the wall...  Dex finally decided he was cold and tired and wanted to go home.  So he warmed up in the shower for a while and off we went.  30 minutes at the pool, but it was awesome.  I can't believe how far his swimming has come this session at lessons.  I'll try to get John to come to the pool with us tomorrow so I can take some pictures and some video.

Finally, HOORAY for Union Rags and his Belmont win!  The owner lives right up the road in Chadds Ford.  Michael Matz is someone I have liked since he won a silver medal in showjumping in the Olympics, eons ago.  And he trains at Fair Hill.  So Union Rags lives six miles away from us.  Very cool.  We were cheering for him.  And also for Five Sixteen, who Maryland jockey Rosie Napravnik was riding.  She came in fifth.  Go Rosie!  I've known her since her career started, and it's cool to see her riding big races now.  She won the Kentucky Oaks this year, and just to ride in the Belmont is a big deal for a female jockey.

Finally the child has learned to pedal.  All props go to school.

Ms. Lisa

Dear Dexter,

I meant, a long time ago, to write a post about Ms. Lisa but I always made excuses and then I kind of forgot about it.  Until a couple weeks ago when I read someone's blog about an influential teacher in their life.  And I realized that Ms. Lisa might be one of the most influential teachers in your young life, but you'll never remember her.  So maybe I should write down a few things about her, so you can read about her when you're a little older.

Ms. Lisa came in to your life when you were a little more than 2 years old.  She is a teacher for Early Intervention services, and you qualified for Early Intervention under the kind of vague title of "Social Development."  Which meant you didn't have a speech therapist or an occupational therapist or a physical therapist.  You had Ms. Lisa, who is kind of a jack of all trades.

Ms. Lisa started coming to our house when you were talking up a storm, but had a few issues with saying some letters.  F was hard for you.  V was hard for you.  T was hard for you.  After a few weeks of Ms. Lisa's brilliant suggestions (we made and colored posters with pictures of words starting with those letters, and we played other letter games) you were talking like a champ.

Ms. Lisa helped us expand your imagination a little bit.  You were always a very "inside the box" kind of player.  Your cars didn't talk to each other.  Your cars didn't do anything they weren't supposed to do.  You liked pushing buttons to see what would happen, but didn't like to do much more with a toy than just push the buttons.  Ms. Lisa expanded your horizons.  Eventually your trains had conversations.  Eventually your cars could pretend to drive on a road, instead of driving on an ACTUAL road.  Every now and then your cars would have a party and you'd serve them some yummy food.

When you started going to school, Ms. Lisa went with you once a week.  She helped you grow from the little quiet boy who would let anyone take his car (and then follow that person around to wait for them to be distracted and drop it) to the more outgoing little boy who would fight for his car tooth and nail.  She helped you learn to tell your friends, "No, I don't like that."  She helped you learn how to play right next to your friends, instead of playing off by yourself in a corner.  And, bless her heart, she taught you how to put on your coat, all by yourself.

But the most important influence Ms. Lisa had on your life is one you never really saw.  It wasn't anything she taught you.  It wasn't anything she said to you.  Instead, it was her realization that something was perhaps a little bit "off" with you.  Ms. Lisa was the very first person to give us an article about Asperger's, and suggest that maybe, even though not everything fits, maybe this was something we should look in to.  Ms. Lisa was the person who recommended we re-do your Autism screening questionnaire.  Ms. Lisa was the one who helped us answer the ambiguous questions that we had a hard time with because, to us, you were a totally normal little man.  We didn't see a lot of other kids, so your little quirks were normal to us, not a flag for something greater.  In short, were it not for Ms. Lisa you never would have had an Autism evaluation.  You never would have been diagnosed with Autism.  You never would have received the resources you have now.  You wouldn't be in your awesome special pre-school.  You wouldn't have speech therapy and occupational therapy and behavior services and Medical Assistance.  All of this is possible because Ms. Lisa noticed, and cared, and helped.

Sadly, when your turned three you left the Early Intervention services and entered the big scary new world of the Intermediate Unit.  And we lost Ms. Lisa.  I think it was probably harder for me than it was for you.  We saw Ms. Lisa at the gym a couple weeks ago and you didn't remember who she was.  I certainly did, though, and I will always be so grateful for all that she did for you.

And there you have it, little man.  The story of the teacher who may have had the most influence on your life.  Who you will never remember.  Thank you, Ms. Lisa.

Love,
Mama

Your medal from Soccer Shots.  But if we had another medal, we really should give it to Ms. Lisa.