Soap Carving, Auditory Testing, Sleepover!

Last Friday, Nico pulled out his pocket knife and started carving his soap figure for Cub Scouts. He decided on a horse.

For Saturday movie night, Nico chose Ferdinand as the movie to watch. We couldn't find it available to rent on Amazon Prime, but we did see that it was available at the RedBox at M&W Market. So Nico and I walked over there to rent it. As we were leaving I hear someone yell, "Joanna!" and it's Guy, he had stopped at M&W to get gas after he was done running errands, so we rode home with him.

Ferdinand is a VERY good movie. And the pizza, was VERY good.

Earlier on Saturday Nico and I completed his shelf by adding book ends, a pencil holder, and wrapping the edges with a bumper so that he wouldn't bonk his head at night. Here's how it looks!

On Sunday we celebrated Papa's birthday at Smokey Mountain Pizza. I can't believe I got NO pictures from it! But it was fun, Nico and Lexie played games in the arcade, and it was fun to get together, have some food, eat some cake, and celebrate PA!

Bright and early Monday morning was Nico's Auditory Processing testing. We drove out to Amity Elementary school to meet with the audiologist. She remembers Nico from Madison Elementary, where she had come to test all the kiddos' hearing. 

Nico went into a soundproof room, and the audiologist went into a different one that was connected by a window they could see each other through. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other, but I did have a pair of headphones next to me that let me hear what Nico was hearing.  He had to go through a gamut of testing.

He had to pick out what someone was saying in one ear, with background noise coming in to the other. He had to identify "High" or "Low" for a series of tones, repeat words that were said in one ear, at the same time as a different word in the other ear. "Which word did you hear in your left ear?"

She said this kind of testing can be hard on kids and that they often take breaks, and indeed we did. Nico needed two breaks. The first one, she came out of her room first and said, "That last one was hard on him so we're going to take a break." He was discouraged that he couldn't get them all right and it was really getting him down. She told us while we were on the break that from what she was seeing that he's actually doing better than most kids his age. That seemed to cheer him up a bit.

The final report was what she had reported earlier - that for all the tests he did, overall he was testing better than kids his age. This means he has NO auditory issues! 

The only somewhat "off" thing is the reflexes in his left ear. Like you can test your knee reflexes by hitting them, they test ear reflexes by sending sound into the ear and measuring the reflex response. She said that the reflexes in his left ear are not quite what they should be. 

Alos, throughout the testing she saw that he favored his right ear and could generally understand things better when heard through his right ear. She said typically kids tend to favor their right ear. The language center is on the left side of the brain, and when someone hears something in their right ear it goes straight to the left side of the brain, so the response is quick. When something comes in through the left ear, it goes straight to the right side of the brain, so in order to get to the language center it has to cross the hemisphere over to the left, which takes a bit longer and is more pronounced in children.

I think they're mostly done with all the testing at school, and we'll talk about the results in a few weeks at another meeting.

On Tuesday, Guy took Nico to Cub Scouts only to find out they weren't meeting that night. Doh!

Wednesday morning I left on a trip and am still there - in Northern California at a conference. I will return home next Monday.

Nico stayed with Guy Wednesday, and today my Mom picked him up from school after Drama Club. Nico wanted to show her his classroom, so he took her in there, and his teacher was still there, so she was able to meet his teacher. Grandma said she was sweet and that she loves Nico.

Bruce and Rory are also staying the night tonight at Papa's and Grandma's. Mom sent me a picture of a snack bar she made for everyone tonight that was a hit! 

And here is Pa reading to Nico before bed. From here it looks like a Richard Scarry book!

Ok that's it for this week!

Pocket Knife, and New Friends

Nico saw that I was starting the blog and he wanted to tell everyone a story about something that happened today:

Mr. Bunn, my music teacher was looking around the room to see if anybody could get switched. (What does it mean to get switched?) Like switch places with someone else. (Why would someone get switched?) Some people like to chat while we're in music class. They talk too much and so they get switched so they don't talk to that person. Mr. Bunn told us to stand up so he can look around and see if anyone could get switched. And while he was looking around, I picked up my hand, and started picking my nose.

Then he demonstrated.

Last Friday I picked Nico up from the Grandparents Salisbury house, it was the last day of Grandma Camp and the Grandparents had dinner for all the kids and parents that night before we took our kids home. They ordered Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets, and Grandma made a pasta dish for a side. She made special gluten free chicken nuggets for Nico.

Nico showed me the race track they had set up that day, with a glow in the dark track.

After dinner, we headed home.

Once home, Nico opened a package from Grandpa Russell - a pocket knife for Cub Scouts! He opened up each of the things on the knife, and when he came to the bottle opener he said "I can open Izze Pops with this!"

We were able to test that out on Saturday night. Izze Pops come with a screw-top lid, so after much trying and no success, we decided to just twist the top off.

Nico chose Diary of a Wimpy Kid: The Long Haul for the movie that night. We all enjoyed that one. 

Earlier in the day we had assembled our cabinet that had been waiting in the garage for us until after Christmas. We needed to wait until after we put Christmas away before we could put it together, because it was to sit right where we had our Christmas tree. Nico had a lot of opportunities to practice using his pocket knife while putting the cabinet together. He keeps it in its case and carefully opens it every time it's needed. 

Guy and Nico also got a lot of work done on Nico's Pinewood Derby car on Saturday morning. They added weights and sanded it. They just need to paint it and then it will be ready to go! The race is next Tuesday, the 15th.

Nico has been hanging out with some new neighbor boys that moved in on the corner. They have 6 kids? 4 boys, 2 girls. I think. The boy he is closest to is in 5th grade. The first time he hung out with them was when it had snowed a while ago, one of the boys invited him over to his yard to build a snow fort. Then a few weeks ago Nico asked if he could go knock on their door and see if they wanted to play. So Guy went over with him, introduced himself to the mom, and Nico hung out there playing board games (Risk) with 3 of the boys. Both Guy and I went over there to pick him up, and then I was able to meet the mom, too. They are a super nice family, "down to earth".  He's been over there several times since. Yesterday, after he was done with his homework, he went and knocked on their door. I told him to be home at 5:30. He came home about 5:20 with the 5th grade boy (Rylan) and Nico asked me if he could stay for dinner. I said... Yes! 

He was very polite.

After dinner, Nico pulled out his microscope for them to look at. They hooked up a webcam and took pictures through the microscope.

They invited Nico to go to Urban Air after school tomorrow. I said... Yes! Everyone at school received a free Urban Air pass from the library. 

And Nico is working on reading 600 minutes to receive a free Roaring Springs Water Park pass. He is at 450-ish minutes so far. On Monday he read 3 hours! He is reading and rereading all his Dogman books. I'd say they are definitely his favorites. Guy reads them to Nico at night and he uses a different voice for each character. It's fun to listen to. 

Now a video with some snippets!

Pocket Knife

Guy again.

It was good to have Nico back around the place.  I could hear his little stomping feet while I was sleeping this morning.

Joanna wanted to nap right after I got up, so Nico and I had the afternoon to ourselves.  We played with micro machines a little bit, then we went to Toy's R Us to play.  I've never taken him there before by myself, but I wanted to take him to a warm place where he could run around.

He had a lot of fun picking stuff up and putting it back.  Early on we found a kids travel suitcase which happened to have 4 wheels, so Nico took it down and pushed it around the store for most of the time.  We also saw some stuffed dogs, including one that barked and moved when you walked past.  Nico was fascinated.  We did have a little accident where Nico was putting trucks into a wagon and tried to push it, but it was too low and he ended up falling down and the wagon flipped up and bopped him in the mouth.  No lasting harm was done though.

Before we went on our excursion to Toy's R Us, Nico discovered he had pockets, so I let him have my pocket knife to put into them.  He's not quite got the hang of it yet, most of the time he ended up pulling his pants down.  Below is one of his more successful attempts.