Evie, School, Monkeys

This was back to school week! But we'll get to that soon. 

A bit of upkeep first. This blog is going to be password protected starting on Thursday Sept 18th. If I know that you read this blog, then you should have received an email from me telling you what that password is going to be. If you are family or friend that would like to continue reading this blog and you didn't get an email from me, then please write me an email at joannarussell06@gmail.com and I will send you the password.

On Sunday after church, the Grandparents Salisbury treated us to Idaho Pizza Company. Nico walked up to complete strangers while we were there to tell them about his haircut. First time I've seen him be that forward! We got a plate for the salad buffet and I got Nico a variety of things covered with cheese and ranch dressing. It was his first time trying ranch. But he seemed to prefer the little ham cubes with nothing else on them. So, that he ate. We got to see my brother David, which was great! Nico had cousins and Uncles there, plus Grandparents. We took up two tables.

Monday was Nico's Open House at his school. Nico and I met his new teacher, the assistants, and his new speech therapist, Miss Marianne. I am very pleased with his new teacher, Miss Carol! 

Miss Yvonne (assistant), Miss Carol (teacher), Miss Bianca (student teacher)

Miss Marianne (speech therapist)

Miss Carol seems very laid back and outgoing. She was sure to tell me that they get messy in the class so don't send Nico to school in nice clothes except on picture day :) Homework every week is a new book which Nico gets to pick out. They are simple books. This week he chose The Farmer in the Dell. Which is literally 4 pages long. The farmer in the dell, the farmer in the dell, hi-hoe the derry-oh, the farmer in the dell. She told me that they'll be reading it back to us by the end of the week. This evening while I was washing dinner dishes, I could hear Nico in his bedroom singing the book, which we had done together earlier. 

Miss Marianne took us to her office and talked briefly about how she does speech therapy. It will be a lot like last year in that it is usually 2 kids at a time that she teaches. 

Nico has 9 kids in his class this year, but with 3 adults in the class that is still a pretty good ratio!

Miss Carol and Miss Yvonne had interacted with Nico before, so they knew him. They were surprised with how well he was speaking compared to last year. I must say, that it's been just in the past few weeks that he has made leaps and bounds in his speaking. Not just in speaking, but in relating! He is able to hold short conversations with me and keep eye contact for much longer.

Tuesday was his first day. But before school, we took Evie to the park. This is a major plus side to having afternoon preschool. The mornings are fresh and new and there is always time to play! We can run errands or play at the park. We picked up Evie and took her to Quarry View.

They played a game of animal rescue on the fire truck.  They would hear an animal in distress and then go rescue it. First one up was cats. Evie said the cats were on fire stuck in a tree, so they climbed into the fire truck and drove to the rescue. They first put the fire out so that the cats weren't on fire anymore, then they took the pretend ladder and propped it up against a tree so they could climb up and get the cats. They climbed trees to get: a dog, horse, and cow. Then they picked wormy apples, crab apples, and splashed in a puddle. Evie put all her crab apples into her hat and then dipped the hat into the water. A present for her Mom.

Also snapped a picture of clubhouse progress:

We've got a door and a kitchen window!

Then school in the afternoon, after a large lunch of hot dogs and strawberries.

I took him to school for his first day. Even though I'd already been in his classroom and met his teachers, I still wanted to take him.

But he took the bus home. Looks like we got one of the same bus drivers this year!

Tuesday night, Guy got a call from work telling him that he didn't have to come in for overtime that night. He had worked 13 or 14 nights straight and this call provided him a much needed rest. Wahoo! We were able to hangout together and watch Miss Marple after Nico went to bed.

This morning before school we went to the zoo. We hadn't been there in a while. Our plan to go every Friday in the summer wasn't working for August. I kind of put it on the back burner because the dinosaurs made it more difficult. But we had SO much fun at the zoo. We spent most of our time watching the monkeys. The large monkey exhibit is underneath several large acorn trees, and acorns were dropping all over the place. Whenever one would hit the monkey cage, Nico would erupt into laughter and ask me what that sound was. "It was an acorn falling on the cage!" Nico: "A acorn falling on a cage!" and then he would laugh and laugh and laugh. He got several other people around him laughing, too. They would come and go but we stayed glued to the exhibit for quite a while. The baby monkey played with rocks, and would climb to the top of the cage to pull the acorns through the cage because most of them were a little too big to fall right through. Then he'd pop the top off of the acorn and start eating it.

That's a full week for us!