Ice skating and pigeons

We went to the ice skating class on Saturday again, and Nico seemed excited at first, but as soon as he got on the ice he just kinda stopped. He stayed in the middle of the rink for the whole class and didn't want to get off the ice and didn't want to join his class. There was the teacher for the class and a volunteer helping out with the class, and one of them was always over with Nico trying to convince him to come to the class, or to come over to where I was so he could get off the ice. He wouldn't let anyone touch him and when they talked to him he would turn his back to them. When they tried to pick him up under his arms to try to move him to the class or closer to me, he said No and wriggled free. So, 30 minute class. After it was over, Lexie skated up to him, where he was with both the teacher and the volunteer trying to talk to him. The teacher asked her "Is he your brother?" No, cousin. "Great, can you help him? We're having trouble." She gracefully brought him back to the exit with no problem or resistance on Nico' part. Then he wanted back on the ice so Lexie helped him over to the coned off section. There were no "ice walkers" that they could play with, so he just stood in the coned off section for a while before making it back to the exit, with a little help from Lexie.

I talked briefly with the teacher, who said that it might be that he's just not ready to take a class. I think she's right.

When I sat down with Nico a few days after that to talk to him about it, he told me he didn't want to go back to class but instead wanted to go to the rink with just me. "Just you and just me" So that's the plan. We didn't go this week at all, but will try to go next week.

Pictures from school. He pointed to one of his friends and told me her name was "Erra", to which I said, "Erra?" and he said "No, Erra!" I obviously was hearing him wrong so he SPELLED her name for me. I was impressed. "E, L, L, A" OHhhh.. "Ella!" Of course!

So, Nico memorized his Pigeon books, both of them. See the video below! There is one page that says SPLASH! You can notice how he says it loud first, then soft, then loud again. The soft version is when he covers up the exclamation point at the end of SPLASH! Guy taught him that the exclamation point makes things loud. So he covers it up (you can see him do this in the video) and whispers <splash> , then takes his finger off the exclamation point and says it loud again SPLASH!

Nico noticed the list of other Pigeon books on the back of one of his, and asked about them, so I logged onto the library website and looked them all up and put them ALL on hold. Except the activity book, which a library would obviously not have anyway. I told him that I'd receive an email from the library when they were ready for us to pick up. We got to experience the excitement of picking up pigeon books TWICE this week, 3 new books each time. "Nico! I just got an email! Guess where I got the email from?" "Library?" And then he would literally watch the clock for the next three hours until the library opened.

When we got the books back home, he attempted to read the books with me by following with his finger on the words and repeating what I was saying. It became confusing because the book was new to both of us and our words became a jumbled mess. So I told him I would read it to him first, and then he could read it to me. He is halfway to memorizing all these other pigeon books too.

A few nights ago he was cracking himself and me up while we were reading the Bath book before bed. He was being silly and saying the wrong words sometimes while "reading", and the word he always used was "car".

"Don't let the pigeon take a car!""wash wash car" "That is a matter of car". Or he would add the word car to the end of the sentence, "Don't let the pigeon take a bath car!" or would leave off the last word of a sentence "Don't let the pigeon take a"

Then he'd laugh hysterically and read it the correct way. This was really hilarious to see him read himself the whole book while I was holding it flipping the pages for him, saying every sentence wrong and then laughing.

That's it for this week. Enjoy the video!