Day 2 of School, Dinosaurs, Pumpkins and Freak-Outs!

On Thursday night (September 6th), Garry sent me a text to come down to the backyard at around midnight. When I walked outside, all I saw were his feet sticking out from under some bushes..which is weird even for him. It turns out that he had cornered a cute little hedgehog in a tree and it was all curled up to avoid him. So I ran to get my camera and I too crawled under the bushes....at midnight...to see the little guy. I didn't get a very good picture but Garry did pet it. I am surprised it didn't turn around and bite him. He gets bitten by weird stuff like badgers and otters, so I guess a hedgehog is too mainstream for him.

 

 

Day two of Jack's school seemed to go well. I dropped him off and came home to unpack. Haha, just kidding -- I totally came home to take a nap! I slept for an hour and a half with my ear practically on the phone but it never rang and I got up and unpacked my room for the rest of the day. I had to take his old IEP to the school and take his albuterol and doctor's note to the nurse's office, so I got to the school pretty early and was able to look around a bit. That place is INCREDIBLE. It all looks brand new, has tall ceilings and lots of natural light and all of the latests gadgets and gizmos. The nurse's office looks like a cheerful Children's Hospital and the OT rooms are giant and filled with special toys and blocks and equipment. I am really happy that he is going to school there.

 

I walked to the classroom to pick him up and ended up talking to his teacher for a long time. She is a hoot! She said he only had one little issue and it happened in art class (the kids actually go to REAL art and music and PE classes!). Apparently, the art teacher wrote Jack's teacher's initials on his paper without explaining to him why she did it and he FLIPPED OUT because she "defiled his artwork"!!! LOL, his teacher explained what the initals were and she said Jack went from furious to completely okay with it. I love that she stays calm and talks to him in a way that he can understand. I am positive that he is going to have really great days and really bad days but this seemed like a good indication of a middle of the road day. She also said that Jackson LOVED doing mosaic artwork of his name and he spent over an hour placing the pieces just so and was very happy to be doing that. She showed me the name and it looked wonderful! He did such a good job. I think he will be just fine there.

 

His Day 2 outfit below:

 

I bought him some ice cream after we left and we went home and played outside until bedtime. He rode down the hill, played in his house, rode his scooter, played with marbles and added things to his collection of things that he finds in the backyard and thinks he should save. He has pinecones, marbles, snail shells, leaves and sticks in there, along with a few beads he found. It is a very boyish collection for sure.

 

 

Today is Saturday and we decided to take Jack to the DinoPark in Kaiserslautern. It was pretty warm and that made Jack act wilder than he has acted in a while. We had a lot of fun looking at the dinos and "Rapunzel's Tower" and the pumpkin sculptures until he had a freak out and we had to leave. And OH BOY did he ever freak the heck out! We had to walk a long way back to the car and Garry had to actually carry him while he screamed and fought. And guess what he decided to start hollering as we were approaching the car: 

 

"YOU ARE NOT MY MOMMY AND DADDY!!! YOU ARE STRANGERS!!!"

 

Oh.My.God.Yes.He.Did.

 

I have no idea why he decided to do that but I am honestly so surprised that no one tried to stop us and make sure we weren't kidnapping him, especially since he was fighting so hard. As punishment for that little stunt, he lost his DS for good and had to spend the rest of the night in his bedroom before he went to sleep (only an hour and half but still...). But..here's the thing: as soon as he got in his bedroom, I took his shoes and socks and shorts off of him and turned on his fan and he was just fine. He calmed down and played mostly happily in his room until he went to bed and it has me wondering if his sensory issues are aggrivated by the heat. He has ALWAYS reacted negatively to being too warm and I thought he just took after me because I enjoy being cool/cold and hate being hot but I wonder if it is more than that. That is something I intend on bringing up with his developmental pediatrician when I see him/her in the next few weeks.

 

Anyway, we did have a lot of fun before the freak out and here are the happy pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

This was on top of a building near where we were parked. I thought it was someone up there with a gun at first!!!

 

These guys were on a different building. Why? Because Germany, lol. I love it here!



 

 



First Day of Kindergarten!

I am not going to lie...I have been nervous about this day for a really long time. Pre-K was pretty tough on us and the last think I have wanted for Jack is another long year of stress and worry. I look back on my blog from his first day of Pre-K and I just want to shudder because we had a really difficult road ahead of us at that point. I sat by my phone all day. I actually did not take it out of my hand or pocket a single time in 6 hours.

 

It never rang.

 

I had to check Jackson out of school at 2:00 so that he could go to his doctor's appointment and I walked up to his classroom with a lot of anxiety, knowing I would hear a report about his behavior. I peeked into the classroom and the teacher was reading a book to the 4-5 kids that didn't ride the bus and she beckoned me into the classroom. I asked her how he did and do you know what she said?

 

He was just great! We enjoyed him SO much!

 

It might sound silly but I think that was the happiest moment of my entire life. Seriously. Now, I know that there will be tough days here and there but just hearing that he did behave himself and he did have a great first day kind of sets the tone for the year, I hope. He has grown and matured so much since we moved to Germany and we had so many wonderful people supporting us who helped us in Arkansas: his therapists at ACT and especially Mrs. Washington. I cannot describe how proud of him I am right now!

 

The day before school started, I took him to his school and we took some pre-kindergarten photos. That was so much fun and he loved playing with the apples. He ended up geting hungry though, so we had to leave and get the baby some food!

 

 

We took him to get his favorite ice cream after we ate and he was in bed by 8:30. We talked a lot about how to play nicely with our friends and how to mind our teacher and he was very receptive! I was very glad to get his schedule back on track so that he would get plenty of sleep.

 

Except that he woke up at 1:00am because he was coughing so hard.

 

*sigh* So, I put Vick's on his feet, gave him cough medicine and his Flovent and I cooked some chicken noodle soup for him and he slept with me for the rest of the night. We woke him up the next morning at 6:40 and he was excited but sleepy. He ate some yogurt for breakfast.

 

And then Garry helped him get dressed.

 

 

And then he was off to his first day of kindergarten!

 

 

We got through the gates pretty fast and were about 15 minutes early, so we waited on the basketball court for his teachers. We actually met some friends from our village there and their little girl was starting kindergarten that day too! She and Jack played on the rocks.

 

 

Then his teacher came and collected them and off he went! He only looked back once and he wasn't even looking at us. He was looking at the other kids in line, lol.

 

 

Garry and I went to breakfast at the cafe in town and were talking about how he was doing when I realized that I am an awful mother...I had forgotten his lunch money!! I had to drop Garry off at home and zoom back up to the school to open up a lunch money account for him and I decided to go ahead and sign him up for sports while I was there. I ended up only having 2 hours at the house before I picked him up for the doctor's office.

 

He was in wild baby mode at the doctor's office and he made me laugh SO hard! His ADHD really came out when he was trapped in the room for a little while. He was into everything! The little tech came in to get all of his vitals and his height and weight and he zeroed out the scale and had Jack step on. He was writing something when it beeped and he told Jack to step off. He did and just as the guy looked over to check his weight, Jack tapped the scale with his foot and it zeroed out! The guy reset the scale and told Jack to step back on and he kept writing. It beeped and he told Jack to step off of the scale, looked over to read it and Jack tapped the scale with his foot and zeroed it out again....AND LAUGHED! He thought it was hilarious! This happened again and finally I made Jack come to me so that he didn't reset the scale. It was pretty funny and Jack thought it was great. Finally, he got up onto the table like this:

 

 

He was laying just like this and moving around, swishing the paper, while I was talking to the tech and suddenly he shot off of the table and landed halfway across the room on his stomach. I have no idea how he did it but it didn't seem to hurt him. Nothing really does though. I made him come sit by me and the doctor came in. Her first words were: "Soooo, ADHD?" Ha! While I was talking to her, he kept bouncing the seat against the wall, so I made him go stand in the middle of the room. She started laughing so I looked behind me and he was laying on the floor on his back, making "snow angels" with his arms and legs. I rolled my eyes and kept talking to her and she just lost it laughing. I looked around and he had crouched in front of the sink, grabbed the edge and was swinging back and forth. UGH! So I made him get back up on the table! Such a pest!

 

It was a long day and Garry wasn't getting home until midnight-ish, so we went home and ate, I gave him a long bath and his medicine and I put him in bed. He was out in just minutes. It was a good day. :)

  PS. He is 48 inches tall and 61 pounds!