Eeny, Meeny, Miny, Moe

Darn. . . the frustration over posting to this little old blog is not the ancient computer, but the internet connection. 

I broke into savings last month (three days before I found out that I would need to have an unexpected surgery- collapsed gallbladder) and got a laptop on sale. The purpose was to ensure that the kids could get their school assignments done and us parents could get our stuff done too. So we now have our 9 year old Windows XP desktop and a new Windows 10 laptop. Since Microsoft just debuted its newest operating system, I was able to upgrade the laptop from Windows 8.1 to Windows 10 for free. This feat unfortunately was not possible at home, instead I had to go to my husband's workplace (with permission) to use their wifi connection. I still need to save up some money to buy a Windows Office license for the laptop. The desktop has Office 2007, but I don't think that I want to install it on the laptop. Oh . . . . the best part about our new technology, I password protected it. The kids cannot use it unless hubby or I log them on. Score!!!!!!

Back to our internet woes. I called the phone company and we have the fastest internet connection in our area, which is the lowest level of service that they offer. The router has been replaced, but yet service is still dicey and sometimes non-existent. I just replaced the office power strip/ surge protector. I thought that it might be possible that the old one which the phone line ran through may have gone bad. So far we have yet to lose service, but it is still running slower than dirt. Next options will be either to re-run a phone line to the outside phone box or have our phone company visit us. Re-running the line would probably be the cheapest option, but it is definitely a pain to do. If only our house had modern phone lines instead of twisted rusting pre-WWII phone cables which are over 1/4" in diameter. The current line to the outdoor box is about 9 years old. I may have to ask hubby to scale the yew bushes and rouge poison ivy to check the outside portion of the line. 

Hopefully we can figure it out soon, it is hard to explain to Pumpkin why the internet will not work. To him it is supposed to be like water from a faucet, it should always there when you need it. Sometimes it is hard to get a few steps ahead of his literal mind. On the bright side, not as many behavior notes are coming home this school year. And he has only been to the principal's office once to have a chat after an incident with another child. The school was fair and handled the situation efficiently. The other child had to apologize to Pumpkin and both boys have some new directions to follow.

Anyone else have an older house with similar internet issues? What have you done for internet service?

Project Time

I cannot believe that we are already ten days into the new year. Time sure does seem to fly around here.

The kids started back to school on Monday. Pumpkin's class is starting to learn cursive handwriting. Princess's class is doing more challenging read activities. Both of their report cards came home yesterday. We need to work on handwriting with both children. Princess needs to work on count to 100 by 5s and Pumpkin needs to work on his spelling skills.

I have been doing good on some of my January goals and falling a bit behind on other. Ha ha! Good thing goals can be changed and modified as needed.

We had a glitch with our kitchen plumbing starting on New Year's Day. I did take a laundry basket full of dishes to grandma's house last weekend. We hand washed the dirty dishes and had a nice conversation. Hubby attempted to clean out the p trap last weekend to no avail, so we called a plumber. The plumber replaced some pipes and attempted to clean out the line to no avail, so we called the sewer service. The sewer service got the issue resolved on Wednesday. Thank goodness! It is sort of hard to cook when you cannot use your sink. It is also kind of hard to work on eating more healthy if you have to grab a few meals out.  But, I have managed to lose two and a half pounds. 

My greatest accomplishment so far has been the southwest quadrant of the great room. I used Christmas money to purchase a small cube unit to help organize the room better. It is so cute!  Below are before and after pictures. My next project is the northwest quadrant, it will probably be more time consuming since Hubby has to help me with some parts of it. That is the same area that I would like to set up the reading nook in.

We did test out the proposed reading nook area today. We have a green swivel rocking chair that I had moved from the southwest quadrant. Right now it is temporarily in front of the mantel.  Both kids brought home flyers from school this week that they were excited about. It is a reading challenge of 360 minutes by February 23 to earn tickets to a fun amusement park. I figure that if we read 30 minutes every Saturday and Sunday, we will met the challenge in time. Princess and I worked together and read Blue Hat, Green Hat and Put me in the Zoo for 30 minutes. Pumpkin read me the first 4 chapters of Roscoe Riley Rules #1: Never Glue Your Friends to Chairs for 30 minutes.

Well off to conquer the northwest quadrant! What are your plans this weekend?

A Tale of Two Tables

I was chatting with grandma in July about one aspect of our homework dilemma: How to stay near Pumpkin while he does his homework and cook dinner at the same time. The problem was that the table in the kitchen had a drop down side that was worse for the wear and made it impossible to sit in a normal fashion.  Since our eating table is located in the Sunroom (where we have a wonderful view of nature and the pond), it became a catch-all table with piles of stuff. 

Last school year homework was done at a long sofa table in the Great Room. Unfortunately that table is not close enough to the sink, stove, and refrigerator so dinner often suffered. Hubby became very proficient in the art of making cheese toasties. It was his avenue to escape homework.  Ha ha ha ha!

Our kitchen table was given to my parents as a gift when I was a small child. After my mom and stepdad #1 divorced, it sat in mom's garage for a few years.  The heat, humidity, and cold did not treat it kindly. The painted legs were cracked and chipped. The top of the table and sides also suffered from the wood splitting apart. A gentleman from church fixed it up enough to be usable, but honestly it needs a complete overhaul.

Grandma had a wonderful idea, she offered to trade tables with us to help with our homework dilemma. The new kitchen table was my great-great grandma's kitchen table. It is just a touch larger than the other table without any drop down sides.  The finish still looks nice after years of use.

About a week before school started, hubby and a friend did the Great Table Switch.  The "new" table is working out well. Pumpkin is enjoying doing his homework in the kitchen. The table is no longer a catch-all area, although it is homework and sack lunch central. And best of all, I can cook supper while monitoring and encouraging the homework situation. Now if we could only speed the homework process up (wink, wink).

101 Things

There is always 101 things that need to be done. It can be overwhelming at times. Sometimes I cannot tell the difference between up and down. 

Now that school has started, we have the homework battle with Pumpkin each night. We are trying to discover techniques that may help us proceed in a faster manner. I search the internet for ideas in the evenings. I dropped by the library and check out books for ideas. We did a change out with our kitchen table to help with our homework battle. Another post will be dedicated to that soon. Friday morning I am heading up north to a parent training session to see if I can glean ideas in general that will help us to help Pumpkin. We have met with his teacher and principal twice so far this school year and we are just starting the third week of school. We do have a great teacher this year and we are working with her on Pumpkin's social hurtles and quirks. Next week we go back to the childhood behavioral pediatrician to explore the possibly of medication to help manage the ADHD, so we can work on teaching the needed skills for the ASD. I am so glad for the weekends which give us a short break of the homework battle.

Housework has turned into a formidable mountain around here. Between being sick all summer, having an injured foot, and now homework it has been a challenge to get even the basics done. I have attempted to train the kids, but more often than not they are more of the problem than the solution. Laundry is getting washed, but unfortunately it has been hanging out unfolded in the laundry baskets until they are empty or reclaimed for another load of clean laundry. Surfaces are piled high with clutter, papers, STUFF. Dishes are hit and miss. I think that I need to have a cleaning party, one room at a time of course. Any friends up for the challenge?

We did have a friend come by this past weekend. He fixed the leak under our kitchen sink and removed our garbage disposal for us. I know, a lot of people love their garbage disposals. But, I did not have one until we moved into our current home.  I really am not fond of them. Why would someone would want to send stuff down their drains and into their pipes to risk having a blockage thereby having to call a plumber? We have an older model house and I know that we have some tile collapsing in the front yard, so why take the risk of causing more harm than good. I am happy though that I can now return all of the stuff that was under the sink, back underneath the sink. The under the sink supplies have been sitting in a tub in my kitchen for the past three months.

I am attempting to relearn how to type. Ugh! Apparently the rules for composing with a computer have changed. Instead of two spaces after a period (which is what I was taught by a teacher in high school that threated detentions for not following directions), the new rule is one space after a period. I guess this is because in this fast paced world, they want to save as much room and space as they can. Apparently the two space rule was created to help separate sentences when using a typewriter (which once again, I learned how to type on) and is not necessary with a computer since the spacing is more uniform. Up until last week at work, I had never heard of it before. I looked it up on the internet and quite a few well-known sites did talk about this change. So I am attempting with much error to reteach myself how to type. This is a quite a challenge, since it has been ingrained into my brain since my freshman year of high school. Try it for yourself to see how hard it is to conform.

Well, I guess that I should think about hitting the sack. Tomorrow will be another long day. I just have to remember: One day at a time. One breath at a time. This too shall pass. Before I know it life will get easier instead of more challenging. At least I hope (wink, wink).

Summer Is Almost Over

Summer is almost over!  School is just around the corner.

We have the kids school supplies.  We had separate shopping trips for each child.  I have a laundry basket that is overfilled with all of their goodies.  Pumpkin was the easy one this year and we zipped through three stores pretty fast.  Princess on the other hand took at least 20 minutes to decide on each item that was on her school supply list.  I thought that the shopping trip would NEVER end.  Ha ha ha!   

Pumpkin will be going into the second grade and Princess will be starting kindergarten.  Thankful that both kids will be at the same location! We get to met the teachers with the kids this coming week, then school starts on August 18.  I think that they are both excited.  Hubby and I got a chance to met with the principal and Pumpkin's teacher to get game plan started.  We have a really good feeling about this school year and are so thankful that the staff is supportive and flexible. 

We finished our summer care Friday.  It was truly a blessing!  The kids got to play outside most of the summer.  They even got the opportunity to take swim lessons.  Pumpkin got extra help strengthening his math and reading skills.  This coming week the kids get to hang out with me at home.

Pumpkin lost his first two teeth ever on July 14.  We have yet to have a visit from the tooth fairy.  He is refusing to part with his teeth, since they contain his "memories."  So they are hidden away in his room so the tooth fairy cannot find them.  He got that train of thought from the movie "Rise of the Guardians."  His two "shark" teeth were almost fully in right behind the ones that fell out.  They are starting to shift forward now.

I am still hanging in there.  Life certainly has been rough this year, but I am still smiling.  I got released from my multiple doctors two Monday's ago.  Ten long weeks of uncertainty and just not feeling good at all.  So thankful that all of the testing and illness is gone.  Thanks be to God!  Unfortunately, I cannot say that it is the end of my health saga.  The next day I ended up with a stress fracture to my right foot.  I initially thought that it was a really bad foot cramp, but since the pain did not subside I saw the podiatrist.  So, I have a lovely black surgical shoe that I get to wear until I go back for another visit.  I think that the culprit might have been my house shoes.  I have been wearing them for about six years now.  I know, I know!  Shoes are not meant to be worn daily for that long.  I just could not bear to give them up.  I find that I have trouble getting rid of things that have sentimental value.  I bought them a few months before I had Princess and wore them in the hospital during our maternal stay.

For the upcoming week, we had planned to go to the state fair, have a garage sale, and take a few local day trips.  But since I injured my driving foot, we are going to have to stay local unless someone else does the driving and I cannot be standing for hours at a time.  I probably should not be lugging stuff over to grandma's house for a garage sale either.  I have decided that I will use my heavy duty walking boot (from my plantar fasciitis stint in 2009), when it comes to going to school for registration day.  The last thing I need is for someone to step on my injured hoof.  Funny thing is that I can move faster in the boot, than in the shoe.  Ha ha ha!

Well life is never boring around here!  Hopefully I stay a little more up to date with this little blog as we venture into the fall.

I Think We Can! I Think We Can!

We have been experimenting with Pumpkin and how to motivate him in regards to education. 

Poker Chip Incentive
The grounding concept of this idea came from our childhood development pediatrician.  She had used a similar idea on her ADHD son when he was in junior high and high school.  We modified it for our first grader. 

Idea:  Use poker chips as an incentive to award appropriate behavior. 

Our Goal: To teach Pumpkin to concentrate and focus while working on school work.  A subgoal is to teach Pumpkin the value of money.

What we did:  I got a bag of old poker chips from my grandma's house and gave them a bath in the sink.  I used a permanent marker and wrote "A" on 10 blue chips, "B" on 10 red chips, and "V" on 10 white chips and placed them into a baggie.  Then I made an awards chart listing how many chips are required to earn each incentive.  We told Pumpkin that every time he brings a paper home with the grade of A, B, or V (very good) he will earn a chip.  Once he earns enough chips he can trade the chips in (like money) to collect incentives.  We found a plastic jar with a lid to deposit his chips into like a bank.

Results:  He has brought home papers with higher grades.  He has finished more in-class assignments in whole instead of leaving blank answers when he forgot or got distracted.  The purpose of this is to not make him feel like he needs to get only A's or B's.  It is to make him realize that he knows the answers and can do well on his assignments if he takes the time to focus and concentrate at the task at hand.  It is perfectly fine with me if he brings a C home, I just do not want to see the D's or F's when I know that he has the answers floating around inside his head.  So far he earn his way to see the Lego Movie and trade 7 chips to earn dinner out at the restaurant that Auntie works.  I think that he wants to work on earning the Hot Wheel Mega Loop Mayhem Track next. 

Reading Rescue 1-2-3
Pumpkin continues to have issues with reading.  We have yet to fully recover from a non-family adult telling him that she would use reading as a punishment for inappropriate behavior this past summer.  I have consulted with our friendly children department librarians for help.  The head children's librarian suggested Reading Rescue 1-2-3 by Peggy Wilber.  I have found the book useful.  I have used the test to assess Pumpkin's reading level.  He is on level 1c according to their book.  The areas that we need to work on currently are reading short passages with accuracy and rhyming.  When testing him he would say an associated word instead of rhyming word.  For example when I say "bear", he would say "polar bear" instead of something like "hair". Or "red" would end up with a made up word such as "smed".  This book gives a lot of easy to use ideas and is not hard to understand for phonic challenged parents.  

The librarians also suggested that we read books to Pumpkin that he likes.  Since he likes listening to the Junie B. Jones series, they recommended the Roscoe Riley Rules series.  Pumpkin is really enjoying listening this particular series since it has a boy for the main character.  They also suggested non-fiction books about things that Pumpkin enjoys.  Today we checked out books about sharks, snakes, butterflies, and camouflage.

Educational Games

We have been trying a variety of games to help entice Pumpkin to practice and learn words.  

POP for Rhyming

 

Oh my!  Such an amazing and fun game, both Pumpkin and Princess enjoy playing this.  It has picture bubbles and a spinner.  You spin to see how many bubbles to pull out of the container.  For each bubble you say the name of the image then say a word that rhymes.  If you rhyme correctly you keep the bubble, if the word does not rhyme the bubble goes into a discard pile.  If you get a POP bubble all of your bubbles goes back into the container.  The player with 10 bubbles wins. 

POP for Sight Words

 

We also enjoy this game.  Pumpkin gets about 80% of the words correct.  This will be a great game to continue helping him to become more fluent with reading.  It is similar to the POP for Rhyming except the cards look like popcorn and you play until the container is empty.  Pumpkin was enjoying it so much that he had his Hot Wheels playing too, so he would say their cards for them.  I looked up the company's website and there is a POP for Sight Words 2.  I will have to look into purchasing that version in the future. 

Spelling Word Matching Game

Pumpkin's teacher suggested that we turn Pumpkin's spelling words into a matching game to make the learning process fun.  Every Sunday I make up a batch of matching cards for Pumpkin to practice at great grandma's house before and after school.  I make the cards out of index cards that have been cut in half.  Pumpkin plays traditional matching with them, but has came up with a new game on his own.  He has great grandma hide one set of the cards in a different room.  He takes his matching set and looks for the cards.  When he find a matching pair, he says the word and then spells the word.  Each evening at home we work on write each spelling word twice and our spelling sentence twice.

So we are trudging along and exploring what works to help Pumpkin.  Princess should be a wiz at reading before we know it since she gets roped into playing our games to help Pumpkin.  If anyone has any ideas to try on Pumpkin, we are all ears!

The last few posts have mentioned sickness.  After about two months we are almost sickness free.  Pumpkin got his pneumonia shot earlier this week.  Princess has a bit of a runny nose.  My voice has returned and I am not coughing too much now.  Of course after all this time it would be silly to believe that I would reach 100% so soon, so as fate would have it, I sprained my ankle on Thursday.  Go figure!  At least I got a nifty new ankle brace through my workplace.

One of these days I will get back to attempting to loose a few pounds.  Maybe I can tempt hubby to join in too.  I need to get myself to my quirky normal before I can attempt to even go on a leisurely walk, take a hike, or play with the kids in the yard.  I guess that I could at least start with eating more fruits and vegetables (wink, wink).  Oh and you will never guess what happened!  My sister roasted brussel sprouts the other evening, yuck!  But I tried them anyway and liked them.  So I bought fresh brussel sprouts at the store today and will try my hand at creating my sister's recipe.

Vroom! Vroom!

Pumpkin had a big project at school and today was the presentation day. Their assignment was to write a story about a robot with juicy words, sounds, and a problem to solve. They also had to build the robot in their story with their family. The whole project has been a month in the making. Pumpkin did a wonderful job today and we are so proud of him.

Vroom! Vroom! 

By Pumpkin

In Hot Wheel Land, six cars were lined on the track. In the morning giant robot racers came. The robot racers did not know how to get into the cars. They were too big! 

Fire Robot had an idea. “I must tell the robots to shrink.” He told them to push their shrink buttons. They went cafluwee! They did not have enough power to shrink. “The race is today. 

We don’t have time to charge our batteries so our shrink buttons won’t work.” Next a storm came. The lightening was attacking the cars because they are metal. A wild snake robot 

 

slithered up a tree. Boom! The lightening destroyed the snake robot. And it broke a big piece off the tree that is big enough for them to build six giant robot sized cars. The storm is done now 

 
we have our cars. Fire Robot got into a good fast white car. The racers were on the start line. “On your marks! Get set! GO!” They started theirs cars. The white car was at the 

end of the line. Vroom vroom! They raced near a volcano. A blue car jumps up high towards the volcano. It landed in the water because the wind pushed it away. The white car jumps ahead to the finish line. 

Fire Robot wins the race. He gets a trophy. The End.

Ups And Downs

Pumpkin has been bumping along on the pathway of education.  He definitely has his ups and downs in the past few years.  He is our Pumpkin.  He is just himself, nothing more and nothing less.  He is a loving child.  He can be a helpful child.  He loves to play with his sister.  He loves to invent and tinker.  He loves sharks and penguins.  He enjoys Piggie and Elephant books.  And he has ADHD (attention deficient hyperactivity disorder difference).  

He was diagnosed at the end of November.  He is not defective, he just learns and acts a bit differently than his peers.  He is an active child that does have trouble focusing and can be impulsive.  He is an active child that would much rather be outdoors than inside (what child really wants to be stuck indoors anyway).  He is an active child that has so much energy that he just cannot contain it, kind of like Tigger from Winnie the Pooh.  ADHD has such a negative stigma at times.  But he is a child.  He is not suppose to be mature all the time.  He is not suppose to know all the answers.  He is just different.  He is just Pumpkin.

This year we have learned how to establish eye contact.  We have learned that repeating simple rules creates ownership and better adherence to actually following the rules.  We have learned that we cannot defect from our daily peanut butter and grape jelly sandwich for lunch.  Yikes!  We have learned that it helps to take breaks during homework time.  We have learned about online games that help with learning spelling and math.  We have learned that sometimes parents need a time out.

Pumpkin also has the social skills of a rock.  Last year we had to ask the teacher send home pictures with the kids names, so he could learn his classmates names.  He still cannot tell us the names of his "new" classmates in his class this year.  He does not ask social questions of others, just talks about himself and his interests.  If someone says hi to him it is like he has blinders on and he just keeps going.  He shies away from shaking hands at church.  He laughs at things that may not necessarily be funny.  If he drops a glass of water on the floor at home, he will shriek like a banshee until someone comes to see what has happened. 

We had a second appointment Monday and he is border line high functioning autism (HFA).  He met most of but not all of the criteria on the parent survey.  He also had a 18 point difference between his verbal (108) and analytic (126) IQ values.  The childhood development pediatrician that we saw is going to consult with colleagues to figure out what our next steps will be. There is a very good chance that we will need to travel to a larger city in the area to partake in an autism panel to determine if he does indeed have HFA. 

We met with Pumpkin's principal and teacher today.  Even though he attends a parochial school, it is encouraging to know that they have had students in the past that have been successful academically with similar diagnoses.  They are receptive to helping us and Pumpkin succeed.  We are looking into methods and ideas since he is more designed for visual learning instead of verbal learning.  As suggested by the specialist, we are looking into obtaining an educational evaluation through our local "home" school.  I am sure that it will be an uphill battle since we have not gone the traditional route through the local school system.  I have tried a first mode of contact and if I do not hear anything within a week, I will try my next method of contact.

I have been read the book Easy to Love but Hard to Raise by Marner and Bashista.  It has been very fascinating.  Unfortunately, I will not get a chance to finish reading it before it has to be returned to the library on Friday.  I will either have to order it through interlibrary loan again or purchase the book for reference at home.  From what I have read so far, I think everyone should read this book to obtain a better understanding of what it is like to have a child that is considered different and to add a bit of humor and insight to enrich our own lives.

We have a long road ahead of us.  Rome was not built in a day.  So we will take one day at a time.  Some days I wish mom was still here.  I have questions that I would love to ask her.  At least we are starting to grow our own network of knowledgeable, kind, and supportive people.  And for me talking about things helps.  It helps me to process information, it helps me to de-stress, it helps me to heal.  So from time to time Pumpkins ups and down will probably appear on this little old blog.

Topsy Turvy

It has been a rough fall.  In more ways than one.

The house is in need of deep cleaning and organization.  I am actually embarrassed to have company stop by.  I just do not know where to start.  Stuff just piles up, then it has babies and more babies until it is an uncontrollable mess.  I still have some areas that I have yet to touch.  I am not sure if it is that I am afraid to find something that I do not want to deal with (some stuff has been sitting around since before mom died, waiting for me to come back to it) or if I wonder what really is the point since it will be a mess once again in such a short time.  I was utilizing the e-book "31 Days To Clean" by Sarah Mae, but I did not make it quite past the first week.  I did a big flop trying to keep up with the kitchen cleaning schedule, being a working mom, and managing the kiddos in the evenings.  I guess I need to try it again, but at a slower pace.  I did come up with the following cleaning mission statement that I have on the wall in the bedroom.

To me they are pretty lofty goals, which honestly would be easier to achieve if I did not work outside the home.  So, I will slow plug away at achieving what right now seems the impossible.  I did stumble across the website Women Living Well this evening and they will be having a five week challenge:  Making Your Home a Haven.  I am going to try the challenge and see if it helps to inspire me to be more diligent about the cleaning and organization of my home.

Pumpkin is having a lot of discipline problems at school this year.  First grade is really rough.  I had the honor of meeting with his teacher and the principal last night pertaining to his behavior at school.  He has yet to reach the same maturity level as his peers and his social skills are lacking at times which is leading to some serious problems.  He also has it stuck in his head that he is a bad boy, so he thinks he needs to act like a bad boy and that nothing that he does is right.  I have a whole list of things that were suggested to work on, but no ideas on how to actually accomplish the tasks at hand.  I walked away more frustrated and feeling more like a failure as a parent than before I attended the meeting.  

It was suggested to give him a few more weeks until the mid-term arrives, then the school will probably recommend that we visit the pediatrician about his behavior.  We took him to the pediatrician last fall and his behavior problems then were a combination of an ear infection and lack of maturity that equaled his peers.  Our pediatrician said he was a typical boy and he would mature in his own time.  

I just do not know what to think or what to do.  We have been praying every night with him about school and I have been praying with him in the mornings too.  Yesterday morning Pumpkin told me that my prayers were not working.  I replied "You can pray that your room will be clean, but if you do not try it will not get clean.  It is the same with school,  you can pray to have a good day and make good choices, but you have to try if you want things to get better."  He is a good, smart, loving kid and it is so hard to see him struggling with school this year.

Well it sure is late and I have to be at work early, so I best be shutting everything down for the evening.

School Days

First grade is off to a rocky start.  I am hoping that once Pumpkin really gets into the swing of things it will improve.

Days of School Song
(Pretend 12 Days of Christmas music in the background)

On the first day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me an empty book bag. . . . 
(Thought that Pumpkin forgot his homework on the first day, so called the teacher to check in.  Thankfully no homework, but she asked that we work on his eye contact when he is conversing with others.)

On the second day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me our first glimpse at homework . . . .   
(Phonics & spelling, math, reading, and memory work.) 

On the fourth day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me his first ever bruised blacken eye. . . .
(Fell at recess)

On the fifth day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me my first taste of homework rebellion . . . . 
(Top time: two hours to do 20 minutes of homework) 

On the seventh day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me a bruised swollen blacken shin . . . . 
(Fell at recess.  Boy first grade is tough!)

On the tenth day of school, my Pumpkin stayed home and to the doctor we did go . . . . 
(First time for strep throat and first time for fifth disease virus/ slap cheek syndrome. Gave up on pictures by this point. Cheeks, chin and ear started bright red and upper arms looked to be covered in hives.  Then is spread down his arms and down his legs.  About 90% gone now.)

On the eleventh day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me several checks in his behavior folder . . . .
(Doctor approved him returning to school and said no going outside in the heat/ sun until the rash disappeared, approximately 7 days.  This child is an outdoor kid, it was rough for school and home alike.)

On the fourteenth day school, my Pumpkin brought to me a note for reading help at school . . . .
(He is doing good with reading, but not focusing and paying attention.  It has been recommended that a smaller group will help Pumpkin to learn how to focus better.) 
 
Today was the fifteen day of school, my Pumpkin brought to me no checks in his behavior folder . . . .
(Yay!)