Jefferson's Last Day of Kindergarten

I know it's been awhile since I've made a good post. We've been a bit busy around here. Jackson has had quite a busy schedule with his school district evaluations and other evaluations. We also got a new computer a couple weeks ago that we've been setting up and transferring stuff from the old computer and just getting used to. Oh, and we also got a Wii! That's been distracting us a bit.

So on Jefferson's last day of school (well, technically his second to last day, but since his last day was all of 1 1/2 hours, it doesn't really count) his class has an "End of Year" program. His class sang several songs and did some "Reader's Theatre". I took a few pictures, but they didn't end up very good. Between Jefferson being in the back row for the songs and the lady in front of me moving into the frame almost every time I snapped a picture and the lighting in the classroom that I couldn't figure what setting on my camera to use, it wasn't easy.

Here are a couple pictures:

School District Preschool

Jackson qualified for the school district's preschool program! While it's great that he is going to continue getting the extra help he needs, it's also a little sad that he still needs the extra help. It's that parent thing about wanting your child to be perfect, but I know Jackson is special and we love him so much the way he is.

He was evaluated by the school district in several areas, including: Cognitive, Speech, Fine and Gross Motor, Behavior, and Socialization. Before his first evaluation appointment I had to fill out this super long parent questionnaire that covered several areas in development. The results from that questionnaire were then taken into consideration when looking at his scores from his school district testing.

His first day of evaluations were for Speech and Cognitive. He had no problem wowing the evaluators on his cognitive exam- he is definitely a smart kid! They score the cognitive exam in two ways and one of his scores placed him in the 99th percentile- which means only 1% of kids his same age that take the same test would score better than him. In his speech exam, he scored in the 46th percentile, which is close to average, and higher than I expected him to score. His past year in KOTM has certainly helped him improve his speech! The evaluators still had a few concerns about his speech- like his repetitive phrases, inconsistency in word pronunciations, and the high pitch that he tends to use, so they recommended that he be tested again at the beginning of the school year to check for progress. During the evaluation I ended up filling out another parent questionnaire- this time for autism - because within 5 minutes of Jackson's testing the one evaluator turned to me and asked if they had me fill out the autism questionnaire- Jackson was having difficulty moving on to the next task because he wanted to make sure the cards he was given to match to the pictures were perfectly lined up and a few other quirks were presenting themselves (along with his low scores from the first questionnaire in behavior and socialization). I wasn't surprised at all. I've suspected that Jackson would place on the Autism Spectrum Disorder scale for some time now- although he is certainly high-functioning.

His second day of evaluations were for Fine and Gross Motor. He did great in his fine motor evaluation except for in a couple key areas like stacking blocks higher than four (although he can do it at home just fine- but we have larger blocks) and inconsistency of hand usage. Those two areas brought his score down into the qualifying range (7th percentile or lower). His gross motor evaluation was next and he was tested in range of motion from jumping to walking in a straight line to doing a somersault to throwing a ball to walking up and down stairs, etc.. He ended up placing in the 8th percentile for that, but after looking at his other scores, the evaluators felt he should still qualify for services.

Since it took them awhile to review his results after his Gross Motor test (we hung out in the playroom for 1 1/2 hours waiting to find out if he qualified), and since Nate worked from home that morning so he could also watch Mason (Jefferson was at school) but had to go to a client site in the afternoon, I couldn't wait around all day, so they went over the results with me and sent me home and had me come back a couple days later to get my copies and sign the paperwork which took a bit longer to type up.

So the areas that qualified him are Fine and Gross Motor, Behavior, and Socialization. He starts in August and will go 4 days a week.

How Popular Are Our Names?

Here's how our family's first names rank the year of said person's birth:

Nathaniel (1975)- 132
Jennifer (1977)- 1
Jefferson (2002)- 706
Jackson (2005)- 44
Mason (2006)- 39

Wanna know where your name ranks? Go here!

Showing No Fear

To avoid going to bed, Jackson decided that that falling onto the couch was a lot of fun and Mason decided to join in. Here they are having a blast:

Ikea

We went to Ikea on Saturday. Jefferson was upset that the kid playroom was full so he couldn't play, which made the trip around the store less fun, and Jackson and Mason wanted to climb on EVERYTHING. Jackson's favorite thing to do was climb up on the beds and settle in:

Jackson's Last Day of Class

Yesterday was the last day of the playgroup Jackson has been going to at Kids On The Move. He's had a lot of fun since he started in January and made a lot of progress.

Preparing For The Terrible Twos

I gave Mason's blanket and dogs a "bath" on Friday. Mason WAS NOT HAPPY with me. He didn't care that his dog smelled so bad you could practically smell it across the room. So, for almost 2 hours Mason cried or sulked around, while waiting for his precious dogs to be free. I had to take some pictures and video of his tantrum because I just couldn't resist capturing the event.
Here's a picture and some video after he realized that I put his dogs in the washing machine:

Here he is right after I switched the load over to the dryer:

Here he is a bit calmer, waiting for the dryer to finish:

Fun At The Park!

We went over to the park by Grandma and Grandpa's house so that we could spend some time with them before they leave for a whole month to visit family and friends in Virginia. Jackson is in love with slides (although the tube kind freak him out, so I had to slide down with him), Mason is a daredevil, and Jefferson is just all over the place. It was lots of fun!

Check Out These Eyelashes!

Okay, so I keep seeing posts about amazingly long eyelashes on kids/babies and so I had to post a picture of Mason's eyelashes. Although he started out with hardly any at birth (which was quite the opposite of Jefferson- his eyelashes are very easy to see in his newborn portrait), he has more than made up for that. Here are his eyelashes now (the ends are fairly light, so hard to see, but really, they go on forever!):

Scout Expo

I currently serve in the Cub Scouts - Wolves, to be exact. It wasn't a calling I expected, although being the mother of 3 boys, I should have. It's been pretty fun- we have a great group of boys- and Jefferson loves to come to cub scouts with me (I'm not sure the wolves like him coming though- he can get a bit overexcited). This past Saturday was the Scout Expo, and our den was in charge of our troop's booth for 2 hours. The theme was "Physically Strong" or something like that, so our troop set up a fitness obstacle course. We had lots of kids stop by and participate and I think it was a success. Most troops had great set-ups and some of the older troops had quite the elaborate set-ups (our ward is less than a year old so we don't have the money for much and we haven't had time to acquire much). A couple troops even rented some big inflatable slides and such. Jefferson couldn't wait until my shift was over so that he could go on the slides. All in all I thought the Scout Expo was better than the county fair. You still got some good food options (although I didn't bring any cash for that), there were lots of activities (almost all free!), and only a few booths selling stuff. Some of the army guys from Camp Williams even brought over a few army vehicles- including an Apache helicopter and a Paladin Self-Propelled Howitzer (which the kids were allowed to climb in and all over). Nate had to go into work on Saturday, so he didn't get to come to the expo (and Jackson and Mason stayed home with Grandma), but he was bummed he missed it when I told him about the army vehicles. I'm looking forward to next year's!

Here are some pictures of the inflatable slides and the army vehicles:
(Once again taken with the camera phone because silly me forgot the camera)