all geared up

and ready to "go", i hope! owen is going to be in underwear (and vinyl pants) this weekend to see what happens in terms of potty training. we have 9 pair of training underwear, 3 pair of vinyl pants, a book that has a button with a flushing potty sound (the button is a hit with owen!) and cool foamy soap that comes out of a hippo's mouth (huggies clean team, i think) that he'll get to use when he goes potty. we'll see if we have to up the ante or sweeten the pot but i'm hoping that (1) keeping his underwear dry and (2) using the hippo soap will be incentive enough for him. we may have to resort to my parent's old stand-by: m's. the trick will be keeping those safe from him and daddy. maybe we'll find a cool depenser that only lets a small amount out.

anyway, he's continued to stay dry most of the day at day care and has even gone potty there once or twice. it's still tough with not knowing which room he'll be in, but when i talked with one of the directors, she said that we can send extra underwear and vinyl pants instead of pull-ups and they'll work with that. my aversion to pull-ups is that they don't let the child feel when they're wet. sure we'll be washing underwear like mad (too mad and we'll go back to diapers for the time being) but we won't have to keep buying the pull-ups. i'll keep you all posted on his progress.

the first full week of school is done. it was a good week. kids mostly behaving, classes going well. my prek/k classes can really sing this year! i have a hand full of truely tricky kids, but at least they're not all clumped together in one group! last year was a different story. it's a wonderful bunch of kids this year. cute stories from yesterday (yes, they all happened yesterday) include a little boy who came in, and proceded to start undressing himself, shoes and socks first. then he started in on his shirt, and by that time i had caught him and told him to put everything back on. he eventually ended up being my partner during the beat activity we were doing with rhythm sticks. in another class, one of my little boys totally melted down because he got the wrong color of rhythm sticks. (he got red, he wanted blue.) now usually i can talk with the kids and they'll be ok with it. not this little boy. i eventually told him that if he couldn't accept the red sticks and maybe get a different color another day, that he couldn't do the activity with us. the para that is in that class for another student ended up taking the first student back to the room where he went right to the cool-down area and told his problems to the stuffed penguin that is there. when the para returned, she mentioned that as she was walking under my window (their class is in a portable on the playground, which my room overlooks) on her way back, not only could she hear everyone using the rhythm sticks, but she could hear the beat being kept with them also! yay!!!!

we went to the homecoming game at jeff's h.s. last night. the district had closed the building a couple of years ago and sent the entire staff and student body to another site in the district while they re-did the inside of the building and added some more space. this is the first year back in the building. we're going for a tour later this morning, maybe with some friends. after that, it's offto grandma's!

owen's aunt sheena and uncle nick are moving this week from up-state new york to our city. yay! it will be really nice to have them nearby. nick is a teacher so i'm going to try to help him with finding something in my district, even if it's for subbing.

when we went to the fair last weekend, owen whinnied his way through the 4-H horse barns. it was hilarious! he even went potty in the big potty at the fair. we're going back tomorrow with katie, rob, and peter i think. we went to the rodeo last weekend, too. owen liked that. he'll do the mutton bustin' in a year or two (kids are set on a sheep and try too hold on for 6 seconds as the sheep bolts across the arena toward other sheep standing in the middle. the kids they had doing it during the rodeo last week were really funny and cute when they were being interviewed.