Dylan

Which brings us to Dylan!  Who happens to be the birthday boy!  I love this kid!

I bet you didn’t know it was really painful to pose for pictures.  SO painful.  He just couldn’t do it.  I really thought we would go out and it would be really quick, but he had really pained smiles when he forced it, and when I got him to smile, he did the scrunched nose, head down thing that he does when he’s mad we’ve made him smile.  Ugh.  It was seriously hard.  This is what I got.

I even let Monster-Dylan come out for a little, but Sweet-Dylan was too shy to come out for pictures I guess.

Dylan did really well this school year.  He has changed quite a bit.  I can tell just by watching him in swimming lessons.  He seems like he wants to please his teacher, not just do whatever he wants.  It’s an improvement!

Dylan is competitive and all year long he was trying to get his STAR reading level higher.  He started out at like 2.3, then next time moved up to 3.2.  Then he was up to 3.8 or something for a long time, which he said was the highest in his class.  I’m not sure why he thought that.  It’s not like the teacher tells them who is highest.  I think maybe he just saw that he was the only one choosing books that high in the library.  At the end of the year they took the test once more and he got 4.9!  He was so happy!  He told me he was the highest in his class.  He said, “Harley is 4.8 and Tate is 4.7 but I am highest.”  It’s funny because I read with the kids in his class and Harley has been the fastest reader since Kindergarten.  Her fluency is really great.  And Tate is often faster than Dylan as well.  But the STAR test measures comprehension.  Apparently Dylan has a slightly higher comprehension.  I told Ryan I’m certain the reason his comprehension is getting better is because we read to him.  Plain and simple.  We read him chapter books.  Just hearing the words and trying to put them into context as he listens has helped improve comprehension.  Dylan loves Goosebumps books.  I think they’re dumb so I told him I didn’t want to read them to him.  I told him he could read them to himself, but Ryan likes reading them with him so those are the books that Ryan reads with him.  I have chosen a few different chapter books to read with him but currently we are trying to get through Fablehaven.  It’s long and we don’t have as much free time to read since Kaden came along.  But there are plenty of words in these books that he doesn’t know, so he has to be learning context.

I love reading with Dylan.  He listens so well sometimes I think he’s fallen asleep, but that doesn’t happen very often.  And he will start guessing what he thinks is going to happen or guessing at what the book hasn’t told us yet.  Like what happened to Grandma Sorensen in Fablehaven.  He’s just so fun.

The kids were excited about the reading program at the library this summer.  Dylan was like, “last year I didn’t like reading, but this year I LOVE reading! So I’m going to do well!”  I can’t tell you how happy that makes me.  I will come into the living room in the morning to find him on the couch reading books.  He tells me that he reads in his bedroom in the mornings when he wakes up too early. (They’re not allowed to come out of their rooms early because Dylan and Sadie end up fighting and Ryan and I REALLY can’t take the screaming at 6:30 am).  AND I ask him to read to Sadie and he does it without complaining.  I even asked him to listen to Sadie try and read and I listened while I was making dinner and they were on the couch and Dylan was actually really patient with her. I was impressed!  I mean, he did tell her the word a little too often instead of letting her sound it out.  But it takes a lot of patience to listen to a new reader sound things out and Dylan never whined or got bored.  I was pleasantly surprised.

While I’m on the subject of school, I’ll mention math too.  I don’t have much in the way of measurement of math skills at school.  I know he rarely had problems with his math homework he brought home.  He was actually pretty quick at his facts pages.  It wasn’t until I started him on this website- TenMarks that I saw how well he does.  I heard about this math website that is normally like $40 to join but they were offering it free for the summer, an attempt to help children not lose so much knowledge over the summer.  It seemed pretty legit, you have to put your kids school in and everything.  I signed up him and Kylee and I put in what grades they were going into.  Then I set Dylan down and let him try the assessment it had.  As I was watching, there were a couple of questions that I thought for sure were over his head.  But I was wrong!  He figured them out rather quickly.  Things like double-digit addition and subtraction where you had to borrow or carry.  I haven’t seen him do much of that as homework so I didn’t think he would get it.  He doesn’t do it the way I’m used to, but he does it and it works.  It’s this Common Core method apparently.  But whatever they’ve taught him, it clicks in his little head.

After the assessment he did a couple of assignments.  I was listening to him think out loud and blown away at him doing problems like 48+17+23.  Without writing anything down, he just started sayin, “so you take the one from the 17 and that makes it 58, then the two makes it 78, 78-79-80-81...”  He’s splitting the numbers up into tens and ones, which is what I do when I’m doing it in my head as well (I assume most people do).

After a few minutes I was like, “Dylan I’m impressed!  It’s like you just get it.”  He goes, “I DO get it.  I like math.”  I had no idea.  For awhile he was excited about the computer math, but I think it’s gotten harder and he’s not as excited anymore.  Kylee doesn’t love it either because it’s hard.  But if they complete assignments they earn games and stuff.  Dylan earned one game, but he says it’s a pretty hard game.

The thing is that we haven’t been doing any electronics yet this summer.  Dylan had a rough week or two at the end of the school year.  He was not getting enough sleep and he was just making bad choices, like hitting and kicking his sisters when he didn’t get his way.  He shoved Sadie pretty hard in the car when I was right there telling them to stop fighting, and when I told him he had lost privileges for a week he was not at all surprised.  He just said okay.  I swear sometimes he feels like it’s worth it to get his payback or the last hit or whatever.  As the week went on he kept getting in trouble.  Not big things, but just not listening and making me really frustrated, and still fighting with the girls a lot.  I told him he had to be good for a week before he could have electronics back.  Then he kicked Kylee in the stomach (or put his foot up and “pushed” her in the stomach) over something really dumb and I lost it.  Kylee was freaking out (it’s possible she was overreacting a little just trying to get him in trouble) and he was in the wrong in the first place with whatever they were fighting about.  I just get so sick of him trying to solve arguments, or end them, with violence.  If he doesn’t get his way in the argument, he just lashes out as a “fine, take that then.”  Anyway, I got pretty upset and told him he could not do electronics for the whole month of June.  This was like June 7^th or something, so it was a long time.  At first I was nervous.  Dylan really enjoys electronics as his down time.  And sometimes I really need him to have down time.  But it’s turned out to be pretty great.  I told Ryan they are going to have a 1980’s summer like us!

Sadie and Kylee had not lost their electronics, but Kylee is rarely interested in electronics.  She will watch a movie with the family, and she will dink around on her ipod, and occasionally plays the Wii with friends.  But for the most part she doesn’t care for them.  Sadie likes the iPad, but only when there’s nobody home to play with.  Since the kids are home from school, she isn’t interested in the iPad either.  So it’s been nice having them play together and not beg for mind-numbing electronics.

One of the last days of school, the kids were nasty to each other in the morning (lack of sleep makes everyone cranky, I was dragging them out of bed for that last week of school.  It was so hard to get them to bed on time when the weather was so beautiful and it stays light so late.)  I may have already mentioned this so forgive me if I’m repeating stories.  Anyway, they were fighting and I got mad and told them they couldn’t play with friends until they played nicely together.  They whined and complained.  But then when they came home from school they both actually seemed to be looking forward to playing with each other and they had ideas of what they wanted to do.  It was really cute.

The kids still fight.  A lot.  Dylan being in the middle of the girls seems to fight the most.  But Sadie lately is not always pleasant.  But what I’m seeing is that Dylan and Kylee will whisper things to each other and they will say things like, “we’re going to go outside and play”  And then I won’t see them for awhile.  Or downstairs.  I get a little nervous about what it is they’re doing, but I love that they’re enjoying playing with each other.  Kylee spends time playing with Sadie too and from what I can tell it’s mostly just whatever Sadie wants to do, like ponies or tea parties. 

The fun thing about Dylan without electronics is that he finds things to do.  He comes up with a LOT of things.  His personality type is someone who has a lot of ideas.  Had I not read about Type 1 children from the Child Whisperer, I probably would shut down more of his ideas than I do.  But I learned that they have these ideas and they like to try them out and don’t really care if they don’t work or they don’t finish their project.  Sometimes Dylan will come up to me saying he wants to do an experiment.  I am tempted to tell him how it won’t work.  But instead I just let him try it out.  He has fun, it entertains him, he may even learn something in the process.  One day he wanted to see what would happen if he put a gummy bear in water for awhile.  Of course they got carried away and ended up putting a bunch of different types of candy in the cup of water which was gross.  But the next day the gummy bear was like five times its regular size!  It was pretty cool.

Another thing Dylan does is create potions.  He starts with a cup of water and finds things to add.  The best things are the food-dye candy that he has that he never eats.  Like Bubble Gum balls or jawbreakers.  Those turn the water colors.  Then he was adding a squirt of soap and who knows what else.  One day him and Sadie got a little carried away with their candy and made a bunch of colors.

I guess that’s one way to use the candy I don’t really want them eating anyway.  My kids hardly ever eat their candy from their stash.  I don’t know why.  I guess they get treats so many other places.  And I make treats or we take them out or something.

Some other things Dylan does besides experiments and crafts are exploring, finding secret hide-outs.  Finding sticks for his stick collection.  Mining rocks (smashing them with a hammer- he started this at friend’s houses and though it doesn’t sound safe, we’re trying to let him have fun).  He took a bucket and hung it in a tree and decided it was going to be a bird trap.  He started filling it with things he thought would attract birds.  Our neighbor boy came and helped him.  They dug in the dirt finding as many bugs and worms as they could.  They spent a long time.  I also heard them talking about how they were going to keep the bird as a pet and what cage they could use, etc, etc.  Do you see what I mean about ideas that I would normally just say “ain’t no way”?  It’s been a learning experience for me to have this personality type.

The unfortunate thing is that he moves from one thing to the next and a lot of the crafts or experiments make quite the mess.  And he moves to the next thing so fast, he leaves a trail of messes behind.  So I have to try not to freak out.  And he has to clean up after himself.  I have a rule that you have to clean up one project before moving on to another game or project.  But I always have to ask them to clean up.  It hasn’t been THAT bad this summer yet.  Most of the things they’re doing involve hanging out in secret hideouts reading or writing or just talking or whatever.  So that’s not too big of a mess.

So I’m not missing electronics.  I would love to have no electronics the whole summer.  But it is Dylan’s birthday tomorrow and he will be getting electronic-related items so I’m sure he will spend some time on them. 

I love Dylan’s heart.  He is always wanting to brighten someone’s day with a note.  He loves to write to people and loves to give away his candy.  I swear he tries to buy friends with candy.  But it is his so I let him give it away if he wants.  Here are some things he wrote a couple months ago.

This was for St Patrick's Day at school.  I thought it was funny.

And this was for Grandpa and Grandma

He’s been asking when we can go do another one-on-one date just me and him or him and Dad.  The kids really love that.  We need to find more time for it.  I just enjoy doing things as a whole family so much.