mad face, yoga, and a bad choice

What have we been up to the past few weeks? I had to look through my photos to remember.

Luke had fun playing with the timer on the camera. A big change from Christmas when he was terrified of it.

He posed us in front of the unmade bed and had us make mad faces.

We are so intimidating aren't we? Lamar is the only one that looks remotely mad. Luke can't hide his smile and apparently I don't know the difference in a mad face and a fish face. It might pass for a "mad fish face".

And we are loving our new Wii fit. I didn't realize how many good balance and coordination games there are for Wii. So good for Luke.


A little leg lift action

And school picture day. I had no idea what he would agree to wear, since the Sunday before picture day he refused to wear buttons to church. Laying on the floor crying about wearing a shirt with buttons. Since Lamar had never worn a polo until he met me, I immediately looked at him with an accusing eye. He said, "I've said nothing to him about buttons. I promise." And that Sunday he wore a t-shirt.

So I'd been building up picture day as something special and let him select a shirt from his church clothes. And he was definite that he wanted to wear this one.




And I bet he squinted in his school picture too, but we'll still love it. So after I got this one quick shot before we headed to school on picture day, Luke needed me to photograph some of his yoga poses he's learned from Wii Fit:



Half moon

The "Wario", known to most as the warrior. I guess "the Wario" is where Wii fit meets Mario brothers.

And his personal favorite, the tree.

Something was so funny at dinner the other night.

I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard. I don't remember what made him laugh but it was something so small and silly. But watching him laugh completely cracked me up.

***

I've gotten a couple of funny emails from Luke's teacher Ms. Jenny. One day they were painting pictures of their families. They painted their moms first and Jenny asked, "Oh Luke, is that your mom?" He said, "Yes, I call her Mommy but you call her Amy." Then after they painted their dads he said, "Ms. Jenny, this is my dad but you call him Lamar."

The same day one of his classmates had just had a birthday and was now five. Luke announced to the class he was "almost five." We'd talked about it once or twice that he'd be five on his next birthday, but I didn't know if he even understood.

And last week Luke's teacher sent me this language sample during a 10 minute center. In case you haven't had the joy of speech therapy and language samples (lucky you), a language sample is just recording all the lanuage he uses in a designated time period (10 minutes here) with no prompting or adults guiding his language with questions. So, I realize this will be pretty boring for most of you, but it's pretty amazing to me.

Ms. Jenny look at the pirates (After this comment I totally moved out of the center and just sat back and took notes. All the rest of the comments below were directed to his friends without any adult prompting or facilitation. Oh and might I add that he had great eye contact during the majority these exchanges as well:) )

HeyOh No (his pirate fell overboard)

Wow, look at his feet (one had a peg leg)

Turn around and look (to one of his friends who had not responded to his request above)

Where did his shoe go?

I’m sorry (another friends pirate fell overboard)

Ahh I fell off – splash

I saw a shark

David let’s go

Be careful pirates

Let’s get that pirate

Ok here (in response to a friend asking for a specific pirate)

Ok let’s get the barn

Here’s the tractor

I want to be the rooster

Hi (his rooster talking to his friends cow)

What are you doing? (once again the rooster asking the cow)

There’s another sheep in here

I got the animals (friend asked where the animals were)

Ready everybody come in here

Hey cow

Tell the sheep to come in the barn.

Oh no

I’m in the barn

Let’s get in the tractor everyone

The sheep wants to come too.

Press the green button

3-2-1 go

Where’s the rooster

Oh thanks here he is

Look, look, look I found two roosters

It’s clean up time

I’ll get the tractor

***

Luke still had a hard time with reading comprehension. Or maybe I should say listening comprehension. When we read a story it's hard for him to answer questions about it. And this has been especially hard with Bible stories. I'm not sure why. Maybe the stories are more abstract and the illustrations are not the same in any two Bibles or Sunday school materials so he doesn't have many visual clues. The other night we were reading about Adam and Eve. Luke looked at a picture of them with the fruit and said, "What did they do with that apple?" (For the record it was drawn as an unidentifiable fruit, but looked more like an apple than any other fruit. Sorry for my need to qualify that.) and I said, "They ate the fruit God told them not to eat. They made a bad choice." Luke's heard a lot about making bad choices lately and he asked many questions about it.

The next day at lunch Luke said completely out of the blue, "What did Adam and Eve do with that apple?" I answered accordingly and he said, "They made a bad choice. Not a good choice. A bad choice." So we have now subtitled the Adam and Eve story as "The First Bad Choice."