Taking the Scenic Route

My Mom came up and watched the kids so that Zach and I could go out this afternoon.  We went to Granite City and split an appetizer, he had a luncheon burger and I had a cup of the best soup I have ever had in a restaurant.  (the only soup I have had in a restaurant, but it was still really good.)  They have a cheddar and ale soup there that doesn’t have onions in the base, so I can actually eat it.  Yum!

Then we went to the local movie place and were able to get balcony, front row, center seats.  The balcony is 21 and over, serves everything from all the stuff from the concession stands, the diner, the restaurant, and the bar.  You just press a button and a server comes to you and at the end of the movie they leave you a check.  Zach got a cappuccino and I had a mixed drink.  (hee hee…I never do that, it was fun!).  The seats are loveseats with tables and heated seats with cup holders.  It felt heavenly.  We watched the new Harry Potter movie.  We didn’t even realize until this evening that it opened today.  lol.  We aren’t terribly observant of what is out in the *actual* theater, but we can tell you the dates a lot of movies are coming out on dvd for the rental market. 

Mom let us take her vehicle so that we didn’t have to switch around car seats for her to take Zane to his therapy.  It was nice to ride around in a nicer vehicle.  We met up with Mom and the kids at therapy.  I saw my Mom holding Zora right next to the door as I walked up, and as I walked through the door I peeked my head around to say hi to Zora.  She looked at me with the most bewildered, shocked look.  Apparently, mom had just let her press the button to open the door for the first time and she was probably really confused as to how that button made her parents appear. 

At therapy Zane hit something today that he really struggled with.  She is working on teaching him to follow body language by having him pick which item she wants by seeing where she is looking.  It is really, really hard for him.  We are going to have to find ways to integrate that into every day life to help him get that skill.

Cute Zane thing

I was talking to the OT about writing goals for him and she was clarifying that I might get some looks from others when they see his goal of writing all the letters because he is a year under when that is considered an age appropriate skill.  However, since he already writes them all, but does a lot of them functionally incorrect, it makes more sense to get the habits reformed NOW instead of fighting it a year from now when it is even more ingrained.  I mentioned that we need to include numbers too since he has some of the same issues, which lead to talking about math modifiers (plus, minus sign, equals) and how to write a fraction correctly.   She wasn’t surprised about the add/subtract, but she asked how on earth he was learning fractions and what was he doing.  I told her that he doesn’t line them up in an orderly way that makes adding/subtracting them easier.  She was just shaking her head and asked what prompted learning fractions and just laughed when I said that Zach was goofing off with him the other night and they were doing fractions…cutting things apart, adding them together…that kind of thing.  We both chuckled at the nerdiness of my dh and his son because they look at learning fractions (or any math concept) as “FUN”.  lol. 

Cute Zora thing

She is starting to do the actions to “Wheels on the Bus”.  She also understands “up” and “down” and can say “up” with enough clarity that there is NO DOUBT what she wants.  Today Zora was playing around and she sat down, and Zach commented “are you sitting down?”, she smiled, and stood up, and he commented on that too, which worked into a game of “sit down” (and she sits) and “stand up” (and she stands).  She was giggling with delight as we played the early version of “Mother, May I”.  It was astonishing to us to see that level of receptive language in such a tiny thing.  I am just not used to the pace she is taking us on.