Category: Gage

Sundays with Gage – Learning to read

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stickersGage has known his letters by sight since before he was two and now at 3 1/2, he’s learning sight words.  He knows around 20 or 30 and sometimes he’ll surprise me with one I didn’t know, like this week he had an old book titled ABC Book and pointed to the word book and said, “that is book”.  Yep, sure is.   Yesterday during his private swim lesson he pointed to his instructor’s swimsuit and asked, “What’s that say?”  and when she didn’t answer him fast enough he said “Speedo” and he was right (I’m sure this has more to do with his incredible memory than anything else, but she was impressed :)).

sheetsWe’re doing worksheets where he circles pictures that start with a particular letter (left) and having him go through a pile of stickers and put only ones that start with a particular letter on the paper (above).  He is well above 90% accuracy for both of these exercises.  The kid is smart. I’ll have him reading books in no time 🙂

 

Sundays with Gage – Loving Elephant and Piggie

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We’ve been enjoying some books from the Elephant & Piggie series by Mo Willems for the last several weeks.   The illustrations and stories are easy to understand and full of things to talk about.  They also lead to very simple activities that take little preparation.  I would recommend all four of the ones we’ve been reading.  They are especially good for beginning readers as the words are large, simple and repeated.  I’ll list them in the order that Gage likes them best.

Can I Play Too? (An Elephant and Piggie Book)Can I Play Too?  Ages 3-5.  57 pages

Themes- Frienship, Making friends, Thinking outside the box for solutions, Inclusion

Snake wants to play catch with Gerald and Piggie and embarrassment, sadness, and determination come into play.

I hope I’m not spoiling anything here by saying that Piggie’s solution to the no hands problem was using the snake as the ball.  Jason and Gage used his blue snake to play catch.  There wasn’t a lot of catching , but he tried and he had fun throwing.

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Should I Share My Ice Cream? (An Elephant and Piggie Book)Should I Share My Ice Cream?   Ages 4-6.  64 pages

Themes- Friendship, Sharing, Doing the right thing.

Gerald buys an ice cream cone and before he eats it he wonders if he should share it with Piggie.  As he goes back and forth on whether to share, the cone melts. Piggie saves the day.

So, this activity took less than 5 minutes of preparation, just long enough to cut and tape together a “cone” for the (dirty) “ice cream”.  We were able to watch the melting process in action without the mess 🙂  It took over 3 hours to totally melt.

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I'm a Frog! (Elephant and Piggie Series)I’m a Frog!  Ages 4-8.   64 pages

Themes- Pretend play

Piggie pretends to be a frog and Gerald doesn’t understand what’s going on until Piggie explains how he too can pretend to be something else.

The picture is terrible, but you get the idea. After reading the story we all took turns pretending to be other animals and then guessing what they were.  He’s mid-jump.

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Pigs Make Me Sneeze! (An Elephant and Piggie Book)Pigs Make Me Sneeze!   Ages 3-5.  64 pages

Themes- Friendship, Getting sick

Gerald thinks he allergic to Piggie because he can’t stop sneezing around her and is relieved to know that he is only getting sick and they can still be friends.

No pics with this one because aside from pretending to sneeze and taking turns saying bless you we didn’t really do much.

I can’t wait to check out more of the Elephant & Piggie series!

Valentine’s Day with Gage

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This year I was happy to find Shrek Valentine cards, he’s one of Gage’s favorites.  He practiced writing his name on them – with lots of help.

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I was invited to his class party where we decorated bags to collect cards and had snacks.  Doesn’t he look so grown up passing out his cards?

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After school and lunch with Grandma where we went through his bag, we went to the community center and passed out more Valentine’s Day cards.  I have no pictures of this because I was too busy encouraging and enjoying the fun.  We had extra stickers and on Thursday Gage let me put Fiona on his hand.  As of this morning she was still there.  Must be true love.

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We had lots of fun this year and he loved redecorating his Valentine’s with the stickers he received from his teacher.

I hope you all had a day with as much fun!

Weekends with Gage – A long week of hellos and goodbyes

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This last week has been a looooong week.  I took a 2 1/2 hour nap today and feel human again.  Here’s what’s been going on this week…

Goodbye Scout. We adopted Scout in August 1998 when she was around 3 months old.  We had to say a sad goodbye on Wednesday after 15 and a half years.  I admit that I still hear her meows around the house.  Gage knows that she lives in Heaven now and not with us. What he understands about that is a mystery.  Some cute kitty pics I could get my hands on fast.

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Hello Flu!  It started with vomiting early last Sunday morning, followed by a runny nose, cough, fever, not eating.  A week of sleeping in bed with mom, watching Madagascar way too many times, three trips to the doctor and a very sad boy who didn’t get to go to school or do anything fun.  Not that he had the energy for it.  Jason and I snuck away for dinner last night and came him right after to another fever.

Goodbye Marissa.  Marissa is one of Gage’s ABA tutors who has been coming to our house to work with Gage for the last year.  She is such a positive person and was so good with him.  We will all miss her, but she earned her Master’s degree in December and found  job in Pittsburgh.  Her last day was this morning.

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Hello Grandma and Grandpa!  They are here and not a moment too soon.  They moved into their apartment on Monday and have been over every day this week to give me some help/relief/distraction with Gage.  It’s so nice to have back-up. I think I could get used to this.

Goodbye (fingers crossed) Flu.  Today is the first day all week that Gage hasn’t woken up with a fever. Yea!  He may actually be able to go to school tomorrow.  Double Yea!

Sundays with Gage – Puzzling

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Gage is high maintenance, always has been, starting with the colic that seemed to last forever (but in reality only six months until we got him on acid reflux medication).  When he was diagnosed on the spectrum there was almost a lessening of the burden of guilt for me and the fact that I found mothering so, so hard.  I had some answers as to why it was so difficult to engage him or why he didn’t really seem to care what I was doing.  He’s wired a little differently, that’s all.  With all of the differently therapies he’s been doing this past year, there has been a huge improvement.  He’s always liked to play by himself, but now he wants us to play with him, more than just be entertained by us.

The biggest improvement has come because we’ve changed our thought process.  Gage needs to be actively engaged all of the time so we adjust to what we can engage him in.  It’s tiring.  So, imagine my happy dance when Gage found a 500 piece puzzle buried under a pile of odds and ends on our dining room table.  I had started it one ambitious day probably a year and a half ago, but it’s sat untouched since then.  Gage found a few stray pieces and pulled out the chair and said “Mommy’s puzzle”.  He was ready to work!  I cleaned off the table and we’ve spent about 20 minutes every day this week working on mommy’s puzzle.  He likes to look at me and tell me, “I’m a good helper” with a satisfied smile.  He tries the pieces and if I help him pick the right one he can get it in!  For the first time Gage has independently joined me in an activity that I love, not the other way around and it has made me feel all warm and fuzzy inside 🙂  Now, If I could just get him to sit in my lap and listen to me read  Inferno.

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Sundays with Gage – Where is home?

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My parents moved into their current house before I started 1st grade, that was 1978.  I lived there until I left for college at 18, came back for the next two summers and for 5 months after I graduated from college.  The house holds a lot of memories.  My parents both come from bigger families and many of the them live fairly close by.  When I think of home that’s where I think of, a house full of memories and close to the family I love.  This past weekend we took a very quick trip down for a surprise 40th birthday party for my cousin’s wife (a fun time was had by all, too much for some ;)) and spent maybe our last night there.  My parents will be moving close to us next month.  I am excited for us all, especially Gage, but I will miss that house.

And this leads to the question, where is home?  When I say home now, will it be here, where we make new memories and have cherished family close by or will it continue to be the place I grew up and spent every holiday until age 42?  Time will tell.  Gage loved to go to Papaw’s house but it would mean two and a half hours in the car.  I can’t wait to see the surprise on his face when the trip takes 12 minutes!  They will be living closer to Gage’s school than we do!  Here’s the picture we took before we left for the party last night.  It’s full of great memories and the next people who live there will be lucky to be in a house so full of love.

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Weekends with Gage(‘s obsession)

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When given a present to open on Christmas, Gage would take it and say, “There’s a train in here.”  Oftentimes there was, but if there wasn’t not much time or attention was paid and he wanted the next gift because it still had the possibility of  being the love of his 3-year-old life.  He’s pretty single-minded in his love for trains and we’ve attempted to get him hooked on other things and sometimes it works, for a day or a week, but the trains always come back.  In some of the reading we’ve done this last year it is often suggested to feed the obsession and we’ve been doing that but I am trained out.  Yesterday we took Gage to his first model train show or as Gage thinks of it, heaven.  Let’s look at how Gage spent two-and-half bliss-filled hours…

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He was so intent that he did not want to take time out to smile for me.  Trains are serious business!

Most of us are obviously crazy about books but is there another obsession that needs fed?  Something that you love as much as Gage loves trains?

Weekends with Gage-Welcome to 2014!

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Gage wasn’t on the blog much this year, but that will change in 2014 as I plan on having Weekends with Gage every week.  I will have the usual kid book reviews, kid book activities, some milestones, but I’ve also decided to go back to basics and come out of the closet, such as it is.  I miss blogging about being Gage’s mom and after I read through my posts from that first year I was so glad that I had taken the time because they are all moments I can’t get back.  The coming out of the closet part is a closet that some of you already know about but now one that I am taking public on the blog, last December before Christmas Gage was diagnosed with PDD-NOS (for him the mild side of autism).  Last year I wasn’t up to talking about about it and Jason didn’t think it was fair to blog about Gage when he had no control or say over it, but we’ve come to an understanding 🙂  This past year I have found so many bloggers who have already been through what we are going through and lived to tell the tale and they were a source of comfort and information to me and I think I can add to the conversation.  Gage’s PDD diagnosis is a small part of who he is (some therapists aren’t even sure the diagnosis is correct) but a part I want to acknowledge because otherwise it seems like I think it’s something bad or embarrassing and that’s not true.  I couldn’t be prouder of him.  He is super smart and comes up with some of the best lines.  He is doing well because he’s worked so hard this year and the sky’s the limit for 2014!

Jason’s dad came over the weekend and I had the chance to recreate a photo I took in May 2011.  Oh my how times have changed 🙂  Forgive the quality – I only had time for the camera phone!

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Weekends with Gage and Harry

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I am a regular at our library.  I do take Gage, but find it near impossible to actually shop for books so for personal time I tend to go before I pick him up from school about once a week.  The limit for checkouts is 50.  I am always very close to that – right now I have 49 items checked out.  Books, audios, movies, play-a-aways, music cds…the majority are enjoyed by Gage.  He loves books.  We always have them on the table for before or after meal times and before bed.  I brought home these three books weeks apart (our library will let you renew indefinitely as long as no one is waiting for it) and he loves them all.

harryHarry is read often in this house.  At first I thought they might have too many words and be too long, but no worries he listens and looks the whole time.  The illustrations are so great. They are bold and big and easy to follow.

We started with Harry the Dirty Dog. In this book Harry doesn’t like to take baths and runs away from home and after he’s had all the fun he can handle he gets tired and hungry and returns home, only his family doesn’t recognize him because he is so dirty.  Gage may have initially fell in love because there is a train and any book with a train must be good.  So cute and my personal favorite.  It’s 32 pages and first published in 1956.

In No Roses for Harry he receives a sweater from grandma that he hates.  He tries to ditch it but has no luck until a little birdy helps him.  This one could be confusing at first, but after a few readings I think he started to get the concept of the sweater just being one long piece of wool.  32 pages and first published in 1958.

Harry and the Lady Next Door is the one I brought home this week and I haven’t warmed up to it yet, maybe part of it is the length, it’s 64 pages.  It took two tries to get through the whole thing.  Seriously, yesterday alone he wanted to read it at least 4 different times.  I also think Harry is not very nice in this one, always trying to drown out the lady who sings too loudly next door, but it’s a teaching moment 🙂  This was published in 1960.

I know there’s at least one more Harry book.  We’re sure to read it soon.  These are classics. but I don’t remember reading these.

Did you read the Harry books growing up?

Weekends with Gage- the 3rd Birthday edition

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So, Jason and I arrived back to our Cleveland area home Friday night at 10 pm from our weeklong Gageless vacation. It was exactly what we both needed and I will probably post a few fun pics next weekend.  This weekend it’s all about Gage.

He turned 3 today. I can’t believe it and yet I welcome it. I have never been a girl who had to have a baby. I love kids, but babies, not as much. So, as Gage sheds his baby status and heads into kid cuteness I am 100% on board. I love watching him grow and figure things out.  Life with Gage has been full of ups and downs, but the boy never ceases to amaze me.  He is smart and sweet, sassy and adorable.  My life has been transformed by him.  It’s a new journey that I am excited and privileged to take.

I don’t have the time right now to go through photos of the last year, BUT I can show him at every birthday.

Gage at 1.

Gage a t 2.

bdcake1Gage at 3.

And a few other pics from the day.

3bdcakeHis yummy dairy free, gluten free birthday cake made by Grandma. bdcake2Blowing out the last candle.  And Gage and me with his new engineer hat bdhatThis went very nicely with his new Thomas Lionel train set.  I hope to share this fun story with you later this week.

Can you believe that Gage is 3? And still not one haircut!  He seems to be keeping up with other kids his age in the height and weight department, but hair is different story.