A Week of Firsts

This week we had a few firsts and it was fun. Austin started his first day of preschool! Not only was it his first day but it was my first day having someone go to school of any kind - except myself. It was fun to HAVE to get up and get things rolling. Another first we both had was soccer. Austin is on his first little sports team and although I didn't think it went that great and he is the youngest on his team (of 4 kids) it will be fun to get him involved a little more.

How it went:




Austin LOVES preschool. He wishes he could go everyday and is sad on days he can't go. He is already starting to learn new things and I am so excited to watch him grow over the next year. It is nice for both of us to have some away time. He is more than ready to have more than just "mom" (and dad of course) be active in his life. He likes his teacher and although his class is super small I think it will work out great. More than anything I hope he learns to follow directions, take turns, LISTEN, learn how to stand in line and after your turn go to the END of the line. So far, so good. Oh, and they have this special treasure box that he LOVES. When they participate and do different things they can earn stickers and once they get 10 stickers they get to pick a treasure out of the box. WOW - I can't tell you how motivated he is by the treasure box. He was so excited after his first day of school that he barely took a nap at all and the moment he woke up he wanted to go back to school so he could get a treasure!!! We have since adopted the treasure box at our house. It works most of the time and he gets super excited. Now I just have to come up with a chart so I can be more productive about how and when to give out treasures.

As for soccer, we weren't so lucky. Austin is just so cautious about things. Once he gets going he is fine but to get him to start is like pulling teeth. The morning started out OK. With this level of soccer they are there for 1 hr. The first 1/2 hr is a team practice and the second 1/2 hr is 3 on 3 play. There are 4 kids on each team and the main goal is to have the kids have fun. They don't care who they kick it to or what goal they score in, they just want them to have fun. Back to Austin. The first half hour, the practice part, went fairly smooth. He is definitely young and having never gone to school or done any organized activity you could tell that he was just in outer space. He didn't understand a lot of basic concepts like standing in line, kicking to a partner, relay races etc. I know it will get better but it was hard. He was out in the clouds for a lot of it. One of the coaches kept telling him "watch the ball", "just watch the ball" ... as he of course was distracted by every bug the flew by and activity the other team was doing. All in all it was ok, but the second half when they started playing was a nightmare. We almost left in the middle of it. He was just too scared. All the kids trying to kick one ball, kids falling over and he didn't understand that if he wanted to kick it he had to go and kick it. The ball wasn't going to just come to him. He just left the field and sat by me. He had no interest. A lot of the time he was off to the side picking grass and throwing leaves up in the air and watching them fall. I even tried to go on the field with him (they said parents were allowed) and he just freaked. He did play for a minute, okay more like 30 seconds, until someone bumped him or the ball went the other direction then he would wander off the field and start playing with other kids or throwing rocks or who knows what. Finally I picked up all our stuff and said "If your not playing soccer we don't need to be here, let's go" After that he stayed on the field the whole time. I think he actually got to kick the ball and that made him so happy. He gave himself a hip hip horay that made all the other parents chuckle. At the end of the day he said he had fun and that he likes his team so hopefully now that he knows what's going on a little he will do better next week.

His little team

Poor assistant coach trying to talk to him and he's not listening, just picking grass.

Pre-game pep talk, once again Austin just picking the grass.

Some cool action shots to make it look like he really played! Let me tell you, after seeing these I thought hmmm, I must be getting better with my camera LOL.
This was the time he got to kick the ball. He was SO happy. I love the picture because it looks like he just smoked the rest of the kids LOL.
This is funny because I don't remember him being happy that he fell. This makes me feel good. Maybe he really did have a good time and I should just chill. hmmmmm interesting thought.

This is what Austin was really doing during most of the game. Oh well.
High fives at the end. He thought this part was super cool.

And just for an update, since this post was all about Austin. Kate is doing really really good. She has started eating fruit!! Yippee. She is talking really well, her speech therapist said that she may not qualify for speech therapy anymore because she's doing so good. We have to do an eval. on Wednesday and we'll know after that if she still qualifies. Kate is WALKING. I know, I said it, it's for real. WALKING - my Kate. Nothing short of a miracle that's for sure. She doesn't do it full time but the % of walking she does increases day by day. She can stand up in the middle of the room by herself and can walk just about anywhere. She is still working on transitioning between two surfaces like the carpet to the kitchen but she's getting braver everyday and she's just building up her confidence. It's funny, we're not 100% sure what the difference has been but she has improved 200x in the last month. I think that those who saw her a month ago in Montana wouldn't believe she was the same little bug. Here is a recent picture just cause she's so dang cute.