Teacher Conference

Well, Tommy and I went to go see Coby's teacher last Friday. Coby isn't doing so good. The teacher said that if she could just have his attention he'd do much better. Apparently while the teacher is going over work, Coby is off into space and when she says it's time to turn in the work, Coby rushes to put whatever down on his paper to just say that he did something. Most of the time she makes him redo it but by doing that it's holding him back from working forward with the rest of the class. The teacher also suggested that he might have ADD. Which I knew she would. I did get him an appointment with a doctor but I can't get him in there until Nov. 6th. It's a total bummer! If I can get Coby in there and get him checked out and if he is ADD, I'm hoping the doctor will have other alternatives for helping Coby get focused. Like if there is certain foods I should get him to eat before school or really anything other than medication. I don't believe in turning kids into zombies just so they are easier to deal with. Anyway, I'm still working with him and making him read more and giving him my own little spelling tests and I'm trying to think of any games I can do with him to help him focus. I was thinking of getting him some I spy games or something like that. Anywho, I think I'm just about to my witts end and I'm losing patience. I just really hope this doctor will have some answers for me.

Coby

Well, I took Coby to see his doctor and now I have to make an appointment to see another doctor for an evaluation. I guess I pretty much new that I'd have to take him to a specialist before we could really get him diagnosed. My pediatrician has a kid with ADHD and told me that Coby is showing signs of having it. But he didn't think it was that bad, but he could get worse when he gets older and I'll have the choice to put him on medication or he could just grow out of it. I hope he'll just grow out of it. What I think is weird, the doctor asked if ADHD ran in my family or in Tommy's and it doesn't. So if Coby has this where is he getting it from? The only relative I can think of that might've had it is my nephew, but I don't see how that would effect us. It's just all crazy to me. Also when the doctor was looking Coby over, Gavin of course had to get into all the action and was doing the same things Coby was doing, so the doctor told me that Gavin may be showing signs of it too. But I think that's just Gavin being jealous of Coby getting attention, so I'm not really all that concerned about that. The doctor did give me a tip though, he said that if you give a person with ADHD caffiene it will have the opposite effect then it would on a normal person. So I tried my own little experiment by giving him a coke when he got crazy and I think it kinda works. I've done it twice now and both times he did mellow out. He was still talking a lot but he wasn't bouncing off the walls like he normally does. So I don't know what to do right now but I was thinking of sending a coke with him to school to drink with his lunch. I just don't know how his teacher will react when I send him to school with that. We'll see what happens this week.

I don't know!

How do people keep up with these things? It's almost been 3 weeks since the hurricane and I haven't done anything or gone anywhere except to my parents house. So what's there to talk about? Tommy's been gone going on 3 weeks, first he was sent to Virgina and now he's in Jacksonville. Apparently they have new computer software that Tommy has to learn to help work on engines. Or something like that! So anyway, he's been gone for a while and won't be back until next week. We are all having daddy withdrawls!
For the past couple of weeks something great and wonderful has been happening around here. Lexie is potty training herself!!!! Isn't that great? She's been running into the bathroom and doing everything all by herself and doesn't really need my help. It's wonderful! So we're really proud of her and being diaper free is the most awesome feeling ever!
Today I'm having to take Coby and Lexie to the doctor. Lexie and Gavin got into my crochet stuff and found my scissors. Gavin cut Lexie's thumb pretty bad, although it's healing, I think very well, I'm having to take her to the doctor to make sure it will heal right. Coby is having to go to the doctor because as I said in one of my last posts, Coby is having a really hard time in school. His teacher is constantly sending notes home on how he can't stop talking, can't follow directions, and is not finishing his classwork. We just got a progress report on Monday and he got 2 A's and 2 D's in Reading and Science. We have a teacher conference next week because I don't know how or why he's getting these grades because I haven't received science work or projects so I don't know what's going on with that. Now with his reading, when he's at home with me he reads rather well. In fact, the other day for homework, he brought home a story about a fox named Dot. The teacher's directions were to read the story to your child and then have your child read it back to you. So I started reading the story and Coby took it out of my hands and read it all by himself without my help. We have Dr. Suess stories and he reads them just fine. So I'm not really sure why this is all happening with his teacher. So back to the doctor appt., Tommy and I have been thinking that because he can't do things at school because he gets really distracted easily and his teacher doesn't have any patience, so we're going to get the docs opinion about Coby possibly having ADHD and also Coby is having trouble writing a bit, like he's spelling things backwards and also misplacing sounds in words sometimes. His big problem is writing numbers backwards. He just can't remember he says. If he is diagnosed with any of these things, at least I'll know what to work on with him and his teacher. I hope she'll back off a bit if he is and I hope she doesn't expect me to put him on any medication because I don't believe in turning children into zombies. We'll see what the doctor says first......

Hurricane Gustav

Well, we got through another hurricane. I'm sure, to a lot of Mobile people, Gustav was just a bad storm. As for me and my family we live near the river here in Saraland so if it rains hard it usually floods. Our house is probably at the highest point of the neighborhood so we kind of have an advantage. We've been here 5 years now and we have yet to have water even come up in our yard, (knock on wood). Although it does flood at both ends of our road. So the night before the storm hit we stayed with my Grandmother-in-law just to be safe. The next day on Monday when the storm hit we got lots of rain and gusts of wind but it wasn't as bad as we thought it would be. So that afternoon we decided to go home and just wait out the rest of the storm there. After we had made it home, that's when the water started to rise. We still felt pretty comfortable though because we still had our power. At exactly 6:30 pm we lost our power. The kids freaked a bit but we called the Power Company and they said that we'd have power back on in a couple of hours. So we went out on the porch and the kids decided they were going to play out in the rain. Our ditch finally filled up with just enough water for the kids to pretend it was a pool. They had the best fun. The Power Company didn't come through so we were forced to use our generator. It was alright because we had one lamp, our t.v., an A.C. unit, and our refrigerator working so we were good. As we were watching football Tommy had noticed some lights outside and ironically at that moment that he was saying something about it, his Grandmother called us to tell us our neighborhood was on the news and police and rescue trucks were sent in to evacuate people. Then I got a little freaked but Tommy got out to check on the water down the road and he said he could tell it was going down. So all was okay. We just had to go without power for 12 hours. But that's nothing compared to 2 weeks after Katrina! I feel very blessed that my family and I were protected in this storm and I'm grateful that the storm didn't come our way. I hate that it went to Louisiana but it has to go somewhere right? I hope everyone else got through the storm as well or better than we did.