Hey, all you Gentle Readers! All three of ya :) I apologize for the lack of posts lately. Been feeling a little overwhelmed by life and underwhelmed by dealing with it. Plus DH had my laptop in his custody for a couple of days, studying for his promotion test.
Our promised "several inches of snow" fizzled out today, much to the disgust of young David, who says "I hate global warming."
In knitting, I picked up my lovely Wedgie a couple of evenings ago and am now into skein three of the
Noro. I contemplated stopping at two skeins, which
Vyvyan suggests, but I like to wrap a scarf around my neck a la Tom Baker's Doctor Who, so I'm going for crazy-long. It's looking great and I promise a pic on me soon. Camera is
batteryless, and David has his camera at Cub Scouts tonight to photograph the small David's investiture (?). After Wedgie, I am going back to my Snowdrop Shawl to make a little progress, I think. So ends the knitting update. If you don't need to read a truckload of whining about how to make my child happy again, stop now!
Small David is ... not great. He's feeling angst-y, irritable, and gets upset very easily, and it seems to be a combination of all kinds of things.
Here's what I hate - when your kids are too old for you to be able to solve all their problems. Sigh. We've made some progress getting him to talk about his feelings, at least. All kinds of things are getting to him, and he's just not ever...happy. Not really for a couple of months now. I'm getting more and more concerned.
Tae Kwon Do was stressful - we found out that it is because he's gone up a belt and has a much more complex pattern that he can't memorize yet.
Dadster talked to the instructor and he had a helper do lots more one-to-one work with him to get the pattern and moves down. I think that's going to be OK now.
Cubs has just started to become a "thing," too. David loved Beavers and the kids/leaders there. He's just moved up to the Cub pack and, frankly, it's more than a little Lord of the Flies. The leader is a very old woman, who's been doing it since her son, now in his forties, was a Cub Scout. She, and the other leaders, have
no idea how to command the attention and respect of a group of little boys, and the kids in general make me REALLY happy David doesn't go to the school most of them attend. I attended a couple of sessions and found myself speaking up to say "Oi. Listen to the leader." DH is there tonight and will be watching, and talking to the District head who will be there, but I think the solution is to look for a better-run pack. There's only one little boy that David has bonded with there, anyhow, so we might be able to switch to a pack a bit further away if they have space. The other pack is more likely to have kids from David's school anyway, but they were oversubscribed when he joined Beavers last year.
School is now boring and a waste of time - he can't really articulate that one, but hasn't tried when he's not in the middle of being upset in the morning when it's time to get ready for school, so we'll have to chat again soon. I talked to his teachers this week to let them know he's feeling bored and frustrated and that I would try and find out more. They are watching him more closely. Because the classwork is too easy, he's not getting anything out of the day except his socializing, especially with his
tablemate and buddy Sam, who is another really bright kid in his year.
However, I don't know what to suggest to enrich the work and add some interest to the topics. He likes the arty projects best. Those of you who know David have some idea just how bright he is, and his main teacher certainly knows his has stellar test scores, reads off the charts, and has an incredible vocabulary. However, he does what is expected of him and not more in school, and she doesn't push for anything different, since he was the youngest child in the room last year. The classroom is a combined Year 3/Year 4 room, with about 20 kids. That equates to second and third grades in the US. This year, at 8, he is in the middle of the age range so he's fitting in socially really well with both years. His slow and not-very-neat writing is the thing holding him back from really ripping with story writing, etc., and I keep trying to point this out to the teacher, but she's pleased enough with his writing in class, and I've seen samples. It's creative and funny, and very polished for a 7-8-year-old, etc., but he struggles to get it out on paper in time.
Mathwise he does really well but if it were somehow more interesting, I think he'd leap far ahead. So school. That's an issue. I don't want to take him out and
homeschool him, because he likes the kids so much and it's a great little school. But we need to find ways to challenge him within school before he hates it. I think homeschooling right here, right now, would be very isolating for him. But some days I wonder. 90% of what he knows he's taught himself through books, etc. That's what happens when you learn to read at 3. I'm struggling.
He doesn't like bedtime
at all. We've tried several different ways of easing the transition or lengthening the awake time. In a nutshell, he doesn't like being alone in his room. It's a huge room, 15 by 15 feet, and he has a loft bed, and I think he feels lost and lonely in there. DH and I have been tossing around a couple of ideas to make the room more warm and fuzzy, among them turning the loft bed into a
low bed (it's a bed that has three height settings; used to be highest height when he shared a bedroom with Lily in Nebraska, now it's middle height, and at low height you could put curtains or something around the bedposts and make it a
hidey place.) The other idea is to swap rooms and put him in the Grandma room (guest room) which is much smaller, but there's really not room for all his bookshelves and toy shelves in there.
See? A very boring post, but it's all that's in my head right now. That, and all the stuff I need to do for Lily's preschool. Feeling overwhelmed by my To Do list, which I wouldn't be feeling if I weren't overwhelmed by David's general unhappiness.
Suggestions? Advice? Two cents' worth? Anyone?
One Wedgie, size 5 (US) needles, two and a half balls of Noro Kureyon, and total scarf happiness!! I decided not to do the differently-shaped final wedge and just cast off, but now I'm second-guessing my second guess. I think Vyvyan's scarf pictures show that the funny little last wedge is really THE way to go. I may spit-splice and add that wedge, or I may just live with my pointy one.
