There's a lot more writing than first quarter. I think some of it sounds like a form letter with data typed in. It mentions a parent-teacher conference, but no forms have come home. I actually wouldn't mind a conference to hear about how he's doing.....which I wonder if I should think about that more with my own students. I'm not a big fan of calling home, but it can be a powerful tool for building a relationship with a family.
I won't do this every year. Shane's getting to the point he's too old to post too much about him.
I contacted parents for four out of six kids who were in my final block today. There were some productive conversations, but the class is still a work in progress! I had a two absent, so they'll be back in the mix tomorrow.
I think calling home on 2/3 of a class is a record for me.
I gave Shane a choice: Wrestling with me or TKD with Mom.
He chose wrestling.
It was more of a "What's going on right now?" and "Will there be kids there?" pick than "I really want to watch wrestling!"
We left the house a little after 9 AM and, yes, there were kids there! Ryan and Sarah were around to watch their brother wrestle.
Covenant is an easy drive. I like all the people and I like wrestling, so I was happy to go! I haven't made it out to many (if any) high school meets this year and that needed to be rectified.
The other coaches really enjoy college wrestling, but my joy in wrestling if from watching kids I know grow. Three years ago, the high school team's record was 1 win - 25 losses. Then it was 5-25 and this year they're something like 11-13. Most of the kids are young, so hopefully next year they will stick around and improve further.
Shane's Pokemon cards kept the kids busy and allowed me to watch, talk, and coach.
Being a coach has it's perks. Chris and I took our kids up to the hospitality room for snacks in between rounds. We went up for lunch later and I knew (or at least recognized) half the people in the room.
The kids didn't stay contained the whole time. Shane and Ryan were climbing magnolia trees outside at one point and then tackling wrestlers at others. Shane was lying on the ground and grabbing at ankles of kids from other teams until I spotted him attached to a confused kid I didn't know!
I liked it better when he stuck to tackling kids I did know.
Wrestlers are pretty good about taking a beating without complaint. Shane vaulted onto Nima from a couple steps up at one point.
He dropped down on Pyi....
....and Drew, too. The kid revels in seizing attention...literally.
Ryan got into some of the same shenanigans. Sarah was calmer, but she tried to tackle some kids, too.
We stayed through most of the finals. Then I had to sprint Shane away at 2 PM. We drove home, grabbed his basketball jersey, and raced off to his basketball game.
We barely made it on time. I wouldn't have minded if we'd missed picture day since I wasn't going to buy any.
They had been packing up when we arrived and stopped to take Shane's pics. I guess it gives him the full experience, but I felt bad.
Shane's favorite part of the game may be when names are announced. He was dancing all over.
Joaquin was on the other team. He'd been on Shane's team last year and they two of them were paired up!
It was a high-energy, dance-handshake.
Shane's all about moving around, but the focus isn't so much on the game.
Dancing Shane:
The coach's younger kid has an electronic device and it-calls-to-me Shane:
I provided snacks this week. Sunny D's and fig bars. Mission accomplished.
But wait, there's more. We signed Shane up for Ninja Night at TKD! I dropped him off after the basketball game.
I picked him up a little before 9 PM. He stayed out of the house nearly all day!
And he wasn't ready to go home when I picked him up either!
The dojang posted this picture of all the kids online.
Shane would like it if every day was like this one. We can't always be that active, though.
Or, at least, I can't always be that active. It was a great day, but I was worn out!
It's winter. It's cold. If we're hopping in the car, it's to go somewhere.
Shane will open his car door, hop in, and leave the it wide open. He will get situated, move stuff around, browse through books, and generally annoy me, but will he think to shut the door?
And if he complains the car is cold while the door is open?
This is one of those things that I thought was mildly amusing at first. However, after multiple corrections it's grown into a pet peeve. I've definitely raised my voice when Shane has been in his own world and we've been in a hurry.
Rules for getting in the car:
1 - Open door.
2 - Get in.
3 - CLOSE DOOR.
4 - Do whatever you need to do.
5 - Be buckled up before I accelerate past 10 mph.
This qualifies as one of those little things that kids do over and over and then don't understand why their parents get so bent out of shape over something so small!
It's also going to be funny to read this in later years. That's always an important thing to keep it all in perspective
This week...no, this whole season has had an odd feel to it. Grandma Lois passed away on Tuesday and Aunt Ellen passed away Thursday and wrestling was still on. I've been more checked out this season, but the show moves on.
My goofy middle schoolers spend the time before practice poking at each other and trying to stand on top of the throw mats.
Shane went back to his wrestling practice Thursday night. I pick him up after my practice and take him directly to UVA.
He's not the only kid who has trouble listening, but he's one of the most animated of the distracted.
It's still both funny and annoying simultaneously.
Shane's having fun. He was excited today, because we were supposed to give Ryan a ride home.
"Can we go into his house?" Shane asked. "Please?"
I told Shane we can't invite ourselves in and the reason we were driving Ryan home was his dad had to go somewhere else and wouldn't be there.
Shane held onto hope despite my answer and walked up to Ryan's dad at the start of practice to ask, "Can we go in your house when we drop Ryan off?"
The answer was no, but the kids had a fun time talking on the drive home. Ryan dropped an awkward comment right as we parked (of course) that I had to redirect and try not to laugh about as we said goodbye.
Grandma Lois passed away Jan 22nd. I got the email after my wrestling match.
Lois' daughter, Sherrie, had emailed Pop the day before. She told Pop that the hospice nurses thought it wouldn't be long and they weren't wrong.
Grandma Lois will be missed, but it was about as peaceful an ending as one could hope for. Grandma Lois was ready to go home to see Jesus and Grandpa Vern.
While this has been happening, Aunt Ellen (Grandpa Vern's sister) began to slip away for her final journey. She would pass to heaven on Jan 24th.
The funerals will both be held the final week of January. Unfortunately for me, that's the last week of wrestling season and the first full week of new students and new classes. I looked into a plane ticket, but I felt like my duties here prevented my attendance.
I do want to make it out to Nebraska to pay my respects. It just looks like it will be at a later date. I hope to bring Shane and Carrie with me, but I'll have to look into it more later on.
For now, my prayers are with the family and the days march on.
We had our one and only home match of the season tonight!
Originally, it had been scheduled for the start of January. The HS scheduled a match for the same day, it got cancelled, and then the HS match was rescheduled.
We got it rescheduled eventually, but it fell on a teacher workday.
Thankfully, most of my squad turned up even without the kids being in school.
I could have directed them better and had us set up in half the time, but I let the kids self-direct after we got the first mat out.
That makes it learning experience. Plus, people feel more invested and connected when they put energy into it.
It took longer, but that was part of the plan. I didn't want to have to herd and entertain for overlong before the other team arrived. They had their own woes: No one scheduled them a bus.
I'm continually amazed by how much coaching youth sports is pretending you know what's going on even as you wing it.
Someone moved all of the chairs out of all the nearby storage rooms and we couldn't find them anywhere. I asked the AD and he directed me to a girl's locker room that was empty....which I offered to the other team when they arrived and needed a place to change.
We had a decent night performance-wise. The kids who come to practice did ok. The more they come, the better they did. The ones who don't practice got annihilated. The other team had a deeper, more trained talent pool, but two of my second year kids impressed me.
We have not done as good a job of being consistent with sports as I would have liked. We've missed a lot.
At this point, there have been five basketball practices and we've made one. Carrie got him to the first one, but forgot about another. Then we missed when Carrie wanted to rest after driving back from the funeral. The next week? Shane had the flu.
This week it was all on me. Shane was off school and needed some sort of activity. I looked at the clock around 6 PM and said, "Wait.....wasn't basketball at 5 PM?" Those brain fart moments are always humbling.
Especially, when it happens two days in a row with wrestling! (Writing from the future with 20/20 hindsight!).
We've been a little more consistent with wrestling. There are two chances to go each week, but the flu, travel, and 'oops' moments we've missed some of those, as well. I wasn't planning on having Shane compete much, but I figured he should get at least one match in.
That hasn't happened.
Now that we're healthy, I hope to get things back on track.
On a related note, I asked about Spring sports. I asked Shane wanted to do. Soccer made the cut and baseball was a 'no.'
If it was my choice, I'd have picked baseball over soccer. I'd love to play catch!
However, Shane's got to have some say at some point. We're going to skip baseball this year and I'm going to try and be a good a sport about it.
That does leave some more time each week. Shane would love to do swim lessons, but maybe I'll sign Shane up for lacrosse instead....
Shane's fever broke Saturday morning. It hadn't been long enough to sign him up for a play date, but it was long enough for us to go grocery shopping.
I totally meant to make a gif out of Shane hanging on to the cart and jumping/kicking off with one leg to push it.
Instead, you get a sentence and this picture.
Maybe I'll go back and download a gif creator on my phone later. I spent some time transferring and cleaning up to make room for one, but never pulled the trigger on downloading anything.
"But Dad! I don't like reading! It's boring and I want action!" Shane said.
My kid acts like I'm torturing him by requiring him to read at least 20 minutes a day.
That kills me.
About the only thing Shane will read without complaint are comics like Garfield.
....and then what he wants to do is read them aloud so you hear and laugh at every joke he likes.
The kid is outrageously social.
So far he seems to like to read the Roald Dahl books and Captain Underpants some, but it's hard to get Shane to read willingly if there are no pictures or no one is sitting right next to him as he does it. He likes to listen to books and be read to, but reading on his own for fun? We're still getting there.
I offer students a choice in my AFDA class for their final assignment: They can take the final exam or make a final project.
The final project is to design a game.
It's called "project based learning." The idea is to give something open ended, allow for research, creativity, and, hopefully, fun. Kids are supposed to make, modify, or expand a game. Then they playtest and design a survey the playtesters have to fill out. We have a unit on statistics, probability and surveys, so....it fits.
I try to introduce students to a few games over the course of the year to expand their horizons and have fun doing something new and logical. Often, there's resistance. This year/semester, I've had multiple subjects in each period, gaps, hyperness, and I haven't had much success or interest like in previous years (I helped start an Uno craze last year when I discovered one of my students didn't know how to play).
Here's a pair of kid's testing out a modified version of Labyrinth. They're both gamers (and awesome kids), so the interest level was higher than normal.
I wish the students got a little more into it, but I think it's memorable at least. When kids desperately need to pass an SOL, they typically focus on studying and I let the test count as their final exam (I am sometimes one of the final verified credits they need to get their diploma, so that's a priority).
I started playing video games again over winter break.
By "playing" I mean "playing video games even if it's not multiplayer."
I've been trying to only play something when at least someone else was in game with me to keep it social. That meant World of Warcraft with Carrie, Genevieve and Chris (I'm their tank), or Destiny 2 with John and Bill (I tank their score).
I've been behind on the blog, but if you include another way to kill a little bit of time and energy each night and now I'm really behind again. I try to only play at night, but that's typically when I write.
With Shane sick and low energy, I've played more just hanging around the house than I expected. I've managed to get through some of my backlog on Steam. Dan bought me a Battletech game as a gift....Japan spread their empire across half the glove from their humble start in Nigeria in Civ V...and I made it through a deck-builder called Slay the Spire and an early access version of the Lord of the Rings card game I have the physical version of.
Gives me some stuff to mention at work when student ask if/what I play. I may have to try Fortnite since that seems to their favorite game.
Random picture of Carrie with the cat on the couch.
I took these Monday night after Shane went to bed.
Carrie thought Bucket was being cute. Both the cats will force themselves onto her lap.
What Carrie didn't know was that she would be spending a lot of time on that couch with the cats and Shane.
Shane had a fever for the next five days. He stayed home from school all week. Saturday morning was the first day he didn't have a fever and his energy level came back. Sunday was 24 hours fever clear and Shane was allowed to re-integrate with society from quarantine.
The new question is how long until Carrie gets sick from spending so much time with Shane...
Side note: Apparently, Patrick and Shelby got sick, too. Then Cole and Tenley had fevers in South Carolina. Coincidence? John McG had strep, as well, but he wasn't at the funeral, so that had to be bad luck.
It started with a low grade fever and Shane trying to milk it for extra electronic time.
It progressed to an urgent care center visit and a visit to the pharmacy.
We spent over two hours at the urgent care and Shane started complaining his stomach hurt. Since he hadn't eaten much all day, we went through the drive-through at CFA while we waited for our prescription to be filled.
When we parked back at the CVS, Shane switched from "stomach pain" to "about to throw up."
He filled the CFA bag and it started to drip out the bottom. After a moment of panic, reach back across and opened his car door, so he could continue to puke "chicken noodle soup" down the side of the car.
We had a quick discussion on what "stomach pain" meant vs "nausea." Then we ate the chicken nuggets I'd rescued from the bag before I'd given it to Shane to 'blarf' in (His word, not mine).
Shane was feeling pretty puny by the time we got home. The strep test was negative and the flu test was negative, but Shane full on panicked when they tried to get a sample. I held his arms and legs, but he spooked the nurse holding his head. The probe never made it up where it needed to be and the doctor prescribed us Tamiflu based on his symptoms.
There was no school due to the snow, but Shane's going to stay home tomorrow whether they cancel school or not.
We've had church cancelled twice now. That's the same as the number of days of school cancelled!
I'd rather go to church than school. At least we should get Monday off. There was plenty of snow!
The city is doing a much better job of clearing the roads after that debacle several years ago.
We have our snow day routine: Sledding with Rah, Silas, and Zora!
The snow had a more ice-like feel. It was warmer than expected, so it could have been part melted.
Made for some fast runs and some rough landings when we built the ramp!
There wasn't enough snow to build anything really dangerous....which is probably a good thing, because I would have been tempted. Shane is on the cusp of doing all sorts of things that start hitting my interest level, but he's not there yet....
But for now, Shane was happy to push snow down a grate as I shoveled it from the street. We each did something we liked.
If it's going to be cold, it might as well snow some. Snow is fun!
A snowstorm is predicted for the weekend. It's supposed to start sometime in the afternoon, so it was imperative to get some Shane energy out early in the morning!
We were the first ones at TKD. The instructor let Shane practice his flying side kicks.
"NOW! Do NINETY-NINE more!"
I was laughing.
"Why you stop running? Go faster! RUN!"
I really like Shane's gym master.
It was a sparring day, so there was plenty of energy that got out.
Raheem knocked in the afternoon. He had a new football with him. I hung out in the house, so they'd play focus on each other for a while. When I did pop out, Raheem immediately asked to play catch.
So I did. He kept my kid busy for a while, so it seemed fair recompense!
We had to say good-bye to Raheem to go to Shane's basketball game. Shane put me on the spot and asked if Rah could come.
I said, "No." If it did start to snow as advertised, I didn't want to be responsible for an extra kid who I wasn't sure about if the mom would remember where he was. I felt bad doing it, but the game was 20 minutes away and I didn't think Rah would find 2nd graders all that fascinating when we got there.
The game turned out to be pretty interesting, though. Shane's team had an early lead, but the other team had a huge comeback thanks to one kid's precocious shooting and won by one shot. I sat next to and was talking with his Great-Aunt. His name was Legend and maybe this was the start to his basketball legend.
Shane was a partying fool most of the game. Legend's Great-Aunt remarked, "He's full of personality!"
I'll post some video eventually.
It was snowing as we left, but nothing was sticking to the road yet. We headed home for a night of electronics and snowflakes.
