Wednesday, May 14, 2008

Happy summer birthday!

In Dima's class, they celebrate all of the summer birthdays in May, and Dima's celebration was last Friday. As far as we know, the boys have never celebrated their birthdays. I don't think Dima had any idea that the celebration was for him, but he thought it was great that they got to eat cake and he had his picture taken. :) I had made a pencil brownie/cake for his class and they were to eat it right before school ended.

So after school I get this...

"Mama, cake uh-oh fall," says Dima with a big smile on his face.

"Your cake fell?"

"Yes! Fall..." here some hand motions that look like Dima dropped the cake!

When Mark got home, we quizzed Dima some more...

"Did Mrs. H eat cake? Did Emma eat cake? Did Isaac eat cake?..."

"Yes, yes, yes...cake fall" (still with a big smile)

So our guess was that somehow Dima had dropped the cake. We were only hoping that everyone did actually get to eat some of it. So afterschool this week I asked Mrs. H about it. He did indeed drop his cake! They had all had cake and there was only a small part left. Dima was bringing home the leftover cake as well as a flower pot he had decorated for Mother's Day. He wanted to help carry something, and Mrs. H (wisely) did not give him the flower pot. He carried the cake on the cardboard it was on a few steps before he leaned forward and it slid straight onto the floor.

The boys always want to help, which we love to encourage, but we usually only give them non-breakable items (Dima carried a gallon of milk one time and fell on it and smashed in the side--it didn't spill, but needless to say we don't give them anything to carry that needs to be handled less than roughly).

Anyone have any suggestions for training a child to be more aware of his body and surroundings? :) :) And yes, growing 4 inches in 4 months certainly doesn't help with the clumsiness, but we really need to work on teaching the boys to be careful.

**Oh, and I added translation links to the blog for any international readers (scroll down and look on the left). Click on the language of interest and it will translate our blog into that language! If there's another language you'd like listed, let me know and I will see if I can add it (not all languages are available yet, but there are a lot!).

2 comments:

Diana said...

When you find those suggestions about teaching body awareness, please post them! We're struggling with the same thing at our house.

Are you still doing OT? If so, how is it going?

Tonya said...

4 INCHES IN 4 MONTHS!!??? Whoa! That probably has a lot to do with it. Lyra was supposedly physically delayed when she came home but just living in our house has advanced her motor skills and space awareness WAY past a normal child her age. I think a lot of it has to do with what you expose them to. I am pretty sure that your kids will improve rapidly when they get done with their growth spurts.