July 2018 – Family Highlights

On July 1st, we picked up our new furry family member Kingston. He was an instant hit. King is a much different cat than Wang, and is just what our family needs. He’s calm and super sweet; exactly what you’d expect from a Persian. So far, King mostly stays in Calan’s room where his food/water and bed are kept. We let him out on “walk-abouts” during the day with Wang locked up in his cage. Wang will peer out with expecting eyes, following King’s every move. King doesn’t seem to mind, and in fact will often stop and rest a few feet from the cage in the family room. About a week and a half in, the boys accidentally let King out of Calan’s room while Wang was roaming free. King walked downstairs and approached Wang. They came a couple feet away from each other until Wang did the expected and launched himself squarely on top of King. We quickly separated them, but it just confirmed that while we have the two cats we just can’t trust Wang. Have we ever trusted him? No…

 

Following our eventful spring basketball season, Calan felt he wanted to try playing again. The good news in that is that the YMCA decided to not do their usual summer flag football and run a basketball season instead. So, we gave it another shot. He had some familiar faces with Ian and Mila on the team and their dad Frankie as an assistant coach. Calan was mostly fine in practices leading into the season so we felt a little better for him. In the end though, when it came game time his anxiety about playing and dealing with the mucus returned. This time, however we were much better at handling it with him. No pressures and not pushing. Just get him to the games, and along with working with the coach let him watch the game from the sidelines. In fact, it wasn’t until the very last game that he was able to go sit with his team on their bench without Mama or Dada with him. He wanted to be with us in all of the games, so even though it took the whole season, that was progress! He never did end up playing in a game; however, in the middle of the season the coach offered Calan $5 cash if he’d just step on the court as a player with the clock running. After some cajoling, Calan did manage to get a few feet out onto the court for a just a few seconds, and promptly returned to the bench area. He collected his money…so, the motivation worked, but it only went so far. It was hard not to see Calan continue to progress in a sport he so enjoyed and was getting really good at. But it was also positive that we tried again and this time around didn’t push him or try to “fix” the situation as we attempted to in the spring. Our thoughts going forward are to maybe focus less on organized sports (or at least basketball) and use the time and money to explore more things when it comes to activities. This could be anything from biking, hiking, beach going, skiing, camping and more exploratory adventures like rock hounding, day-trips to interesting places, traveling, seeing new spots, etc. That’s all an important part of childhood as well so nothing wrong with switching gears.

Solving Cubes
Continuing with his cube obsession, Calan has now solved a 4×4 cube numerous times. He even solved his first 5×5 cube at the Y with his buddy, Troy. Calan is also wearing off on some of his friends, like Ian and Mila. They too got their own cubes and have been interested in learning what Calan is doing.

This year, Evan officially started swim lessons with Coach Lynne. He had is own class with a few other kids around his age for the final 4 weeks of the season. Like Calan, he hadn’t been in the water at all during the winter and spring, but we did manage to reintroduce getting into the water again one weekend when we visited Carson’s pool down the street. He was pretty reluctant to get in the water with Lynne but she got him over it fairly quickly. On the second day, he was holding his breath under water well and making his way across the short side of the pool. As he built some confidence and progressed quickly through the days, he got more comfortable and started looking forward to going in the pool either for lessons or with Dada to practice in the evenings. He also became a pro at jumping in on his own and doing what Lynne calls “wide pulls” to help him move as much water as possible to propel himself forward. He continues to work on his straight legs, which was challenging for him last year. He’s definitely getting the hang of it, and as a result is able to go longer distances all on his own. When he first started, he would try very hard, moving his body and limbs quickly, but going nowhere. He’s looking pretty good with less than 2 weeks to go for the lessons season.

 

Evan has also officially mastered getting out of his crib now. First, he would use his table to climb out, but now he’s able to just climb over the railing and out. We talked to him about staying in and came up with a plan to finally move him out of his crib. After a couple weeks of staying in his crib (even though he could easily get out) we “rewarded” him with setting up the big boy bed. After all, it was about time! It was strange to see the crib taken down and not being used for the first time in over four years…and nearly eight when you count the time that Calan used it.

 

 

Our big boy four-year-old also learned how to get dressed completely and take off his own clothing all by himself recently. He’s using pull-up training pants still but he’s able to get those on and off as well. Just a touch of independence gained this month for the little guy.