Cautious Optimism

Sooooooo, could it be that the answer is a $150 pair of head phones? We started using them on Friday and THAT AFTERNOON we got a nice note on one of Hamslice's assignments. We tried them Sunday at church school and got a GLOWING review of his attention and behavior. (This from the same people who told us he needed to go into the Special Ed classroom the week before.)

Is it Misophonia? Hyperacusis? Could it be this easy?

Hamslice has admitted that the head phones help him "a lot" and he voluntarily takes them to school. He is eager to behave correctly with them so they don't get taken away. These are signs to me that they are important and helpful. So far this is the best result for him.

Today is day 2 in school with them, I am eager to hear how it goes (no pun intended). I have set an appointment for Thursday to review all of this with his teachers.

Fingers crossed everybody!

So... the problem is not ADHD

We have had our little Hamslice on medication for more than two weeks and it has not been effective. His teachers have actually said that his behavior is worse ON the medication than au naturale. Here's what it looks like:

1.  Hamslice takes a pill
2.  20 minutes later he is lying on the floor with overwhelming fatigue
3.  He is ornery all day because the fatigue doesn't ease up until the med wears off. 

His pediatrician says this is not a normal reaction to the meds, and he prescribed a second stimulant brand. Same result. And an interesting side note is this: his concentration is not any better on medication.

Our friends and family who are now as out of ideas as we are have helpfully recommended the "dye free food diet" and "gluten free living" to us. How are they supposed to know that was our first line of defense when all of this descended on us two years ago? Oh, and they forgot lactose free living, we tried that too. Oh, and probiotics. And chewing gum. And mint. And Vitamin D supplements. and Occupational therapy with skin brushing. And swinging. And trampoline exercises. And a rigorous fitness plan. And talk therapy. And bite plates. And sensory stimulation using velcro and various textured ribbons.

My gut says that Hamslice may have some of the same problems I had in early school years, where my hearing was a huge problem for me. I would spend hours in class being tortured by the sound of the other students eating white bread and cheese and apples and blinking and chewing gum. Other days the sound of my own heartbeat would be so loud in my head that I couldn't concentrate. My peers were such a cause of agony that I didn't want to be around them. The teacher's voice sounded like a bass drum in my ears.

It hit home for me over Presidents' Day when I took Hamslice to see the Sponge Bob Square Pants movie with his friend J. After the movie we went to lunch at Chick Fil-A and they sat side by side. J was perky and excited by the movie, Hamslice looked like he had been punched in the face fifty times. The movie was bright and VERY loud.

Aha.

Next step is to try noise cancelling headphones to see if we can ease up the sound and give him a little peace in the classroom. His teachers are now magically more compliant than they were two weeks ago, so we are able to try some new things.

Stay tuned...

Behavior Update

So those of you who really know us are aware that along with all of the hilarity of Hamslice comes the behavior issue as well. Here's how it has been playing out this year...

Right away in the school year his teachers really came down on us about behavior, but it was a 360 degree "your kid is bad" approach, which served only to make us defensive. We spent a good deal of time arguing with the administration that no, indeed he is not totally bad and can you be more specific in his badness so we can address something measurable.

They asked us to go to his pediatrician and get ADHD medication. So I had them fill out the paperwork to get a prescription, and they went completely OVERBOARD and marked him as SEVERE in all categories. This made me really mad. 

This went on until Christmas Break. When Hamslice returned from break, his teachers sent home notes thanking us for his much improved behavior, and we were able to remove all of his behavior accommodations. However, because we had all been sick over the break, we didn't actually PUT him on medication, so now their credibility was shot with me.

Fast forward two months and I have been hearing from Hamslice that he is unhappy and that he wishes he could just control his behavior a little more so he would be more successful in class. We discussed this with his therapist and she mentioned that we could medicate just to control his emotional impulsiveness (aka tendency toward acting like a baby and falling to pieces at every little thing) which sounds like a good plan to us.

We spoke also with a few of our trusted friends who suggested that we test run a stimulant by giving Hamslice coffee and seeing if that does anything.

This weekend we gave him a mocha coffee and for three beautiful hours he acted his age. Hambone and I were able to take a deep breath and relax for just these hours. After the coffee wore off, we were back to business as usual.

I believe we have an answer. We talk to the pediatrician on Thursday to get started.

Sing it, Hamslice

We have entered the era of butt jokes, where everything somehow devolves to a joke about buns, butts, or but cracks. It's a pretty hilarious time that my 2nd grade self has been waiting for for years.

Knock knock

Who's there
Dog
Dog who
Dog butt.

This morning Hamslice was singing to himself, which means he uses his Vienna Boys Choir voice (which is a real treat that he only shares with himself) to sing an adaptation of the song "tight pants".

"Everybody's talkin' 'bout my butt cheeks, my butt cheeks, I've got my but cheeks on..."

Rock on, Hamslice.

Domestic Jester

As many of you know, we've been fighting the flu over most of Christmas vacation this year. First me, then Hambone, then Hamslice, then me again. The net result is a disorienting feeling of floating through days as the house descends to shambles.

Enter today, when I woke up with the stark realization that the Cub Scouts were coming over for their meeting tonight. I surveyed over a month of cleaning to that has not been done, a bored 7-year old, and 15 construction workers building a bathroom in the basement.

Oh, and I needed to bake a snack for tonight and buy craft supplies.

So I battened down the hatches and cleaned, organized, shopped and baked my buns off until about 2:30, when I realized to my amazement that the house was "decent" and I had 20 cute cupcakes made with confetti and snowmen on top.

I was working very hard at patting myself on the back, when I though "Hey, let's fit some fun into this day!" So I asked Hamslice if he wanted to go to Red Zone. Of course he did. However, laser tag was totally overcrowded and we wound up dragging an overwhelmed Hamslice out of there by an ankle and a wrist as he screamed and writhed about how something or another was unfair. He made himself so upset that he threw up right in the middle of the lobby.

We arrived home to "talk it out" and do some hugging with just enough time to get the table set for cub scouts.

At that moment I realized that the dog had eaten 13 of our 20 cupcakes while we were gone.

Cue the Calliope music.

How Wishes Come True, According to Hamslice

Yesterday during a long car ride, I told Hamslice a story where the hero of the story was the Fairy with the White Gossamer Wings. All of my stories have this same fairy as the hero, and Hamslice has had it "up to here" with the Fairy with the White Gossamer Wings. He actually shouts "Nooooo!" when I say her name.

Hamslice said to me "I don't believe in Fairies. Fairies are stupid."

I looked at him, slightly wounded and said, "Well if you don't have Fairies, how do your wishes come true?"

He looks at me and said, "I don't need Fairies. I've got Santa Claus and God."

Touche Hamslice.

The Pluses and Minuses of Creativity

Hamslice has begun developing the neatest sense of humor and a interesting creative approach to problem solving. He is adding onto stories to create punch lines, and bringing the whole plot line to absurdity, which I enjoy immensely. Hambone rolls his eyes, but I suspect he gets it too.

But sometimes his curiosity and problem solving method go too far. On our trip to Michigan last week, Hamslice read a book called "Python Vs. Alligator... who would win" and it turned out that the Python can eat an alligator while the alligator doesn't like the taste of python.

This led to lots of discussion about what a python would look like with an alligator inside, and how long it would take to digest. Then there was a graphic and uncomfortable discussion about how it may or may not poop out the bones.

I thought that he was actually interested in python digestion, (which he wasn't but I'll get to that later) so I told him the story about the lady who had a python as a pet, and how one day the python stretched out from her head to her feet and just laid there next to her, which was unusual. She called the vet and the vet said the python was measuring her to see if he was big enough to eat her yet.

Hamslice's eyes about fell out of his head. I said that the python could eat a human just like it could eat an alligator. Then we talked about how the stomach of the python would dissolve the bones of her skull and then her brains and eyeballs would be just floating around in the snake's stomach. He was laughing at the time, but 3am the next morning told a different story. Lots of lights went on in his room that night.

It turns out he was only interested in how a python would eat an ALLIGATOR, and not anything else.

We're still learning. Always learning.

The Funniest Guy in the Room

I remember my Mom telling me over and over when I was a kid... it's not really the best thing to try being the funniest kid in the room. It wasn't until I was an adult that I realized the wisdom in that statement. The funniest guy always goes a little too far just to get a laugh, while the second funniest guy in the room is the real comedian.

Fast forward to Hamslice in the second grade. This week Wednesday his best buddy J (the second funniest guy in the room) pulled Hamslice aside in the lunch room and said "Look what word I know..." and he wrote it on his napkin.

Ladies and gentlemen, this was the "F" word. Not a lovely F word like "Fabulous" or "Frankincense"  but the queen mother of all "F" words. And J wrote not just the F word, he also added its toady companion word "You."

Hamslice looked at the words on the napkin and decided (as the funniest guy in the room) that his required response was to read it as loudly and as many times in a row as he could. He then started pointing at people while shouting it, so several of the kids at school got a big "F... YOU" at lunch. Happy Wednesday, everyone.

And I will say that the call I received from the principal was not the most jovial conversation I've ever had.

Remember. Be the second funniest guy in the room. In this case there was a pretty stiff penalty for him as well, but he will still live this down before Hamslice.

Life in the Country

People have asked me several times in the last few months, "What's it like for a hard boiled city gal to move out to the country?" with the followup question "Do you hate it?"

And I just start laughing. We have never been happier than we are with this decision to move out into the wild. Here are things we don't miss about the city:

• listening to drunk people shout their way home from the bars
• cleaning up the flower pots that drunk people knocked over on their way home from the bars
• smelling the pee in every alley from drunk people on their way home from the bars
• panhandlers on *EVERY* corner
• that guy with the persian rug over his shoulders shouting at everyone that HE IS THE CHIEF
• um... let's see... drunk people ringing our doorbell at midnight, insisting that they live in our house
• rats
• rats
• rats
• the smell of the neighbors cigarette smoke wafting through our walls
• noise
• traffic
• ravens fans
• produce from the grocery store that just *isn't quite right*
• city water

seriously that should be enough to live in a permanent state of ecstasy, here are the new 'problems' we have in the country:

• traffic jams of deer in the driveway
• too many choices of excellent grocery stores with fresh seafood, miles-long organic food sections and amazing produce
• we sometimes can't find hamslice because he is outside playing
• the neighbors are so friendly that we don't know when or if we are offending them
• the school is proactive and teaching at lightening speed
• we love everyone we have met here so far (we can't identify any jerks)

and so on.

So you can see now how I will miss the city, but .. um... not really. Buh Bye.

Oh the Lies. Karma has Caught Me At Last

When I was about 7 years old, I told the biggest gossip in Dad's church that my Mom drank alcohol to such excess that she would start hiccuping and slurring her words. I thought it was hilarious. Subsequently Mom had a rough couple of months, trying to explain that she was not, in reality, a raging alcoholic.

Apparently this is a genetic trait. My dear angelic (cough cough) Hamslice has been telling whoppers about me at school. The first whopper entailed me punching the kids of our friends whenever they came over to our house. The newest one is that I refuse to feed him.

These fibs have led to some rather awkward conversations with Hamslice's school administration. Most of them come off like that fictional court interrogation where the attorney asks "So, Mrs. Johnson, when did you stop beating your child."

*sigh*

I know somewhere up there Mom is laughing her ass off.

Let the Re-evaluations begin

So we had our group meeting at school today. Teacher, Vice principal, Psychologist, Occupational Therapist, Student Liaison and Student Teacher. And me and Hambone. The meeting was much more productive than other similar meetings we have had, and ultimately we are optimistic.

The upshot is that we will begin evaluations for Hamslice within the MD public school system so his results will be normalized across the state. The evaluation is for fine motor and sensory issues, which will get to the root of what's really happening with his SPD. The OT at the school sort of poo pooed our other OT, after we had started poo pooing the SPD treatment we had received. The school's OT was more in line with our understanding of how to diagnose and manage SPD than the old OT. We liked that.

But it was the same kind of gang-up that we've grown accustomed to, where the group has papers to toss at us and a series of episodes that happened in class to blindside us with. We were ready with our papers to toss back at them and our questions right back. We are on to them.

His teacher was less than thrilled that Hamslice was trilling his lips and making noises during class time. She said his drawing and handwriting was juvenile. She also was trying to get a handle on his organizational system, which right now consists of having items scattered about every nook and cranny in the school. Pencils everywhere, papers everywhere. Aie yie yie. And she said he had just had a little spaz out THAT VERY DAY.

However, since the first day of school, Hamslice has had only two really bad episodes so Hambone and I were thinking this was a win for us.

Someday we will have a meeting where only good things are said about Hamslice. Someday.

Back to School, Back to Square One

This week was back to school for Hamslice. We had all hoped against hope that our new school, located in suburban utopia, would be some sort of smiling bubble zone that would embrace Hamslice whole heartedly that this friendliness would erase all of his [former] issues.

So, it was a bit of a wake up call when he was already punching kids by 1:30 pm on Day One. I suppose that the big move to the county was a way of Hambone and I drifting off into blissful denial that we still have a little guy with a very different brain.

To be fair to all involved, I did mention Hamslice's sensory issues on "meet your teacher" day, which was the day before school started. I talked to the teacher three separate times in the hopes she wouldn't forget. I also spoke to the music teacher and anyone else I could find.

Interestingly, they all did seem to forget my conversations (it was a pretty busy day, so I will give them the benefit of the doubt) and that led to a pretty bad set-up for Hamslice right off the bat. For instance, his classroom teacher forgot to let Hamslice bring "soft bunny" into class to provide a sensory break as needed. Instead she sat him in front of the window, where there were contractors jackhammering all day. It was so loud in the classroom that the teacher had to use a microphone to be heard over the noise.

Hamslice went right from that environment to music, to the cafeteria, and then to recess. Three humungously loud situations in a row. By the end of recess he was swinging fists.

So the teacher notified me by email, and I responded with a very professional, clinical sounding email that basically said, what did you expect after all that noise and tactile deprivation? I told her that Soft Bunny was coming again the next for Hamslice, and she would need to start using it. She wrote back and said the principal and vice principal disallowed Soft Bunny (nobody had even looked at it) and that he would receive a stress ball instead.  At this point I let it go. They will get to enjoy whatever consequences they create there.

After school, the vice principal pulled me aside and said we would need to have a conference about Hamslice and his special conditions. On Tuesday afternoon I get to face another gang up of Teacher, Vice Principal, Principal, Social Worker, Student Liaison and I would not at all be surprised to see the goddamn Janitor there. We will have been in school less than a week on Tuesday.

So now I am rereading all those vicious documents from the therapists from two years ago trying to develop a plan for my school negotiations. I am not entirely sure what I will ask for yet, but I will go in unafraid. And I will advocate for my son like the best lawyer in town. And he will thrive, if I have to have meetings with everyone in order for that to happen.

On a positive note, perhaps getting in early with the powers that be is a good thing. Maybe we can get out in front of it this year before everyone jumps to their own conclusions about him. The school's reputation is for responsiveness and accommodation, so maybe this is just that reputation playing out. Maybe my shell-shock is showing through.

More next week...

The House -- Before & After

I have seen that a lot of web sites are following the house progress, so I am posting some before/after photos. Please feel free to use the photos but do not share the URL of this blog. We are still moving in, so there is clutter here and there in the pictures. I'll update this later on when we are all set for prime time.

Kitchen Before

Kitchen After

3rd floor bedroom Before

3rd fl. bedroom After

House side After

House side Before

Foyer stairs Before

Foyer stairs After

Dining Room Before

Dining Room After

House front Before

After

The Big Move. Holy Moley

So the big news is that we now live in the country, and have divested ourselves of the city entirely. The last of our stuff arrived today, and we settle on the sale of the Federal Hill house on Friday or Monday.

Are we happy? Yes, we are thrilled. Did we have an organized and stress free move? Not on your life.

Here's how it went down:  I had carefully started boxing items in the house as I had time and was able to locate boxes. Therefore my Christmas decorations, old X-Box games and family photo albums were well labeled and organized for the move.

As the date of the move grew closer, it because increasingly unclear which date EXACTLY we would move, so we had a lot of trouble trying to figure out when to hire the movers.

One Friday night, Hambone said, "Let's try sleeping over night just to see how it is once." So we each packed a polite little bag with one pair of underpants, PJs and clothes for the next day.

On that Saturday, Hamslice woke up and declared that he was NOT GOING BACK TO FEDERAL HILL EVER AGAIN. And he was serious. When we went back to the city that evening he wouldn't get out of the truck. The city was dead to him.

Hambone looked at me, and I at him, as we slowly started unrolling big black trash bags. We then commenced feverishly packing everything we could put our hands on. We must have looked like we were running from the law we were packing so fast. Randomized bags of stuff started appearing in the kitchen. For example take these bags:

• Pens and extension cords as well as three board games and a tea kettle
• 5 blazers, a bag of dogfood and three frying pans
• Shoe shine kit, all of our spatulas, a book on child birth and three pillows

The house had these random bags leaning against the walls throughout the house. There are nearly 50 of them. Our glamorous moving company idea was reduced to Hambone sending "the guys" who are general laborers. Because they are not professional movers, even more chaos was added into the mix. No labels on any containers, giant piles of mismatched items heaped on the floor, lawn furniture in the living room, aie yie yie.

At one point, Hambone even enlisted our maid to pack stuff.

So that was the move. The other news is that the house is not quite done. For example, the light switches are all set to work from a computerized lighting control. However that computer system doesn't work yet, so no  light switches work. We also have intermittent HVAC on the second floor, where the HVAC guy says it's all set, but then the next day the thing is shut off at the safety valve.

Meanwhile we are trying to keep the Fed Hill house in "like new" condition, but one of "the guys" unplugged the storage freezer in the garage with 4 pounds of meat in it. Now the garage smells like the bowels of hell.

And now that the house is "done" Hambone is starting work on a massive patio and 5 car garage. So this has been a lot of hammering and concrete pouring and stuff.

But we are on the way out, back to a semblance of normalcy that we can see "just over the horizon" which I will say is a far cry better than "out there somewhere."

First Steps in our New Home

This morning I was ready to head to the grocery store for our weekly run, and Hambone said "Why are you doing that when we move in less than a week?" So I take that to be very, very good news. I spent the day packing up the rest of our house instead of grocery shopping -- I packed everything that would fit in boxes until I ran out of boxes. My excitement knew no bounds.

To fill you in a little on the construction, the last few weeks have involved large teams of laborers, all digging and moving furniture and lifting and drinking Gatorade by the gallon. My job throughout construction has been to provide lunch for all the guys. During the winter months this was easy because there were only about three people working most Saturdays, so a few pizzas or a quick trip to McDonalds did the trick. 

Lately with the crews so big, Hambone decided it would be a good idea to buy a cheap gas grill and serve everybody fresh burgers and hotdogs. He said it would be about half as expensive and the food would be better quality, so why not?

To put this into perspective, this means making lunch for 10 to 15 workers, and they were big, hungry laborers. Did I mention big? And the house is not, shall we say, entertainment ready. For instance, we have no plates. I bought plates, but by Saturday they were invariably gone. Nobody knows where. There are also no tables, and for the first cookout, there was also no spatula. Being an improvisor, I made 20 burgers and 16 hotdogs using a putty knife.

But the guys were all jovial and they line up for their burgers served on paper towels like they are at the Taj Mahal. I will always be grateful for their attitude.

One of them, referred to simply as "Big O" (apparently the father of another laborer named Orin) is my favorite. He only spoke to me with ancient animal like sounds, but he makes everything sound like a celebration. MMMmmMMmmmmm  oooeaaaahh brimmme sommeda'. I look forward to seeing him in line, and usually he passes through the line more than once. The first weekend he ate five burgers and two hotdogs. Last weekend I grilled corn and he seemed to like that pretty good too.

Our own little family had a celebratory first meal of "food cooked inside my brand new gourmet kitchen" which consisted of microwaved hotdogs. Hambone had a good laugh about that.

We are so excited to try this new lifestyle out. Hopefully fewer hotdogs and more outdoor time are in store for us. Stay tuned.

The Summer of the Move

We are starting to pack up and move things to the new house, which is incredibly exciting. Our original move date was April, then June, then July 4 weekend, and it seems that now we are looking at the completion date as August. But I keep telling Hambone it has to be sooner!

I planned the summer activities for Hamslice and me to include living at the new house, which meant I scheduled camps for him up there, and took weeks off of camp with the idea that we would go hiking together and exploring around the pond and fishing. However, with the move date so late, I am commuting for all of the camps, and Hamslice is watching a lot of TV. Again.

But we are getting there!

This summer Hamslice wants to learn how to catch and throw a baseball, and that is tough to do here in the city but we have that on the list of first things to tackle when we move. He has regaled me on the drive up to camp (one hour each way! AAHHH) with every known fact about superheros. Some of them I believe are embellishments by Hamslice which make me so proud. He gets that from his mom.

One of his camps this summer is at Puh'tok which is a non-academic camp. He sincerely hates this camp because there is no real curriculum so the kids spend their energy conducting intense social experiments on each other. Hamslice and I have had tearful, heart to heart talks about how learning to deal with these kids now is as much a skill as learning math or reading, and that he can't survive as an adult without learning how to handle it. He grudgingly accepts this explanation and patiently counts the days until camp is over.

He has three weeks at Club Scientific, which after Puh'Tok, seems like a wonderland to him.

Last week I registered him for the new school in Sparks and he received a MONSTER load of "skills maintenance" homework. He has been plowing through the pile two pages at a time, laughing and saying how easy it is. I have high hopes for him for next year.

I will note however, that Hamslice does like the songs he's learning at Puh'tok. There is one about a moose with juice on the loose, and a song about butts, and one about Bazooka bubble gum which mercifully has replaced some of the superhero talk. At least for this week.

Crooked Teeth and Swimming

Hamslice lost his first tooth about 6 weeks ago, and the new tooth is about half way grown in. It looks to me like his new tooth is about twice as wide as his baby tooth, so it's coming in nearly sideways. Snaggle tooth.

So far there aren't any other loose teeth, so this one will just have to jam itself in there and hope for the best. Looks like we need to find an orthodontist in the next year.

In other news, Hamslice is becoming a pretty good swimmer. He is able to do the crawl and breast stroke. When he swims with his face in the water he's even pretty fast -- It's his best skill so far.  He is still very skittish about jumping in, though. He's certain this is the way he will die.

We have set up swimming lessons for our new address in Sparks, however it looks like our move-in date continues to be a moving target. I suppose it will depend on the day that I just show up with a truck and say, "Here we are."  Hopefully we are going on the 4th of July weekend. Either way, we will keep him swimming for as long as he wants to do it. Maybe a little longer than that.

Last weekend Hambone and I realized that we will just need to put in a pool at the new house. Apparently, that's the best solution.

Hamslice Update, Waaaay overdue

I have been remiss in updating the Hamslice story for quite a while. As many of you know, when all this behavior stuff went down, Hambone and I devised an 18 month plan to fix everything, because why wouldn't you make an 18 month plan.

The plan is nearly complete and involved a lot of therapeutic intervention, home building, grade skipping, time taking, and attention to family. Possibly the most important factors in our ability to see light at the end of this is that we took the time and attended to our family.

After a series of charting exercises, and Social Thinking classes we are seeing a little guy who has loosened up a little and is able to take life nearly in stride. There are still things that get under his skin in a serious way, such as loud noises (particularly singing) and situations that are super unfair or where the rules change, but overall much better.

The 18  month plan in detail:

• Pull Hamslice out of school and homeschool for 2 months with intense therapy over the summer
• Change to public school for first grade, with therapy support as needed.
• Skip kindergarten and place him in first grade by doing a supreme paperwork shuffle that may not have been entirely legal. I came clean around Christmas, and they let me keep him in his grade.
• Prepare for second grade by buying a house in a better school district. This turned into a massive undertaking because rather than just move, Hambone wanted to do a full gut/renovation of a historic house in the school district
• Get Hamslice outside exercising, tripping over things, getting bug bites and playing in mud. As boys are supposed to.
• Move to the new house

Then evaluate. 

We move next month (?) or soon thereafter. Hamslice made it through first grade easily academically, and behavior that still has him in the bottom third, but seems to be manageable. At least... his teacher knows how to work with him.

It seems like we may be able to keep him in school without drowning him in meds or therapy (which, after about 8 months starts sounding like farty old ladies giving mediocre advice) and maybe this whole deal is fading to the background.

We are optimistic. And definitely smarter for the experience, and looking forward to supporting our little guy through school and in life, no matter what it takes.

Hamslice Designs a Security System

So Hamslice has been interested in the renovation of the new house. Not in a "helping" way, but more as a critic of the process. The one thing he is very concerned about is safety at the new house.

Watch this video to see his schematic of the security system that includes the following and *so much more*:

1. a security piano
2. haunted pool security skeleton
3. lasers (obviously)
4. canon with amazing ordnance 
5. metal safety jackets for the dogs

Unapologetic Bragging

As you all know, Hamslice has been doing a lot of work lately on his social skills and learning how to "do school." At one point I forgot that the point of school was "the 3 Rs" because I was so focused on just keeping him out of trouble.

Well, our little man seems to have picked up his 3 Rs just fine on his own. I noticed he has been making great strides in reading, and we're working on penmanship, you know... normal stuff.

Today Hamslice took his second set of standardized tests to check progress from the beginning of the year, and he JUMPED THREE LEVELS!!! Wahooo!!!

His teacher said he would have jumped a fourth level, but he missed one consonant blend. She said he had to test for hours in order to get all the levels, because the test and test until the student "peters out." She said he was testing so long that she felt guilty and asked him if he wanted to stop.

He said, "NO! KEEP GOING!"

So she is placing him in a new study group within his class and will continue testing tomorrow.

Go Hamslice!!! Mom and Dad so proud of you!

The Rules of Friendship

About a month ago, I was watching Hamslice after school as he was playing with some of his classmates. It was a little uncomfortable to watch him because he didn't entirely seem to understand the purpose or nature of play, and it seemed that it was more of an exercise in self-aggrandizement.

That afternoon, we sat down and talked about friendship and "How to Do Friendship" and we made a list of Friendship Rules, which I will list below.

I told my Dad about it, and he helpfully reminded me that this was more like the blind leading the blind, because historically I haven't been very good at friendship either. So if you have suggestions for additions to the list, please let me know. Leave a comment maybe.

Friendship "DOs"	Friendship "DON'TS"
Give friends fair choices	Brag
Listen	Interrupt
Let friends finish talking	Grab
Go slow	Argue
Take turns winning with new friends	Cheat
Work together to decide the rules of the game	Claim you won if there is no game
Make sure you know the rules (and agree with them) before you start playing
Try friends' ideas

Construction Safety Tip #27 - Using the Man Lift

Here is one more safety tip by Marci, as learned on the job at the new house; How to use the Man Lift

When using a man lift, always keep the engine running. It might initially seem like a good idea to save fuel by turning off the engine when you feel like you'll be in the same spot for a while, but it is actually not a good idea.

Here's why:  While the man lift may start up again reliably several times in a row, there will be the one or two times when you can't start it up again from the controls that you have in the bucket waaaay up in the sky.

And, while the man lift DOES have an emergency horn, it turns out that nobody on a busy job site will actually come to your aid. In addition to honking the horn, some other unsuccessful methods for getting help include:

• waving your coat around 
• hollering HEY
• saying YOOOO HOOOO in a loud, but cloying voice
• letting your hair down 
• jumping up and down 
• rocking the lift back and forth violently

Other unpopular moves in the man lift include driving it axle-deep in the mud.  Apparently the only way to get it out of that kind of mud is to push it out with an excavator.

Just FYI.

SPD in the Lunchroom

This school year has been a 100% turnaround from last year in terms of Hamslice's academic progress. He is now reading fluently, and is a little math rockstar.

Even so, we were alerted three weeks ago that he had "two out of three strikes" and was about to be suspended. Oh here we go again, it seemed. So I dug deeper, and asked Hamslice what was going on. Apparently he was having trouble during lunchtime with controlling his behavior and emotions.

Hambone and I were determined to keep his record clean and developed a plan. I started the ball rolling by "just showing up" for one lunch, and I saw kids running in circles around the tables, slapping each other and stealing lunch items. And it was SO LOUD! It was as loud as a nightclub at midnight.

I looked over at Hamslice with his hyper responsive hearing and visual perception and he was obviously miserable. Indeed, even I had a tension headache after just being in there for a few minutes. I sat with him during that entire lunch period and we read the dinosaur book that AB gave him for his birthday. Some of the other kids came over to see it too.

Then we stared a schedule: Hambone would go during lunch on Tues/Thurs and I go on M/W/F to manage lunch. Taking a page from AB's playbook, I bring about 15 books with me, and have established our table as the quiet table where people who are finished with their lunch can read. The books I bring have lots of flaps and holes and fuzzy sections so they are more like toys than books.

More kids are coming to the quiet table these days. Not all of them, but enough that the room is a little more manageable. Hamslice still hates lunch, but he's not getting in trouble anymore. This will be a long haul, but still less intense than last year. Stay tuned.

Ecosystem...Interrupted

The new house has had a 130 year old ecosystem within its walls that we discovered as we went through the demolition process.

It started with the bees (which we found first) and the honey from the bees drew mice into the house. There were several dozen mouse nests in the walls, and we found one live mouse in the kitchen -- I had he exquisite pleasure of pulling down a piece of plaster with a mouse behind it.

As we moved down the house (from top to bottom) we found many, many snake skins. They were wrapped around the roof joists, the electrical wires, and many times the water pipes. Some were over three feet long. Eeeewwwww

But, now that we have displaced the snakes, the toads have moved in. Hambone just sent me a picture of the newest plague.

Let's see... in the bible there were 10 plagues.... we're on #4...

Understanding SPD by Being There

As we journey with Hamslice through Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD) together there are a lot of times we can forget about it, and there are some times where it comes right up to the surface and can't be ignored.

Yesterday was Hamslice's class field trip to a farm just outside White Marsh. I was surprised to see that Hamslice wasn't looking forward to it AT ALL, and wondered what an excursion like this meant to him.

At the Very Last Minute (there's that stellar Mom side of me coming to the surface...) I volunteered to chaperone the field trip and was gratefully accepted onto the bus that had no shock absorbers. After an hour of very loud and bumpy bus travel, we wound up at the farm.

Apparently, when traveling with 20 first graders and very few moms, there winds up being a lot of down time while lining up and counting the children. Hamslice did OK until the field trip started to break down because there were too many kids on the farm, which meant we were relegated to the corn field, where a very nice lady tried to teach the kids some songs about corn.

After the third song, he really started to lose it. Big time. I pulled him aside and asked what was the  matter, and he said that all he could hear were the other kids shouting. He couldn't hear his own voice to know whether or not he was on pitch, and it was super frustrating. Furthermore, he said, "You promised me this would be fun and so far it is not at all fun."  This, my friends is tell-tale SPD behavior. The blaring of sound in his head, the frustration  in processing it, and the blaming/anger.

So we agreed to stand on the perimeter of the class where he would be able to hear himself singing, and hear less of the others. That worked OK for him. We also splintered off of the group for a little while to do more in-depth discussion about sunflowers and caterpillars. Some of the other kids went with us to learn about which birds eat sunflower seeds, and to talk about whether or not bugs eat sunflower seeds.

By the end of the trip, both Hamslice and I were exhausted, but I think he really had too big of a day. On the bus ride home, he curled up in my lap and snuggled almost the whole way. And after school he fell asleep for an impromptu (and unheard of!) two hour nap.

We are still learning our way through what it means to be Hamslice, but I am happy that I am able to be with him to develop strategies and coping mechanisms for these situations. Event by event, one at a time we will get there.

Behavior Modification that You can Do At Home!

So all the professionals can look on in awe -- I've created a behavior modification program right in my kitchen that works like a charm! It's the CHART Game (pictured below)

  

When to use it: If your kid is having a hard time understanding when they have been bad, or understanding why it is more important to be good instead of bad, it's time for the CHART Game

Here's how it works: Your kid picks a reward that they would absolutely do ANYTHING to get. In our case, Hamslice wanted to download a video game onto the iPad.

We set the YAY (see the big bubble at the end of the green squares) to "Download one video game" and the BOO (see the end of the red square side) to "Delete one video game"

Every time a good behavior happens, they get to color in a green square. Every time a bad behavior happens, they have to color in their own red square. (It is important to have them fill in their squares)

Mom labels both the good and bad behaviors so that they can be reviewed in the future by either mom and child, or read aloud by Dad when Dad gets home from work. The labeling also helps you catch them if they break rule #3 below.

Each time Mom redraws the chart after a reward or punishment (the red squares meet the red bubble or the green squares meet the green bubble) the chart gets longer. I started with 7 squares on each side, and now we are up to 55 squares on each side. The goal is to have the squares become the reward instead of the physical rewards of video games or cookies or whatever.

RULES:
1) Only one square per episode. If there is a major outburst, it still only earns one square.
2) Lying automatically earns a red square (so if they lie about how well they behaved at school, for example... one red square)
3) Coloring additional green squares without permission automatically earns one red square.

Enjoy!

 

Hamslice Update

Many of you have been asking "How's Hamslice doing? What happened when school started again this year?"

So I have an update for you, and the good news is that so far it's pretty good stuff.

We wound up enrolling Hamslice in the local public school, right here in Federal Hill. And believe me I did so with incredible trepidation. When I went there to sign him up, there were some large scale mothers from Sharp Leadenhall there, yelling about stuff and blocking up the counter. but I carried through and after four attempts (on different days) was able to enroll him for fall.

My thinking was this: "It's a practice school. He can go here and learn to do school, and then we will see what's next." The flip side was this "If he can't handle even this school (where some pretty tough cases come through) then we know it's time for special ed or homeschool."

On our first day, I walked him to school and held his hand while things got started for the morning. He was the blonde in a sea of corn rows and little shaved heads. The moms mostly knew each other and were belly laughing and carrying on, meanwhile I was so nervous -- watching Hamslice to see if his nerves were under control. He, however, was a little champ. He did just fine.

Three days later, I get a frantic call from the office -- your son has flipped his lid. So I ran to school and found him in the nurse's office speaking in a high squeaky voice and hiding under the bed. Here we go, I thought.

But I took the words of AB to heart (from her visit this summer), and told him that we needed to eat some food and then get back to class. No more days off for freaking out, Mister. And POOF -- that was the end of any further episodes. To date, nothing even close to a tantrum. All better.

Now that school is actually about school, he is doing very well at math, his reading has exploded and we are all happy to see him mastering concepts one after another. He is very excited now about being the "good kid" and that means something to him now that there are others who are a little worse behaved than he is in school.

This week we bid our last therapist good bye, and we are flying solo. I haven't removed them from speed dial, but we are ready to try this ourselves. Here goes nothin!

Beware of the Bees!

This week the demolition began on our new house. All of the plaster needs to come down in all rooms so we can replace lead pipes, add HVAC, replace knob & tube wiring, and add insulation.

We hired Mr. Jim to do the demo because, man, that guy knows how to tear stuff up.  Two hours after he began swinging his sledge hammer, he was swarmed by something like 300 angry bees. Maybe more

Hambone got an urgent call from Mr. Jim, requesting three full cans of bee/wasp spray. He could hear the bees buzzing in the background of the phone call.

After the dust cleared, it all made sense. Just look at how many hives had been built between the roof and the plaster on the 3rd floor. Yikes!

Bee hives all over the interior walls of the house

Buried Treasure

So it turns out that the previous owner of the new house was a bit of a hoarder. Well, more than a bit. We didn't notice how bad it was during the home inspections because the house is so big that it looked like "some piles of stuff all over the place."

However, as we cleaned out the rooms, we filled three dumpsters with garbage. And to help you really get the scale of the mess, let me tell you that these aren't trash cans, or even the kind of dumpsters you'd see behind a restaurant or school. These are full-on semi trailer sized dumpsters.

And we filled three. So far.

But before you get to feeling too sorry for us, in all of the trash we found a bit of treasure. Here are just some of our big scores:

• Life Magazine in mint condition that describes the Andrea Doria crash for the first time
• 1930's porn (eeew)
• 1 full bottle of DDT
• 1 full bottle of something that smelled even scarier than the DDT
• Harper's Bazaar describing the Titanic disaster for the first time
• Several stock/bond certificates from the early 1900s that we could perhaps try to cash in, but they look so cool we may save them as art
• Confederate money -- several $1, $5 and even $100 bills
• An old quackery medical device from Raytheon that actually microwaves your skin
• Blueprints from the 1980 restoration of the Statue of Liberty
• Contestant photo from the 1954 Miss America Pageant
• A handwritten letter describing a suspected murder
• Divorce papers from the 1950s
• Land deeds and titles from 1850 - 1918

 So all in all, a pretty cool treasure hunt.

In other news, the poison ivy has now spread to all family members -- including the dog. And we found out that hemorrhoid cream is the  most effective treatment for the itchy bumps. It's all good.

Exploring Poison Ivy

The new house seems to have been built on some sort of poison ivy super site. We suspect that this property is the breeding ground for all other poison ivy in the United States.

We discovered it this weekend. I was out in the yard cleaning up old tires and cinder blocks when I noticed all these vines running across the lawn and up the trees. Without a second thought, I reached down and pulled up as many as I could. And of course since they were vines, they draped down my arms and legs. Some of them smacked me in the face.

Hambone comes walking up to me holding out his phone with a picture of poison ivy on the screen. He looked at me and just kind of cleared his throat. I dropped the ivy.

After a minute to think about it, and possibly descend into the deepest depths of madness, I declared "Well so what. Poison ivy doesn't even make me itch. Watch." And I cleaned out the whole yard with a determination previously un-witnessed.

Fast forward to Wednesday, after all the poison ivy has seeped into my skin and I can hardly manage to stop clawing at my skin long enough to write this. Ung. This morning I was so desperate for relief that I spread myself all over with baking powder paste.

Do Not touch. This is poison ivy.

 The good news is that it's all gone from the yard.... for now. I saw more on a tree yesterday as we drove off the property. We will have to figure out a better way to deal with it. Maybe next time I'll wear pants and a long sleeved shirt.

You Can Take Ham Out of the City but...

While it's true that you can take hard core city folk and physically transplant them into the country, but it takes a while to catch onto country living.

We closed on the house Wednesday, and on Thursday (last night) to clean up and organize the house for the renovation. Upon arriving, we noticed an abandoned van on the lot next door. We thought "That's weird."  Then we saw that one of the french doors on the front of the house was standing open, with broken wood all around it.

Damn

Inside, many of the antiques we had purchased at the auction were gone. They left the paper and clothing, but they took our urns, old surveyor's gear, some wooden pulleys -- only stuff that a hard core antique hunter would be after. We thought that we had been "hit" by some people who were frustrated by the auction. Or maybe by some night-flying stars of Trash in the Attic.

So we called the cops just to get a report. Because the house is not insured, we couldn't file for any kind of help there, but we wanted the police to be around to understand what's happening.

While the police were there, Hamslice started screaming BLOODY MURDER behind the house. We all three took off running. (for the record, Hambone was the fastest, then me, then the cop) Hamslice had been bitten pretty badly by the neighbor's dog. And the cop was like "I can't leave here without doing a dog report." So now there are two reports being done on in one evening.

 I said "Heck, while you're at it, come look at this van" and we did -- the van had no license plates on it, and when the cop ran the VIN, it came up as "never ever owned by anyone. No record."

So... less than a stellar beginning here, but it does feel like home. Or, at least what we're used to.

Hamslice Fugitive

This weekend we were in Michigan for a nice family visit with Grandma, Grandpa, Auntie Bet, and K&M. It was also the weekend of M.Borto's wedding reception. So as you can see it was pretty action packed.

Hambone opted (wisely) to stay home and get some work done.

So this means Hamslice and I had a lot of time together and he had some time with relatives. He had his first "on his own" sleepover with Grandma and Grandpa and had a great afternoon throwing apples and walnuts with K&M. And don't forget his afternoon/evening with Parker & Pals at m.borto's event.

On the way home, Hamslice and I had a little spat and he stormed off to an airport bench to sulk. I came up behind him and asked what's up, and in a most sincere voice he said, "I just don't think I can live with you anymore."

So I offered to bring him rolls of quarters every Monday so he can live off of vending machine food in the airport. He didn't like that idea very much, so we picked up our suitcases and went home.

Hamslice Hillbilly

We close on our new house on Wednesday, and we are already having an adventure about this place. It turns out that a house like this (super old) is a real challenge to buy. The assessed value has come in from different vendors (Mortgage/insurance) in such a range that Hambone and I just started laughing. One estimate came in 30% higher than what we are paying, and the other came in 3 1/2 TIMES higher than our price.

However, the house nets out as un-mortgageable and uninsurable through traditional venues because nobody can really get a handle on the value of the property. When I broke the news to Hambone, he looked at me like I was a toddler trying to drive a car. "Let me handle it" he says. He thinks it's hilarious when I try to work on a rehab property.

And for all of you who have been jonesing for pics of our new house, here's a bunch of them.

The photo above is of the house when it was new -- 130 years ago. Note the lack of trees!

This photo shows the house with the old carriage cover across the front. We're planning to rebuild that.

Blessed, Golden Silence

I have excellent news to report: we are now going on FOUR WEEKS without a single phone call or incident report sent home from camp about Hamslice. I feel like we may be getting a peek of sunshine over here, and I am encouraged to think that we may be able to pull off this parenting thing afterall.

Well. Let's not get ahead of ourselves.

At any rate, he has made it through two weeks of Club Scientific (which he looooved) and he is now in Camp Puh'tok which is more of a general "fun summer camp" which he finds a bit dull.

Here are my tips for success:
1) Per AB's advice -- every morning I let Hamslice know that I have meetings "all day" so he can't pitch a fit and have me pick him up. This is key. Thank you AB.

2) We are keeping a closer eye on Hamslice. It is getting pretty clear when he's worn out from too much camp, and every few weeks we give him a day off. These days off help him reset and tackle some more time with "the mortals."

We have also come to the end of our intensive therapy over the summer, so now things will be a little more normal. It is nice to have my home office back to myself again to actually get some work done!

Silence. Blessed, golden silence.

Deposing Woody Allen

During the course of Hamslice's treatment and further assessments, we're learning that his giant brain is causing the following combination of adverse sensory issues:

• Visual Hyperstimulation
• Auditory Hyperstimulation
• Vestibular Hyperstimulation
• Proprioceptive Hypostimulation

In an nutshell, this means that everything he sees, feels and hears drives him slightly crazy. He also has no idea where his body is most of the time, so that makes him very nervous about movements such as leaning, balancing, floating on his back and so on.

So basically, without treatment, he would turn into Woody Allen. (Thanks to Nina for connecting the dots here.)

We also found it ABSOLUTELY FASCINATING that the treatment for this exact set of symptoms is to get him outside doing things like mowing the lawn, vacuuming, weeding, and walking the dog. And I am completely not sh*tting you about this.

I started laughing when the Occupational Therapist described the kinds of activities that would help him -- she said it in all clinical terms, but then demonstrated the movements, and I was like ... Oh. I recognize those.

And immediately, Hambone and I felt like Hamslice needed a BIG dose of therapy, so we bought a house in the country (Sparks, to be exact) with a huge lawn to mow, and lots of painting and repairs to do. Oh yes, we'll fix that boy up in a jiffy. 

So, we leave the city behind us. We're projecting a move date in about 12 months, and are full committed to rushing the project to get in there sooner. Onto a healthier life for us all. Exurbia, here we come!

Hamslice - The results are in.

As many of you know, Hamslice had a rather disappointing K1 year in school. We took him home in April full time after his school determined he was Autistic.

Since then we have been going to multiple specialists, trying to get a handle on the truth. Hambone and I were pretty certain the Autism suspicion was not the actual issue but we were really confused at Hamslice's behavior and effect on adults.

The school referred us to one of the top autism specialists in Maryland, who tested him extensively and concluded that no, he is not autistic. We also had his IQ and cognitive function tested to see if there was indeed a screw loose somewhere.

 His tests came back like this: IQ score puts him in the 95th percentile for intelligence in general, with 'Very superior' ability in Verbal (99th percentile) and some gaps in processing speed and performance IQ. This means he has a little trouble getting his thoughts into writing and processing them into communication for the rest of us.

However, Hamslice was tested under the assumption that he had already had a kindergarten curriculum, and he had not. We suspect his scores would be a little higher had he been tested under the correct educational level. He was also diagnosed with a touch of ADHD combination type with impulsive behaviors.

 So... good news right? It's definitely better news than we were expecting. The Autism spectrum disorders did sound a little like our guy so we had been concerned.

 However, we still have a little guy who has a hard time behaving himself. He is smart enough to know how to get out of tasks through throwing tantrums, and he is stubborn enough to stick with it to the bitter end. For example, I have been teaching him to play the piano, which addresses a lot of his coding and processing gaps. When he has to learn a new song (decode notes, encode into fingerings, get reward through sound) he simply refuses to do it. And the longer I make him sit, the more he amps up his resistance with creative tantrums. So far we have one chair through the wall, one wall decorated with finger scrapes, and one ivory torn off the piano. The harder the task, the worse the tantrum.

 If he goes somewhere that includes an activity he doesn't find stimulating, he does the damnedest things. One time he drooled on a kid, the next time he walked over and felt the boobs of the instructor, once he just started saying "beep" so loud we got kicked out.

What do we do with this genius.

 We are absolutely at a loss about where to send him to school. We wound up opting for the local public school because at least then it won't be a hassle to pick him up every day. And it will probably be EVERY DAY.

Some friends of ours said we need to get in touch with the special ed teacher to build an enhanced curriculum for him. And I have to smile a bit because ... really? We will try it, but if he starts beeping and drooling in the regular class, he'll never make it to the enhanced curriculum part.

We have been doing some reading of our own, and the best book so far is "Children: The Challenge" by Rudolf Dreikurs. This at least trained Hambone and me how to manage the tantrums and to encourage Hamslice in a way that focuses on what he does well so he doesn't worry so much about performing in his gaps. It has been really helpful.

 But probably the biggest turnaround for us since leaving school is what happened when we started making Hambone TRY things. He would have a tantrum, but we stuck with it and made him try things. Finish things. And for him to learn about the pride of accomplishment and the joy of achieving what he thought was not possible has helped him understand that maybe tantrums aren't the answer.

So... one day at a time. At least today it isn't Autism. Maybe tomorrow we will make it through a full day of cooperation and happiness.

Testing into CAMO White Belt

It has been a very big week for Hamslice. This weekend he learned to ride a big boy bike, and last night he earned his first belt in Kung Fu! We are so proud of our little guy. He's learning to face challenges and use courage. We are rooting for you little guy!

Biking!

We had an exciting weekend -- Grandma and Grandpa came to town, cousin D moved in, and Hamslice learned to ride a bike!

We are so proud of Hamslice-- look at this video!

Hamslice Homebody

So we wound up pulling Hamslice out of school in the beginning of April. There were too many things that didn't add up regarding his in-school behavior, and it seemed like time for Mom and Dad to take a turn with him to see what's what.

We have been having a marvelous time getting to know each other better, and learning how to be good partners to each other. I've read eight parenting books, which has been helpful, and Hamslice has been in an atmosphere where he knows he is surrounded by people who love him, which has also been helpful.

Our grand adventure started in the mountains of West Virginia on a camping trip with friends. It was chilly but had a lot of fun.

 

At home, we've started Hamslice on some routines to help him work independently and learn how to have fun with others. He is now taking piano lessons with me (which completes my transformation INTO MY MOTHER) and he has learned all the rules of Chess. Chess is now his favorite pass time, and he has been consistently beating me even when I don't help him. 

He is also reading and writing for at least an hour a day, which he is becoming very proud of after a bit of initial resistance. His alphabet looks good, and he just finished a letter to Auntie Bet.

We're very proud of him, and hopeful that his next school year will go a little better.

Homebound Hamslice

We pulled Hamslice out of school. The day after my last post (that would be April 19, 2013) we had a meeting with the teachers, Principal and school therapist again. The "action plan" that the school developed for Hamslice was to hire a baby sitter to sit with him all day long.

Hambone and I said "Hell to the No" and pulled him out immediately. This means he hasn't been in school since April 12.

Since then Hamslice has blossomed into a new kid. His play style is now nurturing and friendly, he has been learning how to stick with projects and do tasks that he initially thinks are too difficult, and for the first time in a long time he's proud of himself. He is learning to play the piano, and he is playing chess like a master.

He is also talking for the first time about what happened at the school. He told me yesterday how the teachers would lock him in the cubby room (which is a fancy word for closet) for long stretches of time without giving him an opportunity to earn his release by calming down or by performing a proper behavior. They also put him in there without explaining to him how long he would be in there, so he was terrified. Isolated. Singled out.

He said that other kids in the class would throw tantrums like he did, but nobody else was put in the closet. I am horrified. mortified. terrified about putting him back in any school.

How could the teachers generate such an adult dislike for our son?  Man... he's 5 years old.

Hambone's Birthday

Monday was Hambone's birthday. We went out for dinner at Little Havana, like we do every Monday with the Ps. We're sad that the Ps are leaving for Malaysia in July, but we are enjoying them for now.

When they heard it was Hambone's birthday, they ordered cake and took some celebration pics for us. =)

Hamslice Sleepover

Last weekend Hamslice had one of his best friends come over for a sleep over. This was the first sleepover event for both of them, and it was a blast.

They started out mellow with some iPad time, showing each other their favorite games and coaching each other on technique. 

After dinner Mom thought it would be fun to roast marshmallows over the fire pit in the back yard, but of course I didn't have any in the house. The boys settled in with a move (Monster House) with Dad while I scoured all of Federal Hill for a bag of properly sized marshmallows. There were none in the entire area, but I did find some peeps that were left over from Easter in the CVS. It turns out they are delicious when roasted over a fire. =)

 In the morning, these two best buds went for a scooter ride down by the harbor. They were both full of stunts and energy, and Elwood the dog was ready to keep up with the action!

 And then they settled in for a little more iPad time while we his friend's grandparents were en route to pick him up. What a terrific weekend, and what a great experience for Hamslice and his friend.