keeping up with alex & ben: yesterday

Ben's report card came home yesterday. He's doing great...got two E's (Exceeds Grade Level Standards) in "Decoding and Word Recognition - Uses knowledge of letter-sound relationships to sound out unknown words" and "Phonemic Awareness - Hears and produces sounds in words". The rest were M's (Meets Grade Level Standards) except in Handwriting...he got a NM (Nearly Meets Grade Level Standards). He's above the second grade level for "Alphabetic Principle" and right at the second grade level for "Fluency and Comprehension". For effort, he got excellent in reading, and satisfactory in all other areas. Yay! His kindergarten teacher was sure he wouldn't be doing this well, so pbbbttthh to her.

Alex was not a happy camper at his appt yesterday. Monday's appointment was amazing...he sat there smiling and laughing while playing with my iPad (the Uzu app). He played with that for about 30-45 min...and when it was time to go, he was still sitting there, engrossed in it. Yesterday, not so much. He played with it on and off, but mostly was agitated. Poor kid. Two visits in one week. And another next Monday. I must say, the oncology floor is nicely stocked with things to make the kids more comfortable. They had a huge toybox where the kids could pick a new toy at each visit. They had a snack room, with lots of food (Alex had a yogurt, but turned up his nose at the graham crackers). It didn't help that we were waiting for over an hour to see the doctor. Plus, the neurosurgeon was supposed to be there, but he forgot...so we'll have to catch him next time.

Found out the official measurements for Alex's SEGA. It went from 25mm x 12mm to 22mm x 10mm, which Jeremy says is almost a 25% reduction (and I'll just have to trust him because math makes my head hurt). Not too shabby for only 6 weeks on Rapamune!

Last night was the Christmas party for Alex's home. He was all decked out, and did pretty well considering it was a lot of hanging out in an unfamiliar location (fairgrounds).
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After that, Ben and I joined our neighbor friends and went to this Christmas Storybook Land they have set up at our fairgrounds (it's the 34th year, and each year it gets a little bigger).
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