The Fuchs Academy's First Day of School

Yesterday we started our 2013-2014 school year with Alyvia in Second grade and Wyatt in Kindergarten/First grade.  The day started off a little rough for Wyatt who is not use to being told when he needs to get out of bed but I'm hoping today will work out better for that.  We completed all the work I had scheduled with minimal complaints.  Alyvia is my biggest fighter and we are going to get that under control.  She needs to realize we have to be a lot more structured this year because her and Wyatt are both schooling for real.  If she would just realize how much time she wastes resisting she could be done and on her way much earlier.  Not sure that is going to happen today but I'm hoping soon.  Consistency is hard for me too but for the kids and mainly for Lyv I feel it is necessary.  All together the day was very successful.  I'm about to wake the kids for day #2.  Here we go!!!!

~Shylo~

Nice night out at the races!!!

Last night we did something I rarely have the will to do... we traveled out to Wyoming County with our three children to attempt to watch a night of racing.  I never would have entertained the idea if Jen and Jason didn't show interest in going too.  All together the night went rather smoothly.  We were a few minutes late but we were lucky enough to catch "Grandpa 0" in his heat race.  He started third and found himself in second place at the checkered putting him on the outside pole for the feature.  I let the kids play on the "playground" during intermission and through the four cylinder feature in hopes that they would sit nicely through the rest of the program.  No such luck as Mazlyn only wanted to return to the playground and Wyatt found himself face first in a dive on the bleachers. He was alright but a little embarassed.  I was lucky enough to contain Maz through the 30 lap (seemed like 100 laps after you count the caution laps) SST Modified feature.  Grandpa started strong but ended up spinning all alone on lap 4 which drew out the caution and put him to the back of the field, then on lap 13 several cars in front of him got together and left him with no where to go.  He ended up in the turn 3 wall in an attempt to miss the wreckage.  He was towed to the pits and his crew for the night (Tom, Nate, TJ, Deb and Jason) made an impressive effort to fix the right front hyme joint and got him back out onto the track before racing resumed.  This put him in 10th place and from there he was able to charge through and end up finishing in 4th.  We will take it!!  The kids loved cheering on their Grandpa and can't wait to go back to the track!!  

Afterwards we traveled into the pits to congratulate Grandpa on a good race and to help get the car loaded so we could head home.  

Here is Grandpas best little helper loading tires on the trailer!!  Lol.  

~Shylo~

Enjoying Spring!!

I am enjoying the beauty of spring even though the hussle and bustle of summer has already found the Fuchs Family.  Between the races and other family commitments it feels like there will be no break.  But we will find the time to just relax and enjoy each others company.  Hopefully before our new school year begins.  For now though my babies and I are off to the store and maybe even the library.

No promises on regular blogging but an update all the same!!

It's that time of year again.  We are finishing up the school year, getting ready for a week or two off and of course preparing for next year.

We received our homeschool curriculum in the mail just yesterday.  That was Wyatt just after I handed him his new texts.  He was super excited and when we flipped through them he kept asking if we could just start Kindergarten now.  I told him he had to wait a bit but that we would start it July 1st.  

Lyvi was just as excited to get her new books.  We went through the first 20 lessons of her math book and did some review of adding three digit numbers, tally marks and counting hundreds, tens and ones.  She loved it and I was impressed by all she remembers.  I have no worries about her.  She will do great.  We also received her handwriting curriculum (Wyatt's too), she wants to do cursive and I am not yet convinced she is ready.  We are going to work on perfecting printing before moving onto cursive.

Mazlyn doesn't know it yet but he will also be doing some school this coming year.  Part of it will be his speech sessions (that he is doing very well at) but he will also be doing some letter and number activities along with his normal coloring and book listening activities.  Lol.

I am super excited about this year.  I'm going to be working with my Dad on the kids music class:  History of Rock and Roll!!  So happy to have him involved and so looking forward to learning about some more modern musicians.

For now I will say good bye.  Mazlyn is trying to type a message to all of our fans.  Lol

Shylo

Update #2 Mazlyn.....

As I sit here this morning with only Mazlyn awake I am marveling in how amazing he is.  Since Thursday I can not help but wonder what the future holds for my baby and I find myself somewhat upset about it.

Thursday morning we had an appointment to have Mazlyn evaluated because of his lack of speech.  We were saying he had about 30 words but they were not consistent.  With him being 26 months old we knew that this was not the norm.  We had waited 8 months to seek this intervention with the hopes that the words would start to form and he would be fine.  It didn't seem to be coming so at his 2 year check up I asked for a referral and our pediatrician gave me the phone number I needed to get the ball rolling.   After playing phone tag for a week, meeting with the service coordinator and waiting a month for the actual evaluation, they were here.

Mazlyn had no trouble with the Psychologist and her "tests" that were hidden in all the fun puzzles and games she had.  He scored remarkably on all the areas she was testing, which we knew he would.  He is very smart, he just doesn't talk.

Then it was time for the Speech Language Pathologist to do her part.  I sat at the edge of the room with tears in my eyes watching as she prompted Mazlyn over and over (seems like  a million times) and he gave her nothing.  He followed all her instructions to a T but never spoke a word.  He attempted to say several things when asked whats this or who's that but nothing.  (I was secretly afraid that after going through everything to set up the evaluation and waiting a month for them to come Mazlyn was going to pull words and sentences out of nowhere and be talking up a storm while they were here.  I would have loved it and I would have been so relieved but then I would have had another problem on my hands: why he wasn't doing it any other time??)  This was not the case and I could tell by the way she was nodding her head as she was going through her evaluation book that something was off.

So when all was said and done and the lovely ladies had added up their numbers we were presented with a diagnosis.  Mazlyn is practically the smartest 2 year old on the block, he understands everything that is said, follows directions perfectly, has really good motor skills and his social and emotional skills are great.  As for his speech his receptive communication (what he understands that is said) is remarkable.  But his expessive communication is majorly lacking.  Their is a huge gap between the numbers which in turn qualifies him for speech therapy.  Not a problem but why??  (Of course I am filled with all the "why's" a mother would have).

It turns out Mazlyn has a motor speech disorder called Childhood Apraxia of Speech (C.A.S).  In other words he knows what he wants to say he just doesn't know how to make his mouth and voice work together to produce the words.  This is why my Baby can't talk.  He wants to he just can't get the words out.  Not easy for me to swallow but comforting that we have a reason and it's not just... "why does he need to talk when Lyvi and Wyatt will talk for him."  So, as we start this new week we are already modifying what we do with Maz, and how we interact with him.  He should start his therapy within the next week or two, we are still waiting to hear.

I will say we have gotten two new words since Thursday.  He said ba-ket (blanket) on Friday and I really only knew what he was saying because he was pointing at his Mickey Mouse blanket but we celebrated like he had won the race.  I was so excited.  (He will not say anything on demand though so after he got his blanket we could not get him to repeat it.)  But yesterday in the tub he and Wyatt were playing with boats.  Tom and I were both sitting in the bathroom and Mazlyn started to scream and whine (his normal response to get our attention because he can't get the words he wants to say out his mouth) when Tom asked what was wrong he said "boat" clear as day THREE TIMES.  Wyatt had sure enough stolen his boat and he wanted help getting it back so we asked Wyatt to please give it back to him.  Afterward we clapped and said hooray and I had tears in my eyes again.  I was so happy for such a small word.  I have a feeling we will be celebrating little A LOT.  That's okay.  If that helps to motivate him we are there.

So all in all we aren't doing too bad.  The "speech lady" as we have been calling her said it's good we caught this early and can start working on it immediately.  It's not going to be fixed overnight but with hard work on the part of everyone we should be able to get this under control within the next few years.  With regular speech therapy and consistent hard work he should be ready for kindergarten (homeschool style of course : ) ) and he should be able to be understood and be able to communicate his needs and wants.

I'm nervous about the future but I am over the "Why God??" question and moving onto the "Please help us get through this" prayer.  I know with Him all things are possible and even this speech delay is nothing for Him to conquer.  We are going to do EVERYTHING it takes to help Maz.  We love him so much!!

Update #1 of many....

So I should probably start by saying that I am the worst blogger EVER.  The last time I blogged was back in February... I would say a little catch up is in order.

Biggest news we have is that we have moved.  From our first home in Clifton Springs to our new home in Sodus.  Our official move in date was July 30th.  We are so in love with this house.  We have everything that we have ever wanted.  The most important thing being that we are minutes from everyone we love and care about.  Grandma and Grandpa VL are about 5 minutes away, my Mom and Dad are about 8 minutes away, Dan, Aleasha and the girls are about 4 minutes away, Jennifer and Jason and their kids are about 4 minutes away and Scott and Sherron and their kids are about 12 minutes away.  Life is perfect being so much closer to our family.

Our house also includes a deck, a garden, a partially fenced in yard (to be finished when the finances become available), a finished basement that has room for a "homeschool room" (YAY!!) a laundry room, dishwasher and so many other perfect attributes I would be listing forever.  This house is so perfect for our family.  Thank God for making everything work out the way that it did.  And thank Him for Facebook also because without it the connection may not have ever been made.  

We are still unpacking and settling in.  It's only been 6 weeks or so.  We have lost only a little homeschool time but we are caught back up and going strong.  This is the life and we praise God for it daily.  He is so awesome.

For now.... I am going to clean and possibly update on another area later tonight. Maybe not.  Lol. 

Shylo 

The Challenge of preparing to move with 3 small children.

Now I know that I have shared little tidbits about our moving preparations in previous posts but I don't think that I have gone into detail about the highlights and the challenges.  I never realized how difficult it was to keep a house in top-notch shape thinking that the realtor could phone at any time to say she has a perspective buyer interested in viewing our home or how disappointing it can be every night when 8pm rolls around and you have heard nothing from her.

 I'm more exhausted than anything but, it's not easy at all.  I have a stack of empty boxes lined up by the wall so that when the phone call does come we can quickly unload the clutter (that has definitely been minimized but is required to live) from the counters and the dryer.  I am picking up and vacuuming constantly and I am trying to convince my children that now is the time to learn how to make our beds everyday, put our clothes in the laundry everytime and make sure our toys are cleaned up when we are done playing with them always.  Not to mention the husband who is learning slowly but surely.  I know that he wants to get out of this house but when he leaves for work in the morning I don't really think he realizes what goes on while he is away.  He only notices that I am ready for bed by 8pm.

I know that when we sell the house, move to the new house, get all settled and organized and can take a deep breath this time in our lives will feel like a small bump we overcame to achieve greater goals and greater living arrangements but for now I am tired and anxious!!  The kids are excited about moving to the new house, having a huge back yard, their own bedrooms and a better life but I feel bad not being able to say when exactly we will be moving.  I feel like I have said "when we sell this house" a million times.  They aren't really satisfied with that answer and neither am I.  After this move I am hoping we will NEVER have to go through this again.  Only time will tell I guess!!

For now I will continue to reign in the chaos we call life, I will try to have a more optimistic outlook on this whole selling thing and I will make sure when the call from the realtor does come this house is as close to perfect as it has ever been.

For now........

Shylo 

Revelations!!

Recently we have come to some much needed revelations.  We (being me mostly but Tom was included in this decision) have decided that the boxed Horizons phonics curriculum we purchased for Alyvia is NOT working.  She does  not sit well to complete an entire lesson (which are some times 6 pages long).  We had been using this curriculum since August.  I had tried EVERYTHING!!  I tried splitting the long lessons throughout the day, making them more fun, writing the answers for her and yet nothing worked.  She was always "tired" or just couldn't sit still.  She cried about not wanting to do her phonics which we also tried calling reading, writing and pages.  I would get frustrated and wonder why I couldn't get her to get it done.  She wanted to learn how to read but wanted nothing to do with phonics.

Finally, two weeks ago now, Tom and I had a really rough night with her.  I had bought some flashcards for her, easy sight words and Tom decided to try them out with her.  He told her they were going to do only the purple side of these flashcards and she agreed to try them.  We all sat on our bed and started going through them.  I didn't expect much because she had not seen these words regularly or been studying them in her phonics lessons (when we managed to get one done).  She was into it and we were working together to figure them out, then Tom saw an easy word on the brown side and he decided to have her try it.  I knew this was a mistake and she would not have it.  She shut down and was "tired" and he got angry.  We went about another 10 minutes trying to coax her into finishing the purple side.  She agreed to try them in exchange for ice cream and we finished.  (Truthfully her efforts were not worth ice cream in my mind but Daddy gave it to her.)

After Lyvi and Wyatt went to bed Tom and I had to discuss what had happened.  I cried telling him that this is what I deal with every day when it comes to her completing her phonics lessons.  He told me he had no clue that this was what I had been trying to explain.  We started talking about what could be the problem, things were mentioned like dyslexia, ADHD, aspergers, stubbornness ect.  And I wanted nothing to do with the conversation.  We agreed that we needed to figure something different out for her phonics and we headed to bed.

I tossed and turned from 1 am to 3 am and finally I had to get up and get on the computer to figure this out.  I searched and searched all night and read a lot of information about everything.  I decided that I would make a list of the issues we have been having and date it.  I was not going to seek any professional help for this yet, I wanted to try to fix the problem without labels, medications or suggestions that public school would be more able to deal with her particular learning challenges.  Then I started making a list of things we could try out that might make the difference between joyous success and frustrated failure.

I ordered (without consulting Tom which I never do) an exercise ball for Lyvi to sit on at the table and rock or slightly bounce on while she does her school work.  This was a suggestion I read during my early morning search and the women who suggested it described similar problems she was having with her son.  I decided I would get silly putty for her to keep her hands busy while I was reading to her or we were trying to get through a lesson that she wasn't 100% interested in.  I also decided to take a new approach with phonics and these have made a world of difference for us.

First I have kept the flashcards and she has learned the entire purple side in the last two weeks.  We have even started doing the brown side with her insisting we try them.  We put the Horizons phonics curriculum in the file cabinet, out of sight and out of mind.  I'm thinking we may try it with Wyatt or just sell it to another family without the first workbook.  We have instead been doing some worksheets from workbooks I got from our Dollar Tree.  They may seem easy to her but they were labeled for first grade and when I looked at the ones labeled for Kindergarten I thought those would be too easy for even Wyatt.  I think she is having her confidence restored and I know she is loving the extra praise.  She has played around on readingeggs.com and we signed up for the free trial but the interest in that has been lost I think.  We are instead considering buying a phonics computer game or using free resources we find on the web to supplement the workbooks from the dollar store.

Altogether these last few weeks have been a rude awakening for me.  This is our first official year homeschooling and I feel like I should have had this revelation months ago.  For now I am saying there is absolutely nothing wrong with my baby girl.  The curriculum we purchased did not fit her learning style and personally I feel that I do not fit her learning style either so, my solutions are good~buy to the curriculum and hello to this Mommy trying new ways of teaching her precious daughter.  So far (almost three weeks in) I'd say we are doing a lot better.  Her behavior is even improving.  We love you Alyvia Shaye!!

Shylo

The Homeschool Mother's Journal Friday January 6th 2012

In my life this week…  Our house has been quarantined since last Thurs 12-29-11 because Mazlyn woke up in the morning with one of his eyes stuck shut with "gunk".  I knew that he most likely had pink eye so I made an appointment right away and sure enough conjunctivitis and double ear infections.  So.... nasty smelling (and tasting I'm assuming) antibiotics were started and he started looking and acting better by Sunday.  So naturally Sunday morning both Alyvia and Wyatt started having the "gunk" and coughing.  Wyatt slept most of the day away and when he was awake he had a fever of 102.  Monday morning I called and made an appointment for the other two to be seen by the doctor and they were diagnosed with bronchitis, ear infections and pink eye.  So more antibiotics and eye drops were added to the docket.  The kids have been doing well taking their medicine but school has not exactly been smooth sailing this week. 

In our homeschool this week…  Alyvia's homeschool program at the YMCA started back up on Thursday.  We had been on Winter break since early November so it was nice to see our friends and to have her excited about going.  Since the kids had all been on antibiotics for more than 48 hours I figured it was safe for us to venture out and participate this week.

I am inspired by…  All the amazing Homeschool Mom's that I meet either in person (like at the Y) or on the internet.  I have come to realize that we all have our own strengths and weaknesses but we can learn some very valuable things from each other.

Places we’re going and people we’re seeing…  The Y this week for Homeschool program, hopefully making a visit to see Grandparents this weekend and maybe a trip to the Museum of Play next week (before our membership runs out.)

My favorite thing this week was…  When Wyatt (3)  looked me in the eye after taking his medicine and said "Did I take it like your champ Mom??"  I melted into a puddle right there.  He's growing up soooo fast.  And they remember everything.

What’s working/not working for us…  School is very loose around here right now as we prepare to put our house on the market so we can move to a bigger/better house.  Lyvi is learning daily, it's just not always workbooks and readers.

Things I’m working on… Staging our house for sale and getting organized in my head.  Lol.  Funny right??

I’m reading… The Bible daily,  several womanish magazines on the Nook and of course tons of children's books for my three little book lovers.

I’m cooking…  Yeah about this, one of my New Years resolutions is to cook.  I always seem to plan the meals but Tom usually ends up making them.  I am going to try to curb that habit a little.  For his sake and my own.  Lol.

I’m grateful for… Life, love and family.  

I’m praying for… Peace.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share…

Brothers

Thanks for visiting and feel free to follow us through this homeschool journey we are on.  Till next time.

Shylo

Happy New Year!!

So, it is officially 2012!!  Hooray!!  Not that it's a big deal but this year I have actually made and written down several (okay maybe 30 or so...) resolutions.  Nothing too unrealistic.  Some examples would be no yelling, make more home cooked meals, take better care of myself and start blogging regularly (meaning at least once a week).  I have reviewed my list a few times and have even added a few things that I have thought of since my initial drafting.  I'm very happy and excited about it and I plan on keeping every single one of them.

Now to the good (or not so good) first blog entry of the New Year.

On Thursday December 29th. 2011 our youngest Mazlyn (17 months) was diagnosed with pink eye (conjunctivitis) and double ear infections.  The Doctor forewarned me that it would be close to impossible for me to prevent the oldest two from getting it as well so..... Happy New Year to the Fuchs Family!!

Wyatt, 3 has the worst case of it.  Along with his pink eye he also has an ear infection in his left ear and bronchitis. He has had no appetite for 2+ days now and he is visibly sick.  When he is awake (which is not very often throughout the day) he is clingy and quiet.

 Alyvia, 5 who is normally our terror (God love her) has also been infected.  She has pink eye in only one eye, double ear infections and bronchitis.  She is not terrorizing like normal but she is still keeping her title.  Very whiney, still not liking to keep her clothes on and coughing like a barking dog.  Poor thing I know but it is a nice break from the normal.  This is also helping me to keep the "no yelling" resolution.

 Needless to say we have a pharmacy in the fridge.  All three of them have oral medication that needs to be administered twice a day (different doses of course).  And the older two have some lovely eye drops that they need to have dropped in four times a day.  Luckily all three of them take their medicine like CHAMPS.  Otherwise I may be trying to run away.  Lol.

The Daddy is also sick.  Mainly with the cough and runny nose but,  his eyes are itchy too and he's not very fun to be around.  I love him but when he is sick..... he's not much fun.  Lol.  But, who is right??

Anyways, along with my list of personal resolutions, the family has also made a list of "Promises to Jesus" (for his birthday but, all the same for the next year.)  Some of those include saying Grace to God before each meal, eating together as a family, obeying our Mommy and Daddy and being kind to everyone.  I am very excited about these as well.  I think our family is getting to the point where we can understand the significance and create good habits for a lifetime.  Fingers crossed.

For now I'd say I have successfully blogged for the first time in 2012.  You are now up to date with the Fuchs family.  Hopefully I will keep this resolution.

God Bless!!

Shylo