Anthony's Growing Up Fast!

This was a big week for Anthony, he graduated from pre-school and went to his Kindergarten Orientation at his new school, Cougar Run Elementary!! Graduation was so adorable. I tried to video tape when he got up to say what he wants to be when he grows up (take a guess, anyone who knows him much at all will get it right - a firefighter!) but I fumbled the recorder and apparently had it on standby the entire time I thought I was recording:( Hopefully another parent got his and I can get a hold of it soon. Here's a sweet picture of Anthony and his wonderful pre-school teacher, Miss Sally, and of him with his class as he was giving his speech:

Miss Sally has been at St. Luke's Little School for 10 years and was so good at helping Anthony develop new skills, great self-confidence and great friendships. She really enjoyed Anthony and told us how academically smart he is and she worked with him on his writing skills which are so much better after this past year of school. He really doesn't enjoy coloring much, which is very important for developing the hand strength needed for writing, but he loves writing. He frequently will write the menu for dinner, write letters to people and mail them (even if it's only a sticker in the envelope!!) and ask us how to spell things all the time, so I think he'll do fine.

Last night Anthony and I went to his Kindy Orientation and we were very impressed with the school. His classroom is very big (forgot to ask how many kids will be in the class) and they have so many toys & learning tools, I think Anthony will be so happy there. We also got to check out the computer lab that all the kids in the school share. The room had maybe 30 new MacBook laptops and it looks like the kids each are assigned to one machine so every time they go to the lab they go to the same machine. Here's Anthony checking it out:

Next week Anthony starts T-ball. The teams here are all named after the major league teams, last year he was on the Orioles, but this year he is on the... can you guess? Yep, the YANKEES!! As you can tell from the picture above, Daddy's influence is showing and of course this is Anthony's favorite team, although he truly loves ALL baseball right now. He can list just about every team in the country. He pretends to be Todd Helton from the CO Rockies and he really liked Manny Ramirez (with zero influence on that one) until he got suspended for illegal substance use and many others that I don't even know.

My baby is such a big kid now. Luckily he still lets me hug and kiss and cuddle him!

Faith is doing good this week after a bad cold that made me worry enough to bring her to the ER on Mother's Day; it wasn't pneumonia as I was afraid just a bacterial infection in her trachea which they put her on antibiotics for and has pretty much cleared up. Then we all got sick, probably from being at the hospital (my dumb decision that all of us should go with her instead of Fred & Anthony staying home) - Anthony got it first, then Faith and me, then Dana and finally Fred got it. Anyway, we are all doing better now and keeping our fingers crossed it's out of our house! Faith has an evaluation coming up on June 2nd to see if she qualifies to go to the Deaf/Hard of Hearing pre-school as she is aging out of the birth to 3 program that has been providing all of her in-home speech therapy and sign language instruction. We've been told she will definitely qualify and I was able to visit the school on Monday - it looks very good. She will go to school 4 days a week there plus we are going to put her into Anthony's pre-school 1 day a week, because we love that school and it will be a good measure to see when she is ready to be mainstreamed full-time. I guess she is growing up as fast as Anthony!!

Happy Memorial Day Weekend!!

Robin