Friday, November 11, 2011

Ramblings on Clinic, Headsprout and Homeschool

Great day today! Tristan had clinic - we went down to Children's Hospital and I really enjoyed the oncologist taking time to discuss a lot of stuff with us. We talked about everything from Tristan's immune system always seeming to be down (every visit we are checking his lymph nodes because they are swollen with a virus) and how he seems to always have something - to Tristan's height being off the charts! lol This kid is going to be huge! He has followed at 97% curve since he was a baby and is still going strong on pushing above the 97th! It is not from steroids, it is just who he is.

We also discussed how it takes a while for the vincristine and dexamethosone to get completely out of his system and that is why I am slowly seeing him gain back stamina etc. We discussed starting him back on getting his immunizations. Tristan has not had any since he was 2 and a half. So shots here we come!

Just a nice visit. His counts were good. Go back in January. He is coming up on his one year mark of being off treatment. This is exciting! Dec. 31st were his last meds.

A nice day of homeschool for Tristan too. We got to clinic an hour early by accident - my mind was thinking his appointment was at 10... but it was 10:30 and I gave us extra driving time because of the snow... never know how drivers will act in one of the first snow drives of the year. So we visited the gift shop and got a building set. It is plastic with screws and nuts and makes 10 different projects. We worked on that waiting.



I got home and was cleaning out bookmarks on my computer and came acrossed Headsprout again. Last year Tristan was working on www.headsprout.com. I finally quit because it was AWESOME but it rushed him through faster than he was really learning. He was guessing most of the lessons and I felt it was not benefiting him.

Well it has been 8 months since we stopped... so I thought - hmmmmm wonder how he would do now... It was GREAT!!!! He picked it back up on lesson 40 and completed it perfect! But not without thinking - it was still a challenge. I think the break was EXACTLY what Tristan needed.

Very excited to start back on the second half of the program and see how he does.

So they are going to their dads tonight. I have quite a few things to do this weekend. I am volunteering at Harvest Community Church's Thanksgiving outreach. It is a free to the community complete Thanksgiving meal. A big heated tent in the walmart parking lot of Kittanning, PA if anyone in the area wants to go! The meal will be served tomorrow (Saturday) from 3-5. Then they will serve one in Petrolia, PA for our PVC campus Sunday afternoon with the Steeler game projected on their big screen.

I hope to get in a nice run tomorrow and want to work on organizing homeschool for next week. Very excited to add Headsprout into the mix. I also have to go back and work with Alyssa on multiplying. She is doing a computer program - Teaching Textbooks and sometimes you don't always notice their mistakes if their answers are right. I happened to be watching her yesterday and noticed instead of actually multiplying 8 x 4 she was adding 8+8+8+8. Getting the right answers so I had no clue she was not really multiplying. So stopping her lessons to work on that next week.

I LOVE HOMESCHOOL! I love the freedom to STOPPPPPP dead in our tracks and work through the bugs. What is not clicking - we can halt the lessons and not move on until it works. That is the beauty of it all. I remember the same issue on her addition facts. She just did not get them. We took a month off her lessons to work on them. Not moving on until the student gets it is KEY  to a good education. Especially in reading and math.

Well I rambled enough - here are 4 new pics from my phone. Nothing exciting.  Alyssa at Gymnastics - LOVING her new class - very challenging and more in depth than the other classes. Then a sweet picture of Tristan and Wyatt snuggling watching a movie. I LOVE MY KIDDOS! And then Just me. :)  Thank you Jesus for where I am today. (by the way - yesterday was my 10 year anniversary - assuming you all know I am in the process of separation/divorce...funny I never thought life would be like it is ten years ago. Thank you God for your hand on my life. My future is in YOUR hands!)




3 comments:

  1. LMBO - I don't know! ha ha. I wanna say four foot 3. But they measure in metric and then just shout it out to me so I just catch what they say. The papers have metric on them.

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  2. What a great post on Tristan. I am so happy to hear he is nearing his one year off treatment anniversary. Huge milestone. He sure looks happy and healthy and growing tall too! (and cute of course) Nice to hear about how well he is doing.
    Rosemary

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