Handwritting 101

If you happened to catch the CBS Sunday Morning Show, you may have caught a glimpse of our daughters classmates. A feature on Handwriting in the 21st Century was filmed at her school over the past week. The story is actually quite interesting; in the age of text messaging and email, should penmanship be taught in school?

I found the part of the piece most interesting where they spoke of story development by children when writing by hand versus using a computer. Studies show that children are far more expressive when using a computer, maybe because it is easier to type than write by hand.

If you didn't see the story, head on over to the CBS Website to check it out. It was very interesting.

Exhausted!

Drew's first week back to school after the holiday has been exhausting for the little guy! Come Friday morning, he asked to stay in bed and then he wasn't able to do anything without crying. Get his coat on? Nope. Brush his teeth? Nope, that brought on tears too. It really showed us just how exhausting it is for the little guy to be at school for a full day, every day of the week.

Drew really loves his teacher. On Wednesday, as we were driving home, he told me how pretty his teacher looked. I thought it was so sweet, and who doesn't want to hear that they look pretty?! So, I told him that his teacher might enjoy hearing him say that, so off he went to school on Thursday to tell his teacher how pretty she looked.

We're back into the swing of things around here following the wonderful time we all had together during the holidays. In some ways, I'd love to have another full week of having us all off work and school, but it others, it is nice to return to our routine. Bring on week 2 of 2011!

Yogi Bear

I took the kids to see the new Yogi Bear movie over the holidays. While I can't say I enjoyed the movie, the kids certainly did. They were very entertained by Yogi and Boo-Boo, and it was a nice way for me to keep they from fighting with each other, at least for a couple of hours.

It continues to amaze me how well Drew can hear with his cochlear implants. When Drew has difficulty hearing, you can always tell by his behavior. For instance, our experience with Mother's Day dinner. Drew will generally talk a lot, and out of turn, or not pay attention to what is going on, or get really jumpy/rambunctious, when he can't hear well, which honestly is not all that often. Case in point, the movie. He paid attention the whole time. A few times, I heard him laughing, which meant that he clearly found Yogi or Boo-Boo's words or actions funny. He would whisper things to me like, "He's a bad guy," or "Mom, they said a bad word."

Drew was engaged in the entire movie. No captions, no special listening device. Just a little boy and his two CI's.

Drums

Santa was very good to Drew and his sister this year. Not so good for Mommy and Daddy, but defiantly good for the kids. When the lovely Toys R Us catalog came out in November, the spotted drums and began asking for them immediately. I told them that they must be crazy if they thought I would buy them drums, but they got the best of me by asking Santa for the drums. So, at 6 AM on Christmas morning, you could hear, probably throughout the neighborhood, the sound of this little guy, and his sister, banging away on their new drums.

The drums are actually awesome. Not-so-much the morning wake up calls with the drums, but watching the two of them create music is really fun. They bang the drum sticks together and scream "a one, a two, a one, two, three, four" and then bang, ahem, I mean, drum away.

Drew loves it. He can hear it. And we're all enjoying what Santa dropped off at our home.

New Year's Resolution

I will blog more.

That seems easy. Very simple to do, right? But it will take an effort. I haven't blogged in a while, not because I don't have anything to say or share, but becuase I've felt like every post I write is the same. I sing the praises of cochlear implants. I brag about cute little guy and all of his acheivments. So blogging has seemed rather...redundant. Blah. The same old, day in and day out.

But I will blog more. The happenings of the litle guy and his sister. And you may just have to read through some bragging. And you may have to read about how miraculous cochlear implants are. But, that's Drew' life. And that's the reason for the blog.