Saturday, June 28, 2014

The Boy from Mars

   This might be controversial to say but sometimes I feel like Cullen does not live on our planet. His body might be here in the room with us but his spirit is sowing high above us in planes of existence we can only imagine. Sometimes when he speaks a sentence to me that I cannot understand I imagine he is speaking martian or some other language he has learned in his travels.
  Then sometimes he is so present that it gives me glimmers of hope. Today was one of those days were he was very I tune to his surroundings. I was making chore charts for the boys and he came over to me and asked "paper?". This is very unusual for him most of the time he just grabs what he wants and does not think to ask first. I gave him some paper and some markers and he drew a large circle and then to smaller circles inside and said " eyes" then he drew a curvy line and said "mouth" and finely three lines on the top of the circle and said "hair". I could barely contain my excitement " Very pretty Cullen a face!" then he scribbled all over it with wide curving lines before I could get it from him.  We worked together for a while in silence then he began saying some of his ABC's. He says them funny he will say "An A no A, A B no B" he does this alot . Sometimes when I put him down for bed he will go through the whole alphabet this way then start on shapes. "A square no square". I noticed though he was saying the letters of his name " a c no a c a u no a u a l no a l" I looked at his paper and he and written his whole name all by himself. At school he has worked on thus but they draw the dotted lines for him and he fills them in. This was completely unguided and in prompted which is where he does his best work.
     I gave Cullen my old IPod touch recently and he absolutely loves it. He is very good at the game angry birds and scoops. I thought he was just mashing buttons at first but then I say he was actually playing and getting pretty good at it. He also likes to play the music on it and chase his brothers around playing Katy Perry's California Girls.
   When they read me his test results and told me his IQ was on the low range it was hard to hear. But they also said there was no proper means to test him. I know he knows so much more than he shows.
Cullen's shapes

His name written with no guide

A face scribbled over
  Somewhere somehow these nuggets of information had gotten through to him. It makes me wonder how much more his getting through how much more could he show us and tell us if we could get him on our planet more often.
 

Sunday, June 22, 2014

The Call of the Wild

 Summer is now upon us and after the lengthy and extra cold winter we are all happy about it. Cullen seems to be the happiest of all of us about the turn in the weather and the opportunities to play outside.
  Cullen loves to be in nature, nothing makes him happier than to be out in the sunshine. When I take him to the river by our house he will happily sit in the water splashing and throwing rocks for as long as he is allowed. When we went to the beach I have never seen him more content than when he laid down in the sand dug his hands in and chilled.
This summer he as been taking every chance he gets to go outside, lately when he is not supposed to. In some ways he is like a cat you want them to be inside and snuggle up on the couch with you but all they want to do is roam.
  In our house there is a sliding glass door that leads to the porch and freedom. Cullen learned how to open the door and get outside last year. The door also as a deadbolt and I have to keep it locked or he will sneak outside. It would not be so bad, we have a yard that is completely fenced in but sometimes he us not happy with the parameters of our yard and tries to hop the fence for further freedom. The last couple weeks he has learned a new trick to get outside.
  Our home came equipped with a doggie door carved into the front wall. Much to small for our doggie to squeeze through but just the right size for a Cullen. It has a latching mechanism with a flap but he has figured out the latch and removes the flap and scoots outside. The first time he did it I was in a cold panic I could not find him anywhere. I was doing housework and I had deadbolted the door because he likes to go outside. His brothers were playing Lego Batman and when they play the game together a marching band made up of clowns could go through the room and they would not notice. When I put on my headphones Cullen was in his room playing with his cars. When I took them off to check on them Cullen was no where to be found. The sliding door still deadbolted, the kitchen door had not been budged as I was in there the whole time. Then I noticed the doggie door that I never pay attention too and the plastic gaurd was off and laying at Colton feet. I faced to the yard and looked all over starting to panic again til I found him in the sandy part of the yard scooping dirt into his dump truck with his shovel still in his truck jammies covered in dirt.
   I worry about him wandering away constantly,  whenever he feels like doing something he does it.  If he were playing outside and saw a butterfly go down the street he would not hesitate to hop the fence and follow it. I wish I trusted enough to let him outside as he wanted. As nice and small as my town is all it takes is watching one investigation discovery that starts out with "It was a quiet southern town, hardly any crime, until...." To make you want to lock your children inside.
   So I question if I am being an overprotective mother by not letting him go outside with out me there to watch him. Should I let his wild side run free and let him play outside as long as he likes or am I doing the right thing?

Friday, June 13, 2014

Summer Fun'n

  Well here we are again with another gap in my posting, but I have a good reason! Summer is upon us and between getting the boys out of school and trying to adjust Cullen's schedule that we worked so hard to cement for school to adjust for the summer months.
   Cullen graduated preschool and I could not have been more proud of him. At the ceremony he was so well behaved and sat on a teachers lap through the whole thing with no interruptions.
   I have been trying to keep his routine pretty normal getting him up at the same time each morning and making sure breakfast is on the table to minimize tantrum risk. I gave also been trying to fill our days with activities because an idle Cullen us not a good thing.
   Our first week out of school we were lucky enough to have Nina (grandma) and Aunt Stacy and the cousins come to our neck of the woods for a visit. A visit from them is always met with much excitement from everyone. The first day we walked around Asheville which was not really Cullen's cup of tea. He is a tactile child he wants to touch everything, in fact I would go as far as to say he has not fully processed what something is until he has touched it, This hands in approach was not looked upon kindly by the shopkeepers of the hippy shops and we were even told very unkindly to leave one shop before he had touched a thing. That led us to seek out some more kid friendly amusements an landed us at Fun Depot. Fun Depot is like a Chuck E Cheese but better because it offers laser tag ,mini golf and bumper cars. The kids had a blast thanks to their generous Auntie the big boys played laser tag and played games and Cullen gleefully ran from one end of Fun Depot to the other making a joyfully circuit several times with me exhaustedly tagging along.
 The next day we went to the worlds best toy store O.P. Taylors, my favorite thing about them is that kids are encouraged to touch everything, After a fun hour there the rain stymied our original plan of going to the fish hatchery so we were chased into a few of the other local shops. In one of the I found a toddler leash a rather handsome one with a stuffed lion on the back. After the exhausting three hours of chasing Cullen up and down Fun Depot and at leatpst one attempt from him to bolt down the streets if Brevard by himself I purchased the leash. It was very useful and he eventually learned to stop running away after several fruitless attempts. I am planning to write an entire list just about the leash so I will stop writing about it now. When the rain stopped we were able to go to the Fish Hatchery and it was a very fun and might I add FREE way to spend the afternoon. We were very sad when they had to go home and our ennui lasted for several days.
  It was a boring week at our house with video games being the cheif source of amusement for the older boys and escaping the house being the favorite of Cullen.  Today we were able to go to the Family Place Fun Day and it was wonderful.
  I love the Family Place when I did not have to work and the kids were younger I took them every day. It is free, safe family fun and I have made some great friends there. It was a reunion of sorts there today as all the kids who stopped going when they started Kindergarten where there and it was nice to see how much everyone has grown and matured over the years.
  I am now in search of more fun and hopefully free activities to do over the summer. It us only the middle of June and I feel like I have done every fun summer activity! I need help!