"How's My Hair?"

Ever since he got his current hair cut in the Spring, Collin is very concerned about how his hair looks. I catch him brushing it even when it's wet after he gets out of the shower. He even brushes it and smooths it to the one side before going to bed.   He also asked to have his hair cut last weekend before school started...and then reminded us daily until it happened. 

Last night, we compared his current 1st Day of a School picture to the ones in the prior years to make observations. One was that his hair was a mess or in no particular style in the prior year photos but it was brushed and styled in the current photo even though he was about to put a helmet in and ride his bike to school. 

First Day of 4th Grade

The first day of school this morning was more rushed then summer mornings, of course! Collin could not leisurely eat his breakfast and watch Clarence cartoon. He ended up not being able to eat most of his breakfast which consisted of strawberries and chocolate chip muffins because he needed to brush his teeth, pack his lunch, feed the dog, and get on his bike to go to school.  Yes, he was running late so we did not get to take too much time taking first day of school pictures. Looks like we will have to take pictures this afternoon instead. I am sure we will not be the only family that does this. 

I did get a picture of him holding the sign and racing off on his bike.  He was not too excited about School starting again but I'm sure he will have a good day today. I cannot wait to hear about it when I get home. 

Just a Small Birthday Sleepover

Instead of a huge birthday party, I was happy to hear that Collin wanted a few of his good friends to come to the house for a sleepover. Including Collin, the 8 boys swam for about an hour when they first arrived. They threw a ball, had a water fight and and swam around. Because the pizza was late, we gave them popsicles to tie them over.Then the pizza arrived which got them all out of the pool. They were some hungry boys!  

They dried off to come inside to wish Collin Happy Birthday and to have cookie cake. Those boys have some lungs!!!  My mom ears were ringing when they finished. Ouch!!!  Collin loved it though.  

The boys then went upstairs for the rest of the night. I could hear them having Nerf gun wars, playing video games and laughing. It was great to hear them having so min fun. I went to bed around 11pm and heard them for another 30 minutes. I assume they went to sleep soon after that. 

The crew woke up around 8:30am to donuts waiting for them. I was shocked that there were donuts left!

Some boys had to leave early and the rest swam for 30 minutes before Collin had to get ready for football practice and a Scouts pool party. Before they left, I did hear Collin ask them to clean up because he knew he would have to if they did not. 

Reading Comprehension Testing

Because I kept hearing about Collin's struggle with reading comprehension but just know that it's not because he is lazy or not smart, I put my foot down and found a Language Specialist to interview and test him so we can figure out what Collin needs to work on for this school year.  We should have started it sooner so we would have the information already, but at least we are starting. 


We met with a specialist on Tuesday afternoon.  She did immediately have some insight she shared with us which did include that he is NOT lazy, is motivated to learn and possibly does have attention issues.  She recommended that we have Collin tested...so we did.  He came back the next three days for testing at 2 hours each time.  I cannot believe he was not more tired than he was after the final test Friday during lunch.  After each testing session, she came out to tell us a few of her observations but wanted us to know that she has to score the tests and then summarize the findings in her report before we really will know what we need to do next.  We will be able to give this report to his teachers/school and let the teachers know information that will help them with Collin during this school year.


Here are the specialists' comments about Collin so far:

• He is very smart
• His vocabulary is EXCELLENT for his age.  She was really surprised especially because of the struggle with reading comprehension.
• He is motivated and wants to do well
• He has an immature brain for his age.  She had to keep reminding herself that he was almost 10 (in 2 days!) and not 8 or 9 like he was operating at
• He does have some noticeable, minor ticks when he is concentrating
• He is VERY anxious when he starts to read or has to write.  I think this is from the homework environment and struggle with the reading at home.
• Here is what she suspects we will need to focus and work on:
• Hearing or auditory assistance
• Attention
• Working memory - short term possible too
• Putting things together - patterns, sequence order, getting things out of order or skipping right to the last task.  No wonder he has trouble with math word problems!
• Strong difficulty following directions.  Needs to hear one direction at a time before moving to the next one.
• Have accommodations for Collin at school. She explained this to mean that could he have extra time to take a test, have some questions read to him, etc.  We will have to check on this but it will likely not happen plus his friends will notice he has special treatment and he does NOT like to be singled out.

We have a follow up appointment with the specialist on August 31 to hear the report and discuss her recommendations.


This mom is so happy we are making progress even though it's a few small steps at a time.  This will not go away on it's own or Collin will not outgrow it as has been said previously.

Meeting His 4th Grade Teachers

Collin is not excited about school starting Monday but he was really anxious to leave this morning to meet with his teachers. He has already heard that one of his teachers is not nice so I think that has him concerned.

When we arrived, he was happy to see that a few of his friends will be in his class and even one or two that have not been in class with him since Pre-K. He was most excised that his bets buddy, Will, is in his class again. Collin wanted to stay the entire time even though some of his friends has left the classroom already. Maybe he IS ready to get back to school. :)


He is wearing a school hoodie in these pictures not because it's cold.  He just picked it up that morning and was really excited to wear it.

Football Season is Here!!

It's football season for sure!  Time to start the skills clinic for the week before the coaches choose the players for their team and then start practicing. The clinic is four days this week and the skills assessment is Sunday. 

Collin is working with the Receiver coaches which is what we expected he grew taller from last year but did not put much weight on to be on the line. 

Here he is doing some warm-ups. 

Splash N Dash #2

Collin was not excited that his dad sign him up for another race mainly because this one does not involve a bike. It's a hundred meter swim and then a mile run.  Actually, I take that back about him not being excited about racing. It's really hard to tell these days what he is excited about doing. He says he likes one sport, then place the sport and says he never said he like that sport he liked another one. Therefore he gets to play the mall until he decides which one he might like best, if he likes even any sport. He generally is happy to have participated and very glad that he did it but leading up to it is definitely a struggle including this race. 

This morning, he was happy to see a few of his friends were racing too.  It was Jake's first time so Collin was telling him about the race and what to expect which I thought was really nice. Collin himself did not seem like he was too stressed or worried about the race even though he is not swim all year other than to play in the pool. I was a little worried about his endurance because he was going to be swimming in 50 m pool and is used to the neighborhood 25 m pool. While standing in line waiting for his turn to jump in the water, he was talking to the boys in front and behind him and did not seem to be too worried about the swim. When it was his turn, he was ready to go, jumped in the water, and took off with a freestyle stroke. I was pleasantly surprised to see him moving right along down the lane to the other end of the pool. He made it to the one side, went under the rope, and then head back to the other side before getting out to run to the transition area to put his shoes on for the run. It seem like he was a little tired in the run but still ran fairly fast.  In the end, he came in 11th out of 18 boys in his age group. He didn't seem to mind the placement and was not sad that he did not get an award. He wanted to know more about when he was going to play with his friend Jake and eat some ice cream with them on the one hand, it was great to see him not crying like some of the other kids were doing because they did not win an award, but on the other hand, he seemed nonchalant about the outcome of the race.  Well, at least he got up this morning and did some exercising before heading over to a friends house.  😎

Summer Almost Over

It's been a busy few weeks since we came back from our vacation and Collin came back from camp. In the mornings, Collin at attends a football skills clinic 9 AM through 1PM focusing specifically for his position which was Safety last year. He then comes home to rest for a few minutes before heading to our neighbor's house to do school for about an hour to an hour and a half. She homeschools her girls so she said it was fine to add Collin and he actually does sit and do schoolwork with her so we thought that was awesome. Then, several days a week in the evenings, he goes to football speed work clinic from 6 PM until 7:45 PM.  As you can imagine, he is a pretty tired boy when he finally gets home for the evening. He and I head back to his room to read through a book for about 20 minutes before he goes to bed. We both enjoy this quality time together to talk about our day and what might be on his mind.  He said he's not ready for school because there's no need to hurry up and see his friends since he sees his friends that he wants to see right now during the summer. We do know based on his work with our neighbor that he is still struggling with reading and reading comprehension. We are likely going to have a tutor work with him during the school year so he will not get further behind. 

Next week is much of the same before or start August 21st. But by then, our 9 year-old will be 10 years old and going into fourth grade. Hard to believe that he is starting his double digit years!

Peepers are Good

Collin had his annual eye exam last week. Doc said his peepers are good and he has perfect visio.  Good to hear.