Summer 2011

School and such

Lucas has officially finished his 1st year of school here in France! While it has been a pretty stressful year for him, trying to settle in and learn the language and school rules, in the end, Lucas has done pretty well and I am so proud of his progress! During the last week, we were handed a complete 3 page report from his teacher, marking on milestones and what Lucas is capable of (e.g if he can recognize and name the teachers and caregivers in school, if he can draw shapes, if he can name all primary colors, if he is able to communicate effectively etc). On the last page of the report, his teacher remarked that Lucas has shown tremendous progress especially in the last month and he has successfully progressed to the "moyenne section" (he started at petit, then there is moyenne and grand)

At the school Kermesse (Carnival), his teacher told us she is very happy that Lucas has finally found his bearings and that he is following all rules and regulations, he listens and obeys and he is also eating in school, and trying new foods (but not at home...!) Lucas will eat couscous in school, but when I make it for him, he refuses to touch it! Eliane has also managed to make him try new foods, for example, creme Anglais. She says he likes to pretend he is a little kitten and licks at the spoon! 

We were also very happy to hear that Lucas will not be separated from Eliane next year, and his maitresse and we decided that we will not change schools. The 2 bullies will not be in the same class anymore (one will go to the grand section, the other starts primary school). 

After the bullying incident, I'd been going regularly to school to check him out during playtime and can see him play happily with his girls (Lina, Lou-Ann and Ilona). At home, Lucas has been good, he listens more, he obeys a lot more even though he still tries his luck at pushing the limits. But its obvious that he has grown up and his speech has also improved tremendously! He can now tell us what he ate at the school canteen, for example. And he can ask for things. For example, one morning he woke up and asked me for potato chips! I told him, its too early for potato chips. My little one actually waited about 10 minutes and then told me its not early anymore, and he wanted the chips! 

Every morning Lucas will wake me up with a "good morning mama" and the he proceeds to ask "did you sleep well?" If I answer in the negative, he will repeat the question until I say "yes"... Then he will ask if he can open the volets to let the sun in. After that, he climbs into bed for his kiss and then asks "shall we get up?"

At this age, he wants to be independant, whether it is choosing what he wants to wear or making his own peanut butter sandwich or his chocolate milk every morning. He will climb onto a chair, take a spoon and his cup, wait for me to give him his Nesquik - and he will carefully spoon out 2 spoonfuls of cocoa into his cup. He then proceeds to spoon out my coffee onto my cup and add one sugar :)

Lucas likes to help with the vacuum, he also likes to help me wipe down the garden furniture. His favourite thing to do now is to water the plants and then he ends up getting all wet! He also likes to strip down every morning and go pee in the garden! I have to repeatedly remind him to go to the toilet instead! On the other hand, it seems to be doing my mint and thyme a lot of good as both plants are thriving!

I have been thinking of bringing Lucas to the cinema, and Fred & I tried out a movie at home to see if Lucas will sit through the movie and he did! We all watched "Finding Nemo" together and Lucas was glued to the TV! Other new things that we will do this summer - teach Lucas how to swim and hhow to ride the bicycle!

Lucas at 3.8 years

My gorgeous little boy is growing up so fast! Too fast, in fact! The cutest thing he's been doing this week is walking away from me, then turning back halfway and telling me "I'll be back in 5 minutes" putting his hand and spreading his 5 fingers out at me. 

Everyday when I pick him up from school, he runs into my arms happily, grabs my face with two hands and gives me a big kiss. These days Lucas likes to sing Barney's "I Love You" (with all the kisses and hugs and high fives) and everytime we put on socks, without fail, he starts singing "This little piggy.."

Lucas helps clear the dishes after meals, and loves to vacuum the floor with our hand held vacuum. He is also getting more independant, choosing what he wants to wear, taking off and wearing his clothes himself (though he has not mastered putting on socks or putting on his Tshirt). He goes to the toilet himself (and switches on the lights, closes the door and locks it...) and he has also attempted to wipe himself after. Once, I was not alert or quick enough, he'd already wiped himself and put on his pants before I caught on! Lucas' favourite thing to do for now is hand washing! AND peeing on my plants in the garden! 

When we go to the supermarket, he is like a little man, pushing his mini shopping cart and filling it with stuff he wants to buy! I always end up having to put stuff back on the shelves which make our shopping time longer than usual. But its such a joy to watch him choosing the stuff, and talking to me like an adult - telling me we need to buy his chocolate milk because "its all finished" and telling me he "wants the Mickey ice cream, not this ice cream" when I pick the wrong one.

When he comes home from school, and Fred asks him what he ate for lunch, he tells us proudly what was served for lunch. Eliane tells me that Lucas' eating habits have improved and he is now well behaved in school. She says he is grown up already...

May Day!

Its been a long time since my last blog - picking up on the meeting with Noelle, she actually sent the school nurse to our home for a meeting with both parents on how to make Lucas eat. But as it is easier said than done, Lucas is still not eating his veges or fruits - though he is eating baby carrots now :) He started munching on them when he saw Sandra, our pregnant friend eating them and he wanted to try, saying that it was so cute (cos they were "babies" , like him!!!)

Speechwise, Lucas has improved tremendously, even invoking feelings of panic in me when I noticed that he is speaking more french than english sometimes. When we received his class photo, I was surprised that Lucas could name all of his classmates (all except one, that he refused to say her name - I will explain why later). 

For my 41st birthday, Lucas sang me "Happy Birthday" - yes, the full song :) And he also sings in school, according to Eliane, his favourite song is "Petite Escargot". Yesterday, on a day trip out to a farm for kids with other moms from Gepetto, Lucas sang "Petite Escargot" for us! He also loves singing after his BeeBo "Sing, Sign & Play" CD, he dances and plays his piano and guitar (I bought him a child's guitar, an authentic guitar with real strings that he can strum and pluck) AND he loves singing Myley Cyrus' "See you again"!

A week after my birthday, when I went to pick Lucas from school, one of the mothers from school (who also happens to be my MIL's friend) stopped me and told me that she'd arrived early at school that day and heard Lucas screaming for help behind the hedge of the school. She ran towards the cry and found 2 girls beating Lucas. One girl held his hands behind his back while the other bashed him repeatedly. This was during playtime and none of the adults in the school heard him or came to his rescue. 

The girls are sisters, one of them is in Lucas' class - the one he refuses to name. In fact, when I told Lucas' friend's mother about the beating, she asked her daughter if she knew who has been beating Lucas and she immediately said "Olpha". And I found out that she was right. This beatings must have been going on since school reopened in April, because Lucas would cling to me and refuse to let me go when I dropped him off. He did not know how to tell us he was being bullied in school although now I realize that he said "beat, beat" many times - but I thought he was saying that to our newly adopted puppy (more on that later!) 

The girls were also calling him "bridé" which means "slit-eyes". We wrote a formal letter to the school and the headmistress immediately told me that when the mother alerted them that Lucas was beaten by the 2 sisters, they already took action to punish the girls. And the girls were also being punished for another week in school - no playtime for them, instead they have to sit in the headmistress' office and she will continue to lecture them on beatings and racism. She also called the girls' father and told him about Lucas and he has also said that he took action - I noticed that the girls were away from school for a week or so before I bumped into Olpha and her dad in class last Monday. It was a bit tense in class when I walked in - I could feel Eliane and Noelle tensing up , I think its because they saw how very upset I was when I talked to them about the beating and they were expecting me to go off at the dad; but I kept my mouth shut and didn't say anything (I will trust Noelle and her team to take care of the matter and keep Lucas safe). 

Back at home, both Fred & I told Lucas that we know what is going on and that he has nothing more to worry about - that he can trust us to protect him. After we reassured him, he slept well that night, and the next day when he went back to school, Noelle told him that the 2 girls are being punished and he nodded to show he understood, and told Noelle that they beat him (in french). In the end I noticed that as a result of the beating, the area behind the hedge has been cordoned off - great but it had to be Lucas who had to take a beating for it to happen. That area is in fact unsafe and hides the kids from the adults.

Back to the puppy, we adopted a gorgeous little pup, Lucas named her "MoMo" and she stayed with us for 3 weeks before I gave her away to Sandra & Didier for her safety (and Lucas'). Lucas was very rough and almost cruel with her, jumping on her repeatedly and pulling her ears and she was starting to fight back. On the day we decided to give her away, she bit Lucas. 

Anyway last weekend, we visited MoMo in her new home - she has grown so much and is happy, I saw her eating confit and paté from the gité!!!! I now realize that adopting a puppy is like having another child in the house; double the mess, double the fatigue, double the mischief!!!!! And I had to "potty train" the pup :P Each time I scooped up crap, I was telling myself "oh noooooo....!!!!"   

Now life is back to "normal", no more waking up early to take the pup out for its toilette (only she doesn't want to do it outside, she always waits for us to come back and she does it in my garden, killing my plants!!!!!), no more screaming in frustration at both Lucas & MoMo to stop trying to hurt each other and the best is, no more scooping up poop for me :)

Next time, I will adopt a mature dog who is already toilet trained and is calm enough to be with Lucas (but we will also wait for Lucas to be ready which will be a few years from now...)

Meeting

Yesterday when I went to pick Lucas, his teacher called me into the class and asked for a meeting with both parents. Oh my Gawwwdddddddd!!!! Here we go again!!!!! My heart dropped to my Campers and I felt like crying immediately. She said she wanted to discuss some important matters about Lucas - mainly his eating (or non-eating) habits, his french language and he hit one of his pals in school today.

When I got home I immediately picked up the phone and told Fred and all night we were stressing about the meeting.

That night I was so stressed, my gastric started - the pain was so bad, I could not sleep and got up at midnight, looking for something to relief the pain. But I had no meds on hand, so I made do with pieces of toast and warm honey. Thank God, by 2.30 am, the pain subsided and I managed to get some sleep until Lucas woke me up at 5 am.

By noon, I'd broken out in hives.

At 4.30 pm, I was nauseous and a killer headache started.

I walked slowly to the school, like a prisoner walking the green mile to his execution.

On the upside , it was a wonderfully sunny day, almost like summer - it was 30 degrees and the sun was shining brightly.

Maybe its because of such a beautiful day that the teacher was surprisingly gentle with us. She did tell me, "please - don't cry ok?"

No, I wasn't about to cry - I was ready to talk out all the issues and see what I could do to improve with Lucas.

The teacher surprised me by telling me that she is extremely worried that Lucas is not eating in the canteen - apparently he has stopped eating, and refuses to even try the food. He acts up in the canteen, throwing cutleries, stamping feet witha resounding "no" when he is given food. Noelle (the teacher) said that his diet is totally not healthy and that he is existing the whole day on bread, water and crackers and he gets tired because he is not eating well.

I tell her we have that same problem at home - Lucas now only eats chicken nuggets, steak hache, meatballs or fish fingers. He rejects even rice and pasta now. No fruits or veges. He does drink a lot of water to fill his tummy. And he drinks a lot of milk.

For the past week, I have substituted his chocolate biscuits with high fibre crackers. And he doesn't get anymore ice cream. Noelle asked me to take out all things chocolate from Lucas' diet from now on.

We have also started serving Lucas the same food as Fred & I, and he sits at the table even though he doesn't want to eat the food. We all have dessert together after we finish (Lucas' meal is untouched for the past 2 nights). Dessert = vanilla yoghurt.

The past 2 nights Lucas has been going to bed on an empty tummy - this was advised by the paedy. Give him his dinner, if he doesn't eat it, tant pis. Don't give him anything else. So that's what we've been doing.

Noelle also insists that Fred speaks French to Lucas all the time now - which is fair. Fred does tend to revert back to English. But for her to say that my Lucas is not speaking french is not fair. Just this morning, he touched the lamp post outside the school and surprised me by saying "c'est froid!"

What she doesn't realize is that Lucas has only been exposed to french the past 7 months he's been in school. At home, we speak english. So in actual fact, I think he has been doing tremendously well in the recent months. He fully understands what is being said to him in french (Noelle confirms this) but for him to speak it, he sometimes has problems finding the words to express himself and make himself understood, which makes him utterly frustrated and, not knowing how to handle his own frustrations, he takes it out on his friend by hitting. Am I making excuses for Lucas' behavior? No, this is what we observed. When he is frustrated he gets upset. Especially when he is trying to say something and I don't understand him, he gets upset and raises his hand.

Anyway I am just happy that the meeting is over and done with. I am pleased that Lucas has a teacher who cares so much. He is truly blessed. Now, if only we can get him to start eating and trying new food...

Nice, relaxing weekend

I had a really nice weekend :) On Saturday I was with Lucas the whole entire day while Fred had his "time off" taking the glider out for 2 runs. Lucas and I played and relaxed and on the whole it was an easy day for the both of us.
Then today the 3 of us watched Transformers 2 on DVD after a leisurely breakfast - Lucas lost interest after a while, preferring to play with his own robot while we watched the whole movie. Its a really good movie, BTW. You know how the 2nd instalments are usually not as good as the first one; almost always (look at Ironman & Ironman 2) Transformers 2 is the exception! Its just as good, if not better than the first one! I can't wait for the 3rd instalment of Transformers!!!!

I also watched Ashton Kutcher's Kiss & Kill while Fred took Lucas out to the playground for a few hours. Not bad, Ashton's a hottie :)

Undone

I just finished a thriller called Undone by Karin Slaughter. I have to say that this book is rather disturbing. And it must take a rather sick mind to write stuff like what I'd read in this book! Which is why Karin Slaughter has been touted as a brilliant crime writer. Nonetheless, I have to say I am deeply disturbed by this book... but with all things macabre, I couldn't help but finish the book in one reading!

Will I be ordering another Karin Slaughter book? I really don't know the answer to that...