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He has been writing his letters on the iPhone and iPad for over a year, but this is the first fully legible I have seen on paper… with the possible exception of the occasional A, L, e and X. :-) The new school is working out REALLY well for him. He is so much happier, and doing all sorts of new things! I actually wasn’t going to, but I was asked by email for some pictures of actual Christmas events (rather than just the tree in the early morning). So here come a few…
The kids with Grandma Ruth. (Amy would like to point out that despite appearances in this picture, she IS wearing pants.)
Alex with the favorite new toy of the day. And that’s about it for pictures that came out decent. We actually didn’t take a lot of pictures this time. As we did last year, we booked tickets for Alex and the family to the Santa Express run by the Mount Rainier Scenic Railroad. So we all hopped into the car on Monday afternoon and headed out to foothills of Mount Rainier…
Alex and Amy were ready to go…
This was going to be our engine…
And this was the train…
Then we watched the engine couple up to the train… or “buckle up” as Alex and I sometimes say… As we got on, I noticed there was a second engine at the other end of the train, so right after we got on I headed to that end to get a quick picture…
G’ma Ruth and Alex got settled in at a table.
Amy put on her practiced sullen face.
I ate my popcorn.
Soon the train started, and Alex watched out the window intently while perched on my lap.
Only a few minutes later though, the conductor told us it was our turn for Santa…
And unlike last time, when I unfortunately his stop on the video right before Alex started to talk to Santa, this time I actually did get the whole thing on video… Unfortunately, unlike last time, it was much noisier, and it was impossible to hear what Alex said to Santa. (Although, Santa said that Alex said “trains”, which of course would be what he would say.) Also of course, it wasn’t his first time with Santa, and it wasn’t nearly as cute. So I am still very sad about stopping the video early last year. But we quickly moved on. Through dirty windows we saw some scenery…
Last year, we had power outages and never got to the “destination” of the trip. This time we got to the end, which was a little train museum. We got out to look at some of the stuff…
We saw the engine that had pulled the train last year.
And a diesel engine with caboose.
And another old steam engine.
We could have hopped inside that engine, but Alex just wanted to look through the window.
There were some old tanker cars too.
And a repair shed.
At that point, we went back into the train…
Right around then, we realized we had lost Brandy! We had no idea where she had gone. One minute she was with us, then the next she was not. We’d hoped she would be waiting for us at our seats, but she was not. For what seemed like hours, but was really only a few minutes, we sat there and wondered where in the world Brandy had gotten to. As we sat in our seats Alex said, “I think Mommy will be lost FOREVER.” But, of course, a few minutes before the train was due to head back, Brandy showed up at our seats. As the train started heading back toward the station, like last time, Alex and I (and Grandma Ruth too this time) went to find one of the spaces at the ends of the cars where there was a waist high door with an open area above so that you could look out without dirty old glass in the way of the view. Of course, by this time it was dark…
We could see the stuff right by the side of the tracks because of the lights from the train, and it was exciting when we passed level crossings. But of course I wasn’t going to be able to get any good pictures of that with very low light and everything going by quickly. But Alex and I stayed, with me holding him up so he could see out, for the whole ride back to the station.
And then it was over. We headed back to the car for the two hour drive home, with only a quick break for dinner at an Indian restaurant on the way. It was a fun time, although very different than last time. Will it become a tradition? Talk to us again next year. :-)
We always do these things a bit later than many people, but this morning while Amy slept in, Alex, Brandy and I headed out to get a tree. Alex remembered the place we got our tree last year, and that we got it at night. He said we should go the same place… If it was open. So we went to that same place. Selection was sorta slim. We told Alex he could pick the tree. He wandered around and looked at a bunch of trees, and was not very impressed. Until we got to one corner. And then he saw it. He knew immediately this was the tree he wanted. It was the SMALLEST tree they had left. But it was his. He had picked his tree. :-) Next up… This year’s Santa Train. We are going the same place we went last year.
Amy caught me napping the other day, and took this picture… On MY phone. I just found it today! Backstory: Alex wanted me to watch him play with some stuff he had set up in the hallway, but I told him I was tired. So he got a cushion from a Poang and laid it out on the floor for me to lie down on. And he gave me his duck. I apparently fell asleep in the middle of the hallway with the duck. Amy found me and took the picture. I woke up an hour or two later and moved to the bed, completely unaware that a picture had been taken while I was asleep on the floor… With the duck. Once he woke up, I showed Alex the snow. He was excited there would be no school and he wanted to get dressed as fast as possible so he could go outside right away. He ran out ahead of me and immediately made a snow angel…
Then he explored the back yard.
Roscoe joined us right away to see what was up.
This year’s snowman was not quite as cute as last year’s. Then we walked the dog. After about 10 minutes, Alex decided he wanted his gloves again even though he had taken them off earlier. But oops, they were not in my pockets as I thought, but we’d left them at home! He gave me the dog, put his hands in his pockets, and we walked another 15 minutes.
Once we got home, he decided the right thing to have as a snack in the snow was a popsicle. But after a minute or so of that he decided he was cold and he was done. He went in first to sit by the fire, but then decided that wasn’t working, and so instead he cuddled under a blanket with his mom until he was warm. [Minor text edits 2013-12-20 20:23 UTC] [Update 2013-12-20 21:40 UTC to add the snow angel video]
So, last evening as I do many times each week, I made sure Alex was hanging on to my iPad (which he had been using, as he often does) and I unstrapped him and pulled him out of my car. I completely forgot that the iPad had been low on batteries, so I’d plugged it in. So when I pulled Alex out of the car, since the iPad was plugged in, and iPads don’t have MagSafe like Apple laptops do, the iPad was basically violently yanked out of his hands. From there it of course went flying in a nice arc constrained by the cord, smashed against the side of the car, then onto the asphalt parking lot face down. Alex looked shocked. I said “Oh no!”. Then when I picked it up, of course the whole front face was shattered. I told Alex it was completely my fault (it was) and that I was very sorry, but it was broken. He immediately started bawling inconsolably. For the next 15 minutes or so. It is “my” iPad, but he uses it all the time and loves it. I told him we would take it in right away and get it fixed or replaced. He was still inconsolable. He was worried that we might lose some of his games. Not just the games themselves, but the saved levels he has been accumulating. For the last month or so he has been carefully building new worlds and train arrangements in Trainz Simulator and saving dozens and dozens of them. I told him I would make sure everything was all backed up and that we wouldn’t lose anything. Normally I would have been very upset myself about this, but he was so upset I didn’t have time to be upset for myself. So right now I’m going through the process of making sure I have triple redundant backups of the iPad (both on iCloud and a couple copies on my computer) so that Brandy can take it in to the Apple store later today, where it will get swapped out for a new one I am sure. Then when I get home from work I’ll do a restore from the encrypted local backup so that hopefully EVERYTHING will be restore to exactly the current state. (It is now on airplane mode to ensure nothing comes into it to change the state after the backup currently in progress.) Thank goodness for AppleCare+. This is my second screen smashing incident in just under 12 months though, so I’ve used up my allowance after this time. Next time it gets smashed, the cost to deal with it will be just a TAD more. Oops.
Friday was Alex’s last day at his old school. Those who listened to the November 12th Curmudgeon’s Corner know why we are changing schools. We had some issues with the school, but the problems were basically management problems, and Alex’s actual teachers were very fond of him, and he was very fond of them. When I asked him the other day if he would miss his teachers, he said “No. They will miss ME.” Despite that, when we were about to leave for the last time, he pulled me down close to him, and whispered, “Can my teachers come with me to my new school?”. Awww…. Today his teachers said he was telling them all about his new school (which he has visited twice now) and how it is close enough he can walk to school. (Although not by himself quite yet…) He has been telling them a lot about it apparently. He’s talked about it more to them than he has to us for sure! They also said he was more active and played harder today than he had for awhile. The last few days when we have been counting down how many days he had left at the old school, his resistance to going to school dropped each day. He had been so upset about school the last few months, it just started to melt away once we told him he was switching to a new school. His teachers also mentioned at least one parent had said they were really sad when they heard Alex was leaving because their kid really liked Alex. We did leave a note with contact info for parents of kids Alex played with a lot. We’ll see if any of them contact us. The teachers seemed honestly sad to see him go to. They made him the goodbye thing above. In addition to the words, if you look closely you can see it had pencil drawings of some of his favorite things that he talked to them about a lot. His dog Roscoe, trains, and of course a Companion Cube from Portal. The last few months had been tough for him there, and most of the time they didn’t have him in the right place, so we had to make a change. But it was still a sad last day. More for the adults than for the kids, but hey, that’s how it goes I guess. Alex starts his new adventure at his new school on Monday. He won’t admit it, because he says he doesn’t like any school. But he’s actually been acting like he is a little excited about it. We’ll see how it works out soon enough of course. :-) |
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