Parent Teacher Conferences, doctor follow-up, etc.

We took Ben to his second parent-teacher conference on Wednesday night. His new teacher, Mrs. Rounds, seems to be fairly nice. As usual, Ben is pretty smart and knows his stuff. Mrs. Rounds said she'll ask Ben things if the other kids seem to be struggling and he always knows the answer. She showed us some charting with the last iri testing he took. He was well above average with everything except for segmentation (where they're given a word like table and have to sound each part out separately). He was right at the top of the average section there, so pretty close to being above average. He didn't get the highest score in the school for Kindergarteners this time. He actually was 2nd in his class for most of it, except the segmentation, where he's 11th (out of 22, so right in the middle there). We had practiced segmentation with him at home and he did it really well, so I think he just didn't do quite as well while he was tested. Mrs. Rounds did say that sometimes Ben has a hard time listening and doing what she's asked him to do. She said there have been a couple times where she came close to calling home, but she knew that the conferences were coming up, so she'd discuss it with us then. She said she talked to Mrs. Warnke (Ben's old teacher) and found out about the bean system we had been doing, but Ben keeps insisting that he doesn't need to do the beans anymore, so she's letting him try it without. She also wants Ben to work on his handwriting a little more, mostly with getting the letters the right size so that the uppercase are taller than the lowercase, etc. She thinks that Ben is getting a little bored with some of the things, like when they're still discussing the letter sounds. He knows that part pretty well. He'll be starting in a group that's a little more advanced when they do their workshops so that he can learn things he may not already know. He may start doing a thing with the library where they test him to see his reading level and start sending home books with him to read.

We took Daniel to the doctor to follow up on his pneumonia yesterday morning. His blood ox level was up to 100% and he was looking and sounding better. He still had fluid in one of his ears, but the infection seemed to be gone. He had also regained a couple of the ounces he lost, but has a bit more to go to be back where he was before he got sick. The good news is that we can call him over it, but we just still need to watch him to make sure he doesn't get worse again. He has his 9 month well-baby check up on the 17th, so the doctor will check him again then to make sure he's completely over it.

After the doctor appointment, I took the boys to the zoo. They had a really good time. Daniel had fun sitting up in the stroller and playing with his brothers and they all had a good time seeing the animals and playing on some of the slides and toys they have there. As we were driving away, Chris kept saying, "I want to see more big animals!" I'd tell him that we saw them all and he'd say, "No! I want to see more!" He's been asking me today if we can go back. I may brave it again, since they were pretty good, up until the point where Chris had to use the bathroom. That's when having another adult with me would have been nice.

Here are a few pictures:

The boys are coming down the slide together:


They're playing on the animals:


Daniel is hanging out in the stroller:


This one is just Alex and Chris making silly faces: