Although I don't want to diminish Henry's achievements, or my pride in him, I thought I would expand on the statement "he has mastered all of his goals" by telling you what some of them are. Many of our goals at the beginning of the school year were really basic stuff- basically getting him to participate in the classroom setting without hurting someone. Some of his goals were:

-Henry will transition from one activity to another w/no protest
-Henry will take turns w/others and respond to questions in group situations
-Henry will tolerate using the same space and materials w/peers with no aggression

The goals related to his knowledge were things like stating all the sounds of the alphabet, associating the quantity of a group to the correct number, etc. I never had a doubt he could do those things, although after last year I did wonder if a teacher would be able to get past his behaviors to get the knowledge out there.

So, still a great job for Henry, but I didn't want to give the impression that he had mastered his goal of writing a novel or something!

Henry had a rough day on Friday. The boys were heading to my parents' house for the weekend (we had a wedding to go to last night) and Henry and Tommy were both SO SO excited. I try to give Henry plenty of advance notice when we are going to do something special. We wrote it on his calendar and crossed off the days until Friday. Friday morning they both wanted to go right now, but I explained that we would go after work and school, at dinnertime.

Here's what his notebook said Friday afternoon:

Henry had a rough day. He kicked a student in the face (though not hard, it left no mark), & also went after another student. This hasn't happened in forever :( He did apologize to both students.

There was also a math worksheet in his bag with this note written on it:

Henry had a bit of trouble-mostly just refusing to do this.

I e-mailed her and said that I thought it must be related to his excitement about the weekend. I also told her that when I asked Henry about it he told me that he was being Scar (from the Lion King). Here was her response:

I agree. Henry seemed VERY excited about going to Grandma and Grandpa's house. Additionally, one of my assistants was out today, and there was no sub available. As a result, two of my students were unable to go to K inclusion as they always do daily. All of these things factored together could have proven to be a very big change for Henry in one day. As I said, he did apologize to the student. He told me he was being the rat from Lady and the Tramp, though. Exactly what happened was the student approached Henry as he was laying in Quiet area and said, "Henry, my birthday is March 16." This is when the kick happened. However, since nothing like this has happened in such a long time, I don't think we need to become overly alarmed. Thanks so much for your email, though. Have a great time at the wedding, and I'm sure Henry is loving Grandma and Grandpa's house!

I still wish I knew a little more about this. Why was Henry so ticked off about the kid's birthday? Maybe he talks about his birthday all the time? Kind of funny.

The wedding was pretty fun last night. I bought a new dress and shoes which I haven't done in a long time. The only thing is, unfailingly, at every event like that, I am ready to leave before my husband is. It's like I have this social tolerance timer, and when that time is up, I just shut down. Bill, on the other hand, seems to feed on the social stuff, having more and more fun as the night goes on (I realize that this is how most normal people respond to a fun evening with friends!) It was a wedding of someone I work with, so maybe I'm just over spending time with these people, since I do it all week long. Or I just don't get out enough, so I'm out of practice.

I talked to my mom yesterday around 10 am and the boys were eating post-breakfast cookies. Always a good time at Grandma & Grandpa's house.