The Other One

So I noticed lately that my posts have been very Cary centered.  Cary takes up a good chunk of time and I love giving it to her, but I have TWO children.  Both have special needs and both are so important to me.

A lot of people have been asking about Marvin.  How is he?  What's he up to?  Does he still wear the glasses?

Marvin has his moments, but all in all, I couldn't ask for a better brother for Cary.  He is patient with her, involves her in his play, and most of all just loves her.

Here he is.  I think I posted this picture already, but I just love it.  He is so awesome with her!

Marvin also continues to thrive in school.  Who would have thought that the die hard Montessori teacher would be eating crow and saying how much she enjoys public school.  At least this one.  Marvin has blossomed this year!  He does well in class and now that I am not his teacher, our relationship is so much better.  It was hard being teacher and mommy.  I was not always enthusiastic about the role, but it had good parts to it.  This year his teacher is an awesome woman who works her  tooshie off to make sure the children learn, grow, and have fun.

As V-day was rapidly approaching I broached the subject of cards.  Marvin and I have been making homemade cards for years now.  It started out with the fact that he just didn't like store bought cards. So when he was the only child I humored him and we had fun making them.  But this year I just didn't feel like I had the energy or desire to do so.  So when I started talking about buying them his face fell and the lower lip started quivering.  So I caved.  And I ended up being glad I did.

Now here is my little disclaimer before I go on with the story.  I AM NOT trying to say that you SHOULD make homemade Valentines or that what we did is superior.  We always make our cards and bake goodies for the teacher.  It is a special thing for us.  It does not mean that I have tons of time on my hands either.  I probably have less than you:).  In fact while we were doing this I had laundry piled all over the place, the rabbit cage needed cleaning, and my bathrooms were a disaster.  But spending time with Marvin is precious so I took a breath, closed the bathroom doors, and let it go.  I guess I would rather say that I spent time making memories and special things for people we care about than saying I cleaned pee.

Now that I have rambled on long enough about that, back to the original story.  Marvin and I gathered rocks, paper, glue, and glitter.  Say what??  Well we took the idea from the Artful Parent.  Plus with a five year old anything involving rocks and glitter is fun.

 First we cut out the hearts and added glitter.  We put in the child's name so it read "Chris you rock."  Aha, now you may see why we need rocks:).

 So here is Marvin painting glue on rocks and glittering them up.

 Here are the rocks.  He had fun and I will be cleaning glitter out of my kitchen until the end of time.

Here is the finished product.  It isn't mushy, Marvin is not into mush.  Plus he says you can keep a rock forever, candy is gone until you poop it out.  (Did I mention he is not into mush?)

He also insisted that his teacher get the biggest rock.  What teacher hasn't wanted a giant rock to throw at things when you get aggravated  hold papers down with.  We also made her cookies in case she is not into rocks.  Which means I will be hauling everything to school tomorrow (Cary has a doctors appointment Thursday).  I did mention less time somewhere, didn't I?

But in the end it was worth it.  Spending time with Marvin doing something we both love makes it worth it.  I feel like sometimes he gets the short end of the stick and I don't get the quality time that I would like with him.  He is such a great kid that he never complains, but I don't want him to be resentful of his sister so I grab these moments when I can and leave the pee for another time.