Hello everyone, and welcome to What We Dunn.  I’m Fletcher Dunn, and I’ll be your host for today, filling in for A’me, who is on vacation and will be back Monday.

So far we have managed to not starve, lacerate, or poison ourselves.  Alltogether, a pretty successful weekend!

The big event of the day was Trav’s tee ball game.  Here’s a pretty epic swing (alas, a miss).

Eventually (thanks in no small part to an oversize parental influence I’m sure) he got to first base.

He hurt his leg in some way, as you can see, but that wound has since healed once it was discovered that we were going to the playground.But I’m getting ahead of myself!  So anyway, in tee ball, that same basic thing happens about 20 times (10 for each time), and that’s what you call an inning.  Except for the last batter, they empty the bases and everybody on base runs home.

Despite the spectacle of athleticism on on the field, Elliot chose to entertain himself elsewhere.

And I spent the whole time trying to figure out how to get this guy a drink, without a sippy cup, since I had forgotten them.  He kept trying to put his mouth around the whole top of the gatorade.

He also walked around a out.  And whined because he was hot a thirsty, but I choose not to document that bit.

One thing I did choose to document, however, was our manifest studliness, via this selfie:

After the game, we spent some time on the playground.

Here is an animated GIF of an adorable boy:

This morning we had pancakes.  So far there has been only one meltdown, owing to unmet expectations vis-a-vis syrup distribution.

We went to church, and the boys are playing a sortof pokemon-like video game called Nino Kuni; they don’t seem to realize that are spending the entire time READING AND DOING MATH.

And I am sure everybody will be thrilled to know that last night I reached level 98 in Bloodborne (40 Arcane!) and cleared several Pthumerean chalise dungeons.

That’s it for this edition of What We Dunn.  This has been Fletcher Dunn; A’me will be back next time.

For what it’s worth: it’s hard to get feedback about your kids. We get a lot of negative feedback about Elliot, regarding his behavior. I largely ignore it and don’t seek it out. Today I got two different kinds of feedback, which was interesting. The first was from his teacher at school asking if Elliot had taken his medication this morning. She has no sort of plan in place to address his behaviors, even though I’ve given her ideas, he’s on a 504 plan, and she supposedly has a background in special ed. 

The second was from the substitute teacher at church (not written directly to me). I had told her to have me paged if he didn’t behave, because he was not on his ADHD medication and he had already had a largely inattentive weekend. Anyway, we get good reviews about his behavior so rarely that I had to post this one.

From classroom teacher, who depends solely on medication for behavior management: 
Elliot is having a very difficult morning.  Just wondering if he took his medication this morning or if there is something that could be the cause. He is being very silly, perseverating on things(can’t move on or let something go), very talkative and loud, lots of talk outs and   some of the behaviors  I have been seeing.

Yesterday we hung out at a park. These guys are so much fun. They are all good friends with each other too. 

Elliot wrote this note for himself, but I thought it was a good reminder for us all. I also appreciate the use of a proper colon by a 7-year-old. 

Also last week he told me “It’s really hard to find a person I want to marry.” 

Here are Trav and his friend Blake playing dead. 

Stuart is 15 months and wearing pajamas that Travis wore at age 3. 

Georgia and Mitchell arrived, and all was right with the world.

Here’s the view from the hotel. Not bad.

Here are some monkeys we found at the Maui Aquarium.

Movies!

We never quite saw the teeth, but we had a good time!

Three weary hikers.

This beach bum did NOT want to touch the sand. Made it much easier to keep track of him.

Hmmm… what’s wrong with this picture?

This guy…

This was our breakfast scene every morning. We had everything from Loco Moco to waffles!

Stuart had a sweet helper who kept him in line.

One of the locals kept us entertained while we waited at the airport.

Yesterday, because we weren’t tired enough from the birthday party, we skipped church and went to the symphony instead. The Seattle Stmphony does a special show a few times a year where they have one musician come play kid songs, answer questions, and interact with the audience. It’s called Soundbridge. We saw a French horn player. The big boys sat on bean bags at the front of the room while Stuart stuck his fingers into every hole and crevice at the back of the room. During the question time, Elliot asked the musician to play his highest and lowest notes. Then the musician played portions from Harry Potter, Frozen, and Star Wars. Everybody was happy. 

Elliot: We’re playing a game where we separate the stufties into habitats. So far, we have forest, tundra, jungle, air, farm, African, Australian, arctic, underwater, and space.