Boy, oh, boy...  We took Tyler to Children's Hospital on Friday for a follow-up visit regarding his growth discrepancy.  The doctor said that there was no change from November's visit, and to come back again in November for a re-check.  That's really good news; but at some point in his childhood, we do expect to see more changes, and may have to have a surgery done.  Welllll, Friday afternoon I received a call from Nick's principal -- while he was sitting in her office for discipline problems.  Apparently, he's been acting up a bit (hitting, slapping, making fun of other kids) at school, and the teachers were just telling him "no."  Today, however, he "spit a large amount of saliva onto another student in the hallway," and that just can't be tolerated.  They wanted him to go to "time out class."  (Who's ever heard of such a thing as "time out class??""  Anyway, the principal put me on speaker phone, and when I started talking to him about his doing bad things, she said he was grinning.  As soon as I told him of his consequences (no television or video games), though, he became teary-eyed, so I was pretty sure I got the point across.  I talked to him about it again when we got home from school, and he was contrite.  This morning when we were in carline (to re-emphasize appropriate school behavior before arrival), I had him sign the discipline report form, and when I talked to him again about his behavior, he started grinning.  grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr!  I snapped at him and let him know how "not funny" his behavior has been.  I'm thinking about not letting him play tennis today for that, or maybe for at least part of the time...  Not sure what to do!!!

Nick's English is progressing nicely, by the way.  And Tyler thinks his own Russian is progressing - ha!  It's cute, actually.  He's picked up a few things, but mostly just says a lot of "eta" this and "eta" that - ha!  ["Eta" means "this" or "that."]  I'm still very concerned about Nick academically.  Every day he just gets farther and farther behind his peers by not having things taught to him on his level.  He is waaaaaaaaaaaaaay behind where he should be.  I'm worried mostly about his math skills, which are really poor.  When I work with him on the flash cards (multiplication facts), he seems to retain almost nothing from the day before.  Learning disability???

Tyler did great at his golf tournament last week.  We were so proud of him!  He was the youngest guy there.  Out of 16, he placed 11th, so he did beat 5 kids.  He behaved himself so nicely on the course - it was really cool to watch.  He played with a 6th grader and a 4th grader, and he was complimenting their shots during the game.  "Good shot" and "nice putt" he would say.  Awesome.