week ending nov 19, 2006

Week ending November 19, 2006: Alex had his appointment with a speech therapist who works for the county. After nearly an hour of testing him, she said that his speech skills are actually advanced for his age. She had a chart that described which sounds 90% of kids have by which age, and Alex can do some of sounds that many kids don’t acquire until they are 4 years old, such as letter combinations like “st” in “stop”, etc. Chloe seems to have remarkable memory skills and will remind of things that we said one time weeks ago. For instance the other day we were riding in the car and out of the blue Chloe said, “When I grow up you are going to be the grandmother, and my baby will be named Strawberry Shortcake”. I was really impressed that she remembered that I’ll be a grandmother when she has a baby. Another example was when I ran out the car for a second to grab something that we’d left in there. When I got back into the house Chloe said “Mom, are you going to jail?”. I said something to effect of, “jail is for people who do things that are against the law. Did I do something against the law?”. She replied, “you left us alone”. I then recalled a conversation we’d had weeks before when she wanted to go somewhere and Alex didn’t. She had suggested that I should take her where she wanted to go and Alex could stay home. When I asked who would stay with Alex she said he should stay home alone. I then told Chloe that children must always have an adult with them and if I left Alex home alone that would be against the law and I could go to jail. So, she must have remembered this conversation and worried that since I’d gone to the car and there was no adult with her in the house that I would have to go to jail. This week Alex pooped in his underpants 3 times with no attempts to try to find a potty, so I temporarily gave up on potty training him and put him back in diapers. He now hardly ever asks to use the potty, but we had a talk about it and then he did a poo in the potty, so maybe it was only a temporary set back. This week we took the kids to a children’s museum called Port Discovery. The kids really liked it but I saw kids coughing and sneezing all over the place. It is just a matter of time before the twins start developing cold symptoms. This week we got the kids’ picture taken with Santa. The strange faces they are making are what they look like when we ask them to smile. They just don’t know how to fake a smile.