Category Archives: Speech

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4 more days!

and I’ll be in Hawaii! Yep, I’m going out this time to join the hubby while he’s on a job at Pearl. My mom’s coming out to watch my boys and visit her mother and sisters, so I get eleven whole days of being a grown-up all by myself. Well, with Robert in the evenings, but he’ll be working all day so I’ll be bombing around O’ahu by myself. I am unbelievably excited, and I know I’m going to cry when I set foot on island ground again. Yes, I won’t be home for Chistmas with my boys, we’re going to do Christmas on the 30th when both Robert and I are home again. We often delay Christmas since he travels so much, so I didn’t think it mattered. It’s an arbitrary date, and they have no idea when the 25th is anyway. They’ll be making cookies with Nana, they’ve been talking about it for the past week.

Anyway so the little men are doing well. D’s been showing off by doing his alphabet forward and backward. He types “neville” into YouTube looking for videos on Neville (of Thomas the Tank Engine). He’s very good at surfing YouTube for Thomas and Disney videos. He can write and type his full name. He can type C’s name but can’t write it yet. C is very much like my brother, and rather than writing his full name, he does the essentials: “crs.” My brother used to just put a big D and go “they’ll know it’s me.” Ah boys. D runs around saying eyeball a lot, that’s his new word, but he says it “ee-baw.” He’s still not good with consonants and tends to only say the vowel part of the word. C likes to assert his authoritah as the older brother (by one minute!) by yelling at D when he’s done something bad: “No no, buh!” “No mo, buh!”, shaking a finger at him with the other hand propped on his hip. He says no more (“no mo”) a lot and always calls D brother (“buh” or “ba-duh”). C also has a stalker in his class, one of the little girls loves him and is up in his face constantly wanting to kiss and hug him. His teacher says he tells her “no mo!” C is also quite the little YouTube clicker, and turns it to full-screen view for them.

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Word count

C can say (in real words, not just sign):
no
more (“mo”)
Na (for Nana)
buh (for brother)
uh-oh
Ma
Da
go
uck (yuck)

D can say Ma, Da, buh, Na, go, and mo.

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Like I said…

I’m an erratic blogger. I’m really much better on my Vox blog.

We spent the end of the summer as itinerant vagabonds. Drove to Utah, hung out at my mom’s for a while, drove to Bremerton to visit the hubby (he was on a job at the Naval base there) for two weeks, back to my mom’s until their birthday, then drove home. I posted some video clips on my Vox a few days ago.

So the boys are four now. C has two new “real” (spoken) words: more, and NO, which he loves to say. He’s a disagreeable child, what can I say. D is still the strong, silent type, and picks up chicks everywhere he goes. He enjoys massages with essential oils, romantic train rides, and headbutting.

Here’s a new pic:

You know, if the Blogger photo upload interface didn’t suck so much, I might blog here more often. The whole sticking-the-photo-at-the-top-no-matter-where-your-cursor-was is really annoying.

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Well damn!

It has been a while.

Updates:
Still no talking. Sign vocabulary is VERY extensive now, I think they’re up over 100 words. They know some that I don’t recognize, which is frustrating. I try to describe them to my sister(s) for translation – handily, Little!Sis is in school for Deaf Studies and Older!Sis is a speech pathologist and has a deaf roommate, so both are fluent in ASL – but sometimes the signs D’s teacher shows them are either not standard or totally made up. Still only saying a few actual words: ma, da, buh, uh, and eah (mama, dada, brother, no, yes). They make sounds and attempts at words but mostly they just sign.

Anyhoo. They’re out of school for the next two weeks, then they’ll be attending a speech therapy preschool during the month of July, four days a week (from 8-12). Then they have August off and back to their usual preschool in fall. They like their prek teachers and most of the other kids will be coming back, and they LOVE to ride the bus, so they seem happy. Mom keeps pushing me to homeschool but I think they need more than I can give them until they’re talking.

They had their end-of-year testing for their new IEP, and both tested with (of course) severe expressive language delays, but they were right on target for receptive language, fine and gross motor skills, and tested at a 6 year old level cognitively! At three and a half! So that was cool.

I want to have their hearing tested again. Last time it was tested they were only 18 months old. They’ve been evaluated for autism and don’t have any markers for it according to two neurologists, apparently there’s nothing cognitively wrong, and their hearing tests two years ago came back with no hearing loss or distortion; there just doesn’t seem to be any explanation for the not talking. Except that they are stinkers and can’t be bothered to try, maybe. It’s frustrating though, because sometimes I can’t figure out what they want, or I misinterpret them. But, there’ve been a few times when we said something to them and they responded in a way that showed they misheard, so I want to have their hearing checked again, just to be sure. I don’t know if I have to go through the pediatrician to get in there, so I guess I’ll call her in the morning. She’s very awesome so it won’t be a problem. The children’s hospital audiology department on the other hand… Oh well, they’re the only ones in Hampton Roads who can do it, apparently.

So that’s where we’re at. I’ll post some pics next.

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Cuteness in sign

The boys were fighting (as usual) and C hit D, so I made him apologize. He signed “sorry” and then they hugged, then C looked at me and signed “friends” “more”. I said “are you friends again?” and he nodded. Same thing happened in reverse today, probably because I cooed over it so much when C did it, so D had to say “friends again” the next time C hit him and apologized.

D was snuggling with me and I asked if he was my big boy, and he signed “pumpkin”. I said “oh you’re my pumpkin!” and he smiled.