Moves in Curves

Chickens hatching their eggs:

Killing pygmies:

Juice is m’num:

My kids turn 5 today. It’s a strange thought. It doesn’t seem like they should be this old. They had pancakes for breakfast, I made a train-shaped cake and put their names on it in red frosting (the cake didn’t cook properly in the middle, stupid shaped pan), and they seem happy. It finally stopped raining so I want to take them somewhere, but unfortunately it’s Memorial Day so most places are closed.

C says he doesn’t want to be five, because it’s not his favorite number. He wants to be four. D is cool with being five.

Project Alpha likes to sit on me when I lay on the floor.  I tell him not to sit on my back cause it hurts me, and now he’s been sitting (and wiggling) on various parts of my back, butt, and legs, and asking me “Does that peel good, Mama?” Usually I’m like “No, it doesn’t feel good, get off me” and he moves to another spot and repeats the procedure. Tonight he scratched me with a graham cracker (those suckers are sharp)  and was like “Does that peel good, Mama?” Sigh.

Weapon X likes to tell me he’s going to keep me “porever”. He told me after the graham cracker incident above, “Mama I won’t hurt you, I just hug you and kiss you.” Before you aww too much, he also likes to take flying leaps at me unexpectedly, usually landing knees-first. This is a kid who’s going to jump out of planes someday with a Navy SEAL team, I just know it. When I was pregnant, X hid from the ultrasounds for a long time so we couldn’t see if he was a boy or a girl, so my brother nicknamed him Weapon X. Upon reflection, this was oddly prophetic.

They’re done with speech therapy for the summer now, though I still do the constant pronunciation and grammar reinforcements of course. We’re leaving on Tuesday for three weeks in San Diego with the Hubby, then we’ll be back home  for like a week before school starts. They’re doing speech therapy at school, it’s supposed to be twice a week for half an hour each time. School speech therapists don’t get as good results as private therapists in our experience – they don’t always work with the kids according to their specific diagnosis, even when they’re told to in an IEP. So we’re in the pool for the local university clinic, which is the only private therapy we can afford. We did therapy there during July and saw some improvement since they used apraxic specific techniques. I’ll be pushing the school more, as usual, to do what’s best for the boys rather than what’s expedient for them.

It’s hard sometimes, but they are making improvements, and the neurologist was positive about their future, which apparently he’s not normally very positive. I quite liked him, but the school STs told me they usually get parents complaining. I get along with doctors, even though I don’t trust them. The boys’ dentist told me he was glad I wasn’t one of those moms who freak out, that I kept it together and was calm, when Weapon X whacked his mouth and impacted a tooth (he was doing a flying leap at a friend’s house and landed on her coffee table. He makes me tired).

So that’s where we’re at. Hopefully we’ll continue to see leaps of improvement through their kindergarten year.

Boys playing pretend tonight, Project Alpha being the daddy and Weapon X the doggy:

Alpha: You can’t go to Washington with me, doggy. You have to stay here.

X: There no dog food in Washington?

Alpha: I have to go to Washington. Good-bye.

The boys had a good time at gymnastics after all.

We got there a bit early, so we sat in the bleachers and watched a class of tweens doing stretching exercising and junk. The boys watched them for a few minutes and looked around at the girls working on the uneven bars and stuff, and I could see the little gears working in their brains. Finally D turned to me and said, “Mama, why there no boys?” I was like, uh…. Boys do gymnastics too. They were the only boys in their little Parks & Rec class too. Basically the entire boys in the building, barring dads and a baby or two who were waiting for little girls to be finished. Yep.

So, I sent them into the class, which it turns out I’m not allowed to be in for (haha! An hour to sit quietly and read a book with no one touching me or wanting me to get up and get them a popsicle/sandwich/drink of water!). I had forgotten my book so I sat and watched belly dance videos on my iPod until they came out. They said they had a great time and the teacher said they were really good. They always are for other people.

D says he has a new girlfriend in his gymnastics class. He’s a pimp.