Back in the blog & Aaron discovers his power

Our Internet service has been out of service for a week, following a week of crazy work schedules, so it seems like this is all terribly out of date. I'll try to get some photos from the last couple of weeks up this weekend.

Aaron has had a small explosion of vocabulary. Today when I came home he told me "elbow" while pointing at the appropriate body part, asked for a "Opsicle" from the freezer, and then proceeded to say "NO" about twenty times. This is the first day I've heard him really use the word "NO" and he seems pretty pleased with himself. He's reached the point that he will mimic words on command (Luke treats this like a party trick -- "Aaron, say ____") and we can't count or list his words anymore. At the the football game on Tuesday he said "Me go" and pointed to the parking lot when he was tired, so he's working his way into simple sentences. He is mixing up B and D sounds and regularly leaving of the first sound of words, so that's what Austin is focusing on right now.

At his 2 year check up we found out that he's fallen lower on the growth chart -- down to 5th percentile for weight and 10th percentile for height. The nurse practitioner checked, and there is an increased chance of kidney reflux in asymptomatic siblings (Luke had kidney reflux, but eventually his body matured and the valves began working correctly). We're going to test for this at Kosair on Tuesday. It's an awful test - catheter and a giant x-ray machine, but I learned my lesson with Luke and requested a mild sedative for Aaron for the pain and scare-factor. Rich is taking Aaron and I think he's the one who really needs the sedative -- he's very anxious.

Raha is doing incredibly well. After a couple of pretty serious bumps in the last month, he's been really cooperative and fun recently. The conflicts were primarily testing and arguing with me, but we've worked through those issues fairly well. His grades for the first term were: A in Language Arts, A in math, A in science, A in art, B in social studies, and B in P.E. We're really proud of him, especially since this is the first time he's had mainstream classes. He's almost done with the football season and didn't make the basketball team, so our schedule should relax a bit.

We're joining the Pewee Valley Presbyterian Church. Jenny and Mitch invited us, thinking that Raha would like their active and racially diverse youth group. He LOVES it and is enthusiastically going to their activities a couple of times a week. The adults in the church are wonderful - interesting, welcoming, and very willing to argue their way through a Sunday school class on contemporary issues. The church building itself is lovely. It's small and simple - a couple hundred years old with a giant pipe organ.

I'm presenting at the KY Math Teacher's conference on Saturday. Not prepared, overwhelmed, situation normal I guess.