M&Ms

M&M is a particularly cute word when it's garbled by a 2 year old. He holds up each one and happily yells, "lellow!!!!!!" He'll repeat the correct color if he's told to say it correctly. Meghan kept asking him for one, and he kept telling her no in a tone of voice that seemed to say, "you gotta be kidding, lady!"

My family descends on us tomorrow. My grandparents are flying in from Montana for a week, and they'll rotate between our house and my parent's house. Grammy is very anxious to see the boys, so I'm glad that she'll be able to spend several days enjoying them.

Chocolate chip or ?

Aaron says "Ki - co" for "cookie," which is one oddity I'll be sorry to lose! He still says "Dye-dye" for "Bye-bye" and is very enthusiastic. Today his big update from the last post is that he said, "Me yump on Mommy!" Of course he did. Both Austin and Emily think he won't have more than another 6 months of speech therapy. I'm curious to see the results from the assessments they do in the next couple of weeks - I'm not as optimistic as they are, even though he is making progress.

Emily did say that we need to start to encourage Luke to drop some of his sweet speech habits, like "b-struction" and "I b-iscovered something" and "lellow (yellow)". I giggle each time he says one of those things, but I guess he does need to move on to more mature language. Drat.

Rahj is doing beautifully in math - he started a mainstreamed class today. I've been surprised and impressed by him when I'm working with him at home. He learns the content quickly and seems to have a genuine aptitude for math. I wonder if he's showing his really intelligence level now that he's more secure and less anxious.

Feeding Aaron

Aaron still loves cat food - I came into the office this morning and his mouth was overflowing with cat food. He eats handfuls of it. He also makes Ollie very happy by filling the bowl several times a day.

His language is really improving. He just said, "Mommy me ump! (jump)" before jumping off a chair. This morning he ran around talking about his "geen uck (green truck)" and he's making lots of conversational sounding babbles.

Literacy Moment

Just reading Luke his bedtime stories. The story had "extra" written as "X-tra" and he sat there for a couple of minutes going, "eeeeehxtra" then told me tha "X-tra" was spelled wrong because he knew the starting sound. A couple of minutes later he saw the word "cherry cobbler," and told me that the cobbler was ok but that I was saying the word "cherry" wrong, because it should start with a "c" sound. He seemed to really understand when I talked to him about sound blends. Big change in his reasoning.

Maybe I will keep being their mommy

We've taken laundry basket rides, lots of variations, with all three boys playing:

Bad weekend

Big blow up from Rahj, Luke is being sneaky-mean to Aaron, and Aaron's throwing tantrums for candy and having night terrors. Rahj is grounded and will lose flexibility for awhile, Luke is having long conversations with me about kindness, and Aaron just gets to be a toddler. I'm not sure I want to be a mommy this week.

Hill Chicken

Ah....history repeats itself. I had Luke on his bike in our neighborhood while I took Aaron for a walk in the stroller. Going down a gently sloping hill, Luke said, "On these types of bikes, a new rider gets kind of nervous." He suggested walking, but finally agreed to let me help out by holding his handlebars.

My mother used to roll her eyes at me when we went bike riding since I was so scared of going down hills.

Aaron's Bath Entertainment

finally got this loaded -- enjoy!

Sugar Fiend

This morning I came in from voting to Aaron screaming and sobbing. He was standing in the kitchen pointing at the Halloween candy bowl, demanding that for breakfast. Rich said no, and Aaron gave him a healthy tantrum.

Same story with snack. Meghan gave him a little handful of marshmallows mixed in with his healthy snacks this afternoon. He ate just the marshmallows then sobbed when she told him that he needed to eat the rest of his snack. She pulled him out of his chair, and he went to the counter and pointed and the candy bowl, yelling "can-dy!!!!" Meghan wasn't any more sympathetic than Rich, but I'm definitely blaming Aaron's sweet tooth on Rich - genetics?

Misc Luke

Driving to gymnastics today:

Luke - "Punch bug!"
Me - "How do you always see the VW bugs first?"
Luke - "It's because my eyes are so good looking."

I may have written this before - it cracks me up every time he says it, so I'll be sorry when he loses this verbal idiosyncrasy.

He's at gymnastics right now climbing on the pommel horse. All of the 5 year olds have their shirts off (in theory so they won't have t-shirts covering their faces when they do handstands, etc.), but really they just look so cute with their little bellies and ribs sticking out. Luke spent the morning riding his bike around downtown La Grange while we walked, and he was so proud of himself.

First Bike Ride! and Halloween

Of course I forgot that the video can't rotate, but here's a sideways view of Luke's first bike ride at home:

We went to Larry Carson's house after church for a picnic. He has several grandchildren who are older than Luke, so he had several bikes in his backyard for kids to use. Luke was delighted to find one with training wheels and he spent most of the afternoon riding around on the grass and down a gently sloping hill. When it was time to leave, Larry gave him the bike! Luke is SOOOOO excited. He rode lots of circles around the driveway (and even fell off of the brick wall into our little garden), then rode the mile loop around our neighborhood.

We managed to get through Halloween with only one big bowl of candy from the parties and trick-or-treating. The Hendersons had a big neighborhood party full of adults that were fun us, but the kids really wanted to trick-or-treat. We went to about 10 houses, but we'll have to start earlier next year.

Rahsjay surprised me yesterday. We were on our way to swimming lessons and Luke was trying to convince me to let him carve a pumpkin by himself with a knife. His biggest argument was, "Rahsjay got to do it when he was 4." Rahsjay immediately responded with, "But that's because my parents didn't care about me. I'm not being mean, it's just true." He's amazing sometimes - realistic and honest about his past, and optimistic about his place in the world now.