Words

I don't have any recent pictures of the boys. I certainly can't post a blog without at least one picture so I pulled this one out of the archives. It was taken last January at Owen's baptism. It's amazing to me how much both of the boys have grown this year.

Ms. Jennifer, our Parents as Teachers educator, stopped by on Monday for a quick session with the boys. While playing with Owen, she found that he has superb fine motor skills and his gross motor skills are excellent as well. She asked if he has any new words. I told her that I think he is now saying "night night" but wasn't certain. As she read a story to Ben that included the words "good night", Owen perked up and said "nigh nigh". We now have confirmation that he added a new phrase to his vocabulary. He has also started walking just a little more. Crawling is just so much faster!

When my friend, Kim, delicately brought to my attention several months ago that Ben might need to be seen by a speech therapist, I was initially very defensive. He has had issues with stuttering in the past, which comes and goes. This is pretty normal for his age. I am around him all the time, so of course I feel like I understand him completely. I have been discussing this with Ms. Jennifer during our last few visits. She thought he was dropping the beginning or end of certain words and medial sounds in others. I had previously scheduled Ben's three year old screening with the school district for Friday. At the screening it was determined that speech therapy will probably be in our future. He can make the sounds, he is just not using them.

Even though he may need help with his pronunciation, he has a wonderful vocabulary. While he was flinging his beloved "Puppy" around the other day, I warned them that if he wasn't careful, "Puppy" would get a hole in him and I would need to throw him away. His response was, "No-you can't do that-he's "Dog's" best friend!". (That's "Dog" in the picture above.)

I haven't been too wordy lately myself with my posts. I have recently found out that my Sister-in-Law, Julie, is going to be facing chemotherapy again in the near future. My heart is breaking for their family, and it is difficult to find the right words these days. "This sucks" are the ones that come to mind frequently, but remaining positive and keeping faith, I feel, will be much more helpful. I just don't know what to say...