Ben took a box cutter to the boys' rug today. Tyler threw up in the middle of the night a few days ago, and unfortunately, my cleaning efforts weren't good enough. So instead of throwing the "spot clean" rug entirely away, we shortened it. We'll see how long it lasts now!
Thanks Nana and Sue Sue for the wonderful rug that has lasted a pretty long time, don't you think? :)
These boys are silly! They dumped out all the Hot Wheels and parked them in straight rows. I sure love when they play well together!
The following post is going to be pretty boring to most of you..........I want to keep track of Tyler's speech therapy sessions, so I'm going to type his weekly session notes here so I have a reference to how he's doing.
At Tyler's 2 year check up back in October 2009, Dr. Kelly recommended I call First Steps about Tyler's speech delay. He said at age 2, children should be putting two words together, and Tyler barely had a vocabulary of 5-10 words all together. So, we called First Steps, and within about 6 weeks, Tyler was starting therapy once a week in our home. Our speech pathologist is awesome, and we've really enjoyed getting to know her. She comes once a week to our house and interacts with Tyler through play. Being in his own element really helps him, and he's come such a long way! There's a lot of room for improvement, but he has definitely improved since we started.
So, the rest of this particular post will be all of his session notes since he started therapy back in December. His therapist takes notes while we are playing, so these evaluations are written by her.
Date: 12/9/09
Service Summary: Tyler is happy and ready to play. Reading a book and introduce signs for book and turn. He repeats "hooray" "mine" and "tweet tweet." Introduced a touch cue for M in "more" and t t t for "turn" and he repeats the sounds. Really trying to repeat words. Discussed ways to help Tyler with his speech and had mom try sound cues with Tyler. Used "no ime" in protest while playing with trains.
Family Ideas: Collect labels and work on picture list to develop words
Plan for Next Session: Overemphasize sounds in words
Date: 12/16/09
Service Summary: Mom reports that he's been making some choices with cereal and snacks. Use touch cue for M, P, and he's not too interested. Overemphasizing sounds in words. Modeled help and he did a word approx. of it. Uses "uh huh" to answer some questions. Labels the color blue, uses "boo." Repeated "bike" after a model and said "beep beep" on own. Discussed ways to help at home with his speech.
Family Ideas: Continue overemphasizing sounds in words.
Plan for Next Session: Bring poster with refrigerator items to reinforce words.
In January, the Souther family took a huge family trip to Orlando to see Mickey! It was so much fun to hang out with the whole family, including cousins who live in Florida. Tyler and Adam had an awesome time!
In the photo below, I took this picture in our kitchen. The frame on the left is a picture of Ben and me at Epcot in 2000. The frame on the right is a picture of all four of us in the exact same place 10 years later, 2010.
Adam's preschool has a cute little sock hop dance each year as part of an outreach program. The kids bring in new socks to donate to the needy - very creative idea! It was fun to dress Adam up as a 50's guy, but I should have found some gel for his hair rather than mousse.
For the past few weeks, someone has been running a fever. First, it was Tyler for a few days. Then, Adam ran a fever for 5 days straight. Two days after Adam was fever free, tyler's came back. So, I was slightly alarmed by the return of tyler's fever. I don't usually jump at calling the doctor, considering I just pick up the phone and call my dad. But something was telling me to take Tyler to the Take Care Clinic at Walgreens just to check his ears and chest.
The NP decided to treat Tyler for pneumonia!! Good gracious! He really seems fine, just sounds bad when he coughs. We kid around with Adam that he sounds like he has been smoking a pack of cigerettes when he coughs.
Does this look like a sick child??
Tyler is such a compassionate little boy. Every day after his nap, he goes to the pantry to get fruit snacks. But he doesn't walk away until I hand him a pack for bubba, too. So sweet!
We had so much snow this year! ( and sometimes the big snows come in March, too, so I shouldn't say we're done yet). We had a record total for the year somewhere around 30-33 inches (usually average around 25, I think).
Adam loved it......Tyler hated it! Tyler stayed in the garage a lot while I was shoveling the driveway while Adam ran around with the neighborhood kids.
Here are a few pictures I took....
The snow blob....
