Also Big

James is not the only one who has been putting on weight -- we're pretty sure Mattie had a recent growth spurt. He seems taller and heavier to pick up, and he's now somewhere in between 31 and 32 lbs.

He also continues to amuse us with the things he says.  The other day we were at the playground, and he was turning the steering wheel.  He wanted me to sit in the (pretend) back seat.  I asked where we were going, and he said that we were going to Cousin Daniel's house.  I said, "Are we there yet?" and he said, "No. It's a long way.  You should take a nap."  Then he wanted me to repeat the question over and over, until finally he got to "Almost" and "We're turning onto Daniel's street!"  (You can't say the kid doesn't pay attention!)

The other morning I had their Caillou show on pause while I changed James's diaper, and since it had been paused for so long, it flipped back to the regular television channel.  Matthew came in and told me that he went in to the living room and the Caillou was gone.  He said,  "I couldn't believe my eyes!"

Also the other day, I was putting him in his high chair and I guess I was saying or singing something about "put you in the seat, strap you in" and Matthew added, "Two cute boys, you love them.  You forgot that part."  :)  So I repeated it and he was happy!

Monday in the Park

The boys enjoyed an evening playground trip with Grandpa!

25

Woo-hoo -- James weighed in at 25 lbs, 1.5 oz on our home scale this evening. (I think this would put him on the bottom of the 3 year-old growth charts if he were a girl; since he's not, he'd have to gain another pound in the next two weeks to make it onto the charts. I'm not holding my breath on that one, but we are still very pleased with his progress!)

In another step forward, Matthew actually drank some milk out of a cup at the restaurant today.  (He wanted to pour the rest of it into his bottle to drink in the car, but hey, it's a step in the right direction.)

The boys were happy to see Grandpa this evening.  Since the boys didn't nap, Matthew had an early bedtime, but James stayed up to demonstrate his ball-throwing skills for Grandpa.  :)

Picnic

The boys got to eat some of their dinner outside the other day. (They were off to a good start, and then decided they'd rather explore the yard than eat, so we had to go back inside. We told them to sit down and eat, and they did that nonverbal thing where they both looked at each other as if to say, "Are you going to listen to them? No? Okay, me neither. Let's go!")

Thanks, Grandma!

Grandma doesn't waste any time -- the Clifford book that Matthew had asked for arrived in the mail today.  (Thank you, Grandma!)

I told Matthew that Grandma had sent the book he asked for, and his eyes lit up.  "Is it a gift?  Can I hold it?"  He then immediately sat down and started "reading" it:  "I'm Emily Elizabeth.  My favorite dog is Clifford."  (Then James took out the tape measure and Mattie decided he had to measure the book instead...)

Average Again

James's hearing therapist sent over the results from the standardized assessments she had done.  The norms for the test are for children without hearing loss.  For the expressive and receptive language, James is scoring right around the 50th percentile. For articulation, he's at only the 36th percentile, although that test wasn't particularly reliable because James was saying the words very quietly, so it was hard to tell what sounds he was or was not pronouncing. 

On the one hand, the fact that his language skills are on par with children who don't have hearing loss is great.  On the other hand, that does not reflect his potential.  (I am still really angry at his ear doctor for costing us so many months of lost hearing time.  James will catch up, but he didn't need to be falling behind in the first place.)

He has been talking a lot at home recently.  He is definitely in a somewhat contrary phase, but mostly just in what he says:  his favorite sentence these days is, "No, I don't want to [whatever you just asked him to do]."  Of course, he generally does this in his typical cheerful way. He also answers "no" to most questions, but he frequently doesn't mean it, and contradicts himself in the same sentence.  For instance, in response to something like, "Do you want a cracker?", he'll say, "No, I want a cracker."

He loves watching Dora the Explorer these days, and happily participates by saying "map" or "backpack" or "Swiper" and pointing out all the locations.  He and Matthew were singing the "we did it!" song in their bedroom the other day.  :)

Our favorite recent sentence was when we took him out of his high chair, and he climbed right back in and said, "I want some more food!  On a plate!"  (Of course we obliged!  He then ate two or three goldfish crackers and then was ready for his bath.)  He's been doing pretty well with eating (including half a taco the other night).  I suspect it's because we scheduled an appointment with his feeding therapist; even though he doesn't know about it, he always seems to do better when there's an appointment with K on the horizon!  (The last couple of times, though, we've cancelled the appointment in light of his progress, which we won't do this time.)

Not Quite

Ever since our museum trip, Matthew has been asking about his birthday.

"Am I three yet?"
"Is it May yet?"
"Is it still April?"
"Why I'm not three yet?"
"Can Grandma come to my birthday?"

He also tells us that he will eat cake and blow out the candles. He wants a toy car for his birthday ("an orange one with its own engine").

Matthew now likes to make suggestions for how his bedtimes stories will go.  His favorite at the moment is about a nice werewolf who lives in a house in the forest.  The werewolf is friends with Matthew (due to a previous story where Matthew helped the werewolf find his way home), and one day the werewolf invites Matthew to go swimming with him at the lake, and Jamesie and Stanley and Mommy and Grandma come along.  The werewolf picks them all up in his train (which he acquired in a previous story after building train tracks to visit his Mommy and Grandma).  They go to the lake and Mickey Mouse is there ("all by himself because his friends are at the grocery store buying food for Mickey Mouse"), and they all go swimming together and then build sand castles and have lunch and go home. 

Mike also tells him "the werewolf and the beanstalk" (as you might guess, the werewolf's name is Jack and he trades his cow for some magic beans...)

Horsemen

The boys had fun playing inside with Daddy on this rainy day! At one point, James fell off, and Matthew changed the words to "Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed" (..one fell off and bumped his head) to be "two little boys riding on the horse." Of course, this song then inspired James to take a break to jump on the couch and sing along!

They both love to sing these days, although James doesn't quite have all the words to most songs yet (he skips a line here or there). Mattie tries to sing along to a lot of the songs on his TV shows, which is cute. :) They love to accompany themselves on the drum (each one takes a drum stick).

Air Mike

We hadn't planned to go the museum today, but Matthew wanted to go, so we agreed. And believe it or not, we saw new things today that we hadn't done before! One of them was this trampoline setup. Mike had a great time! (Matthew was disappointed that he couldn't go on it -- you have to be at least three. But there was no one else around, so the attendant let him and James bounce on it for a minute or two without the harness contraption, just us holding their hands, and he was delighted.) The attendant told Mike that usually it was pretty crowded, with typically a 20 minute wait, so we got lucky!

James, by the way, was disappointed when we first got there -- he ran into the room where the robots were last time, and asked where the robots were. But they had a new wolf exhibit down the hall, so that made up for it.  :)  (We saw that when we first arrived, and on the way back, he said he wanted to see the "doggies" again.)

The water features are open again, and if we had let him, Matthew probably would have spent the whole afternoon playing with the pump and bucket system pictured here.  Jamesie preferred going to see the farm animals.

We rode the train as usual, but this time we went in the "caboose"!  (No different from any other car, but at the end -- and James wanted a 6 this time, and the caboose was 26.)  Matthew seems to know all the attractions around the train route by heart ("fox!  mirror people!  eagle's nest!"), and James is pretty good at it, too.

We also found the lake with the remote control boats.  Mattie was really excited about the idea of sailboats, but the real thing wasn't quite as engaging for him.  Admittedly, it was getting late by then and he was pretty tired.

And of course, we couldn't leave without seeing at least one of the dinosaurs.  (In the picture here, Mattie is pointing at me saying, "You can give the dinosaur some milk!")

More from Mattie Bear

Matthew was saying good night to the family pictures last night.  "Good night, Isaac.  Good night, Baby Seth. Good night, Mommy. Good night, Daniel-when-he-was-a-baby.  Goodnight, Jamesie.  Good night, Other Boy."  (We had to stop him at that point and tell him that "other boy" was a picture of him!  I'm not sure he believed us at first.)

Tonight Matthew was looking at the back of his Clifford book, which shows pictures of all the other Clifford books.  He pointed to the Christmas one and said to me, "You should tell Grandma to bring us this one.  You can send her an email."

(Grandma has lots of Clifford books at home and has offered to give some to Mattie and James -- in fact, the book we were reading was from Grandma.)

Pump

We've been giving James tube-feedings (usually about 8 oz) at night for a few days now.  It's hard to tell how it's going.  Logistically it's a minor hassle (starting it early enough so we can turn it off before going to sleep). Fortunately the very annoying beeps from the pump don't seem to wake up the boys.  (Though I am quite nervous to type this because I don't want to jinx it.)

It seems like he's drinking somewhat less milk during the day (which is what the GI doctor predicted when he said don't bother with the pump a few months ago), but we're going to give it a little longer and see what happens.  (I kind of feel like since we gave in and went back to the pump that he should suddenly be magically gaining large amounts of weight, but of course that's not too realistic!)

Touch a Truck

I know it's confusing, but the child in the orange shirt in these pictures is actually James. :)

We went the annual Touch a Truck event on Sunday, our first time there.  It was really fun!  They had tons of vehicles set up in a huge parking lot, and the kids could get on and in them.  The boys got to "drive" a bus, see a helicopter take off, sit in another helicopter, go in a firetruck, and sit behind the wheel of a race car.  The race car was Mattie's favorite; we were on our way out, but he really wanted to do it, and despite the line, we didn't manage to talk him out of it.  And he's still delighted about it today!

James was quite at home at the controls of the backhoe, and both boys liked climbing up and down the ramp of the tow truck.  And even though with the sun and the pavement it was probably too hot to be wearing long sleeves, neither of them complained.  :)


P.S.  We called Grandpa B to wish him a happy birthday, but he wasn't home.  Matthew said that we should eat some cake.  Then he said that he wanted to get a present for Grandpa.  I told him that was a good idea and suggested that he could draw a picture for Grandpa. Mattie replied, "I think we should get him a toy car!"

Rockem Sockem

Saturday was the Robot Rumble day at the Museum.  We didn't realize this in advance, but fortunately we got a late start, so we missed the worst of the crowds (and the important part there is that we got to park in the main parking lot instead of having to take a shuttle from the overflow!)  As with last year when we accidentally came on Robot day, the boys weren't all that interested in the robots, except for the one in the top picture here (designed by a high school team, I believe), which threw basketballs. 

But, we enjoyed the usual activities.  We ended up in separate train seats because James wanted to sit on the nine car and Matthew wanted one with a seven (which turned out to be 17).  :)  Mike and Mattie got the better end of that deal, because the little girl in car 8 screamed her head off most of the trip.  (She was probably only one year old, so you can't blame her, but it was not pleasant!)

Mattie wanted to go to the Butterfly House, so we stopped in.  The butterfly release was finished, but apparently this large butterfly here just wasn't ready to fly yet and had been passed around to several people.  Mattie remembered just how to do it, holding out his hand for the butterfly to climb on.  Jamesie followed suit, but we had to remind him not to pet the butterfly's wings!

Happy Birthday, Grandpa Barr!

 We hope you have a fantastic day!

Evaluated

James went for his speech evaluation on Friday.  They did it in a really nice way -- he got to play in a fairly natural way, while the speech pathologist interacted with him asking questions and observing, while her intern transcribed everything he said with the sounds he was using (for instance, that he says "gump" instead of "jump"). You have to be a very good listener to be in that line of work!  The SP was really great; she was wonderful with James, and also explained things to us as she went and at the end.  And it didn't hurt that she would spontaneously comment on how wonderful he was to work with and how cute he was. :)

We don't know the formal results yet, but my impression is that they think they will be able to qualify him for services based on some of his speech patterns (sometimes dropping final consonants, deleting weak syllables in multi-syllable words, and something else that I don't recall exactly. It might be the fact that he doesn't usually use words like "is" -- he'll just say, "Matthew running!" instead of "Matthew is running!).  

The classroom observation also categorized him in the "at risk" category -- not for academic skills, but for social interactions (not conversing with classmates, being less assertive, using more gestures than words with adults).  Again, this all comes down to speech and hearing issues, not other social skills deficits. I didn't fully agree with all of their ratings on that observation, but I wasn't about to argue with it, since I also think that any help he can get on that front will only be a good thing.  He's definitely a lot quieter at school than at home.  And while I don't think that's a big deal in the 2-year old class, it probably changes a lot when he gets into the 3s.  

So, I'll be happy if this preliminary info ends up being the case for the IEP meeting (the meeting where they decide what services he's eligible for).  I think he could benefit from help in those areas, and these criteria don't call his cognitive skills into question.  

Hoops and Bubbles

Our neighbors had an impromptu dinner gathering on Friday (which was more elegant than the planned parties at our house!)  It was a nice break after a week of medical and evaluation appointments.  

And even though R's daughter has long outgrown toys that would interest Matthew and James, her hula hoops and bubbles were a huge hit with the junior set.  (She also let Mattie water their plants, which was one of the highlights of his evening.  Mike's highlights were the grilled sausage and tour of the house renovations!)

Class Picture Day

 What handsome boys!

Also today, the school district teacher for the hard-of-hearing came to visit the preschool (as part of the evaluation process). She was concerned that the classroom wasn't the best hearing environment -- it's loud and has a lot of echoes, so she is worried that James might not be able to hear his peers well. (I hadn't noticed that in my visits, but she actually did sound readings, and it's about 65 decibels when the kids are just doing relatively quiet activities -- the recommendation for classrooms is to be more like 35 db.)  He'll be in a different room next year, and there may be steps we can help them take to improve the situation -- we'll see.  But the saving grace for this year is that, at least in my observations, the 2-year-olds actually don't talk to each other much at all in the classroom, and when they do, it seems to mostly be along the lines of, "That's my toy!  I was playing with it!"  So I don't think he's missed much on that score, but it's good to be aware of for the future.

Second Opinion

We saw the new ear doctor today about the dry skin in James's ears.  It's a longer drive than to UNC, but the parking is easy, and we waited only 5-10 minutes to see the doctor, which was awesome!

I had to laugh, though, because when we told him about James's medical history, the first thing out of his mouth was that he had been at Duke before going into private practice, and "for auditory processing issues, we always sent people to UNC, because they're the best."  (Yes, yes, we know.)

He took a look at James's ears and said they looked okay right now, but that if they started getting gunky that we should call up and bring him in.  From what we described of his symptoms, there are three likely causes: contact dermatitis (skin reaction to something like the hearing aid earmold), a yeast infection, or a fungal infection.  And all three have different treatments, so there's nothing he can do until he gets a culture of whatever it is.  But the fact that there's a plan for actually diagnosing what's going on was very refreshing!  It would be lovely if we didn't need to follow through with that plan, but I think we'll probably need to at least with his left ear (the right one seems to be okay for now).

Up a Tree

Auntie Nora and Uncle Adrian have a great climbing tree in their front yard. James loved it! Matthew and Daniel did too, although I think they wouldn't have cared about it if they hadn't seen James having so much fun.

(The other day at the playground, James was holding on to the rings, and lifted his feet up above his head and did a flip with only a little assistance from me.  One of the other moms asked if he was in gymnastics.  I said, "No, but maybe he should be!"  Clearly being underweight isn't slowing him down in the strength or energy department!)