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!)

$#*@

James went to the doctor today, for what we were hoping would be to start scheduling the surgery to get his G-tube removed.  Instead, the surgery team was not happy with his slow weight gain, so instead, they want us to start using the tube again to make sure he's getting enough calories. Ugh.  We are so disappointed and discouraged.  The other suggestions they gave us are pretty much the same things we've been trying to do for a year, and which don't seem to make a lot of difference.

Hiding

The boys enjoyed finding the (empty) eggs in their own private egg hunt on Easter morning (the day after the party).

Daniel wanted to hide the eggs by himself for Matthew and James to find. The result is the second picture here!

Matthew wanted to hide his own eggs. So, he hid them all inside this Elmo cart. Then he closed the lid, and said, "Where are my eggs? I'm searching for them!" and then, of course, opened the lid to find them all. :)

You will see from the first picture that we utterly failed to get a cute picture of the cousins together with their Easter baskets.  Matthew ran away, and Daniel and James either had their eyes closed or some strange expression in most of the shots.  Ah well!

Happy Easter!

Hope you all had a very happy Easter!

We are back from a wonderful Easter weekend at Cousin Daniel's.  The boys enjoyed playing with their cousin and his friends (and in Matthew's case, also enjoyed playing with the Dustbuster), and had their first experience with dying Easter eggs.  :)

They also loved the Easter egg hunt, once they got the idea of it. (Matthew just wanted to stop and examine the first couple of them.  "Look, a purple one!  What's inside it?  Can we open it?"  We had to tell him there would be time for that later!)

Daniel did continue his holiday tradition of getting sick (fever and throw-up the night we arrived), but fortunately some medicine and sleep helped quite a bit, and he was fine for the party.  

The Architect

Jamesie's towers have gotten much more elaborate lately! (All of the ones pictured here are completely his creations; no help from Mommy and Daddy. I suspect N showed him how to use all the different blocks instead of just making one tall tower, though.)

For the one in the middle, I asked him if he was building a big snake, and he said no, it was a train track.  (He also then put the red triangle blocks together to make squares, which I thought was pretty clever!  They did something similar on the Blue's Clues episode he recently watched, so maybe he learned it there.)

Matthew just wanted to build the same thing over and over -- in case you couldn't guess, it's a helicopter.  The red triangle on top is the propeller.  :)

Jamesie has also been very into drawing lately.  He'll draw something on his little MagnaDoodle, and then ask, "What's that?" and we have to guess what it is.  In the initial versions of this game, he would never actually tell you what it was unless you got it right, just replying, "No, it's not a [whatever]."  (Worst game of Pictionary ever!)  The correct answers ranged from "a line" to "a parrot" to "a goat."  These days he'll usually reveal what it is -- whales, strawberries, circles, butterflies, and rainbows are among the favorites.  His strawberry looks strawberry shaped, and the butterfly looks like one butterfly wing, and the rainbow is an arch.  He can also do a pretty good heart shape.  Of course, he also makes a lot of lines or squiggles that don't look at all like what he claims they are!


P.S.  You may notice he does not have his hearing aids on -- we noticed he seemed to be getting some dry skin again, so we're hoping giving his ears a little break might help head off another round of problems.  Ugh!  Poor little guy!  We're also probably going to try to go see a new ear doctor (since we've already seen that his regular ear doc doesn't have much that's helpful to say about this particular issue, and I'm still pretty angry about how that was handled).

You Say Tomato

 The boys helped Grandma and Daddy plant some tomatoes today -- but they were mainly just interested in using their watering cans!

Fortunately, tomatoes need plenty of water, so they're in luck with having an excuse to bring out the hose on a regular basis.  :)