progress report

Between parent teacher conferences, well check-ups, and a few other things going on lately around these parts, I thought it might be good to write a little update on the family.

At parent teacher conferences a couple weeks ago I learned that Garrett, while performing academically right about where I expected him to be (pretty average all around, with the exception of his love of reading and his lack of organization skills), is highly sensitive at school (translation: he cries easily). He's kind of an emotional roller coaster at home these days, too, with moods that swing wildly and quickly from belly laughter to high pitched screams of despair, so I guess learning this wasn't too unexpected, although it was a little disappointing to find out that it carries over at school. I'm wondering if this new personality quirk has more to do with his genetic coding, or the fact that 7-year-olds have a tendency to be emotional basket cases in general. Either way, I'm hoping it's something he grows out of sooner rather than later. He's a very bright boy, and I'm grateful for this sensitive side of his, but he needs to learn how to reign it in.

The report from Caleb's teacher, on the other hand, proved that he behaves much better at school than he does at home. At school he is kind and hard working, while at home he tends more to be a button-pusher with a few anger management problems. I have a feeling a lot of his behavior problems stem from middle child syndrome and an inability to handle things well when he's on sensory overload. He seems to be enjoying kindergarten, though it's usually a struggle to get him there willingly. He blames this on the fact that he strongly dislikes the lunch period (it's too noisy which stresses him out). But he's been memorizing sight words and learning to read, which has been incredibly empowering for him. He knows the routine for homework after school and will tackle it himself. If nothing else, Caleb takes his learning surprisingly seriously.

As briefly mentioned in a previous post, Matthew recently qualified to receive speech therapy through the Early Intervention program. His twice weekly sessions started up last week. His therapist his a sweet older Hispanic lady named Miss Betty. I was a little concerned at first over how thick her accent was -- both because of my inability to sometimes understand what she was saying, as well as what it meant for Matthew's speech development -- but so far it's worked out just fine. He's still working on warming up to her when she's actually sitting in our living room, but he eagerly anticipates her visits. Between the time that I started the process with EI to get him services and now, his speech has actually improved quite a lot -- he's saying more words and fairly clearly -- so with Miss Betty's help, we can only go up. As for me, I have thoroughly enjoyed the time I get to spend with Matthew when his big brothers are at school. His current favorite things include ducks, penguins, "Old Street" (i.e. classic episodes of Sesame Street), and fingerplays and singing songs with hand actions, which I in part owe a huge thanks for to his nursery teachers.

Daniel recently went in for his 6 month well check-up. He's growing right along his established curve (weight: 17 lbs 6 oz, length: 26 inches), and has officially (and finally) stopped wheezing. He's a happy baby and recently stopped waking up to eat during the night. He still needs me to come in and soothe him back to sleep occasionally, but it's hard for me to count getting up for two minutes once or twice a night when he'll otherwise give me 10-12 hours of solid sleep. This weekend he cut his first tooth, which explained some unusual fussiness last week, and the world is his oyster now that he's undeniably mobile. This kid, while not technically crawling, is scooting, pivoting, planking, and butterfly lunging just about anywhere he wants to go.

At the end of October we went in for our annual family visit to the optometrist, and this year Blake and I got to pick out new glasses. Even though his new semi-rimless frames are a stark contrast to the dark plastic ones he's been wearing for years, only a tiny handful of people have noticed, and no one has seemed to have noticed mine. Granted, mine don't look all that different from what I had before, but still. We're deciding to take this apparent lack of notice as the fact that our new eyes fit us remarkably well. ;)