12:12 12/12/12

Pretty special day, 12:12pm on 12/12/12. It will only happen once a century, and this century you spent that special moment in your first day of Preschool!

Miss Aubrie (SLP) was going to have you wait to the new year to come, but she decided that making a friend or two before the new year would be great. Funny thing about your first day of Preschool, you were the only child that wasn't scared to leave momma and daddy to go to class.

Your played with sand, read a book, played some games, made a very glittery craft in which you are super proud of and insisted goes on our fridge, and you even got to snack on some popcorn and hot cocoa! Needless to say, you didn't want to leave.

All the teachers were very impressed how much you would repeat, they say it is a good sign that you are interested in speaking. They were amazed all the animals you knew, and the sounds that go with each and every animal! But  they couldn't stop laughing when they asked everyone to clean up, without being directed you immediately began singing "clean up, clean up, everybody do your share" while picking up the chairs and stacking them. You made momma proud, even if i don't understand why you think the chairs were making the room messy!

The homework Miss Aubrie gave us to work on during the break was "Yes" and "No" questions. When I ask you questions like "is Gage a boy?" you like to respond "boy!" in stead of "yes!" Don't worry we will get there, you are catching on so quickly these days!

Lately...

Lately, your favorite animal in the world is an elephant. You follow me around on all fours make elephant noises, or high pitched squeals, and wiggling your tiny nose. You love Diego, he is the coolest animal rescuer on TV. You sleep til 10am everyday. You LOVE chicken and been known to pick up an entire chicken breast by hand and eat it. You think all belts and workout bands are snakes. You love to wrestle dad, and know better not to with mom. You are officially potty trained and only have 1-2 accidents a week, mostly at night followed by a big dinner with lots of drinks. You are constantly fake sneezing just so you can say "bless you." The cold weather has nothing on you, I often find a door wide open and you missing shoes playing outside. You have been known to play in the snow for hours, after the sun has gone down, playing "polar bears" while mom and dad watch you from the window where it's warm. You love to take small bites out of all the apples or eat half of a banana and leave the other half for mom to find. You love nursery and seem sad when we say you have to sit through sacrament first. You have the hardest head of anyone I know, and  you take basketballs nailing you, metal faucets Attacking you, and the ground finding a way to your head like a champ, with no tears. You still cry when i cry, and often need to be consoled after i turn on the scary vacuum. You need a toy to accompany you at the store, and you usually find a stuffed animal in the first 10 seconds, but you gladly put it back when we are ready to leave. You will share everything but your trains and your toy whales, you have made it very clear that Asher is not allowed. You like to sleep upside down in your bed, with your feet up on your headboard. You have the most sweet heart, and the wildest imagination. Two and a half is pretty great, for both you and me!

speech

If you can remember, at the beginning of summer most of your vocab consisted of animals, and the few commands you knew were only understood by momma or daddy. Dr. Schmidt wanted to check back at the end of summer, and if you were still not putting words together to make sentences he recommended we get a few things tested so we could get you caught up. When the end of summer came around, not enough progress was made, so the testing began.

You passed your Health exams with flying colors. Everyone seemed amazed that a kid so active and strong could have undergone a heart surgery. No surprise there!

Your Hearing exam was an interesting experience. I thought for sure you would be scared and unwilling to cooperate, but momma thought wrong. You sat on my lap in this little room cluttered with creepy animals and blinking lights. For what its worth, if I was two I would have been scared. Every so often little chirps went off in various corners of the room. You swung your head to and fro to figure out what animal could be making that noise. It was a a pretty fun game, so much so that you started jabbering all about the animals chirping and forgot to listen for the next one to make a noise that on one occasion I was asked to quiet you down. I love your enthusiasm, even if they didn't. After all was said and done you did amazing and have no hearing problems!

Later that week Jaque came to our house to do some tests. She worked on gross and fine motor skills. problem solving skills, social skills, responsive language, and expressive language. I bet you can guess on what you aced? You see, in order to qualify for Early Intervention, a program to help you get on track before you are three, you needed to test low enough in at least one area to be considered a severe delay. You aced all the motor skills and scored low enough in language to qualify for the program.

While you were being tested both mom and dad had a strange feeling of pride and fear. There was so much excitement for doing well on a section of the test and a also a fear that you may not qualify. Glad that it is all over, we couldn't be more excited that you get to work with Aubrie on your speech for the next couple of months.