End of Year Activities

So much has happened in the past few months. So, I better start documenting.

1. Ben spoke his first words.

His first official word was "ball". Hopefully, that's a sign that he'll grow up and become a professional baseball player and buy his parents a shiny new house. Since then, he's added "dog", "tree", and "bye-bye". Lezlie swears she heard him say dinosaur. But, I'll believe it when I see it. It's pretty cute. Every time he sees anything that looks remotely like a dinosaur, alligator, tiger, etc., he sticks his hand out and says "Roar!" But then again, he does the same thing with his giraffe.

2. Ben has taken a liking into pooping in the tub.

This is just a natural occurrence now. Part of it has to do with my wanting to get all of the work done as soon as possible after getting home from work. Cook food, feed kids, and then bathe kids. Those last two don't go well close together. Maya is a good investigator and usually spots the dirty deed quickly and tells us. Part of the problem is that he's so constipated all of the time and the hot water helps him out. We've tried straight juice, applesauce, and other things but he still struggles to get it out.

3. Maya started speech therapy.

We've noticed that Maya has had trouble with her speech for probably a year and a half. And, we've passed these concerns onto her Parents as Teachers worker, Marge. From what I understand, it is very hard to get help early on due to the strict requirements. But, when kids turn 3 the funding and requirements change. So, once Maya turned 3, Marge quickly recommended Maya for an evaluation. First, they checked her hearing. That was fine. Then, they did a speech evaluation. They noticed the same things we had. She tends to leave off the ends of words. And, she substitutes a lot of consonants with the "b" sound. So, she was officially accepted to receive speech therapy twice a week for a total of one hour. And, they even come to the day care.

We were definitely relieved that she was finally gonna get some help. Part of me thinks we should have done something ourselves earlier. But, the therapists seemed confident that they could get her on track before she started kindergarten. We were also glad to find out that her therapist was Linda, Maya's choir teacher from church. It's not that she has trouble getting to know other people. It's just that we can easily get status from Linda every week at church.

4. Maya changed classrooms at daycare.

This is something that has kind of bugged us, but I think in the end, it has all turned out good. About a month ago, the daycare started splitting Maya's time between 2 classes. I would bring her in the morning to the 3 year old room. Then, Lezlie would pick her up from the 4-5 year old room. We initially thought that they were doing this to shift kids around due to classroom size limits. But, after a little prodding, we found out that she was being moved because Maya and her best friend often get into it with each other. This is a perfect explanation to us, but what bugged me the most was that they seemed to be hiding this information from us. Maybe this wasn't the case. Who knows? Anyway, she seems to be happy in the new room. And, her new teacher asked if it was ok to copy her speech homework and work with her on it. That's something her previous teacher never would have done. And I have to say that it's good that she'll be hanging around older kids that are a little more mature. I'm not saying that Maya is an angel. But, the 3 year old kids definitely fed off of each other with respect to orneriness.

5. Maya started Sunday school and "sort of" participated in her first Christmas program.

Our church gave us the option to enroll Maya into Sunday school. The age limit is 3 and Maya barely made the cut but we decided to give it a try. And lucky for us, she loves it. If we say we're going to Sunday School, she becomes very excited. They start Sunday school with kids from all age groups singing and dancing. And, then they go to their classrooms, do a lesson and then go off to do a project at a separate station. For a busy kid like Maya, this is great. In the meantime, Ben plays in the nursery and we sit and converse with the other parents.

The kids practiced for the Christmas program for the past month. And, Maya was set to sing "Go Tell it on the Mountain" with actions also. Then, I took her to the official rehearsal and saw that the 3-4 year old "lambs" were going to be front and center of the church. My first thought was "That's not gonna work out". And I was correct. She didn't fuss. She just really didn't understand why Momma and Daddy weren't up there with her.

I'll leave you with a couple short videos from the Christmas program.