Mel’s Mundane Meanderings

It’s been a while since I’ve updated on the kids!

Gabriel is now 5 years and 7 months old. He can write his letters, although he often gets a few of them backwards (especially “N” and “S”). He has taken quite an interest in writing things and spelling lately – just yesterday he tried to write “please” in chalk on the driveway. He spelled it “Pes,” and when I showed him how to spell it correctly, Mikaela looked at the word and told me it needed a “Z” on the end. Smarty pants.

Anyway, Gabriel loves playing with our alphabet magnets and is getting pretty good spelling simple words by himself. I wish I could say the same on the reading and math fronts … he still struggles to count to 20 without mistakes, and his reading is going VERY slowly. He knows the letter sounds, he just has a hard time putting them together. I am giving him some room on this, though .. it could really be part of his processing issues.

His speech continues to get clearer. He is understood about 90% of the time by others … a day I thought would never come! We’re still working on proper sentence structure, i.e. saying “I need to go to the bathroom please” instead of “I hafta go bathroom.”

His curiosity and sense of wonderment thrill me. I have a lot of hope for his future. He asks a lot of questions lately about where things come from, what things are made of and what the purpose of things are (what are eyebrows for? where does (tap) water come from? what’s this made of?)

His sensory integration/hydrocephaly/speech/add/ocd issues … I’m really beginning to think he may just be a bit of an odd duck, but not to a severe degree. I mean that I don’t think he has nearly as many issues, and nearly as severe issues as I thought he did. Thank God. That really did not come out well … but do you know what I mean? He is a sensitive child, and almost all of his lingering issues revolve around that. So I guess I’d say his problems are now emotional, and even then not really out of the range of “normal.”

He does have a few hangups. He hates having his hair changed. If it’s spiky he gets upset and sometimes cries. He HATES getting water in his ears and often fights me in the shower if that happens. And he still has some mildly “OCD”  tendencies, but I think they’re really more in the range of someone who is a perfectionist, just like his dad.

Mikaela has more good days than bad. She sure can cop a major attitude though. I shudder to think of her teen or even her tween years. You woudn’t think my tiny 25-pound 4-year-old could slam a door with such ferocity. I swear one of these days it’s going to fall off its hinges. And of course she gets punished for it … but she does it anyway.

Mikaela is now 4 years and 3 months old. She is still tiny … but she’s finally in a size 3, so I know she’s growing! Honestly, I need to re-weigh her. She must be going through a growth spurt, because she eats all the time right now.  I mean, seriously. She eats 3 meals and possibly even up to 5 snacks a day. Maybe more .. I guess I should count! I have to struggle to make sure she’s eating healthy snacks, though … at least for most of the snack times. She sure does love junk food!

Mikaela is smart. She’s definitely reading, although I would still call her a beginner. She is bad about guessing instead of reading the word. She is trying to write and spell just like Gabriel, although I think Gabriel has her beaten in that area so far… and I guess he should since he’s older.

Mikaela loves going onto starfall.com and playing their beginning-reader games. She knows how to get to the site, click around to where she wants to go, and close the page down afterwards. Gabriel enjoys playing on that site as well.

Mikaela is super cute. Pictures never do her justice. She’s just so petite and adorable (OK, I’m biased, I know) … but seriously we get comments from strangers everywhere we go. It really honestly makes me nervous that she attracts so much attention. I don’t take my eye off of her in public for a millisecond … and I’m sure I won’t until she’s much, much older. But anyway back to her cute-ness … she also has this very girly high-pitched voice that my mom always says sounds so cute every time she calls. My mom got a shock when we were in TN for the wedding though!

My parents, kids and I had to stop off at Wal-mart so I could get some camera memory the day before the wedding. I decided to leave the kids in the van with my mom while my dad and I went in. Well, I don’t know if the kids forgot my mom was there (she was sitting behind them) or what .. but they pulled out their rudest, crudest potty humor. In front of my very proper mother. Thankfully, she thought it was somewhat funny (or so she says), but I was mortified.

Back to Mikaela … I really want to get her involved in dance lessons or soccer or gymnastics soon. She’s never had the opportunity to do anything like that and I really think she would enjoy it. Anyone have any advice for activities for this age?