May catch-up

Finally getting around to posting about things that happened two whole months ago. I really need to get back into this blogging thing. It seems to be my outlet for things, and I'm finding myself needing that outlet from the things that are going on in my life right now. Anyway, here's what happened in May:
My sister and I took five kids, five and under, on an eight hour weekend trip to northern Minnesota. It was crazy, but fun. We handled it like champs and we celebrated with a few drinks. We even went to Pizza Ranch with them all during dinner rush. That was probably the stupidest thing we could have done.
We said good-bye to daycare boy. He's going to go to a new sitter next school year, as I decided to get out of doing daycare. I'll be honest, I don't miss him one bit.
Fletcher had his last speech session for the 2011-2012 school year. At the end of our session, Ms. Diane told us that she had a new territory so we would be getting a new speech teacher in the fall. I'll be honest again, I cried. I liked Ms. Diane and will miss her. She did great things for my boy.
We celebrated Chase and Codi's second birthday with them at the zoo.
It was a fun day full of cousins bonding.
I signed up to be an independent sales consultant with Thirty-One. I'm enjoying it so far. It's nice to get out of the house without the kids and hang out with the ladies.
We got two big ash trees cut down in our front yard. This may not seem exciting, but the mess those trees made was awful. I've never been so happy to see a tree cut down.
Adam made me a garden box for mother's day. It's awesome. He did a great job building it and doing all the work to prepare me to plant in it. I will say that my veggies are growing nicely, just waiting for everything to get bigger so we can pick it.
Pictures may not be in order of what I wrote about, due to the blogger app on iphone, but you're all smart and I'm
sure you can figure out which picture goes with what. The end.

fletch update-2

fletcher had a speech session last tuesday with ms. diane. right around 3:30, a different car showed up in the drive. i thought it was the new coordinator arriving a bit early to sit in on a session with fletcher. once ms. diane pulled in, the two got out of their cars and came to the house. fletcher greeted them at the door, like he usually does. the new lady introduced herself and ironically, she is a diane as well. they came in diane1 sat on floor and began doing what she does and diane2 sat and observed. daycare boy's dad came so i had to step out for a few minutes, but when i came back in the room, diane2 began asking me a few questions. she was asking about his words, how many he has and how he says them. diane1 and i were asking him to do different things and different questions so he would 'talk' for diane2, so she could hear him and understand what diane1 and myself have told her about him. at this point, diane2 was referring to lip sounds, throat sounds and tongue sounds, and how they each have to do with the way fletcher says certain words. while he was playing, she noted that his cognitive behavior is right on with his age by how he was playing and that she would say this speech issue is one of two things: his hearing or the relay from brain to mouth. she did go on to say that she was a speech pathologist and that she would probably be joining the team, which means he would probably get an additional two days of services. i was pretty thrilled about that and asked when this would happen, because additional one-on-one help would be beneficial for him. she told me that it would be written into his IFSP at the 6 month evaluation, but if i wanted the meeting sooner, i could request that for early october. i am quite confident that i'll be making that request the next time diane1 shows up on september 15th.

it was a pretty boring session, however, i did get a few questions answered and some good news for the future. i just hope fletcher continues to move forward with his progress and that eventually everything clicks and he gets the whole talking thing. very few people understand what i am going through, but i would almost do anything to hear him ask 'why' a hundred times a day, or to say something completely off the wall that has me rolling on the floor laughing. instead, each day, we repeat ourselves over and over to him and do the word activities that ms.diane gives us to reinforce his letter and word sounds.

adam and i can tell that his speech has improved since we started this, but sometimes we don't feel like he is making the strides he should be. he does have a list of about 35-40 words he has used, unprompted, but he doesn't use all of them on a regular basis. he can be pretty stubborn and unwilling to communicate or say stuff that we know he can. he just looks at us and laughs or shakes his head no and says, 'oh', which is 'no' to fletcher. my strong-willed, stubborn, little boy is definitely in that terrible two stage and let's us know what he wants, whether he talks or not. i guess i should be happy we can understand him as much as we do.