Milestone Minutiae

We finally met up with Emmett's friend Eden at Brighton today. Emmett and Eden had a great time skiing together. In the morning Emmett took a blue run, and in the afternoon he agreed to take a longer lift to get to runs that were higher on the mountain. Today Emmett wore a watch and met me right on time both times we were getting back together. Luke took two group lessons today. His instructor for the first meeting said he seemed tired and was falling a lot so I was worried that he wouldn't make it through his afternoon lesson. He wanted to try it, though, so I told his afternoon instructor that I'd be near the lift if she needed to drop him. He perked up in the afternoon and had a great class. They started on the bunny lift but near the end of class he took his first trip up Majestic, the lift that Emmett and Eden rode most of the day. He's now mastered "turning on greens" and working on whatever comes after that (turning on blues?). Henry took two na

I've been keeping track, and we're up to something like 25-30. Today I heard a couple new ones. After I told him what we were doing next, ending with, "All right?" he parroted back to me "Right!" I asked him to repeat it and it sounded pretty much the same as his word for "white," so I'm not sure it really counts as a new word. Then I asked him to say "now." He leaned over and shrieked at the top of his lungs, "Now!" Come to think of it, he may primarily experience that word when I'm trying to rouse his brothers from the TV or a video game...

He's definitely using two-word phrases - "shoe on," "shoe off," "hat on," "hat off," and "on mom" (when he was climbing on me). He also understands pretty complicated stuff - twice now when I've asked Emmett to do something, Henry has overheard me and gone off to try to do it. Once I got out a dog treat and asked Emmett to use it to get Jenny locked up in the bedroom. He wanted to finish what he was doing, and in the meantime Henry demanded that I give him a dog treat too. I thought he was just going to feed it to Jenny, but after I handed it to him he walked over to Jenny, showed her the treat, and then walked her to the bedroom before giving it to her! Another time I asked Emmett to go downstairs and turn off the lights. A moment later I noticed that Henry was heading down the stairs. He can't reach the lights, of course, so I followed him and carried him around to the light switches.

On March 4th when we saw had Henry's speech evaluation, he had about 5 words - Mom, bye-bye, yeah, uh-huh (yes), and uh-uh (no). The evaluation was interesting, using play and pictures to evaluate what he understands. His "receptive" language (what he understands) was assessed at the 94th percentile, or an "age equivalent" of 2 years 4 months (he was 22 months at the appointment). His "expressive" language (what he says) was at the 8th percentile, an age-equivalent of 15 months. The report we were sent then helpfully averages the two scores to the 53rd percentile and an age-equivalent of 21 months. The therapist and I talked about what our goals for speech therapy would be - getting Henry's vocabulary to several dozen words. Mostly "speech therapy" consists of being extra excited when the kid talks and trying to get Henry to play with sounds and eventually form words. Since then he's been picking up words pretty fast - I think i

Today I took the boys to Brighton to ski again. Luke took a morning lesson, and Emmett skied with a friend named Eden. Henry spent a lot of time on my back. It was a good day - in his lesson, Luke progressed to the point where he doesn't need tip-clamps any more, and he gets off the lift by himself. After his lesson and a little lunch he was so tired that he slept for a long time in the wooden chairs in the lodge! Next time he wants to take an afternoon lesson too, but I wonder if he'll have the energy. I guess we'll have to find out! Emmett had a little trouble with his skis the first time up the lift, and had forgotten his gloves so there was a little trauma there. It was a warm day, but he kept falling and his hands were cold. In the end, a stranger gave him some gloves and he skied down. Eden's mom found her and returned the gloves while I had his skis adjusted. After he got his confidence back on the bunny hill, he and Eden had a good time skiing together

Emmett was practicing an old song on piano and hit a wrong note. He started again, and again hit the wrong note. Then he looked down, said, "Oh, my bench is in the wrong place!" David sighed while Emmett picked up his bench and moved it a couple of inches to one side. (There is plenty of room on the bench to move from side to side.) When he started again, Emmett played the song flawlessly.

Noticing that I always kiss boo-boos to make them better, Henry has started coming to me for kisses whenever he bumps something, even just a little. He often won't even be crying. If I'm busy with wet or messy hands in the kitchen, he gets impatient waiting for his kiss. In those cases, I started blowing kisses to his boo-boos so he could get back to what he was doing. Since then, I've noticed that sometimes he'll come towards me, but then decide to kiss his own boo-boos. On occasion, he'll blow kisses to whatever got bumped, too.