update on the boys

Okay, so it's been a while. Sorry.....life's gotten a bit busy. Here's a 6-month update......

Sam (aka Duck)
Sam is loving kindergarten this year. His teacher is incredible and we are just so lucky to have had her this year. He loves to tell stories, asks what letters different words start with, and has progressed from squiggles for his name to clearly writing each letter. (the "S" is backward most of the tiem, but it's still a distinct letter) Tonight he sat trying to read Dinosaurs Love Underpants to me. We read it probably 3-4 nights a week and he has the gist of it down fairly well.

We get a new book from school each week that is supposed to be easy enough for him to learn and that's going well. We're workign on the difference between letters and words. Of course "I" and "a" are a bit troublesome, but he's learning that if it's more than one letter, it must be a word. Sight words are coming along. Need to work on that a bit more.

Sam can count to 20 fairly well, though 14-16 trips him up.

Due to his delays and low muscle tone, Sam struggles with his pencil grip. This makes writing a challenge sometimes. His teacher has goen so far as to write the words for him in highlighter so he can trace them. It's a bit easier to see than dotted lines, but at the same time, he has to pay attention to what he's doing because she does use yellow, not blue or green.

Sam will do a "bonus" year of kindergarten next fall. We're all good with that decision and I'm hoping that we'll get him into a program this summer that will help retain the skills he learned, so he can at least not start completely over.

Henry (aka biscuit or biscuit butt)
I don't know how my dad came up with either of those names, I call Henry "turkey" because he's my little butterball. At 9.5 pounds, I think he weighed more than any turkey I cooked during our 5 years in Florida.

Henry is receiving speech therapy services through EI. While not anywhere near the same level of delay that Sam has/had, Henry is behind his age peers. He turned two last month and wow, I guess I'd have to sit down and think about what words he actually has. I mean, it's quite a few. He does a lot of mimicking, which is SOOOOOOOOOOOOO nice to see/hear.

He does, however, have one hell of a mean streak and temper. I think once we get him back in day care, we'll see that improve because he won't be bored. With Sam gone all day at school, it leaves Henry with the run of hte house, which is good that he doesn't have anyone to compete with for Nana's attention, but it's bad because he doesn't have a pint-sized playmate either.

(should have seen them tonight.....they were playing ring around the rosie in the kitchen tonight and aside from Sam going a little fast, they were doing it really well and without fighting.)

Where I think we did a better job as parents was getting Henry tubes much earlier than Sam had them. Sam's were put in July 09 just before his 4th birthday. Henry got them in June 10 at 16 months of age.

Henry's favorite words are cookie, more, milk, and tick-tock (for all faced clocks).

and us.......
Our seventh anniversary is coming up next month. SEVEN YEARS!

There's so much I could write here, but every time I try, I either say too much, say something stupid or I start crying. So, I will tell you this: IT SUCKS living apart. It sucks that we felt we had to make the decisions that were made, regardless of what they were. It also sucks because we are really trying to make a plan to be back under one roof and the finances just never seem to work out right.