The Weekly Review: Week 76

SLP Resource of the Week

Rebecca at Adventures in Speech Pathology has put together a great beginning of the school year post on 10 Things You Need for Articulation Therapy. The post lists the 10 things along with links to free resources she found browsing the web to give you materials in the 10 areas. I particularly liked the beautiful, accurate informational handout on the hierarchy of speech therapy Rebecca linked to in #3 from Mommy Speech Therapy.

Ava this Week

As we were walking to school one day this week, we came across some art that had obviously been traced into the setting concrete by some adolescent males. Ava stopped, entranced by the foot long line drawing of male genitalia before her. Then she excitedly shouted, "Look Mama! Someone drew scissors on the sidewalk!" I sure was grateful she interpreted that picture as scissors especially given that she decided to shout her observations to everyone walking by on the street.

Weekly Michael

Michael is a conservative soul who tends to learn well from his mistakes - sometimes too well. He was trying to keep up with his running sister one day on the way to school and fell, scraping the palms of his hands. I helped him up and comforted him. The next day, as he could tell Ava was gearing up for another spontaneous run, he cautioned the family, "Now, we can't run anymore on sidewalks because we can fall and scrape our hands." I haven't been able to persuade him to run again. He'll discontentedly watch Ava and I run ahead, but refuses to break out of his conservative, safe pace even as the distance between us lengthens. I don't know how to encourage/reassure him. I worry about that boy sometimes.

Weekly Weight Loss

This week I'm down 1.6. Taking last week's bump up into consideration, that's an average weight loss of a little less than half a pound over the past two weeks. Given that we had out of town guests for an extended weekend and a couple of extravagant meals here and there I'll consider this a win. It's nice to be back on track though.

I've also started walking the kids to school in the morning weather permitting. I spend 30-35 minutes (round-trip) walking and so that adds some consistent activity to my routine. We usually have a great time. We examine rocks and flowering vines. We talk about the dewdrops shining in the sunlight. We say hello to the construction workers setting up for their day's work patching the road. We discuss sparing the lives of the bugs on the sidewalk rather than squishing them. We discuss and practice staying aware of the traffic around us and safe street crossing procedures. All in all, it's much better family time than driving.

This Week's Special Event

I'm beginning to have senior moments. (And I'm not all that "senior" as my 40th birthday is still well on the horizon.) I typed out this section heading with something in particular in mind and then promptly forgot what I was intending to write about. Let me just say - that is darned irritating. Oh well, sorry about that. :-)

Have a great weekend everyone!