The Weekly Review: Week 28

The weekly review will look a little different this week just because I feel like changing things up a little. This time you get what comes floating off the top of my head. :-)

The Weekly Annoyance:

Facebook changed everything around again and I'm not particularly fond of this newest version.

The Weekly Indulgence:

I'm watching fall television pilots over the internet. I very rarely have the time to watch tv anymore, but prior to having children I loved checking out all the new shows each fall. Now we don't even subscribe to television. I do have a hulu plus account and lots of the networks make their newest shows available on their website and so I have spent way too much time this week checking out some new shows that I enjoyed and several I thought were pretty awful. Still, I had fun and isn't that what's really important for leisure time?

The Weekly Admission:

Someone, who shall remain nameless, had their school pictures come in this week. I admit it. I snickered. If you could just see the facial expression involved you'd snicker too. How can it be so cute, and yet so funny at the same time?

Weekly Coolest Toy Ever:

We found Michael's birthday present. It is two months early, but I stumbled upon it on Amazon and it was just so perfect. Apparently Lego has a whole separate educational line. Who knew? I certainly didn't. In that line they have a Duplo set called tech machines. This is a set designed around the concepts of air, land, water, and space. The set comes with lesson plans for a teacher. The thing that is unique about it is that there are screws built into the duplo blocks. So when you assemble the vehicles, you lock each piece together so that they can actually be played with without falling apart. I think Michael is going to love it. It's a shame I have to hide it for the next two months.

Dawn of a New Era

And so begins sibling sneakiness...

Part 1:
The children were playing "sleepover" upstairs. I heard thudding feet coming down the stairs and I overheard Michael say, "We need to go to the basement without Mama seeing us." He says this five feet away from me at full volume of course. He's just old enough to start being sneaky, but still unsophisticated enough to think that if he can't see me, I can't hear him. Ava echoed, "without Mama seeing us". I actually thought it was all pretty funny and kept my back to them as they "snuck" around the corner to the basement stairs. I managed to not laugh out loud as Michael pulled Ava away rather loudly when she almost came the wrong way (towards me).

Part 2:
I put the children down for nap. Michael first, and Ava second. I close their doors during nap. Michael's door has one of those child protection devices on the inside doorknob to keep him from wandering when he should be sleeping, but Ava's does not because until recently she didn't wander.

I came downstairs and began to settle. I love naptime. I love the quiet and the moments that are completely mine. Then I heard feet coming down the stairs. And giggling. And shushing. Michael said, this time whispering (loudly), "Shhhh! She'll hear us!" Apparently Ava had left her room and let Michael out of his and the two decided to go exploring. I deliberately shifted in my chair making it creak. Michael said, "Quick, she's coming!" and then I heard thudding feet heading back upstairs.

I waited a few moments to give them time to get back upstairs. Children who were experienced at this game would have each gone to their separate rooms and pretended to be asleep. My little ones both headed to Michael's room and were playing when I got up the stairs. I escorted them both back to their beds and reminded them that naptime isn't playtime. I actually sat in a chair in Ava's room for the five minutes it took her to fall asleep when she stayed still for that long. Then I slipped back downstairs for a second time.

Speech Sample - Suspected Childhood Apraxia of Speech - 25 months

This is a bit of a therapy session I was doing with Ava on 4-4-11. We were using a few of the Kaufman Cards. She had just turned 25 months old.

In the previous sample, Ava used the following consonants: /b, d, t, m, n, w, j/. All but one of those (mama) were used in one-syllable CV words.

In this sample Ava produces five different two-syllable words. Four of them were imitated correctly and one was imitated incorrectly, but still with a two-syllable non-reduplicated word. She uses /b, d t, p, m, n, h/ in this sample. She has added the /p/ and /h/ syllables in the six weeks since the last sample. She has also moved from productions that were primarily the CV syllable shape to productions that are C1V1C2V2 in syllable shape which is much more complex.