2.5 Years

I was thinking the other day about what I did before you came along.  Whatever it was, I must not miss it if I can barely remember it.  That was only 2.5 years ago, but it seems more like eons ago.  I've always felt like I had an old soul, and now it just feels wiser.  You've re-invigorated my life and gave it a new sense of purpose which sometimes causes me to worry.  I worry I may lose myself in a world of choo-choo trains, dinosaurs, and space guns, but in the end the final prize of a World's Best Mom tea cup is just too alluring!  I complain a lot about how tired I am, but I never tire of your face... especially your huge, enviable doll eyes.  You're my crazy kid, and I love you.

Here are your 2.5 year tidbits:

• You're data in support of the terrible twos statistics.  You have a regular temper tantrums and you love to say "No" or "Nononononoooooo"!  One time I kept asking you if you wanted rice (because you're so flighty with your responses) and on the third time you said in the most annoyed tone, "Noooooo!" and a sourpuss face.  I swear I had a split-second flash of a teenager.  All it was missing was the infamous eye-roll. And suddenly I was THAT mom.
• You love your Kindle Fire.  You and your dad can have vegging out contests on the couch with each of your tablets in hand.  Most of the time you fight with your dad for his Ipad because everyone knows that the Ipad is just plain cooler.  Dad usually ends up on your Kindle.
• You're more accepting of bathtime.  Earlier this year I got you to accept sitting in a bathtub without crying bloody murder.  That is - until I poured water on your head (being careful not to wet your face). Let the wailing commence!  Lately we've reached a somewhat happy medium where you're sort of calm in the tub, but you won't sit anymore.  You MUST stand for your entire bath.  Teenage thoughts enter my mind again.  This boy is meant to take showers instead of baths.  If only we can get him to wet his head.
• Two is your favorite number.  Is it because you're two?  I don't know.  But you use it to count "Two, Two, Go!" and you use it to describe a second item when there are two of them.  It's awesome.  I'm trying to get you to respond to the question "How old are you?" but you've been non-cooperative (Please see the first bullet).  Maybe by the time I succeed, you'll be three...
•  You are obsessed with dinosaurs, Dino Dan on Nickelodeon, Godzilla, and sharks (yeah - I have such a boy)
• Tooth brushing is a daily struggle but it becomes World War 3 when I focus on the top teeth.  You say, "No up. Down!"  I haven't checked but I think your molars came in because you like to pull the front collar of the shirt you are wearing and bite on it until the front of your shirt is soaked.  Your favorite T-shirt (Go-Diego-Go) now has a hole.  
• You scream "Mama!" so that I watch and respond to every little thing that you do.  
• We had a small bout where you fought us to go to bed. We tried lots of tactics like tricking you into bed, making a game out of it, and just plain leaving you in the family room.  One night you were having such a major temper tantrum that I tried the unspeakable:  treating you like a human being and talking to you!  I got down on my knees to your eye-level and began to rationalize why it was bedtime.  And you know what?  It worked!  Only for about a week, but your tantrums were never as intense again.  Nowadays we've found that sticking to our guns and having you cry it out, with a little bit of us rationalizing with you has made bedtime a little more palatable.
• You are a Daddy's boy and your dad gloats about it
• Sometimes you just bust out in this hysterical laugh that seems forced and fake (and a little nerdy).  Like yesterday when you rolled your car window down and stuck your hand so that it was flying in the wind. You kept forcing the laugh, which in turn made me crack up, so you forced it even more, which cracked me up even more.  We were forcefully laughing all the way home.
• You wear a size 9 shoe and all your 2T pants are floods.  I need to buy 3T.
• You like to ride your tricycle around the house.
• You love your little brother but you also use him as a scapegoat and he sometimes annoys you.  "Did someone go caca?"  Diego: "Brother, caca!"; "Diego, do you want to take a bath?"; "No!  Bubble brother!".  The other day you hauled your brother in his walker all the way to the kitchen and left him there so he would stop annoying you while you played with your toys.  Problem solved.
• You've been going to weekly speech therapy for about 6 months now.  The therapist got you to stop saying "Gah" for "Yes"  now you say "Ya" except when you fall down and you're stunned.  Are you OK?  "Gah!"
• The picture below is mostly for me to compare when your little brother is 2.5 but these are all the words you know how to say (although you understand so much more):  

I swear I didn't mean to highlight Row 22 on purpose, but yeah it's an important word.

Enjoying every crazy minute of motherhood thanks to you! - Shirley

Neanderthal Speech

I don't know who is having a harder time with speech therapy:  me or Diego.  He has been going to his therapy sessions once a week for 4 sessions now and the only new word he has said is "cookie".

Speech therapy is different than I expected it to be.  We arrive for the session and Diego is taken to a room with the speech therapist while I wait for him in a waiting room for 40 minutes.  The last 5 minutes are then spent with the therapist summarizing to me what she observed during the session.  And the session itself?  Well, I don't know because the door is closed, but when walking by I can hear her talking.  She told me that she has spent many-a-session just talking the entire time (in general, she wasn't specifically speaking about Diego's sessions).

When she said that, I admired her for being so chatty.  I often I wonder if Diego has this speech issue because I'm just not chatty enough.

Back in my college days I had a part time job working at the Fraud department of Bank of America.  There was an older black woman from the South who also worked there:  Ms. Lily May.  Man could that woman TALK!  She talked for hours and days on-end.  She would amuse me with her uncanny ability to come up with the perfect sayings for any topic, which I would later note that Dr. Phil can also do.  Is it a southern thing?

"Give a man enough rope, and he'll hang himself" is just one example of things she'd say.

My point is that if I knew where Lily was today, I would call her up and tell her that I knew the perfect profession for her!  Lily May: speech therapist.

I'm sure there's more to it than just talking though.  Diego's therapist seems to have a different agenda each session.  During the first session she focused on getting him to sign, and she said he was signing "more" by the end of the session.  The second session, he seemed to regress and was shy around her.  The third session, she was noting the exact consonant/vowel combinations that he was capable of and honed in on those, and the fourth session she tried to get him to imitate sounds, but he didn't do it for her.  This surprised me because he's great at making monkey, dog, and even fish sounds.  When she handed me some cue cards to take home I realized that the sounds she was going for were different than what he was used to.  For example:  he knows dog as "wow-wow" not "woof-woof".

I feel like they just don't know or understand Diego yet and 40 minutes is a small amount of time in the grand scheme of things.  Unfortunately I wouldn't be able to devote additional time since I'll be heading back to work and these sessions are going to require me to sneak away during my lunch hour.  I'm doing what I can to help him with his speech.  Here are couple of helpful tips I've received since speech therapy began:

-If your son is within hearing distance, talk to yourself about what either of you are doing.  E.g. "Diego pick up ball", "Diego throw ball", "Mama wash dishes"  (Don't be afraid to sound like a Neanderthal!)

-If you don't understand what your son is saying when he speaks gibberish don't pretend to (even if you know what he wants)  say, "I don't understand what you're saying." shrug your shoulders and try to get him to vocalize a little more before you give him what he wants.    

Even with four sessions under our belt, he is still just getting to know his speech therapist so it's too early to expect any real results.  And yet I was a little miffed to receive Diego's progress report.  It was a formal request for Diego's pediatrician to provide an updated prescription for continued speech therapy.  OK fine.  But in the summary were written the words:  "Expressive language disorder" and although that's probably a term that is often used for anyone needing speech therapy -  I still wanted to use "Expressive Language" in a "disorderly" way when I read that!  What mom wouldn't?

Me Shirley, Me no like speech therapy! (Grunt!) - Shirley

Diego's Speech Therapy Goals:

1. Imitate/produce consonant/vowel combinations and be able to imitate 80% of the time.
2. Learn functional sign language to express needs 80% of the time.
3. Label nouns 80% of the time.

 

Clicking the banner is all it takes to cast your vote!