We're studying the moon and seas right now, the frog's life cycle, plus the regular this and that. It is also now the week of Unleavened Bread. As for my monthly update:
What We Did for Inside Joy...
I love these little girls! They started their day off on my bed with my iPhone to listen and sway to some Christian music. I've got a wonderful video of them here "dancing."
Olivia loves to be silly.
I'd just finished fixing Happy's hair, and the girls wanted to brush mine.
Trust and Liv relaxing with their sweets and Elizabeth licking a beater.
What We Did for Outside Fun...
Trusten showed me some of the rocks he busted open with William's rock hammer. One of them was literally full of fossils.
Trust, Liv, and Happy in the sandbox...oh what fun! I love when they happily play together in peace.
These are from the same day as the sandbox pictures, with the exception of the first one of the three blowing bubbles at the bottom of the steps. When they play peacefully and joyfully, I'm able to enjoy meditation time.
This was so funny! I just happened to take pictures of Liv at the right time. You can see in the first shot, she is grimacing with effort to yank up a handful of wild onions, and then, Boing, she went backward as the onions gave way.
I put an extra shirt on top of her dress, as it was a bit chilly. I do know how to match! I just love this beautiful (inside and out) baby girl. I wish I'd have been able to take a picture of her when she was propped on her side, but I didn't have a camera until I asked Liv to go grab my iPhone. She was eating henbit flowers.
What the Boys Learned in Books...
Trusten was working on his math lesson on the couch with me, and also on the couch on the other side of me, the girls sat while Liv practiced writing letters on my iPad. In the other picture William is taking a break from reading his book about crystals to play with Lego blocks.
I bought these books for Trusten. One series is Amish-based, the other series Mennonite-based. They're for his reading level, and the stories encourage good traits in children, like helpfulness and kindness. He will turn seven next in May. I'd bought a series of books for Jaden William for his seventh birthday, but we have since given those away, and I think these books are much better.
What William Did as His Latest Animal Welfare Effort...
If you know William well, you know that he loves animals and has rescued many critters from certain death over the years. This is a little bunny he heard screaming in the woods. The first picture is right after rescue. The other pictures were taken the day afterward, and Bunny was doing much better. We cared for the bunny for a few days, and Jade was planning to soon let the little thing go shortly, but something terrible happened. In short, Olivia killed the sweet baby rabbit as an act of revenge for Jaden William's hateful attitude toward her that day. Nathan and I both talked to her in-depth as to why that was wrong, and it taught Jaden William a good lesson, too. I just feel terrible that the innocent bunny had to die. It was so precious!
What We Ate...
We ate at a Mexican restaurant one day. William ordered fish, which is not included in his rules of his vegetarian diet.
Looking at this is making my mouth water. Baked chicken with bbq sauce and greens and fried okra and raisin bread; garlic butter pasta with broccoli and carrot; roast with potatoes and carrots (Sabbath); chicken-fried steak and corn and green beans; a concoction that I call Mexican corn and rice (it's good); and beef fajita on homemade tortilla
Sprouted mung beans; another one of my new concoctions I call cheesy rice and lentil casserole (SOOO good, I could eat it every day); chocolate cheescake (Sabbath dessert); and bread (I've been trying to make all our own bread again, but I go back and forth).
Now to update on Elizabeth. She seems to be quite smart and understand anything you tell her, obeys instructions (like when asked to throw something away, go retrieve something you request, go somewhere you tell her, etc.), is doing a great job with potty training (later than my others but still not bad), seems to have some sort of musical gift or at least love, because even long ago she'd hum tunes she'd heard, and she since I've always made up little songs for all my babies and young children to match with various areas of their everyday life (Like "Gotta Get That Baby Clean" in the shower or bath that I've sung since JW was a baby, "Children, Children, Oh I Love My Children," at spontaneous times, "Milk and Cuddles for the Baby Girl" for nursing time, and the big hit, "Spider's Coming to Town" for tickle time), Elizabeth starts humming a song when she wants something or when I'm about to do the activity associated with whatever song. She signs with more coordination now and does a great job with the signs she knows, so one of my upcoming priorities is to teach her more signs. There have been a lot of signs that I knew before but can't remember exactly now. I know I've got to get with the program.
She knows she can go get something to stand on to help her reach places. She knows how to navigate to different games on my phone.
She doesn't speak the minimum number of words that the average child knows for his or her age per most guidelines, but I'm not sure whether to be concerned. She was pretty close to the proper number of words around her second birthday. Now the gap is bigger again.
I've gone back to watch videos and hear audios of William to help me get a better idea of where he was at this age, but I've got limited data from off which to go. It appears that, even though he was somewhat delayed, it wasn't bad, and I guess stuttering for all those years was his main hindrance. I can't compare Elizabeth to Trust or Liv or to her cousin Layla who is only five weeks older, because they all three are very advanced speakers. It's hard to compare her to William, too, because he had the firstborn advantage, too, so I have no way of knowing how much better she'd be doing if she was the only child.
I wish I knew more about myself at that age. She looks and acts a lot like I do. She looks about identical. I also know I've struggled with speech issues. I dealt with pronunciation problems and so had to take speech for what I think was two years in elementary school. Even today, at the age of 31, I struggle in social situations. In writing I can get my grammar perfect, and unless I'm texting from my phone my writing usually comes out pretty well. I've always scored super high on writing skills. But my speech can be embarrassing (and I usually scored pretty low on "listening skills," as audio learning is not my bag). I get words mixed around, my tone can sound odd, and my processing speed is poor. Really poor. In order to get everything to come out fluidly, I must slow way down, and nobody wants to listen to someone who speaks so very slowly. If I write a speech, then speaking is grand. But if I'm having to go free-talk in conversations, it really matters not what I could contribute to the conversation. It gets jumbled up on my hard drive, and it's difficult for my processor to actually pull that information and share it.
But what was I like when I was Elizabeth's age? Did I have delayed speech? I was an early reader. But what about my expressed speech and language development? I asked my mother a while back, but she didn't respond to that part of our text conversation. I'm sure she just accidentally missed responding to that part, or she may not remember well enough to give me an informed response.
One of her favorite things has looong been animal sounds (and signs and some words). I may have mentioned before that she's got an animal sounds app on my iPhone. It's got a lot of different animals, and she frequently says, "Weeez," (please) when she sees me with the phone, because she wants to play. It brings me great joy to hear her make a donkey sound or to take her toy frog and hop it around, saying, "Bo-bot, bo-bot" (ribbit, ribbit). Maybe if animal sounds counted as words, she'd be close to the minimum.
Again, I don't even know whether it should be a concern. I know there have been a lot of kids through history that don't start talking much until they turn three (or sometimes around four). And most of those kids ended up fine, and some were even geniuses of a sort. It's just hard to know what I should do sometimes, whether to be concerned or not. I don't want to spend money we really don't have right now on a speech therapist she doesn't need and a lot of time driving so far, if it's not necessary. But I don't want to mess up by not doing so if she really needs it. The bigger part of me thinks she'll be fine. And most people seem to think she'll be fine.
Hopefully no one is getting super tired of hearing me "talk" this out. It's probably good that I'm recording all this, though. It will be fun for her to look back on and laugh at me.
She is always playing around with little things like the wooden block with the momma and baby polar bears shown in the upper left picture. I frequently match videos of such things to show her and talk to her about it all. The other pictures are screenshots of video footage from Planet Earth. "See the polar bear. See the babies? See the baby bear get on top of the momma bear? Just like on the block."
I think I'll just keep doing as I'm doing and keep praying. We've all got weaknesses somewhere, but we've also got strengths. I'm thinking she'll be fine, but I'll continue to carefully monitor her, of course.
I'll post soon about how our week of UB is going.
Until next time...
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