Hug Twice

Matt is the one that gives the kids their bath in the evening.  I don’t know how we evolved into that, but for as far back as I can remember, he’s been the one to take them upstairs and bathe them, and then I put CJ to bed and he puts Alexa to bed.

Tonight, while giving the kids their bath (they bathe together) Matt called me up to the bathroom.  When I got there, he pointed at the children and said:

“We have three scraped knees and two cranky kids.”

They’d been playing outside all day and although I knew about Alexa’s scraped knee, I didn’t know CJ had scraped his under his long shorts (he blames the scooter) and they both had had a long hot sticky day and were past being ready to be put to bed.  Even if they deny it.

Three scraped knees and two cranky kids.  That’s the sign of summer’s arrival if I’ve ever heard one.

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I think Alexa doesn’t talk in words as much as she should be by now.  She’ll be 20 months in a few short days, and it seems like she should have a much larger vocabulary than she does.

I’m not sure completely - I know with a speech delayed child already I probably overreact to everything.  Alexa is certainly a lot more speech-interactive than CJ was at her age - she engages in speech-type communication with us a lot more than he did.

But it is all in complete and utter gibberish.  Not a single word in the bunch.

That is not to say she has zero words. She does say a few words.  But the only ones she uses with any consistenly at all are Mama and Dada.  She does make sounds sort of like speech in appropriate places - when you ask her a question she “answers”.  And she is VERY good at non-verbal communication, so you know that she understands.  She gets her meaning across very clearly to anyone who will pay attention.

But I wonder.  And worry a little.  And try not to overreact.

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Last year, CJ did soccer through the parks and rec department program, and it was a disaster.  He didn’t pay attention, wandered off continually, and basically, one of the coaches was *his* coach basically just to keep him in line.  This year, we’re doing soccer again, and t-ball as well, because he really needs to work on being able to focus and pay attention in groups.

We showed up for soccer, and one of the instructors was the same as last year - and she remembered him.  By name.  She has hundreds of kids all summer and him, she remembers.  Heh.    But, he did great!  He paid attention and followed directions and had a great time.

T-Ball… well…  we still have a lot of work to do.  But somehow his class in general seems a little less focused than the soccer one last year, so he’s not the only wanderer and flower picker and grass thrower.
But he’s definitely not following directions and paying attention as well as he did the day before at soccer.

I really hope the soccer behavior becomes the trend, not the t-ball one.

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My mother has been visiting for two weeks, and she is leaving this morning.  They live about 1000 miles away, so she only gets to visit a few times a year.  Because CJ is almost 4, and she has visited for so long this time, it is going to be a hard adjustment for him I think when she leaves.  We’ll be taking her to the airport this morning and looking at the airplanes.

And playing an arcade game or two at the airport.  Nana likes to give the grandchildren quarters when they want to play with the flashing lights.  It’s a Nana’s right, after all.

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On Friday morning, I had my wisdom teeth out.  They told me because of the medicine, I wouldn’t remember it, but I kind of do.  That isn’t a bad thing though, it was relatively unpleasant and I didn’t feel anything.

Then, for the next two days, i got to lie in bed and have people bring me things.  I barely saw my son, because when i did see him he tried to jump on me in bed and disturb my head, and my daughter showed up to nurse and then was whisked away to be played with elsewhere.   Actually, it was kind of like when I gave birth to her, except then she was in my room all the time and although she was peaceful during the day, she kept me up all night the entire time in the hospital.  Which was a harbinger of days to come, but that’s another story.

It’s been weird.  Too bad I didn’t feel better so I could enjoy my free time.  instead I drank milkshakes and moaned a lot.  And napped in between bouts of oddly fascinating yet really bad TV.

On second thought, it really wasn’t all that bad. 

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