Megan has been his speech therapist for the last year and a half. She has been so patient and kind and fun with him. He has made tremendous progress in his speech. Now he says wonderful things like, "Me no like you anymore!", "All your fault, Mom!", "Me hate you!", "Stop talking (to) me!", "Drive faster, Mom!"
Yes, we're just thrilled to have him talking so much.
Actually, despite his rather loud and contrary positions, we are are so happy to have him communicate in other than screams and cries.
The in-home speech therapy program he's been a part of ends when they are three and he's progressed enough that he doesn't qualify for additional preschool services. This is great news, but we will be sad to not have Megan come around a couple times a month. Peter was always so happy to see her. She was also a very helpful sounding board for me when I was feeling frustrated with Peter's speech and food problems.
Just last week his mom and I decided it was time to let these two have a trial play date and just see how it went. Not unreasonable for almost three year olds. But these two may be cut from the same bolt of feisty, strong-willed cloth. For all we knew they might just scream, cry and hit each other for an hour-- or as long as it took us to get them back to their respective homes. George regularly plays with Eric's older brother, Dallas, so we hoped we could do double play dates
Miraculously, they played perfectly! So a couple days later we tried again! Again they were best buddies with no conflict! HA! Wonder of wonders!
George had a water games birthday party this week and Peter got to invite Eric as well, since his birthday is tomorrow.
The weather wasn't that great for a summer water party, but the wind and rain held off just long enough to play the games. We've been having a rather cool spell for August in Utah.
The kids were quite good at catching the balloons in their towels that we tossed to them.
They got one!
The water balloon toss was a success, in that there were no tears. Sadly, the same cannot be said for all the activities we attempted.
Elinor and Zach were a lot of fun to have at the party. I'm telling you, if you want to entertain younger kids, just bring in a couple of great teenagers... and instant party!
We had a squirt gun fight.
How did moms plan birthday parties before the dollar store concept was born? The kids really got into the squirt gun fight.
Brigham wasn't a fan, so he came and sat in the "safe zone" with us. Except that I was firing at Abe from the safe zone, so I guess it wasn't so safe.
There was the storming of the castle.
Good friend Zach came over to play games with Clark, but Clark wasn't home from work yet... so he got roped into the water fights. Faith is brutal!
You don't want to get on her bad side!
This picture cracks me up, because if you look carefully there are a couple sets of hands on the top of the fence. While we were trying to get the kids lined up for a picture, our backyard neighbors were planning the ultimate photobomb!
Ha, ha, ha! Too funny!
Then it was time for the water balloon fight! Each side had two coolers full of water balloons. (That was a labor of love, I must say)
This team had both the birthday boys, but I will say they were at a distinct disadvantage. Three team members ended up being very sensitive to the whole "water balloon war" thing. Who knew? I thought all kids liked water balloon wars. But as it turns out, not all kids like getting hit in the head/face/eye. These are the inherent risks associated with water balloon fights, but maybe older kids would have appreciated my labor of love a little more. Live and learn.
And it was violent at times.
Cannon didn't show much mercy to the younger kids. He could really dish it out. But in his defense, he could take it pretty well too and he was a favorite target of the 8 and under crowd. Here he is recovering from a strike to sensitive parts. He was a good sport.
Clark eventually arrived home from work and couldn't help but join in the fun.
Here's kind of a fun pieced together panoramic picture that Google pictures put together.
This is my favorite picture of the evening. Here is Zach pelting cute little Ava (who was one tough cookie) with a water balloon. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Zach, Clark is coming from behind with a cooler part way filled with water to dump on Zach's head! It was pretty funny and Zach was a very good sport!
We had to hurry inside because the weather was getting yucky, and we didn't have a chance to clean up last night, so the kids and I were on water balloon duty this morning. We had a very colorful lawn.
Perfection! She was a little fussy today-- which is very unusual for Greta, but her top front teeth are coming in and that would bother anyone. She has started babbling and singing a lot lately. She was always in the "safe zone" at the party.
Blurry, but action packed!
We had pizza and little mini cupcakes and then we sang happy birthday to both George and Peter. Peter had a hard time blowing out his candle, but Faith helped him out.
George got some pretty awesome birthday presents, but one of his favorites was this skateboard. He's been practicing all day today. William is George's birthday twin, except that William is one year older. Yes, you read than right--- William is older than George. In all fairness, George is standing on a skateboard, but still.
I had a couple other water games for outside planned, but the truth is, I totally forgot about them. During the party I kept thinking, "I know I had other stuff to do besides water balloons and squirt guns...", but for the life of me, I couldn't remember what I planned. Why didn't I write this stuff down?
It takes me a good three weeks to mentally recover from vacations and I'm just not there yet. Oh well, like I said, the weather kind of turned, so we improvised inside and Abe told a couple stories to the kids. One was about the time his childhood dog, "Hawker" getting shot with quills from a porcupine, which his uncle then eventually shot down from a tree (the porcupine-- not the dog). The kids were enthralled. Abe is a master storyteller.
I had to draw the line when he started to tell them how his dog eventually died by getting run over. I figured I was already going to get phone calls about these poor children getting pelted by water balloons to the eye. We really ought not tells stories about beloved pet dogs dying.
Then we wrapped things up with a little Animal Charades and it was all over. George was a convincing platypus. Cannon guessed what he was. I was clueless, but it must have been very clear to Cannon.
Happy 7th birthday to George and 3rd birthday to Peter!
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