The rest of this summer has absolutely flown by. While I am thankful for September and God’s great mercy in switching on the outdoor AC, I do wonder how time keeps getting away from me like this!
Early August saw these two young ladies off to their first ever overnight camp experience with Hopewell Camps at Tel Hai. I think I was far more nervous than they were. They both took all the new experiences in their stride, even my book-loving introvert Romilly!
This little man had to get in on the photo op action while we were saying our goodbyes:
On the heels of their week at camp we had a long-overdue weekend visit from Megan, of whom I regretfully took not one picture while she was here. (You know you’re family when I don’t even get the camera out anymore!) I did take pictures of this amazing ever-growing family of dolls she has made for our kids over the years.
Lewis’s doll was a new addition this trip (a belated birthday present), and each of the old dolls is receiving a new outfit themed around the flag of their birth country. I cannot even tell you how much joy these little dolls have given the kids (okay, and me!) over the years. Aren’t they wonderful? (Please pardon Niko doll’s lack of pants. They always turn up eventually, just not in time for the photo shoot this time.)
Thank you, Megan, for your friendship, for spoiling us, and for another wonderful-but-way-too-short visit.
We celebrated our summer and fall birthday girls in late August with a grand party at pop-pop’s house. (And do you know, my beautiful firstborn is 12 today?! Happy, birthday, Pippa!)
(Loch Ness monster and galaxy cupcakes by Pippa, even though it was her birthday party.)
And then, just like that, we found ourselves starting school again!
With a baby coming in October and a couple of other adventures on the horizon that I will share about in future posts, we thought it would be good to get an early start. So far, things have been going remarkably smoothly, as long as we manage to stay at home enough.
We’ve had a busy season of appointments, which has finally started to settle down, but one permanent feature of our Fall semester at least will be speech therapy for Lewis and Delia and OT for Delia at Theraplay. It has been over two years since we have tried traditional therapies with Delia, and we finally feel like she is ready to try again. Lewis, I believe, will take to speech therapy like duck to water, since he wants to speak so badly and is very motivated to work at it. He just struggles with articulation in a way that I don’t feel I have the tools to help with yet. I was thrilled to find that both speech therapists who met with them know ASL and are very happy to use that as a stepping stone for spoken language, since both Lewis and Delia currently use more sign than speech. Watch this space!
In the meatime, we are still chugging along with Delia’s NeuroDevelopmental Program at home, and seeing some encouraging progress. She contiues to be more willing to attempt to copy speech (when she’s in the mood!) and has even recently added “water” to her list of words she will use meaningfully. This is one of our daily flash card exercises. (If the video works?)
We are coming down the home stretch to baby time (less than six weeks to my due date!). I *think* we finally have our girl name nailed down. And that’s probably all we’re going to need, right? Right?! (Any boy name suggestions are welcome. He’s really not going to have a name if he’s a he!)
As always, thanks for hanging in there with my sporadic posting. We are still here. We are doing well. We are just busy in all the best possible ways!