Breathing

We've all been sick for the last couple of weeks. First it was Finn with his ear infections. Then it was me with a sinus/throat infection and Elwood with an upper respiratory infection brought on by allergies. When Todd started coughing and blowing technicolor stuff out of his head last week, he didn't even bother going to see the doctor. He called, gave them the run down from the rest of us and his current symptoms and they set him up an antibiotic.

But today, for the first time in two weeks, I can breath easily. Both literally and figuratively.

My nose is no longer full of the crud and crap from my illness and my head and heart are no longer filled with the fear and anticipation of the last couple of weeks.

Finn had his hearing retest on Friday and the results were much better. They are no longer concerned about any significant hearing loss. They still want to do another test in a couple of months to test specific frequencies, but this is just a precaution. He can hear and that is not the cause of his speech delay.

His speech therapy will continue, but we are already hearing new words. The word cup is coming more frequently and easily. He said "coffee" in the car the other day - a word we've never heard him say. And last night, he said his name. "Pinn" was the sweetest sound I've ever heard. I know he's said it before for the baby sitter, but to hear it come out so easily was just music to my ears.

And Elwood has had his own first this week. We had our first evaluation with the school district to make sure he will be ready for kindergarten in 2011. Because of his birthday, he will be one of the older kids in class (Finn will have the same problem), but they do a 4 year old evaluation to make sure the kids are on track and don't need the pre-K program. Elwood was so well behaved. He did great with the health exams (gotta clean those ears out better!) and the first two tasks. He played with the play-do in between tests and didn't come looking for us. Unfortunately, by the time he got to the language test, his patience had grown thin. He scored far lower than all of us know he is capable of, including the teacher giving the test. While Todd was frustrated, we know that he is fine and that the few things we do need to work on will come easily to him.

Yesterday, Elwood went to his first friend birthday party. He has been to birthday parties for the children of our friends before, but this was the first time that he went for one of his friends. When we got there, his friend ran up and hugged him and I only saw Elwood when he came running by me or or when I had to retrieve him from the bedroom to watch the birthday boy open his presents. He started to argue when it was time to go, but soon stopped and left without tears or anger.

This was a good weekend. I'm so proud of both of my boys. I'm so proud of our little family.
I'm so not looking forward to going back to work tomorrow. But if I didn't have Monday, we wouldn't get to Friday.