(Almost) Wordless Wednesday, Wildlife Edition

Wildlife refuge again. Cheap, dry entertainment on an unpredictable, refusing to nap day!

We saw three raccoons today but this was the only shot that I got of them.

Hum, do you suppose this is the next large family that TLC is going to follow around with their camera crews?

Such well behaved little goslings, and no yelling from the parents... just saying!

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Oh, let's pretend it's not Wednesday anymore... I took Rylan to finish up his speech evaluation today and it looks like we'll be doing some home therapy but none at school at this point. Turns out he took longer to evaluate because she had to find a "ceiling" where he missed so many questions in a row before the real eval could start and he, at three, kept going into the 7 year old range?!?!? for the cognition portions. She was mostly concerned about his tongue being a little "lazy" but more so his raspy voice. Those of you on FB might have seen his video and read the comments about his deep voice. Apparently that's not a 'cool' thing so we are really having to work on resting his voice. Inside voice almost all the time but we're not to "take away the joy of screaming like a maniac outside" :) I had never really been aware of it because he's such an emotional, animated kid when he's talking. But yah, he speaks loud and with a lot of energy. The speech therapist is gathering up a home packet for us and we go back in May to see if the month of being very aware of his volume has improved his actual voice at all. She was full of compliments for my parenting - which is always nice to receive - and said that she would work with him if "you weren't who you are". I just kind of looked at her and she explained that she had total faith in me being capable of working with Rylan at home and that I would do the "tasks" with him daily.

She's right, I will.

She also pointed out that we (Jim and I) have a very skewed view of what is 'normal' for a 3 or 4 year old since Karleigh was our first.

Oh come on!

Compliments for my parenting and for my older kid! (truth be told, I think Karleigh's smart and witty but still average... in a good way of course) Anyway, he scored right at the top of average for 3 years 11 months and he's 3 years 6 months so we wait a little bit more and work on what we are supposed to. It is SO nice to have an outside opinion though because, already, Rylan notices when he's talking too loud and will say "oh yah, Teacher Mary said inside voice" just to remind himself. Fingers crossed and prayers said that we don't need to do anything major in the future with his "large tonsils" or vocal cords.