Long day

The day after a holiday weekend (or helpful visitors) always seems so long. Today was no exception. The girls and I had two appointments so I thought it would go by quickly but it dragged on and on and on. On the plus side I was well rested because the girls are very nearly back to their old sleeping selves. Our first appointment was with the Speech and Language program. The appointment went pretty much as I expected. It was nap time so the girls were a bit crusty but they did well. Of course they both didn't say much to the therapist but I had accounted for this and had the list of all their words (see my updates are good for something!). If we have the pleasure of going again I will suggest to the therapist that we use books rather than toys to get them to talk. They don't really make a habit of talking when they are dropped in a room full of new toys - the same thing happens at the Early Years. They become very quiet while they take everything in. The appointment consisted of the therapist asking me all sorts of questions about their play habits and how they interact with others. The girls were left to play while we observed and tried to get them to talk. Emma did much better than Leah - Leah wouldn't even say baby. Thankfully the therapist took my word that Leah is actually very chatty. In the end she didn't see any cause for concern with the speech but because they were preemies (and speech problems are very common in preemies) she did not want to discharge us. She instead signed me up for a workshop on strategies to help encourage them to talk. Should be interesting. While you might think that my brain is rotting away while I'm not working I'm actually learning a ton about child development which I guess is one perk to having preemies. So the morning nap didn't happen. We got home around 11:30am and they were asleep by noon. I had to get them up at 1:30 to eat because I had a doctor appointment at 2:15pm. While they were napping I looked up directions to our new doctor and discovered that it was in an old house...a not very stroller friendly old house. I was tempted to cancel and reschedule when someone else could watch the girls but I decided to give it a try. There were stairs when we got there so I brought the stroller into the reception area then got the girls. We were all set when the receptionist told me the stroller wouldn't fit through the door to the doctor's office. When I told her that they would have to crawl around she offered to watch them while I was in my appointment! So in the end the appointment which I expected to be hell because the girls don't sit still for long was nice and relaxing. At the end they even helped me carry the girls and the stroller to the car...and the doctor was nice too. I'm pretty excited to have a nice doctor with nice staff. The funny part is the doctors office is actually walking distance from our house - for those of you that have been here you'll know how amazing this is...we live in the sticks now. I haven't mentioned lately how much I still miss the condo - especially now that summer is over.

GUILTY

Tricking them into sitting together

"Jackson come back...we promise we'll be gentle"