Coleman Family Blog: January

Our sickness continued into January with each of the kids getting strep again.

We must have a carrier in the house who keeps re-spreading it.

They all just finished up antibiotics and hopefully that nipped it in the bud!!

Maggie continues to go to speech weekly and we're still not seeing huge progress. She does seem a little more willing to imitate what we say, but she is very inconsistent with the way she says each thing. For example, if she copies me saying "hi", sometimes it'll come out "ee", sometimes, "i", sometimes "h", and sometimes "ugh". It's great that she's trying, but she's not adding words to her vocabulary that she consistently says on her own that is coherent. So we're upping the anty on the sign-language, trying to learn more so we can teach her more so she can communicate more. We're very hopeful that her speech will start to "click" at some point.

However, she adds to her song repertoire weekly. I kid you not, she can hum in tune to so many songs, she just doesn't enunciate anything!

The big kids are doing so well in school, we're so proud of them. The boys are reading like crazy and Allie is starting to read as well. Homework time is definitely the most challenging time of the day; trying to help the boys and keep them on track while keeping the girls occupied is insanity. There is just not enough of me to go around sometimes!

Allie's behavior and emotions are very up and down. Overall, she is better than she was this time last year, but it continues to be a daily struggle. We're furthering our training on how to best parent children who come from trauma and trying to "un-learn" some of our parenting techniques that worked for the boys but are counterproductive for Allie. Maggie definitely shows some of the same emotional issues as her sister; she is anxious when she is not near me or in my arms. She gets overwhelmed in loud, crowded, unfamiliar situations. She still cries a lot to be held. But so far the severity of it is not nearly to the degree as Allie. Our days are exhausting to say the least, but we're plugging away one day at time.

It's really important for each of our kids to get one-on-one time with us and we try to be intentional about giving them this time as often as possible, whether at home, or out on Mommy or Daddy Dates. Now if we could just get a Mommy & Daddy date everyone once in a while, we'd be good to go!

back at the doc... and not happy about it