Back in the summer of '83

Ever since Levi started school, it seems like he now has to plan out his days to the minute. "It's 11:00, time for my snack." And somehow, along the way, I have to become an entertainment seeker and scheduler, writing down dates on the magnetic calender on the fridge.

It's funny because I'm pretty sure my mom didn't do that for me and my sisters and brother when we were growing up. Our summers consisted of watching our 3 (sometimes 4 depending on the weather) channels on T.V., riding our bikes up and down the gravel/dirt roads, and going to the lake twice during the entire summer. I lived in the country, so no one ever came over. We even had a party line phone that we shared with 2 other neighbors, so I couldn't even really talk to anyone with one of the old, tell-you-what-I-think neighbors picking up the phone and telling me to hang up because she had "an important call to make."

OK, so I admittedly didn't walk to school in the snow, uphill both ways, but it was a lot different for me when I was Levi's age back in the summer of 1983. And now thanks to that thought, I'll have to fight the urge to continuously sing "Summer of 69" by Bryan Adams for the rest of the day. I'm really not complaining, but it was a lot different for me when I was little.

On to real life...Benjamin got his yearly eval last week in speech. He scored in the 3-year-old range on both his expressive language (what he can say) and his receptive language (what he understands). But on his articulation (how much we understand of what he says) he scored much lower. That really didn't surprise us or his speech therapist. She still isn't ruling out speech apraxia for him, but the speech therapy for that is apparently the same as what we've been doing. He has made so much progress this past year, and I'm so proud at how far he has come.

This has been a great summer for him and probably the easiest so far for me. This is the first complete summer he's been potty trained (does anyone else hear the angels singing in the background?) He'll let us go new places and do different things without the fit throwing and constant screaming. He's doing so much better with his transitions. I can even take him to Wal-Mart now for an hour or so or take the boys out to a restaurant by myself and he does great. And I'm quite sure I was the only parent that almost cried when she saw her child walk away with an instructor either of us had ever laid eyes on before for swimming lessons last month. That might seem like a little thing to most people, but it's huge for us.

Rock on, Mr. Benjamin.