Claudia's 7th Birthday

Toy veggies and fruit from Grandma & Grandpa Verhulst

A "laptop" from Grandma Schoemig

More educational electronic games

The kids (and Hanai)

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What a difference a year makes, hardly looks like the same kid...

February 17, 2010

February 17, 2009

It's hard to believe we are starting our second round of birthdays. There will be no more surprise celebrations now. They all now know when their birthdays are (everyone got their own calendar for the New Year and they all counted the days until "Claudia's Happy Birthday" this year) and what to expect (cake and presents).

Anniversary, Therapy and Education

I finally bought a laptop! Yippee! Now I don't have to wait for a sunny or warm weekend to blog or check my email or do my household budget or ...

Just thinking outloud...
I often struggle with how much to "share" on the blog about certain aspects of our family's life. I feel a responsibility to keep much of our kids' information somewhat private, but then I also feel somehow compelled to be open and honest about the challenges and problems we have had over the past year. However, I also don't intend for it to sound as though everything is always rosey at the Verhulst house (we have our ups and downs). I usually err on the side of caution and hold back quite a bit, since once you post something on the net it's pretty much out there for anyone to see - forever. Just so you know. I have answered some specific questions occasionally by email.

Anniversary

As I said in our last post, we celebrated our one-year-at-home anniversary on February 4th. It wasn't anything really big, just pizza for dinner (which the kids cannot get enough of) and a "family" gift of a Vtech V Flash game system (it's an 'edutainment' system that I found on Amazon.com for $75 - including 4 games). It was a big hit because the kids love all things electronic and Mom and Dad are happy because it entertains and educates them at the same time.

Therapy

Things have been going very slowly with Oscar's home-schooling (mainly reading, he is almost caught up to where he should be in math) - to the point that we had him tested to see if he has some real learning problems. It turns out that he does. We are going to be sending him to an audiologist and optometrist for further testing. We started him on a therapy called Interactive Metronome this week. We are also looking into special education schools to possibly enroll Oscar in next school year. The schools we are looking at have small class sizes, incorporate occupational therapy, and other therapies as needed and have the goal of getting the kids ready to return to traditional school. We visit the first one this Thursday morning.

Diana started her vision therapy at the beginning of January. She enjoys going because she views it as "play time". She talks it up so much with her sisters that Mayerly asks me all the time, "When do I get to go to the doctor?". I told her that she goes to the doctor in April (time for shots again), probably not what she had in mind...

Education

We went to the girls' school tonight for parent/teacher conferences. Everyone seems to be making good progress. Mayerly's teacher even reported that she almost never has trouble with her not listening to instructions now (ah, finally a pay-off for all that discipline). Claudia's teacher just loves all the girls (they were all in her class April-May of last year). Diana's teacher is having a baby before the end of the year (she's due in April). Diana really likes her teacher, so I hope she does okay with the substitute that she will have for the last month and a half of this school year. She doesn't usually take too well to change.