John

It's been so long since I've given you a proper update on my firstborn. He's growing and changing in (mostly) great ways. 

His teacher and school speech therapist just gave me his second quarter "grades" and they believe he is progressing in all of his goal areas (ahem, except for singing along with the other kids...but I'm not much of a group singer either so I'm not too concerned. After all, I think most of us could make it through life without group sings...you know, if we had to). 

Although, the report card did say, "John has not yet learned how to share toys with the other children." If this were someone else's responsibility, I would laugh. Billy thinks it's quite generous that they phrased it "not yet learned." I think it's a hard thing to teach a boy who has only some words in any given sentence...and who is not used to talking in order to get his way. These days, I feel like I say "what do you say?" "Say 'please,'" or "John, boys who don't ask nicely don't get ___" ALL DAY long. yikes. But eventually, it will sink it, yes? Polite behavior, kind sharing, and thoughtfulness are just around the bend, right? A couple of weeks ago, he began saying "share" so we're moving in the right direction at least.

Yes, he started saying share! Last time I shared a count of John's words, I believe we were hovering around two dozen. I started keeping track at one point and got up to 60 words (that was a couple months into school). Now we are at hundreds. Too many to count and new words every day. It's wonderfully encouraging and I feel like the greatest weight of worry for his future has lifted off my shoulders.

Of course, John still talks like a foreigner. He pronounces words like an ESL student, like he originally spoke Chinese and is now picking up on English. So he will emphasize the wrong syllable, or substitute some sounds (r) for others (w). John is famous for shortening words into sounds; I don't know if this is speech laziness or a "shortcut" his brain/mouth are taking. All this is fairly normal for kids learning to talk, I assume. But it's exaggerated in his speech. Actually, it's both puzzling/bothersome and funny. Here are a few examples:

fooDA (food)

shon (John)

B (baby)

ha-va-wa (Havilah)

eese (cheese)

d (red)

boo (blue)

no wader (no water, as in milk)

But I'll take word fragments and word approximations over nothing any day! He's working hard on his speech and learning that he can do it (and that we aren't going to let him grow up without talking!).

Then again, some words like yellow, share, bus, home, two, or Mom come out clear as day. The point is that we're getting closer to true English speech, noticeably closer. Praise God for that!

John loves to play; he is practically obsessive about it. He says, "Mama, play home?" whenever we're running errands. As in, "Mom, let's go home so we can get back to playing!" It's literally the first word out of his mouth in the morning (either that or poo poo, meaning he wants to go sit on the toilet--which we are progressing with!) and the final teary reason that he doesn't want to go to bed. He's getting more into imaginative play lately, which is fun to see. He loves baseball, basketball (with a little hoop in the kitchen), blocks, books, puzzles, the park, riding his tricycle and scooter, "washing" the dishes, art projects, playing with Hava's babies and his stuffed animals, building train sets...ok, there isn't much that he doesn't like to do, as long as it is playing.

John's a sweet boy and we're thankful for him!