10 Weeks

Callister is 10 weeks old! I've said it before, but he is just the cutest and easiest baby to take care of. He is so much fun, because now he smiles and coos at all three of us! He absolutely loves Connell and smiles whenever he talks to him. Connell is very protective and always has to know where "the baby" is. Callister was 12 lbs, 6 oz at his 2 month check-up, which is 86th percentile for his age. He is 23 inches long, which is 77th percentile, so he's a pretty good size! He definitely has more of a belly than Connell ever had!



As you can see in the picture, Connell finally got a haircut. It choked me up to buzz off his gorgeous curls (well, JayC did the actual buzzing), but they'll grow back! He looks too big and grown up for my taste. Connell is doing great in his speech therapy. His teacher, Elaine, says he improves every time he goes. He is improving a lot, but he's still way behind for his age. We're looking into getting him approved to go to a state preschool, where they could continue working on his speech, but he would also have more of a social environment to learn in. So we have to go through the testing and evaluations to see if Connell qualifies. He loves the attention, so I don't worry about that. The county psychologist came to our house on Friday to start the evaluation process, and I had to answer an hour's worth of questions about what Connell can and can't do. Then she had him draw some shapes and lines to see how his motor skills are. She was impressed and told me that he's doing awesome in everything but communication. We have had some people (I won't mention names) make some rude comments basically hinting that they think Connell has some autism, and even though I knew he didn't, it still bothered me a lot that someone would say that about him, so I talked to the psychologist about it, and she said he absolutely does NOT show any signs of autism, and that he is completely normal for his age, except for his severe speech delay. She said there's no way of knowing what causes that in a child, and I guess it happens often. At least I know that he's totally fine in every other way, and I can tell people that if they say something now! I'm so relieved! There was always the worry, but now I can tell those rude people off if they say anything again! Man, being a parent is hard!

Anyway, so the psychologist is going to observe Connell in speech next week and then she'll come back to finish his paperwork. Then eventually we'll have a big meeting with everybody and they'll give us 2 or 3 options that we can do for Connell. We're not obligated to choose any of them if we don't want to, but at least we can see what they're offering for next year. The goal is to get him up to speed with his peers and ready for kindergarten. I know he'll be fine. I love being able to have real (almost) conversations with my son! And I know the Lord will bless us for doing our best. (I'm so thankful for Conference!) And I'm thankful for my calling in the Primary presidency so I can observe Connell in Sunbeams. I love watching him sing songs and do the actions with the other kids! I'm also thankful that the government was able to compromise at the last minute and avoid the shutdown, so we can get our paycheck next week! I definitely have an increased testimony of food storage and savings, as the prophets have told us for years.