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(+) The chickens are doing very well! We still have all 17 that we started with and they are now 3 weeks old! They are little eating machines and we are starting to get an idea of how many pullets/cockerels that we have. It's been a very interesting and educating journey. The kids are absolutely crazy about them and enjoy helping to feed them and give them nightly cuddles. While I was cleaning out their brooder a couple of days ago, I put them out in their big outdoor pen that they'll eventually be in permanently once they get their feathers. They were really nervous about it and stayed all together. They're still pretty young though, so that's expected I suppose.
(+) Evan has been doing wonderfully at school! He just completed his first week. On the first day, I cried like a baby after dropping him off. I cried the whole way to my Meme's house where I was going to drop Emily off. It was a really sad morning for me. I've just never left him with anyone other than family before. And he was looking like such a BIG boy. How did my little baby become a big, independent 4-year old preschooler? He has made two friends at school, their names are Patrick and Gunner. Evan seems to get along with them really well and he's happy to go see them. I'm so proud. I'm a little concerned because it doesn't seem like I get much of any feedback from the teacher about how he's doing or if he's causing trouble. Danny says that I should just assume that no news means good news and that we have nothing to worry about. I'm still just concerned. The teacher is really young and this is her first year with a class, so I'm sure that she's probably overwhelmed with having 20 little ones in the mornings and another 10 in the afternoons. I'm sure that's a lot to keep track of and I know that she's probably too busy to spend time talking to each parent! She sent home a little goal survey paper for the parents to fill out and on it I wrote that I'm very interested in hearing about Evan's progress and I would like to receive feedback about how he's doing, what we can do to improve, etc. I hope that it goes over well, but we'll see.
(+) After taking Evan to his 4-year old well-child visit, I asked the doctor about his speech and whether we should be concerned. He's very smart and knows A LOT of different words, but he has a hard time with articulation. At his 3-year visit, she had mentioned that she was slightly concerned with it and ordered a hearing test. The hearing test went well and we decided to give it another year and see how much he improved with age + us working with him some. The doctor said that he has definitely improved since last year, but if we were concerned then she would refer us to a speech therapist to see. We agreed to meet with the therapist and she spent an hour with Evan. As a parent, it's very hard to sit and listen to your child do one of those speech tests and hear them have difficulty. You don't realize it so much during everyday conversation, but hearing him pronounce the specific words that she requested him made me realize that he definitely has some areas to work on. After the test was over, the therapist told me that he mispronounced about 40% of the words. She recommended that we put him in speech therapy twice a week for 30 minute sessions. She pulled our insurance information and our insurance COVERS NOTHING!! :( At first, we though it would cover the first 20 visits and we would only need to pay a copay, but after looking more closely, it doesn't cover anything at all. I asked the lady how much the visits are typically and she couldn't give me any numbers, which was definitely annoying. But just going off of what our copay is ($25), which we know it'll be much more than that, but just starting with that... If we go twice a week then that's $200 a month! I have no idea how much it'll be honestly. We are not in a position where we can add a large extra expense right now. And just honestly, time-wise, I don't know how the scheduling would work. Because he has school from 8:15-11:15 each morning, we would need afternoon visits and we could only do Wednesday and Thursday afternoons. So those are Danny's only days off and he would basically spend the entire day running around between picking Evan up from school, feeding the kids lunch, dropping Emily off with a babysitter, taking Evan to speech, picking Emily up again and then driving home. Very time consuming.
(+) I mentioned to Evan's teacher that we were looking into putting Evan into speech therapy and asked her if the school had a therapist for the older kids...and She said they actually have a person who comes once a week and they can start meeting with the kids from pre-k! FREE! WHAT A BLESSING!! She is going to have him screened next week and then she'll provide us with additional information about what we need to do next. I am just so happy! I was seriously stressed out about how we were going to try to make speech therapy work and I feel like this is just an answer to my prayers! So wonderful.
(+) I've been doing a lot of research about being a better parent. Mainly information about home education. Not that I plan to homeschool or anything like that, but I feel like I have a lot of areas that I could work on to improve my parenting skills and be a better mom to my kids. I'm praying for more patients with my kids and that I will hold my tongue when speaking with my husband.
(+) I feel like this season of marriage is just so strange. I don't know that I would say that it's hard. We just don't see each other a ton. When we are together, we have the kids right there with us and so that's difficult, too. Our relationship has definitely changed and I know that it needs some work.