Naomi Rides

As the summer draws to a close, I have redoubled my commitment to teach Naomi and Hannah how to ride a bike this year. Our one-time session to the church parking lot in May for riding lessons had been such an effort that we had never repeated it, especially with the soaring temps this July. With temperatures cooling down and only a month or two left of suitable conditions I decided to try teaching the girls in our own yard a little each evening.

Last Thursday I took all four big kids outside after I put Elijah to bed. Hannah and Naomi took turns attempting to pedal through the grass while I steadied them by holding the seat. Again and again I ran behind them around the yard, but they failed to ever take control of the balancing, falling each time I tried letting go. Naomi grew only more and more tense, over correcting herself and balancing less. A couple different friends had suggested we teach her how to coast down a gentle slope first, but we don't own a coaster bike and the pedals kept tripping her up when she attempted to coast on her bike. She ended the night in tears. I was tired and we each had a few bruises.

Discouraged, and desperate for ideas, I came in and, while Matt was tucking the girls in bed, googled "how to teach a child to ride a bike." Almost immediately I came across the idea, which should have been obvious to me, of simply taking the pedals off of the bike so the child can learn to coast first. I ran downstairs and easily removed both pedals, then I ran upstairs to tell Naomi that our next trip out would certainly be better. We went to bed hopeful.

The weekend was busy, but tonight I finally had time to take Naomi out again. This time I left the other kids inside with Matt and just focused on Naomi. She was awkward and clumsy as she tried to push herself along the grass outside, not able to get up enough speed to balance. We tried coasting down the grassy slope to the mailboxes, but the slope is littered with walnuts, rocks, and divots. Then I saw the gently sloping drive that curves around the far side of the mobile home court. Perfect!

The drive was smooth and rarely used. We walked to the top and let Naomi coast down. The first few times down she barely dared to take her feet off the ground. But eventually she lifted her feet more and let the bike roll faster. By about the tenth trip she was coasting most of the 100 yard stretch with her feet up and an enormous smile on her face!

Best of all, I didn't have to run behind her and

coach her at all. I only had to stand by and tell her how proud I was. Even as it grew dark out I ran to get Matt and the other kids. Naomi beamed as she coasted down the hill in front of them, and we all clapped and cheered.

Hopefully she'll be riding and pedaling in a few more sessions, because I already have three more little ones signed up for my learn-to-bike program.

Off Schedule

In the interest of becoming the perfect homeschooling mom (ha!) I have succumbed to scheduling out most of our days now, and while the schedule has helped to get the school year off to a good start, there are going to have to be some adjustments, especially scheduling in more time for me to blog! I'm thankful that the last two weeks have been so productive, but I've also lost the chance to share and preserve memories. So I'm coming back now to preserve here what I can remember.

Two weeks ago I dedicated myself heart and soul to cleaning out our school/craft room and organizing the kids' curriculum for the year. After a week of mess, stress, and a couple of near mental-breakdowns, I stood in a clean room with a box of school curriculum for each girl and a schedule of each girl's school days posted on the wall. Naomi found the binder I had organized with math review worksheets for her to complete during our first several weeks of school, and she sat one afternoon for 5 1/2 hours completing it. I decided then that she was ready for school to begin. And with the hardest work behind us, we were all psyched to hit the ground running last Monday. We just had to stick to the schedules.

Elijah began running a fever shortly after midnight Monday morning. Ah yes, the joke was on me. Because his last ear infection hadn't looked one hundred percent resolved a week earlier, I had been told to bring him in if he began running a fever. So in to the doctor we went Monday morning, where Elijah was diagnosed with a double ear infection. Then to the park we went while we waited for the antibiotic to be prepared, then to the pharmacy, then home for lunch. When Hannah complained that she hadn't gotten the sticker she'd wanted at the doctor, I took the opportunity to explain how sometimes we "get what we get and we don't throw a fit," just as I hadn't gotten the start to our school year that I'd wanted, but we would just "go with the flow." After this convenient lesson in English idiom, we did manage to get a decent day of school in during the afternoon.

Tuesday morning I drug a sad, feverish Elijah to our home school art class, because I didn't want the girls to miss their chance to paint in the style of Eric Carle. When Elijah's fever stayed stubbornly over 104 for the third day, we spent Wednesday morning going back to the doctor to re-check his ears. The ears looked better, which led the doctor to believe Elijah's fever was viral, so we went home to wait it out. His fever broke Wednesday night and Thursday morning he was covered in the tell-tale rash of harmless Roseola. I breathed a sigh of relief then.

Despite this serious attempt to derail our schedule Naomi had done amazingly well at completing her work each day. I had forgotten how much she thrived on a schedule. Somehow that same routine that feels so restrictive to me seems to only empower her. She dove into her work each day, delighted in checking off each completed task, and felt fulfilled when evening came. She is eight years, three months old, and technically entering third grade. Yet she is reading on a fifth to sixth grade level and breezing through her fifth-grade reading for comprehension workbook. She is entering fourth-grade math, devouring fourth grade science, enjoying a fifth-grade vocabulary workbook, thrilled to write couplet poetry, and is refusing to put down her American History textbook--reading 3/4 of it in the first week of school. I flipped through the book yesterday and quizzed her with random questions like "Who was Blacksnake?" which she answered with no trouble at all. In some ways this makes her the easiest child in the world to home school, but in some ways it is very challenging to keep this girl challenged! Just when I think I have a year's worth of curriculum lined up, I find myself scrambling to find more for her to read.

Hannah, on the other hand, has a bright mind but is a little less focused. She wants so badly to help me with Elijah or help Emma with her reading, that she has a hard time sitting still with her own spelling words. She's doing just fine in school, but most of the time still has her head in the clouds. Today she said to me, "Mommy, sometimes I'm tired of just being Hannah all the time."

"You mean you'd like a different name?" I asked, "Which name would you choose?"

She smiled sheepishly and her eyes twinkled up at me, "There are a lot of good names. I think I would choose..." Here she paused dramatically and then whispered whimsically, "Rosie!"

"Rosie Eby?" I laughed.

"No, I can choose a different middle and last name too," she objected. "I would be Rosie Josephina Ruth."

Oh my. I think I need to read her Anne of Green Gables next. She's not Anne Shirley. She's Cordelia.

Unfortunately for Rosie Ruth, the soccer season has been delayed. This means another two weeks or torturous waiting for her. What she doesn't yet know is that a friend from church has decided to bring her to her "bring a friend to ballet class" on Tuesday evening. No, I am not telling Rosie about this until Tuesday afternoon, I've learned my lesson there!

Yes, that is a bow on Elijah's head. Not my fault.

Emma, who still prefers to be called Emma, continues to progress nicely with her speech and can't wait for the preschool year to begin. And Toby continues to amuse me with suggestions like (while looking at another potato-based dinner), "Maybe we could borrow some pizza from Applebees for dinner."

Tomorrow begins another week of learning, growing, and laughing at the Eby house--on schedule or off.

Waiting Mountain and Watching the Sisters

"How many more days until soccer?" Hannah asked with angst this morning, as she does at least daily.

"Good news, Hannah," I consoled her, "you've waited 1 1/2 weeks since we told you you would be playing soccer this fall, and you only have 1 1/2 weeks more to wait."

Matt added, "If you think of it like a mountain, you've already climbed up the whole mountain, and now all you have to do is climb back down, and you'll be in soccer valley."

Hannah threw her head back in a dramatic psuedo-faint, "But I could die coming down, you know. It's hard to come down too."

Tune in in 1 1/2 weeks to see if Hannah lives until soccer season.

In other news, I'm letting the cool fall-feeling air in the screen door today. Toby, noticing that it felt very inviting out there informed me, "We could go outside and play out there some time today. We could. Maybe later we could."

I smiled at him, feeling his longing, and said, "Maybe later, buddy, but I have to make lunch now."

He stood another moment, gazing out at the luscious green play place just beyond his reach, then added, "I'll have to keep an eye on the sisters, so they don't open that latch and go out there to play."

Good boy, Toby. Glad you're here to help. What would I do without him?

Videos of Emma's Home Speech Therapy

For those who are far away and would like to hear some of Emma's speech progress with your own ears, here are two videos of me and Emma going through some of our speech routines. The first is a video of Emma pairing the "T" sounds and "S" sounds with vowels. The second is Emma going through a stack of flashcards that highlight the "K" sound. Please excuse the amateur videography, Hannah was the only willing party. I hope you can hear and enjoy Emma's hard work and progress as much as I have.

Hannah's Gold-medal Bedtime Stall

We had the kids tucked in bed at a respectable 9:30pm last night, and we were very proud. But the thing is, we had let them stay up past midnight three nights last week to watch the Olympics. Then Saturday night Matt decided they needed to watch "Chariots of Fire," which is a long movie to begin with, and much longer when it is paused every few minutes to try to explain to the girls what in the world is going on. So they didn't get to bed until after 11:00pm Saturday night. Not surprisingly, Hannah wasn't quite ready to drift to sleep at 9:30 last night.

She slunk down the stairs slowly, savoring each moment of her out-of-bed experience, used the bathroom, then came to Matt and I for another bed-time hug. After her hug she stood looking at me. "What is it, Hannah?" I asked, slightly annoyed.

"I've been thinking," she began, "Mommy, what is a cartwheel?"

"Something you can learn about tomorrow," I retorted.

But her sad little eyes drew Matt's sympathy. "Hannah, you are so...unique," he chuckled.

So I caved a little and sighed, "It's where your feet go up in the air while your arms and hands go down and you turn over sideways. Your arms and legs look like the spokes of a cart's wheel as they go around." Hannah furrowed her brow, but clearly couldn't picture what I was describing.

"Oh, just do one to show her," Matt goaded me, smiling.

Now, I haven't turned a cartwheel in at least 15 years, and my body has gone through a few changes in those years, like giving birth to five babies. It was also ridiculously late at night and indoors, three good reasons for me to have laughed at Matt and shooed Hannah off to bed. But Matt's playful goading, Hannah's twinkling blue eyes, and my own curiosity spurred me off the couch. "OK, Hannah," I laughed, "Mommy will show you just one cartwheel, and then you go to bed."

I cleared a runway on the living room carpet as Hannah giggled, threw my arms up in the air, and wondered just how this would turn out. But I had to prove to my nay-sayer husband, and my adoring six-year-old fan that Mommy could still cartwheel. So over I went. I felt a small protest from a few ligaments that haven't been stretched that way in 15 years, but I landed on my feet, to Hannah's delight, and I think Matt's surprise.

"Pretty good, pretty good, but you forgot to point your toes," Matt teased. Which was not nearly the approval I deserved for accomplishing such a feat.

"Wait, wait," I laughed. "I can do better than that. One more. Here we go." This time my feet flew a little higher, I attempted to point my toes, and I had only a small hop on the landing. I threw my hands up in my best Gabby Douglas impression and awaited my score.

"You hopped on the landing," Hannah said, feigning disappointment in me.

"That's going to be a big deduction," Matt agreed.

Laughing and just about breathless I collapsed on the couch as Matt sprang up. "Watch, Hannah," he called. "This is how you do a cartwheel." He glided much more smoothly than I had, but I was able to fault his landing.

"I'm the judge," Hannah asserted, "and I'm not sure. One more time, Daddy." Matt was glad to oblige, especially since he had been better than me. "OK, I've got that one in my mind now," Hannah said, "but, Mommy, I need to see yours again."

Of course I couldn't turn her down now, not with my pride on the line. So I turned two more cartwheels for the pint-sized judge, each better than before. After an agonizingly long wait, Hannah announced, "The gold medal goes to Daddy, because his was the best, but I'm still proud of you, Mommy."

Then the three of us were laughing together in our cozy living room, in the old farmhouse, under the great pines and the black summer sky. In my estimation, that was a 10.0 bedtime-stall performance for Hannah, and I enjoyed every moment of it. She deserves a gold medal of her own.

Olympic Hopefuls

The weeks of the Olympics are one of the few times that I miss having a TV in the house. In order to expose our kids to the culture and fun of the Olympic games we dedicated Monday and Tuesday evenings to going to Grandma and Grandpa Eby's house and gluing ourselves to their TV. Unfortunately, in the Eastern Time zone that meant letting the kids watch from 8pm until midnight! But hey, the Olympics only come every four years, and they were free to sleep in the next day.

All four kids sat riveted for an unprecedented amount of time watching synchronized diving, swimming, and gymnastics. The personal biographies and family stories woven throughout the competitions grabbed their hearts and made them cheer out loud for their favorite athletes. "Go Missy! Go Missy!" they yelled at the TV as Missy Franklin took her first swimming gold medal, as if they'd always known her. A few happy tears welled up in some eyes during the medals ceremony. They empathized with the athletes' failures, exulted in their successes, and just marveled at their abilities.

Toby watched closely, with eyebrows furrowed, as a male gymnast tumbled and flipped during and impressive floor routine. Quietly, to no one but himself, he noted, "I will try that later."

About 11:00 Tuesday evening Naomi's eyes were drooping closed. She tilted her head back to peer at the TV as the women's gymnastics team sealed their gold medal. "Are you ready to go home, Naomi?" I asked.

"No!" she answered definitively. "I still want to watch."

There's something wonderful about feeling a little awe at the athletes' impressive abilities, a little pride in your country's accomplishments, and a little fun in breaking the rules and staying up past bedtime at Grandma's house. I think my kids will always remember that winning combination.

While we don't expect any Olympic athletes to arise from our family (Toby may disagree), Matt and I have decided that some athletic competition would be good experience for our kids. Yesterday I signed Naomi and Hannah up for our town's park and rec fall soccer league. Naomi is excited. Hannah is beside herself with excitement, in typical Hannah fashion. "Oh, Mommy! Oh, MOMMY!" she crowed, "Oh, I can't WAIT!! Lots of times I've wanted to do something where, you know, you weren't RIGHT beside me, and I didn't know when I could. Oh, Mommy, I'm SO excited!"

In fact, yesterday her excitement turned to pure torture. "When does soccer start again, Mommy?" she asked at least three times. When I told her she'd have to wait about three weeks, she melted to the floor with,  "Oh, I CAN'T wait!" She spent her evening musing about whether her coach would be a boy or a girl, what color T-shirt her team would wear (she's pulling for blue or purple), and what she would say when she first met her other teammates. "I'm so excited it hurts," she whined as she followed me around, "It really hurts. I feel sick waiting. I hope when I wake up tomorrow I don't remember about soccer."

This morning she stumbled out of bed, peered up at me with forlorn eyes under messy bed-head hair and confided quietly, "I didn't forget." Fortunately, the soccer excitement has been overshadowed slightly by new projects and activities today. Hannah may just make it three more weeks, especially since I'm planning on letting them watch Gabby Douglas take the gold medal in the women's all-around tonight. Thanks goodness we have the Olympics to keep Hannah occupied for a few weeks. Next time I sign her up for a sport I'm not going to tell her until we're in the car on our way to practice.

Breakthrough

My four (soon to be five)-year-old daughter, Emma, battles a severe speech apraxia that reduces the intelligibility of her very complex sentences to that of an 18-month-old toddler. We have waited for her to outgrow this "speech delay," and we have given her the benefit of the standard early intervention and school system therapy programs, but these produced zero real progress in 2 1/2 years time. Finally, this March, after spending nine months on the wait list for a private group of speech-language pathologists who practice at a hospital 36 miles away, Emma received a real assessment and a diagnosis of severe speech apraxia, and I received a glimmer of hope.

Therapy didn't start in earnest until one month ago, and it is only once a week, but its major contribution has been to give me ideas for how to work with Emma myself at home each day. Coinciding with this has been another idea of mine--that if Emma could read and write it would benefit her in three ways: it would make her attend to each sound in a word instead of constantly omitting sounds that are difficult for her to produce; it would give her an alternate form of communication, writing, if she could not make her mouth produce a word; and it would supremely boost her confidence and her self esteem to able to keep up with her sisters academically.

I wasn't positive Emma would succeed at learning to read when she was still four, but I was fairly sure of it. She had spent the last school year learning to identify and write all the letters, and she'd shown her bright mind in other ways, so we gave it a try. We started in with intensive daily home speech and reading therapy for Emma one month ago, and I'm delighted to announce excellent progress!

We do tongue and lip exercises each afternoon. We practice new sounds and pairing these sounds with vowels over and over again: "Ta, Teh, Tih, Tah, Tuh, Tay, Tee, Tie, Toe, Too." I say each sound slowly and clearly, and painstakingly Emma battles her uncooperative tongue to mimic these sounds. She tries, but instead of "Tah" her tongue follows the familiar route that her brain has created for her to produce the "ah" sound, and she says, "T-gah." Tears well up in her eyes. "I gah goo ih!!" (I can't do it!!) she yells at me, pounding her fist on the table. I look at her with tough love and teach her to yell, "It's hard work!!" instead. "Ih ah wuh!!" she yells, pounding her fist again. I look at her tenderly and smile, and this time she smiles back. We both know she just needed to vent. We back the train up again to "T......aaaaahhhh." She succeeds at producing these sound separately, and I praise her. I draw an imaginary line in the air as we connect the sounds now with no "g" in the middle, "Taaaaahhhh." She swallows, focuses and succeeds again, "Taaaahhhh." And we go wild. Progress. We've both tasted it now. And we want more.

"Sa, Seh, Sih, Sah, Suh, Say, See, Sie, So, Soo," we continue. More tears, more yelling, more tough love follow. "You can do this, Emma! Keep trying, Emma! Don't give up." Slowly, more progress follows. "Okay, on to reading," I say cheerily. We move from the kitchen to the living room now: fresh room, fresh perspective. We leave the frustration in the kitchen. We open our book, "Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons," and spend far more time on learning to pronounce each sound properly, pay attention to each sound in a word, and blend sounds into words than a normal child would need to, but it is working.

Emma has tasted the sweet success of speaking intelligibly as well as reading small words, and suddenly she has an insatiable appetite. Words are all around her and she knows now that she has the power to decode them (with a little help). She wants me to read with her all the time now. We're still on words like "See Sam read it," but it makes sense to her, and she wants more. I don't want to hold her back or tell her things like, "You don't know how to read that yet." So I teach her the extra rules that our book hasn't addressed yet, and she soaks them up like a sponge.

Did she just say "top?" I say to myself, overhearing a conversation between Emma and Hannah. Yes, I heard it with my own ears--not "gah," but "T-AH-P" with all the sounds so crisp and intentional, with no one coaxing her, and suddenly I want to cry.

This afternoon the real miracle occurred. Emma came to me wearing some papers taped to her shirt and said, "Woo ah my gay." I recognized the first three words as "Look at my..." but Naomi, Hannah, and I were all clueless as to the last word. "Gay!!" Emma screamed at us. "Gay!! Gay!! Gayyyy!!!!!!" Out came the tears as I looked sorrowfully at her.

"Be careful,Emma," I coaxed her. "Say each sound for me. What letter does the word start with? Can you write it down for me?"

"I goh oh!" (I don't know) she yelled back, but then she paused. Her eyes brightened. "Tee" she said excitedly, and on the paper in front of her she wrote "t."

"Tee?" I asked with giddy excitement, "It starts with Tee?!"

"Yeah!" she yelled back.

"Great, Emma! Good job. Now think about the next sound. What comes next?"

"A," she said, and wrote down, "a."

"Look at my tay..." I coaxed her. "What comes next?"

"Chee," Emma said. I wondered a moment what "Tay-chee" was, but as she wrote I understood. She wrote "g."

"Look at my TAGS?!" I asked.

"Yeah," she smiled with pride.

It's almost imperceptible, like the rising of the sun, but we began last month in the dark, and today I realized we are standing in the brilliant pink and copper glow that herald's the sun's grand appearance. I don't know exactly what the daylight will look like for Emma. Just this morning I wondered to Matt if Emma would ever speak completely fluently or if it would always be obvious that she had an impediment. I guess we won't know that for several years, but I know it's growing brighter around her all the time.