Lachoneus' speech skills

Dear Journal, January 19th, 2010

Here in Italy kids start attending school at age 3...Italian school. We were considering putting Luke in the Italian school. But if he has language/communication problems in his own language then it might make it worse to put him in an Italian school.

Luke still speaks as much gibberish as he does real words. And of course, most of the real words he says only I can understand.

He does not say yes or no. He says "uh-uh" for no and if he means "yes" he repeats what he wants. If I ask him if he wants a sandwich and he does then he says "sandwich."

If I ask him his name he says nothing. If I tell him to say "Luke" or "Lachoneus" he says "uh-uh" (meaning "no"). He use to try...about six months ago he would try to say his name. Guke is what he would say.

He also said prayer a few times...about six months ago. But if we ever try to get him to pray now he gets really silly and starts making goofy sounds. He refuses to be serious if we ask him to pray but he'll be serious if we don't ask him. And he won't repeat a word we say.

I was in nursery for a minute the other day and the teacher was teaching about prayer. She asked Luke to say the prayer and I was a little embarrassed. I explained to her that even at home he just makes silly sounds for prayer.

It is this nursery teacher that has Sterling and I worried about Luke's speech. Her oldest son (now 7) has some communication problems and has had speech therapy. She has asked me three weeks in a row about Luke and his development. Pointing out that I might want to watch carefully and maybe get him evaluated.

It didn't offend me. We are friends.

At first Ster and I agreed strongly that Luke is fine and normal. But as we watched Luke we started wondering.

We did realize that his lack of speech and communication lately is our own fault. Letting him watch too many Donald Duck cartoons (because Donald is his favorite) and not reading enough books to him. He has not gotten enough attention from us since Tiberias was born.

Not just because he have a baby now but because we've been so busy. After our parents' visits we moved apartments. I'm still settling in our belongings and decorating...it's a long process.

So it's been a few days now that we've been really focusing on Lachoneus. Limiting his Donald Duck intake, reading to him a lot more and spending quality time with him. Even coaxing him to use complete sentences.

He has started to do better. But I think we are going to have him evaluated. Our bishop is a childrens' doctor. Specializing in stuff like this. He is going to give us pamphlets and things to help us decide if we want the evaluation. Then we can have either the bishop or other people come to our home to ask us questions and observe Luke.

We don't typically go for this type of thing. But we want to know how normal he is and if there's something we need to focus on with him. We need to know if we should start planning for him to attend Italian school or not.

They do have an American school here on the base. But I think that starts with Kindergarten (age 5). And we'd rather Luke go to an Italian school than to the American school here. That would help me as well. We'd want Luke to not be too uncomfortable going to a school where he is not use to hearing the language spoken. So we'd need to start speaking Italian in our home asap. I don't know much but that would really help me. If we try to speak only Italian in the home for a while I'm sure I'd catch on. It would motivate me to actually study the language too.

Dear Journal, January 21, 2011

Yesterday at work Sterling was told he will not be going on this Spring's deployment! The spot Ster was deploying to fulfill is now requiring a Master Sergeant...three stripes higher than Ster is.

There is still a possibility he might have to go in the end but as of now he is not going.

When I heard the news I was somehow a little disappointed. Probably because he had made the plans for him to be gone six months. But then I realized he is not going to leave me for six whole months anymore! He is not going to miss seeing Ty learning to crawl and walk too!

He will probably go on TDYs...maybe even up to 6weeks at a time. But that's not a problem!

And now that he is not deploying he can take that schooling he needs to get his promotion. He'll get it earlier this year instead of having to wait until after the deployment!

He dropped off his uniform just Tuesday to get his Senior Airman (SrA) patch sewn on for deployment. Now he has to go stop them from doing that and have them sew on his Staff Sergeant (SSgt) patch because he's going to promote! He's going to have four stripes on his patch instead of 3.

We were going to plan a trip to Switzerland to attend the temple and see if any friends wanted to go with us...right before his deployment in March. Now we can plan it for the summer and go in nice weather...plan some sightseeing on that trip as well.

We were going to take family pictures right before he deployed too. Now we can wait another month or two and have beautiful green in our outdoors family pictures.

We were planning to go on a cruise after he returned from deployment. Now we can look at the calendar and decide if we want to do that sooner rather than later in the year.

I think we have decided to plan to put Luke in the Italian school next school year. He turns 3 in the summer and then will be old enough for Italian school. If he/we don't like it we can always pull him out. And if we do keep him in and we do live here until 2013 he'll get 2 years of Italian school. He should know the language by then...me too. :)

Tuesdays at 10:30a is Story Time at the library. The story lady comes and reads to the children who attend. My friend Nelli Mangle takes her kids often and told me about it. I am excited that Sterling is coming with us to Story Time next week! I love it when he's so involved with his sons! He is a wonderful dad!

Another event I am looking forward to is January 29th. Ster and I are taking our Valentine's date early. We wouldn't want to try going out on Valentine's day...it'll be busy everywhere. And we are planning to go on a date to see the Harry Potter movie that night anyway. So we'll figure out plans for dinner and maybe Sterling will come up with some romantic surprise to make it Valentine special. I already told him he should...without telling him "you should." And if he doesn't I'll be fine...I've learned not to get upset when he fails to romance me when I want it. But he's gotten pretty good at the romantic stuff recently. I think he'll pull through.