30 months 14 days

Day 928. Last night I went to bed at 1 am. This morning I woke up with Tammy in our bed. Emmy came around 6:50, and soon they were all up. I picked up Sammy and put him in bed with us. At 7:30 I got up and went to the kitchen to make breakfast.

After breakfast I cleaned them up and dressed them, and we went downstairs, where we read a Bible story together. Then I went upstairs to work. I had an hour before we had to leave. When it was time, I went to get Sammy, put his coats and shoes on, and a little after 9:30 we left the house. We got on the subway for two stops and then had to walk quite a bit. We got there 15 early, showed my PCR test, and they let us into the building to wait there, as it was so cold. They had an aquarium with lots of small fish, as well as a bird cage with a lot of small birds, and we were watching the animals until it was 10:15 and time for our appointment.

It was the first time the speech therapist of the center, where Sammy goes to physiotherapy every week, was seeing Sammy. The appointment lasted 70 minutes. It was not only about speech, but also about eating. She asked lots of questions about our meal times and eating habits. She looked at Sammy's face, had him eat a snack to watch how he eats, and made him talk. She looked at a book together with him. She sure gave me a lot of input and suggestions of things we could do to make improvements. We left before 11:30, walked back to the subway and rode home, where we arrived at 11:40.

Packages were arriving at the same time, and since Randy opened the door, we walked in and I let Randy get Sammy out of the stroller, so I could get to work make lunch as quickly as possible. Randy took Sammy downstairs, and they all came up only when I called them not that long after noon. The kids immediately saw the Amazon packages and wanted to open them, and so I let them. Besides food for them, there were two Paw Patrol caps for the boys; Tammy's cap only gets delivered on Monday.

With the words of the speech therapist still going through my mind, I had decided to change our seating arrangement at the dining room table and moved the chairs and place mats accordingly. Sammy was now in the middle with both of us on either side of him, and Tammy and Emmy at the ends. That made us less separate, and Sammy has both of us to help. I helped him with the main dish, while Randy fed him his pudding. One input was to let him eat more independently, even if he makes a mess, and to not put any pressure whatsoever on him to eat. She said eating should be enjoyable. I believe it worked out very well today. They were also wearing their new caps.

After their puddings, or rather the just-arrived squeezies they wanted, I cleaned them up and dressed them, and the boys went to bed. It was already 1 pm, and it took Emmy until 1:20 to fall asleep. Then Tammy came upstairs and lay down at 1:25. I sat with her for a few minutes to avoid a disaster like yesterday, but it happened anyway. After I had walked away, she got up and started running around. I put her back to bed and then Randy sat down by her. She played in bed for a long time, while Randy was sleeping  next to her. As she was finally getting tired, she started calling for me. She was definitely not in a sleeping position. Randy left, I tucked her in and sat down by her, and by 2:15 she was finally asleep. I was nearly falling asleep myself, but then left her to return to my computer.

But I was not able to keep working much longer because I was so tired. I closed my eyes and fell asleep. At 3:15 I woke up because Sammy was crying, wanting out of bed. That's really late for him. I got up to get him and discovered that Randy and Emmy were already downstairs, which is where I took him. Then I went back upstairs and lay down again. At 3:45 I got up to get some snacks to take downstairs, and while I was down there, Tammy woke up. I picked her up and sat down in the chair with her, where she rested on me for a few minutes. Then Emmy was already calling for me from the bottom of the stairs, and so we went downstairs. I left her there, but returned right away because of her crying. I took my computer and tea and took it all downstairs to stay at my desk. Right away Emmy came wanting to watch Peppa Pig, and Tammy joined him in the request. And so I let them watch for a while, while working on the computer.

In the meantime Randy put Sammy into his new walker. He wasn't too happy at first, and I wasn't sure whether he'd get over it. He'd been holding on to his horse for a while and would not let go of it, even after being put in the walker. So we incorporated it. Randy put the stick into the walker, and I encouraged him to walk over to me and the horse. To me it seems he has a harder time walking with this walker than the first one, but as you can see in the video, he loved the big wheels he could put his hands on to make it move back and forth. He only got it yesterday, so we'll see how it goes during the two weeks he gets to try it out.

After a while I turned the Echo Show off, which the kids were not happy about at first. When I left a few minutes later to go make their dinner and did not take them with me, they were really upset as well. The speech therapist had talked about the importance of them sitting down to eat, so I decided to not let them eat standing on the chair in the kitchen, while I was getting their food ready any more. I prepared their food in peace and then put it on the table. Then I went downstairs to tidy up with them.

I found a "tidy up" song on Alexa that she played for us in a loop, while we were tidying up, which was really me alone tidying up. In the end Tammy put a few books away, but most I did by myself. Then we all went upstairs and sat down at the dining room table. They did eat more than if they had already eaten in the kitchen, but less than if they had eaten in the kitchen. And I can't keep them from getting up once they're done. I put the rest of their food in bowls, and they all went into the bathtub, where they ate some more, though not as much as expected. They were having fun playing, and Tammy did a dance class with all her rubber duckies again. The speech therapist also told us that pouring water from containers helps speech development (a study showed) and encouraged us to give them containers in the bathtub. So we got a few cups, and I showed them how to pour water from one cup into the other, and they started pouring. For Sammy it's hard to hold a cup with one hand only. The other two kept pouring for quite some time.

We got them out one after another and put their Paw Patrol and Peppa Pig pj's on. By 7:15 they were all in bed, and I had Tammy on my chest, while sitting between the boys. We did some talking, then I started singing, and then Tammy agreed to go back to bed. I tried to leave a few times, and around 7:50 I was able to leave for good. It was Sammy who was awake the longest, since he had slept over two hours in the afternoon today, which is very unusual for him. I got myself something to eat that I took downstairs, and after having eaten, I went back to work. Hopefully I make it to bed earlier tonight.