I think life with four kids must be just a swirling mass of calendar chaos. At least mine is.

Spring just seems to be bursting a bit more than usual with things going on, and I add to the mix inadvertently by finding yet more things to explore.

Tennis season is now in swing, and the pun is intended. Alas, there's just so much to do. We had a makeup match at Westwood this morning, and I finally seem to have broken out of my atrocious playing streak. The first three matches of the season went poorly for me--I've lost 1-8 each time, which is embarrassing and leaves me wondering if I should take up golf or adopt reading as my sole hobby. Today Michele and I lost 10-8, but we put up a big fight and we were playing well, if not at the top of our game. I had a good time, it was energizing, and I don't feel like a total tennis failure now. I am supposed to play in a mixed doubles tournament this weekend, which reminds me that I need to sign up. Oops.

I am definitely not doing a good job of making lists, and with as busy as we are, this is the kiss of death. I'm forgetting all kinds of things, I'm sure...not to mention the ones that I know about. Tonight Frances had ballet, flamenco, and soccer. I had a Spanish lesson. Ollie and Walter had bagpipe lessons, a playdate, and then Ollie had a baseball game. Rutledge had an early morning speech session.

IN addition to our regular weekly stuff, I also have gotten myself into a bit of a nervous situation with cognitive testing with the older boys. It's rather complicated to explain why I felt I needed to get this done in the first place, but I have wanted for quite a while to get a basic battery of tests so that I can better understand their strong and weaker areas and to help me put into extinction any questions about Asperger's Syndrome or auditory processing problems. My attempt to get answers really only raised more questions, so tomorrow morning, Walter is going to be having a broader battery of tests, including one that I hope we'll be able to use for his end of year evidence of progress. I feel bad that he has gone to bed late tonight (Ollie's game went late and kept everyone up) and that I perhaps haven't done much to prep him for this test. I hope that he'll also be able to relax and not feel singled out, since I'd like the test to reflect his best efforts. If things go well with his testing, we'll move on to Ollie.

Frances has started working through Headsprout Reading. I am hesitant to pay for programs online, especially when the price is a little steep and it's hard to see where the material covered meshes with what she already knows, but so far I am very pleased. I'm not sure that I'm necessarily seeing a huge change in her fluency (which is just about non-existent) or the variety of what she can read, but I do see her getting exposed to lots of blends and sounds that she will hopefully make automatic in the near future. I have started working with her using Reading Rescue 1-2-3 as well, especially after seeing yet again that the older boys have issues with phonemic awareness. All of them are doing better with this now, but I feel like we need to make it a daily activity for quite a while. I find it challenging to figure out how to best work with the boys when they can already read almost anything. At the same time, I have seen that they lack fluency and some patience with phonological skills, and these might be part of what keeps them from reading more for pleasure. People don't tend to do things that are difficult or that tire them out, so I feel like before I just accept that reading isn't their choice of how to spend free time, I want to be sure that I'm not overlooking some skill gap. So I have been introducing some general phonics strategies: covering up all but the first two letters and then making your mouth ready to say them, looking for smaller words in the larger ones, and "using the other vowel." At this point, while Walter's vocabulary seems weaker compared to Ollie's, I'm having a rough time finding words that he's not familiar with in regular writing to practice on. I think this is a good sign!

Rutledge is preparing for preschool in the fall, though he has not yet gotten a spot anywhere, and we still have a few places left on our list to check out. After Second Pres in Roanoke, it's hard to find a place that meets my standards. I know they do exist, but I'm not willing to drive 30 minutes or more each direction to get this, as much as I'd like to. And the places closest to my house are the ones I'm least impressed with. I believe we've found a good situation for him, but right now he is 7th on the waiting list for 3 day and 11th for 5 day, and if I had my druthers, I'd have him going 5 days a week. For now, we just wait and see, and hopefully around May 15th we'll have more information about whether he has a spot. This means the heat is on with potty training. Right now, he's doing pretty well. This week has seen enormous changes--the first ever poop in the potty (though 3 poops in his underwear, which is gross...). Whole days with no accidents, as long as we remember to take him every 30 minutes, since he still never takes himself or initiates. This has meant that he can use the Power Wheels jeep that a friend gave us a few months ago. I replaced the battery and he has been zooming through the yard and down the street since yesterday, which I truly hope will be a reinforcer to keep up with the new skills. It just may be possible that he is going to grow up after all.

His speech therapy is going so well so far. He added two new sounds this morning, and though he has a terrible time remembering them, he is still very eager to practice and have other people ask him about his homework. He is doing a popcorn sound, an "M" blender sound, a "b" bunny sound, a "t" tick-tock clock sound, and "d" raindrop falling sound. He is very cooperative with the speech therapist, which makes things easier for everyone, and he loves to play her games. Today they played Penguin Pileup while he made his sounds and then he made pizza with a pizza topple game after using his new sounds. There is a lot of emphasis on counting objects while he's there, which isn't his strong suit, but perhaps that will be an added perk of straightening out his articulation problems--a better number sense.

So we are moving along these days. Waiting for summer. Signed up for swim team. Preparing for our end of the year proof of progress. And spending as much time as we can outside.