a whole lot of nothin'.

I haven't posted anything lately because it seems like such an effort to come up with anything worth typing. I've been busy, but nothing noteworthy.

Earlier this week, we had a conference with Reed's speech and hard-of-hearing teacher, Deb. The long and short of it is that based on his most recent audiogram (earlier this month), if we were to have him evaluated for the first time now, he wouldn't qualify for special education services. That means one of two things - either (a) his new tubes are working wonders and he has never had a hearing loss, or (b) he's maturing enough to be able to sit still and listen when the audiologist asks him to do certain things or repeat certain words during testing. I was afraid that since Deb said that he wouldn't qualify for services that we would have to stop using Early Intervention, but she went on to say that each evaluation that is done is good for three years. So even though he wouldn't qualify if tested now, he's still working under an individual educational plan (IEP) that is good for three years - so we can do two more years before we'd need to re-evaluate him. This is a good thing, because I think that even though he's hearing better and talking more, he is still behind the curve. I think he's catching up very quickly, but the more interaction we can have with someone who understands speech and language development, the better off we'll all be in the long run.

In the meantime, Reed's universe seems to center around cereal, Matchbox cars, and Little Einsteins. At this point I should also add that Betseeee dares post "pat pat pat" in my comments again, I'm coming up to LI to kick her butt and steal the O'Girlies. Anyway, he's managed to find a way to get to where we (used to) store the DVDs and thinks that he can do everything himself. He's managed to ruin two of his three Little Einstein DVDs, and we've had to find a new place to hide all the movies.

And finally, as much as my job can frustrate me at times, today I absolutely love it. As part of one of our environmental permits, we need to keep debris and trash off the ground and away from the sewers and water outfalls. This is a real problem sometimes, so today our department went out to clean along the fence separating our property from the river. It was a beautiful morning, not hot, and just perfect for being outside with friends and chatting and goofing off. Much fun was had with rubber snakes and camera phones (baby fawn, anyone? sooo cute!), and we got free Subway for lunch. And now it is 3:18, and a completely reasonable time to pack up and head home. After all, it's spring in Minnesota - nobody works a full day on Friday!