So it was a week later that they got us the sofa, and we had to assemble it, but it was pretty quick (relatively) to unbox and set up – took me maybe 20 min with my 4yos “helping” to put together the sections and set it up. It is quite nice, not the fanciest or highest end sofa but passable and comfy and the primary features are that it has all removeable cushions with removeable covers so I can actually clean it properly when my kids inevitably spill things on the sofa.
Sofa aside I got so busy preparing to see if my 4yos were potentially ready to start kindergarten this year that all thoughts of posting updates or doing things flew out of my head and were replaced by basically straight panic non stop. Totally healthy. Right?
So the situation has been that the twins turn 5 this year but not till later in the year so they _could_ have started kindergarten. However, after the whole, uh, Pandemic situation wherein everything was shut down for basically the better part of two years the kids lacked good socializing with other kids skills or being away from mom skills. We didn’t have any friends with kids in the city we lived in and then no groups were meeting to make new friends so we had no one to regularly take the twins to play with so their level of socializing was with each other or with adults. And they took their cues from each other and thus ended with like high social empathy stuff (great at sharing and not fighting) but total spoken language delays because of twin talk/lack of other kids to talk to. Peopel might get ideas but it’s not through lack of me trying. I talk to my kids all the time and use regular adult sentences and we read books and we sing songs and the kids did not give a single whit about singing along or reading along or talking back to me they just absorbed language and could follow complex instructions from a young age >.< very frustrating. We don’t have a lot of screen time we don’t have tablets we don’t p[lay games on phones (I read books on my phone lol). They just twin talked at each other and played with their toys.
Some of it might also be tied to one of my twins having some other delays due to health things that happened when he was little, and we have a strong suspicion that he very likely high function ASD or ADHD but we are waiting on specialists to do assessments to know for sure.
Anyway, long story short we tried out kindergarten and one twin was extraordinarily not ready for it while his twin was probably ready for it but there was no way I was splitting the twins up (I can only imagine the trauma and I won’t do that to my kids) and I was not going to put in both kids just to have one struggle the entire year as that is also not fair to either of them. So instead we got into a nice play group hosted by the school ad we go twice a week to meet the other parents and kids that are all kind of in the same boat with stay at home parents and kids that never did daycare or preschool before this. Now they are socializing more, they both are actually putting effort into speaking more clearly so their new friends can understand them better, they both are getting more aware of like… peer pressure? In a good way? Like if the other kids all grab a snack at snack time (prepped by the teacher) that the twins don’t like, they will also take it and try it and sometimes decide maybe they do like it! or playing games they would usually not play or singing along with songs. It’s been really great and exhausting to have that new stuff in our schedule and have the twins more interested in new things at home because of it.
I love how the one twin has been really emphasizing some of his words now to make more clear CH or K or T or Sh sounds. because he is still not great at stringing those sounds into his word so there’s a little pause before the tricky sound. It’s basically adorable and I can’t get enough. He also just keeps making up words. It’s not a mandarin orange. It’s an Orangerin or a manderorange >.< I need to record him saying it one of these days before he fixes it so I can play it back to him when he gets big!
Anyway all that new stuff has been hard to do and has been keeping me away from doing art or doing blog posts. now that our new routine is settling in a bit better I think I can try to put an alert in my phone to do some sort of weekly something again. It’s so hard for me to make new habits. Here’s a not quite finished doodle I’ve been working on as a finisher to this post.
