The boys

I sometimes wonder what Joshua will be when he grows up... He his so lively and good at almost anything he does.  He is very athletic and has amazing balance and coordination (we sometimes call him Monkey because he loves to climb, swing, and jump); he's also pretty confident (while getting other kids ready for sledding, he jumps in the sled, takes off and loves it!).  He has an engineering bent to him - he loves puzzles (he has mastered some that have 24 pieces) and certain mechanical things.  But, he is also very dramatic and expressive; definitely the "class clown" of our family!  He is also by far the most vocal of our kids, at least this age.  And, lastly, he is very observant.  He's always taking in various information, and when he talks about it, it can be very funny!  Recently, he was sitting on Derek's lap and saw a freckle on his arm.  He laughs and says, "Dad, you have a round-about on your arm!" (Man holes are also "round-abouts" to him). He also referred to a picture of a cardinal as an "angry bird," and when he looked at a video of a newborn baby asked if it was baby Moses.

On another note, Nathan wrote his name on the marker board for the first time!  I haven't done much with writing letters, and he did a great job! While at the marker board, I wrote "at" and he was able to sound it out.  We continued with other "at" words - cat, bat, hat, etc. and he got every one!  He loves counting, adding, and counting by twos.  It seems like he is really growing. He is currently stuttering quite a bit again, but it doesn't seem to bother him too much.  I did take him to get a preliminary evaluation done (end of Dec.) to see if he qualified for speech therapy, but he didn't.  They also testing his hearing in a few different ways, and his hearing is right at the average mark.  It was comforting to know he hasn't had a lot of hearing loss after 4 sets of tubes.