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We had an appointment with a child psychiatrist today about Ben's lack of speech, and he's now been diagnosed with a mild autism. It's not so bad, but part of me is just shattered. Apparently, he should do very well with the right treatment (he really charmed the doctor), so now we wait for further evaluations and a mountain of meetings and appointments. The doctor said that daycare would be a good idea, ironic considering that we specifically wanted to avoid daycare because we thought that it would be better for our kids. Now we have to figure out how we manage to do meetings and appointments and afford (and find) the daycare and still take care of the baby and give her what she needs. I'm a little overwhelmed right now, I'm sure that it will sink in soon.

Speech impediment

I was watching a cooking segment on some talk show today and remembered just how much I hate it when people use the words "actually" and "literally". I'm guessing that how-to people on tv get paid for every one that they utter, "... then you actually just stir in the rice blah, blah ...", "you literally paint the wall purple and then you're done", ick! They bloat up a perfectly good sentence. I've been trying to listen to myself lately to discover what annoying speech ticks I have. I use "you know" wayyyyy too much, and I also say "so" a lot, probably because usually I'm halfway through a sentence and I forget what the heck I was saying. I may have conquered "like" and "um", although I'm not positive. It's embarrassing to realise that you sound like that annoying 13-year old you heard on the bus talking on her cell phone. When did this happen? I'm sure I used to speak like an adult. What I need is a device that whacks me in the back of the head when I screw up. Any ideas?

Another cute pic of my daughter

The party's over

The holiday is over and it's back to the usual. Despite all the activity, it felt really long, so today home alone with the kids is gonna be tough. Of course, they're still sleeping and it's almost 8:30, so some would say I'm getting lucky. It was a great holiday. My folks and Steve's brother came for Christmas, Bill and Cecil joined us for Christmas dinner which was yummily prepared by Steve. We had lots of visitors and even made it out to the townships for a few visits ourselves. In between, we had a lot of fun with the kids, Ben's discovering that snow can be fun and Naomi is proving to be quite a communicator, she tries to engage people every chance she gets.

Santa was good to me, among the gifts were the newest John Irving and Zadie Smith. I also received a beautiful pilates/yoga mat, so it's finally time to start getting in shape. I don't do resolutions, but this year I would like to lose some baby weight (Ben weight, Naomi's is already gone) and get some more exercise.

I've also got the usual get organized, eat less sugar, become a millionaire aspirations, we'll see how those work out. By request, I received one of those small plastic cabinets with a hundred little dividers that you use for separating screws and nails, etc. I love things with compartments, because they make me feel organized. Over the next few months, I hope to finally go through all of our boxes of hardware, etc, and get all the small stuff into that cabinet. I don't know why I'm obsessed with compartments. For years I tried to find a used library catalogue cabinet, you know, the huge old oak jobbies. If I ever found one I'd buy it despite the fact that I now have nowhere to put it. Just the thought of all those drawers for storage with neat little spaces to put labels makes me giddy. I can't be the only one with a thing for storage, The Container Store is proof of that. Maybe I should just concentrate on having less stuff to store. The last time I knew where all my stuff was when I lived alone. When you move in with someone else there is suddenly another person moving your stuff, and then you lose track of your stuff in their stuff. Now, there's kid stuff taking over our living space, and that's only capable of being organized when they're sleeping, because as soon as they wake up, it's everywhere again.  Speaking of which, I should use this time to pick up all the blocks off the livingroom floor-see ya!