Liar, Liar, Pants on Fire!

Well, it's happened (probably more than once). My kids have made a liar out of me. Does that surprise anyone? A little over a month ago I had to fill out some questionnaires on my boys' development. I answered pretty honestly, but definitely did not overrate them in any way. The goal was for all three of my boys to qualify for Early Childhood. Can you imagine not having to pay for preschool, times 3?! I had some strong motivation!

First of all, my first speech pathologist (the one we got rid of in September) told me that there was no way they would qualify. They wouldn't be accepted for speech only. Them my boys were starting to scare me because they were all of a sudden putting words together, repeating words, etc. HOW COULD THEY DO THIS TO ME?! Then it seems that Noe had the nerve to try to get them to hold a pair of scissors and cut. Did I not tell him he wasn't allowed to do that?? Seriously, who in their right mind would hand my boys scissors? It's bad enough that he has worked with them on making faces. The second dreaded thing they shouldn't be able to do- close a circle. I knew I was doomed.

One of the questions was, "Does your child have 50 or more words?" Well, they all have 50 or more words in Triplease, does that count? Oh but wait, they were having the spurt of vocabulary and I could actually understand what they were saying a lot more. Darnit, couldn't they have waited another month or two?

I am very thankful testing was last month and we went over our results last week. If we had been testing this month, too many questions would have been answered differently, it could have changed all of the results! I can't believe how much has changed in the last month alone.

I am the best parent ever, according to the staff I visited last week. I am a teacher. I have been to more IEP meetings than I care to remember, and I know there are tons of other teachers who go 10 times as much as I do! We did something absolutely crazy, we scheduled 3 MDT (multi-disciplinary team) and 3 IEP (Individualized Education Plan) meetings in ONE afternoon! That is just crazy! The reason we could do this- I am a teacher. We whipped through them as fast as we could. I know my rights, I could really care less what was on the paper. The fact is, MY KIDS ARE GOING TO SCHOOL!!! I won't fight anything unless they tell me they are exiting them from their program, then I will get my fighting gloves on.

During the meeting there was one regular education teacher in there who hadn't met my boys. I loved watching the expression on her face as each psychologist sat down and started reading the reports. Three different psychologists and three almost identical reports. Why? They are always worded using the same terminology, just like report card comments come out of books most of the time (did you all know that- feel free to ask me to translate your child's report card comments- I will tell you what the teacher really wanted to say, lol).

It was pretty interesting to listen to the recaps of the testing. On the school-readiness part, they did a wonderful job. I feared that this would knock them out of the running. I remember sitting with Matthew and the psychologist showed him a page of at least 15 letters. He asked Matthew to find the "Y". Being my obstinate kid, he touched every letter and would say, "No- e, no- b, no- l, no-m," etc. After he had correctly identified all of the letters he would point to the one letter he was asked to identify and say it with a huge grin on his face. Why do kids always do what you don't want them to do?

The areas where my children were behind were areas like speech, language, communication, and social skills. I had to laugh as they asked me some of the questions. For example, "Can your child drink from an open cup?" Are you crazy? Sippy cups still go flying across the room here. You must be deranged if you think I am handing them an open cup. Score one for the boys! Then there was the scissor question. Like you would ever catch me handing my boys scissors and tell them to start cutting up things. If you have a singleton, you are probably thinking this is odd. If you have multiples, you are sitting back and laughing because you probably feel the same way! The other question that stuck out in my mind was how my children act around other children their age. My kids really only play with each other. They don't have a lot of exposure to other kids their age. The only kids that they have hung out with before are our friends' triplets. They are the same age, does that count? No worries, even when Wyatt, Jaxon, and Lucas are here our boys don't really interact with each other. Score another point!

My kids have made a LIAR out of me! Recently our friends have been coming to our house for pizza and to play, so it was our turn to visit them. I had to drop Leigha off at an overnight birthday party so I figured I might as well go somewhere. We went to visit Don, Laura, and their boys. Remember how our boys don't interact with each other? They NEVER play together, just with their own siblings or on their own. WRONG!



It was the first time that we were all able to sit down and eat at the same time. That table is perfect for all of our little ones. If Leigha had been with us, she could have sat with them, no problem!

Look at the neat cubby hole that Laura and Don made for the kids. Oh wait, two different families- one cubby hole!



A little later all you could hear was laughter erupting. My nose became the focal point of their laughter.


Then they started ganging up on me. I am used to three, I can handle three kids bowling me over.


OK, I can handle three, but all six?!



So much for my boys not interacting with children their age. Oh wait, who cares? THEY ARE STARTING SCHOOL IN A FEW WEEKS! Matthew received a brand new stroller/wheel chair to use for transportation. He will have to be tied down on the school bus, while the other two boys are in car seats. I can't believe I have to go buy three little backpacks! The best news- I know their teacher! Their teacher used to work in the resource room at my school. My old assistant principal is the principal at their school. Their school is the school that our neighborhood is zoned for. The bad news is that they just switched from a 9-month school year to a 12-month school year. My school, on the other hand, just went from a 12-month school to a 9-month school. What does that mean? It means that the kids will miss a lot of school this summer since we will be gone for four weeks or so when we drive to North Carolina and then two weeks when we go to Japan.

The good news is that they will be in school for about 3 weeks while I am off! I will actually be able to do something with Leigha when they are in school. That is a huge relief! Leigha is always the one that gets the short end of the stick. I have not been able to put her in any classes due to our schedules. This will offer us some one-on-one time that is greatly needed.

It's hard to believe that almost three years ago I was oblivious as to how these boys were going to change our lives. Now I am going to be sending them off to school. I can't believe how fast the time has gone by.