Good McLean Fun

I am feeling much more composed and in charge of my emotions than I was a few hours ago, so I'll share with you today's trivial tribulation, expressed in an email written to a friend this morning. It sounds trivial, I know. But it felt monumentally devastating at the time. "I have to vent for a second, I'm glad you wrote. In a nutshell I had an emotional breakdown this morning, tears streaming and everything. I am so hesitant to do stuff with the twins because there are 2 of them, I can't control as much if it were just one 2 year old, so I never take them places alone without another adult who has free hands. This morning I decided to just suck it up, stop sheltering them, be brave, let them experience something new, and with my other two I always brought them to a local library preschool story hour, I figure just clapping, dancing, read a book or two, maybe some coloring.. I thought we could do it. I packed them up and we drove to the library. I got there and...

Behind the scenes in the McLean house, January 2014: Jackson/Lincoln have been saying "help" and "ducks", respectively. Jackson still loves to color and will say "more" in sign language, Lincoln still loves to build and play with dirt, and gets mad at me when I ask him to sign "more".  We've attended 3 short speech therapy sessions thus far. They are not fans, and I'm not sold it's making much of any difference right now. If any extra money presents itself we would consider putting them in a 2 year old class twice a week, just to see if a new environment would get them talking more. Facebook allows me a glimpse into other two year old development, as friends post videos of their 2 year olds and even one year olds speaking and communicating more than my boys do. Facebook also shows me pics of beautiful homes being purchased and built, splendid vacations and cocktails, updates on everyone's exercise successes, and lots of puppies ...