And you can count on the fact that we'd love to see you if you'll be in the area. Our time in Provo is limited, and most of it will be spent with the family we came to celebrate the holiday with, so in order to see as many of you as possible, I am planning a casual open house-style gathering. Come when you can and go when you need to. But if you can at all swing it, I'd love to catch up with you in person!

When: Monday, December 21st from 5-8 pm.
Where: Provo.

If you'd like to come, email me and I'll send along location details. I think that most of you have my email address already, but if not, you can find it on my profile page.

I'll probably whip together some brownies or cookies or something, but if you have a favorite holiday treat you'd like to bring to share, I certainly won't stop you. :)

The Macy's on 34th Street in Manhattan is a magical place at Christmastime. The grand main entrance is decked out in vibrant poinsettias and big red bows, and from the ceiling dangle enormous ball-shaped ornaments. And today, the day Macy's declared as "National Believe Day," employees dressed as turn-of-the-century newsies hawked circulars designed as vintage New York Sun newspapers reprinted with Virginia's famous letter to the editor. Sure, it's crowded in the extreme, and stressed-out holiday shoppers and disoriented tourists are not the most pleasant people to cross paths with, but none of that seems to matter once you've walked inside, closing the chilly December air behind you.

This morning, bundled up against the bitter temperatures, the boys and I, along with our friends, Emily and Elizabeth, worked our way underground uptown to Macy's where we intended to pay a little pre-Christmas visit to Santa Claus. Everyone, from the shivering newsies just outside, to the elevator attendants, and all the way up to the elves working the crowds of children lined up on the 8th floor, where Santa is stationed, were not only nice (which is a rare treat indeed in this city), but they seemed genuinely happy to be at work.

We stood in the line (or on the line, which is how they say it in New York), which wasn't nearly as bad as it easily could have been, as it meandered through Santaland -- a magical place filled with decorated Christmas trees, oversized toys, and elves ready to bend over backwards to make sure you had a pleasant experience. Garrett was in a personal heaven.

Well, he was, that is, until we reached Santa. I'd been doing my best to prep him for the moment when he'd get to sit on Santa's lap, and Garrett had seemed excited to do so. But the apple apparently doesn't fall far from the tree, and he panicked when it was his turn. The only way he'd even get near jolly old St. Nick was if I was right there holding onto him, and even that was asking a bit much. Caleb, on the other hand, did great.


Garrett's extreme disinterest in Santa notwithstanding, we survived. No, we had an excellent time. The boys were incredibly well-behaved, and I didn't collapse in exhaustion as soon as we got back home. In fact, I'm thinking we could brave the hoards of holiday shoppers and tourists again next year for another visit to Santa.

And that, my friends, is the magic of Macy's.

I've known for some time that Garrett is a bit of a clown, but his ability to make Caleb laugh just by being himself tickles me, too.

I wrote recently about beginning the process of acquiring speech therapy services for Garrett through the Early Intervention program, and since then things have been moving along quickly. Shortly after getting a hold of EI, I was contacted by a service coordinator who came to my home to get the ball rolling. I was debriefed on the basics of how the program works, and then I signed a pile of paperwork to officially get things started.

Soon after I was contacted by a speech pathologist and a special education instructor, both of whom made appointments to come to my home to evaluate Garrett. The results of their evaluations, along with their personal recommendations, are what will determine Garrett's eligibility for Early Intervention services. We will meet with the special ed instructor this Saturday; the speech pathologist came by yesterday afternoon.

During her visit we first discussed my concerns about Garrett's speech, as well as the potential genetic influence for speech delays in his family history. Then she pulled out her picture charts and bag of toys and asked Garrett various questions to not only hear him talk, but also to determine his level of understanding.

According to the numbers, Garrett's receptive language, or his ability to comprehend, is just about on target. He's a bright boy, and he demonstrated that fact during the evaluation. In one instance she gave him a baby doll and a toy cup and asked him to pretend to give the baby a drink of water. Only she didn't actually say pretend, and consequently Garrett took the doll and the cup and marched right to the kitchen where he pulled a chair over to the sink, fully intending to give that baby a drink of water. His expressive language, or his ability to talk, on the other hand, was definitely determined to be below level. (At two years and five months of age, he is measuring to only have the ability of a child who is one year and eight months old. I can't tell you how nice it feels to know that I'm not crazy in suspecting a speech delay.) However, it was not so dramatically low that he would automatically qualify for services through EI. Because Early Intervention places a heavier emphasis on receptive language development, the combination of his two scores might make him ineligible for services.

The speech pathologist, however, is still going to recommend that he receive services because it is clear that he would benefit. She also does not want to see his family history repeat itself if that can be avoided. If, despite her recommendation, he still does not qualify for Early Intervention, I can first advocate for him to hopefully persuade them to give him services. If that is not successful, in the next couple of months I will be able to start the process of enrolling him in CPSE (which stands for the Committee for Preschool Special Education), which is run by the Department of Education and begins when he turns 3. The speech pathologist told me that in her experience it is often easier to get help through CPSE because a heavier emphasis there is made on expressive language.

The speech pathologist also told me that because Garrett's problems are phonological in nature, speech therapy is definitely in his future, whether or not he receives it through EI. He has a difficult time completely forming words, especially when it comes to closing the ends of words, with the results that many of his words for different things sound exactly the same. (For example, "buh" for him means "bubbles," "buttons" and, oddly, "raisins" -- I can't figure that one out.) In his head, he hears himself saying entire words, but that is not what those around him hear. These are problems that Blake and I are simply not trained to help him with, and it is not something that will completely disappear with time.

She was, however, very impressed with Garrett's ability to say "thank you," both in how he pronounced it, and in how politely and correctly he used it. Before she left she told me that whoever ends up getting to work with him in speech therapy is lucky indeed because he is a sweet boy -- a fact which, unless he's having an irrational meltdown, I couldn't agree more with.

The process for determining eligibility is obviously not yet complete, though I'm surprised that, for a government run program, things are moving along as quickly as they are. If things continue at this rate, we'll likely find out if Garrett will qualify and, if he does, get the services started by the end of the month or early January at the latest. I'll keep you updated as we learn more.

Browsing the holiday store front window displays in Midtown Manhattan has become a Christmas tradition in our family, and one which we enjoyed on Saturday evening with Frank and Laura, our old friends from Blake's Ball State days in Muncie, who are in town for a visit. When we began our usual loop, a cold but manageable bit of rain was falling, but it didn't take long for it to transition into big, wet snowflakes -- the city's first. Consequently, our views of the windows were a little more rushed than we would have liked. Still, though, we saw some great displays. My favorites were Barneys, which did a hilarious tribute to Saturday Night Live, and Bergdorf Goodma n, whose elegant windows followed the theme "A Compendium of Curiosities." (Click the links to see better photos.)

Step aside, NYPD, because Garrett is on the beat. Unfortunately, his desire for control has a tendency to complicate our lives. Here are just a few of the many capacities he has volunteered to serve in:

Prayer Police
Like a good Mormon boy, Garrett makes sure that we always remember to say our prayers, especially at mealtimes and before bed. "Beh, beh," he'll say, meaning, "Come on, guys, let's say a blessing," and then he'll fold his arms and [not-so] patiently wait for us do so as well. He doesn't actually say prayers himself yet, but as soon as Blake or I begin, he'll suddenly decide that he, as well as the rest of us, should be clasping our hands together instead of folding them. Rather than let his insistence evolve into a full-blown tantrum mid-prayer, we pause and shift our hands into the newly dictated position before continuing.

But a few second later Garrett will call out, "Eye! Eye!" meaning, "Everyone close their eyes now!" Up until then, they were closed -- well, perhaps not Garrett's, but rest assured that they are now. We pause again and try to hold in our chuckles as we peek at Garrett's tightly shut eyes, along with his scrunched up nose and gritted teeth.

"Amen," we say as we finally are able to finish the prayer, and "Deedoo, Ma," Garrett says, meaning "Thank you, Mom," as, depending on the situation, he either dives for his food or his silky blue blanket. I think I'd find these habits charming except that, after experiencing them several times a day, they are getting somewhat old.

Spice Rack Police
I have a spice rack on my kitchen counter that Garrett has recently adopted. He likes to take those tempting little spice-filled canisters off, then stack them up, roll them around on the floor, or stuff them in the microwave. And should my recipe call for a teaspoon of basil or oregano, heaven forbid I try to touch them. There is usually little point in arguing with my toddler -- and besides, letting him harmlessly play with the spices is an excellent distraction while I take care of preparing dinner. So until the day comes when he figures out how to unscrew the lids and actually sprinkle dried spices over everything instead of just pretending to, I think I'll let him continue to be in charge my spice rack.

Traffic Police
Recently Garrett has become a stroller-riding equivalent of a back seat driver. He is familiar enough with our neighborhood to know where things (like the playgrounds and the best store front window displays) are and which direction we should be going in order to get to them. On the one hand, I find this ability rather impressive, but on the other, it sure does make running errands a little more emotional.

For example, we reach a corner when suddenly there is frantic whining down in front. "What's wrong?" I ask Garrett, and in response I get more whining and pointing in a direction I'm not headed in.

"You want to go this way?" I say.

"Yeah," he replies.

"But we need to go this other way," I tell him.

"Noooo!!!" he screams.

"But don't you want to go home?" I try to reason with him. He nods in the affirmative, so I continue, "Well, home is this way, not that way."

"Noooo!!!" he screams again.

In the end I just have to take a deep breath and continue to head home my way, reminding myself as I do who is really in charge here.

The ingredients have been collected. The oven is on, and so is my apron.

Let the holiday baking begin.

On the 2009 menu:

• Gingerbread Cookies
• Pecan Logs
  
• Toffee Squares (the linked recipe is the closest to what I'm making that I can find online)
  
• Chocolate Fudge
  
• Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough Truffles
  

It's hard to believe people when they tell you that your newborn will grow out of the fussiness he apparently came packaged with when he was born. "Just wait until he's three months," they say. "Everything will be better then." And deep down you know that it will because you've done this before. But when he's six weeks, two months, even two-and-a-half months old, and the only things he gives you are screams and headaches, in all your exhaustion it's hard to remember that the misery will eventually come to an end and your baby will emerge from that uncomfortable cocoon and will be happy. It's a magical thing, really, and the only reason I can tell you this now is because it has been happening at our house.

After three months of adjusting to an existence outside of the womb, Caleb has finally come to terms with his life. He is happy and actually pleasant to be around. It's as if a new baby has come to live at our house. Which isn't to say that things are perfect. He's still human, after all, and as such is prone to the occasional teary meltdown. But the keyword here is occasional. It's no longer a constant part of his personality.

At any rate, here are some things I'm loving about this "new" (and dare I say improved?) Caleb:

- His smiles have been upgraded from "amateur" to "professional." If you say his name or talk to him, he smiles. If you look at him, he smiles. And sometimes, when he's in a good mood and wants the world to know it, he'll sigh contentedly and smile. And these aren't your run-of-the-mill baby smiles either. They're full-blown, eye-twinkling grins, bursting with uncontainable excitement. (The camera hardly does them justice, but I think you get the idea.)



- He has learned to laugh. He doesn't yet do it spontaneously, but in the evenings, during his second wind just before bedtime, he is especially giddy and ticklish. He thinks it's hilarious when we pretend to gobble up his hands, and I think it's hilarious that laughing gives him the hiccups.

In the wake of Garrett's birth, nearly two and a half years ago, we were so busy packing up, moving to, and getting settled in Brooklyn that we never sent out a formal birth announcement. This is something I have always regretted. So I told myself that with the next baby I'd be more on top of things.

A few months before Caleb was born, my friend Ashley moved back to Brooklyn after a year-and-a-half hiatus to finish school. While she was away she honed in on her awesome design skills and opened up an Etsy shop called Nouveau Designs. What could be more perfect than having a graphic designer land right in your lap in time for the birth of a child for whom you desperately wanted to send out birth announcements? I'll tell you what: Nothing, except for maybe the announcement she put together for Caleb:


I know! Awesome, right? The design was a back-and-forth collaborative effort, and I LOVE what she ultimately came up with. I mean, if you're gonna give birth to a baby in Brooklyn, New York, you might as well capitalize on that fact when creating his announcement. And see that lit up window? That's ours. Because we're up in the middle of the night taking care of our sweet baby.

I wish I could have mailed an announcement to each of you, but after copies were sent out to family, my supply had been whittled down considerably. But I'm happy that I can share it with you via that fabulous instrument known as the internet. For those who didn't find a copy in your mailbox, this is the photograph that accompanied the announcement (he was about two weeks old when this picture was taken):


I might not be able to undo the past, but with Ashley's help I was able to retroactively put together a birth announcement for Garrett. I love how it turned out, and how, like Caleb's design fit his birthplace, so too did Garrett's. Muncie, Indiana is home to the Academy of Model Aeronautics which Blake and I liked to visit -- especially when people from all over the country would come to the airfields to fly their planes during the annual competitions.


We only ordered enough of these to keep for ourselves, but it really makes me wish that I'd thought to hire Ashley in the fall of 2007 when we were both new to Brooklyn.

If any of you are in the market for birth announcements (or cards or invitations...her darling advent calendars sell like hotcakes), I highly recommend Ashley and her work. Seriously, go check out her stuff.

I've been concerned for quite some time now about an ever more apparent speech development delay in Garrett. While his vocabulary is slowly expanding, at nearly 2 1/2 years old he can only say a small handful of words that are understandable to those who don't live with him, and he is not yet putting simple sentences together, as most children his age are. He speaks almost constantly and with incredible voice inflections, but what he says mostly sounds like babbling. When I compare him to his peers, he talks now like they were talking a year ago.

The problem does not appear to stem from his hearing, as he understands and carries out basic instructions from me. He seems, too, to be able to answer simple questions that I ask him, even though I often have no idea of the specifics of his replies. It seems more to me to be a "wiring" issue: he hears fine, but somewhere between his brain and his mouth things get scrambled and the words he produces do not come out as he necessarily intended them to. In fact, after some conversations with my mother-in-law, I am even more convinced that this is where the trouble stems from. Blake had similar speech delays when he was very young, and consequently went through many years of speech therapy.

Earlier today I took Garrett in to see his pediatrician to hopefully begin the process of helping his speech develop as it should. The doctor referred us to the city's Early Intervention program, which is available for children up through age 2. He gave me their phone number, and once we got home, I called to get the ball rolling. Unfortunately, though, no one was in (likely because of the Thanksgiving holiday) so I probably won't be able to get a hold of anyone until early next week.

Before I left the office I was warned that, if after the initial evaluation Garrett's speech was deemed not too horribly delayed, we might be denied the free services EI provides. I'm hoping, though, that given my own observations of Garrett in combination with the family history of speech problems, he will qualify for speech therapy sessions. Besides, the doctor also told me that it's much easier to present a case for further speech therapy to the school board (who succeed the folks at EI once a child turns 3) if I have official in-hand proof from Early Intervention that my child's therapy should not yet be terminated.

I've been warned by several people that working with "the system" often proves to be an uphill battle, but for the sake of my son, I plan to do whatever I can to get him help. So here we go. And maybe, hopefully, it will be sooner rather than later that I will be able to understand what the heck Garrett is always talking about.