Since it's such a quiet list today I thought I'd send a little note about Anthony. 

He "graduates" from Junior Kindergarten tomorrow! (I don't know where the time went... they are certainly not babies anymore...sigh). As you may recall, he is in a special programme for kids with physical disabilities at our local Children's Treatment Centre. His report card is great! He has mastered all the skills required in the JK curriculum (counting and number recognition to 10, ordinal numbers, letter recognition of the first half of the alphabet, colours, shapes, simple patterns, simple weights and measures, dates, seasons, etc.). 

He has done great with the computer this year and can type his own name! Doing a lot more with his hands including cutting and pasting and all kinds of painting, etc. He has had power chair "lessons" and does great backward circles, lol. He also had the chance to do bike riding on a Rifton bicycle. He consistently can do up to 10 pedals in a row! We are amazed at how far he has come this year.

What is really cool (and a bit ironic since he was "supposed to be" non-verbal...) is that his forte seems to be linguistics!!! hehehe His speech HAS improved tremendously this year and the delays now are primarily related to breath volume and strength versus inability to form or pronounce words. He is rated at 4 ½ for verbal content and about 4 years for expression. But he IS able to produce all English sounds. 

The funny part is in french class. He LOVES french. He glows when people speak french to him and his comprehension is terrific for his age and considering we don't speak it at home. He will substitute french phrases appropriately in the middle of sentences and will spontaneously answer some questions in french. He even asks for french videos to watch sometimes. He counts, knows his colours and shapes in both languages. 

He only gets a half hour of french in his day at school. It is kind of funny to watch Bobby when Anthony wants to practice his french with us. Bobby's school alternates a week of french and a week of english. Yet he is more frustrated than not with this. He is so used to jumping in with answers at home before Ant gets a chance... Bobby is usually very quick to learn new things. It kills him that Ant can answer in french when he can't, lol.  And Ant is sooo proud that he knows something that Bobby doesn't - unfortunately, it is too often the other way around. So it's nice to see Ant with the upper hand in this. :-) 

We have Ant enrolled in conductive education this summer for 4 weeks. That should be interesting... it will be our first time to try it. And starting next week, for 2 weeks, the boys will be at summer day camp. It is a programme offered by Ant's school but siblings are welcome so Bobby will go there. Sad part is that Bobby's school has a camp programme too but it would be complicated to include Anthony (would need to hire a 1:1 aide, etc.). But Bobby went to the centre the past 2 years for pre-school camp (one year he was the only sibling there) and loved it, so... 

Anyway, that's my update... I had a few cancellations today so it was quiet here... almost time to go home though. Get some rest, Bobby!

Yvonne
Mommy to survivng triplets: 
Anthony (terrific 5 year old, living with spastic quad CP) & Bobby

Ottawa, Canada