Blossoms

Scene 1: Math. Living room, morning, today.

Me: (Holds both index fingers up) What's 1 + 1?

Bereket: Two!

Bereket and Sira hug, a physical depiction of two.

Me: (Holds two fingers up on one hand and one finger up on the other hand) What's 2 + 1?

Sira: Smiles and points to Tsega.



Tsega makes three . . .




Scene 2: Bragging. Preschool meeting with teachers, yesterday.

Sira and Bereket. Still significantly delayed in speech. BUT, advanced in letter recognition! They are where they should be this time next year right now. They're starting to free hand letters too, drawing M, T, J, X, of course O, and working on B and S. They also like to design letters and shapes with hotwheel cars. I think they'll read and calculate before constructing complex sentences. Sira's teacher dropped him from further special ed services since he's learning with the pace of class, speech will be his focus outside normal class routine.

Bereket. His self portrait was nothing but brown scribble. He has trouble with the tripod grip. Then a couple of weeks ago he astounded his teachers so they took a picture of what he did at the chalk board. A perfect snowman. Three round sections, buttons on the bottom most stout section, hat on top, arms and eyes perfectly placed.

Tsega. Running with language explosion, no, flying. It's all talk all the time now. Oh, the stories.

Everybody's description of all three. Hilarious, cute, always smiling, happiest kids in the class. One problem. Still giving our sweet marshmallow bus driver the 3 stooges act. I relate Doug, I feel for you.

Jerry: Isn't it a shame, you have nothing to worry about now?

Me: Oh! It's not over yet!