I wish I had something extremely profound to say.  Maybe one day when my world stops being so incredibly busy, I'll remember to say it.  (Or just remembering it would be nice, too.)  This is a picture of Ethan running through the house chasing Benjamin, and it is one of my favorites from this month.  He's two going on five in this picture.  He's dirty from head to toe, and that is a routine situation around here.  He's constantly covered in some kind of marker, paint, glue, or left over fragments of lunch.  (Or dinner, or snack, my word that kid eats all the time.)

If you've been following the blog at all, and I'm sure you haven't because no one reads blogs anymore it seems, you'd know that over the Spring/Summer, Ethan was sent to neurodevelopmental peds, and that he "failed" several portions of the MCHAT- maybe I didn't go into that much detail in the previous posts.  At any rate, he did, and the MCHAT is a screening tool that pediatricians use in determining if your child needs to see a specialist.  So he was sent to a specialist (same ones that B goes to), and she wanted him to have a few months of speech therapy.  This wasn't a surprise at all, and we had already begun the paperwork for EI to come out and do their own assessment and therapy.  The therapists are wonderful, but it takes several months for all of that to get rolling smoothly.  So after he'd had a few months of speech, we went back to neurodevelopmental, and they're really quite lovely people there.  Honestly.  But... when they say things like, "Well, what is your biggest fear concerning Ethan?"  And, "What do you think about autism?"  ... it just makes me cringe.  I mean, honestly?  Yeah, um, it makes me want to swallow up and die a little bit.  And I know, I KNOW, it's been years since we've been through all of this, and trust me, we are professionals, but nonetheless, it doesn't always make it any easier.  So, I just half-smiled and said, well, that's just the way it goes in our house.  She hands me more paperwork, and I know the routine after that.  Years and years of therapy and life gets better at 4 or 5.  And I hate to sound depressed about it all because that is not the complete truth.  I'm not happy about it, but not depressed- it's just life, ya know?  That's the way the cookie crumbles kind of situation.  Very matter of fact, I suppose.

But still, again?  Really?  So interesting how different they are, and yet the same.  Be on the look out for something profound.  I'm sure it's coming.