Caleb has now been home just shy of 3 months, and although I hear magical tales from other parents of how their child is practically fluent in English by this time, I just don't buy it. At least not for an 11 year old. One mother whose child has only been home one month longer than Caleb even sent a letter to a listserv I am on, bragging about her daughter's English prowess in reading and writing as well. Either this child has an IQ of 150 with previous English experience, or her Mom had done some serious editing.

Oh well...each child in their own due time. Caleb still struggles to express himself in English even though his receptive English skills have really taken off. Today he said two things that really struck me as funny. I hope it wasn't locational humor as in "I guess you had to be there"...

We were driving down the road and passed a couple who were out walking their dogs. Not just any dogs...these were gargantuan Great Danes. Caleb saw them at the same time as I did, and just as I started to say, "Look at those huge dogs, Caleb!", he pointed to them and said, "Mama! Watch! Horse!" and then said, "woof!" He clearly knew they were dogs or he wouldn't have added the "woof!" but he was trying to express in the best way he knew how, the size of these beasts from his point of view.

If you have a sensitive stomach, you might not want to read any further. We have been struggling for a month to get a stool specimen, but Caleb has not cooperated by pooping during the lab's business hours. We actually got one the first day the doctor ordered it, but the lab refused it because I hadn't refrigerated the specimen which was to check for giardia. Hey, the requisition didn't say one word about "giardia on the rocks", so how was I supposed to know? Since the specimens were all supposed to go on the same order, they refused all four specimen containers. Ugh! This meant doing it all over again.

Caleb does not yet have down some of his verbs, so we often get "I'm bicycle" for "I want to ride my bicycle" or "I'm read" or "I'm book, where?" when he means "I want to read" or "Where is my book?". After all, it works for "I'm cold" and "I'm hungry", so why doesn't it work for everything else he wants to say?

Today, after finally explaining for what felt like the 100th time that if he needed to have a bowel movement that I really needed to know and collect it, he came running to me. Understand that this was after a very trying morning with him where I was beginning to lose all patience. He had been irritating his siblings just for the joy of being a pest, and was in the proverbial doghouse with me. The kids were outside playing and I could hear Micheline shrieking at something he had done. Just as I was ready to go out and correct him once again on being nice, he came running inside to tell me that he needed to go to the bathroom. He looked at me with an urgent expression and said, "Mama, I'm poop!" Yes, today, dear boy, I think the expression just might work. :)