I think it's just easier to stay home.  It seems like everytime we go out lately, one or the other of the kids is having an off moment every single moment.  I guess I should count myself as lucky because they do actually alternate, it's almost like they plan it.  I think if they were both whining at the same time my head would explode.  Of course part of it is me forgetting that they are little kids.  We were walking around a women's clothing store and Spencer was complaining that he wanted to go.  I just kept tellling him that sometime he has to do things that aren't fun blah, blah, blah.  Not effective at all, he continued his pleading to leave.  So then I started talking about the colors of the fabrics and textures and letters on the wall, numbers on the tags, etc.  Happy kid.  Sometimes I think I'm missing some sort of gene that every other mom seems to have because I see other moms using these simple tactics all the time, but it just doesn't usually occur to me to do it.  Oh well.

Spencer is watching Diego right now and repeating the words that they say to repeat.  That's new.  He's also answering questions, including open ended ones.  That's not new necessarily, but it's becoming more common.  Who knows maybe some day he'll imitate the movements too.  Actually I have seen him do that a couple times, but it's very rare still.

Rachel is picking up new words like crazy.  And they are crystal clear too.  She said all done this morning about 100 times clearer than Spencer.  She's 18 months old today.  The last year and a half has been so crazy that it seems longer than that since she was born.  I know that she's going to be more of handful behaviour wise than Spencer.  She through her first major tantrum this morning and sat on the kitchen floor crying for about 5 minutes.  Actually it was far from her first tantrum, just the first one that I recognized as such and didn't respond to.  It will be so nice though to not have to constantly try to instantly decipher gibberish so that I don't have to say "I dont' understand" (apparently that's the absolute worse thing you can say to a child with speech difficulties).  So it will be a trade off.  Each child presenting their own challenges.  Go figure :oP.

Spencer did say some cool stuff today.  He came downstairs and I was dumping so walnut shells into a bowl - I love cracking and eating walnuts - he said "good job, mommy".  Then I asked him what he had in this bucket and he said something about the triangles all gone and cars.  He had the plate that I put his sandwich (cut into triangles) on and a bunch of cars.  The he correctly counted how many cars up to about 10 when he started over again lol.  Above and beyond the words being understandable, he initiated and maintained a converstation.  Earlier he said "Spencer get his shoes" as he ran to get his shoes.  Overall good stuff.  He was a little reluctant to play at the mall today, which is something he's done the last two times we've gone.  He did go play and have fun and definitely recognized another kid as well as remembered that child's name.  It was odd that he needed time to warm up before jumping in though.

I ran into another mom last night that I knew from speech therapy.  Her son is in a similar situation to Spencer, not autistic, but on the spectrum - though we still don't know if Spencer is even on the spectrum.  He has different symptoms than Spencer, but she was saying that he is growing out of them.  She said that that's what the difference is, on the spectrum means they will likely grow out of it, whereas autistic means that they most likely won't.  Interesting.  Doesn't change anything, just like walking into and out of the evals doesn't change anything, but it is interesting.  Spencer seems to be growing out of the 'problem' issues all the time.  What's the saying:  by kindergarten they are all in the same place.  Maybe we really are just wasting an ridiculous amount of co-pays.

Speaking of co-pays, Spence will restart speech therapy on Dec 12.  Our new place is closer and more reputable (in my mind) than the other.  We have 12 visits to use through March 31st, and then it starts over until March 31st of 2010, so we could theoretically have 24 visits in a row and be done.  I have no idea if that's a realistic goal or not.

Oh well, Rachel will be up soon and I need to get the house picked up.  Later...