Trying to keep up

Lately around here it's been about survival. How can I take care of the kids and home just enough to survive and still get to lie down frequently because of the nausea and fatigue? I know this only lasts for a short time so I'm trying not to stress out over the cluttered living room and bedrooms. BJ has been great through all of this and he has worked more than ever with the kids and home on top of his full-time job, school work, and Bible Fellowship preparations every week.

Schaeffer had his speech evaluation last week. Turns out he has low muscle tone in his jaw and lips and cannot form the words that he is probably trying to say every day. Most of his words come out sounding like "ahh", "uhh," and "baa." Dee, the speech and language pathologist (SLT) who also worked with Lily explained that his mouth does not have the control it needs to form all the sounds he needs to be making right now. At 15 months he should be able to make all the constonant and vowel sounds by now. She pointed out that he is still making only the sounds that are formed with a loose mouth. It takes a lot more mouth control to produce the "eee" and "ooh" sounds, therefore, he still just says a lot of "ahh's" and "uhh's." Dee also explained that whenever a child has low muscle tone in the mouth area he/she tends to by-pass the mouth since it's not a fully functioning part of the body. Therefore you get a lot of sounds made in the throat or not much sound at all, which is what Schaeffer does a lot. He can be in a room playing for a long period of time and never make a peep, and then turn to me and start pointing and grunting for something. He's definitely very communicative with his body language and since about 10 months we have been doing sign language. He has started using the sign for "more." I expect the others to come soon as his motor planning skills improve. I don't know what the near future looks like for him in terms of speech, but Dee gave us daily exercises to do with him at home and he will be in speech therapy every other week.