First Day of School!

First day of school! First day of school! (Said in a very Nemo-ish voice, of course!) This is an exciting year for us. We are soooooo thankful that Daddy has such an amazing job! The Spartan Regiment works hard, so by the time school officially started this year, the kiddos had already been practicing for three weeks. I still couldn't resist snapping an official first day of school picture of Daddy though!

The day after James started his regular school schedule, Ian and I went to "Meet the Teacher" at the new Mother's Day Out program we wanted to try for him.

Ian had a great time at "Meet the Teacher" and a few days later, he had his own first day of school!

What is this backpack thingy, Mom? Are you sure the cool kids have Batman?

For some reason, our little tyke was kind of fussy on the way to school. He loves playing with his laptop from Grandaddy and Grammy Jen anytime we are in the car, but he just wasn't thrilled to be on the way to school.

However, when we got there, he ran right over to play with the other kiddos. I couldn't even get a picture of him with his teachers! I knew he wouldn't go down for a nap at noon, so I picked him up a bit early.

He was ready to go, so we grabbed his backpack, lunch box, and how-he-did slip and headed out. It wasn't the smoothest first day of school for him, but I'm sure a lot of that has to do with it being a new place. He has wonderful teachers and we are glad we found this program!

Splash Pad

Earlier this week, Libby invited Ian and I to come play at a local splash pad with Noah. Ian and I were out doing errands, but headed out for some fun anyways. Libby was nice enough to share one of Noah's swim diapers with us, and the boys ran around having a blast splashing (surprise, huh? ;-) )

In fact, we had so much fun that Ian and I went back the next day. Unfortunately, Libby and Noah weren't able to make it so I didn't get any pictures of the boys together. It is a great little place to cool off though!

Not too sure about that water in my face, Mom!

This part is really fun though...you should try it!

Haha...I love his expression here!

Ahh...feels so good! Did you know it is a 110 today, Mom?

Loving the splashes!

Our little explorer - if there is something to be climbed, especially if it is a narrow pathway, it will be climbed and conquered!

Mmm...so refreshing!

Libby, thank you for introducing us to the splash pad! We had a blast! We definitely need another play date soon!

32

I've actually been too scared to count this number before starting this series! Every single day, usually two or three times a day, we pile ALL of Ian's stuffed animals and blankets in his crib and then take them all out again. I haven't really wanted to know how many animals and blankets we were moving about everyday, but finally decided it will be a good number to blackmail remember with Ian later.

We start with 3 quilts that are all very special to us (these quilts are always up on his crib)...

Add 2 Pillow Pet doggies...

1 plush Toy Story blanket that Ian sleeps on every night...

5 puppy dogs, including Skip (middle back) who Ian sleeps with every night...

1 well-endowed gorilla...

1 bunny rabbit...

3 monkeys (my Mom made the one on the right for me when I was little)...

1 squeaky turtle...

1 giraffe...

1 pirate Larry...

3 bears...

1 manatee (Barbara Manatee is one of Ian's favorite VT songs, btw!)...

4 soft blue blankets...

...a better picture of Ian's Toy Story plush...

1 soft lamb...

1 baby doll (don't judge...I bought it for him so he could learn the word "baby")...

1 cute striped elephant...

1 stuffed Moses...

1 silly Cookie Monster...

4 cuddly little blankets...

1 very soft vehicle blanket...

And voila! The child gets thoroughly covered by stuffed animals and blankets!

Of course, he isn't covered very long before he tries to dig himself out.

Getting out from under all the stuffies is one of his favorite parts!

Then we have to pile all 32 animals and blankets at one end of the crib...

So that Ian can leap over them. (He didn't actually land on his head! The angle of the picture sure makes it look that way though!)

Haha...so much fun!!! Let's do it again, Mom! (And again and again and again...)

Lol...sometimes it is rather hard to find the kiddo.

But he's always under there somewhere!

One day, after we had moved all 32 stuffies at least 10 times, I got tired and decided to show Ian how to drop the stuffies out of his crib onto me. That way I got to rest for five minutes while he painstakingly picked up each stuffie and dropped it. He loves it and I get a break! Win-win!

And, of course, our stuffie piling is not limited to the crib!

What would I do without this constant entertainment?? Ian's stuffies and I have gotten very well acquainted through this particular stage, but they assure me they are loving the attention. They've seen Toy Story 3 and aren't looking forward to Ian growing up too soon! ;-)

27 1/2 Months

Wow! Has time flown! This has been one of the busiest, craziest, goodest months we have had in a long time. As usual, I am behind on Ian's monthly updates. So instead of trying to get my mushy brain to remember exactly where 27 months stopped and the 28th began, I figured we could do a 27 1/2 month update this time. :-)

I have already blogged about a lot of the changes happening this month through ECI. To sum it all up:

* Ian is now off of dairy products and scheduled to have allergy testing soon. Hopefully we can identyify some potential offenders that may be keeping him from being willing to eat a variety of foods.

* An OT (occupational therapist) will be coming out in the next couple of months to work with Ian on some of the food textures he is so resistant to eating. It may be allergies, it may be textural - either way, we'll get it figured out and I am happy about that!

* We got Ian a few 100 and 300 word picture books. He LOVES them! He will sit and repeat words out of those books (and only those books). I have several pages memorized and we practice them in the car, in line at the store, in the bath, etc. His speech is definitely getting better with those words and he is using a few signs to initiate what he wants.

* Ian is pretty consistently using the signs "movie" and "eat" to request a movie or a drink (for which he sign "eat"). He will copy sign "table", "blanket", and "cookie", although he doesn't initiate those signs for those objects. However, he did sign and say "dog" (pronounced "daw") a couple of weeks ago when he heard a dog bark on our walk!

* I haven't updated his sizes the last few months because he is still pretty much wearing the same size clothing and diapers - 18 months in shorts, 2t in shirts, 5 in diapers, 7 in shoes.

* We now have an absolutely precious bedtime routine down that melts my heart every time I am home and get to participate. After bath, snack, a little bit of a movie and/or a book, Daddy and I take Ian into his room and get his crib ready. We turn the white noise CD on and the light off. Then Daddy uses a nice soft voice to tell Ian all about the wonderful things he got to do that day and then prays for him. It is so cute - Ian usually "prays" along with Daddy. And just this past Saturday, he said "amen" at the end of the prayer. Ian now gets so excited when it is time to say "A-nen!!!!" Then Daddy and I sing him the lullaby Daddy made up for him and Ian sings the last "bum bum bum" line with Daddy. Sometimes we pretend to eat Ian or Skip (his stuffed dog) in between lines of the song, which tickles Ian to no end. Then it's kisses all around and we lay him down and he usually goes right to sleep. It's the sweet ending to these long toddler days that makes it all worth it!

Doozy of a Week - 3

Sorry - I had totally meant to keep up with the numbers theme this week and we have had so much going on I haven't been able to. We've had three major events in the last week that have eaten a ton of time and energy.

1. Ian's dietician recommended taking him off milk products (except cheese). Apparently some kiddos are allergic and/or intolerant to the milk protein. That allergy causes the GI tract to be inflamed and keeps them from wanting to eat a variety of foods. It can also cause excess drooling, which can hinder speech. Sooo - we are going to try going without the dairy for the next two weeks to see if it helps with the drooling and speech. I feel so bad for Ian. Here I've been trying to be a good Momma by giving him milk and yogurts everyday and that may have been doing nothing but causing him problems. I am so thankful we made the decision to start the ECI process though and found out about this sooner rather than later! Since dairy is about half of Ian's diet (of what he will actually eat), I have had to do some major revamping to his diet. We are fortunate that we have a nice Kroger nearby with a great whole foods section with rice milk, coconut milk, and coconut milk yogurts & ice cream.

2. Last Thursday we found out that the transmission on my car was going out. I am so thankful we took the car in when we did to a mechanic I totally trust - the transmission really is on its last legs and could have caused a dangerous accident if it had gone out while driving on the highway. So we are now down to one car and I have been spending every spare moment looking for another car. James has been amazing and sat through the 2 1/2 -3 hour process at a couple of dealerships with me over the weekend. We are pretty frugal when it comes to buying cars and haven't found anything we are willing to fork out major dough over yet.

3. Thanks to a text from my wonderful sister-in-law, Lissie, (and a follow up text from my awesome sister) I found out that my Grandpa had major heart failure this morning and had to be resuscitated. Fortunately, he was already in the hospital for a foot infection and had a wonderful team of doctors that were able to work on him right away. He is on dialysis and apparently one of the meds that they were giving him for the foot infection caused a rise in his potassium levels. For a dialysis patient, that can be extremely dangerous. He is still heavily sedated with a breathing tube - as my Grandma says, it is a "wait and see" situation. My poor Grandma tripped over a garden hose yesterday and got pretty beat up to top it all off. So I will probably go out there in the next week or two to help however I can. We would definitely appreciate your thoughts and prayers. None of us are ready to say good-bye to my Grandpa yet.

On a good note, we just found out that James is going to become an actual employee of the school (instead of just a consultant) and get health benefits even though he will still be part time! This was really great and unexpected news in the midst of such a crazy week. I'll update with anything I found out about Grandpa.

70

So my week of numbers got interrupted by life (and having to share a computer with hubby), so it will be two weeks of numbers!

I recently went to the doctor for my annual exam. They did blood work and everything came back just fine. In fact, the nurse told me that the Vitamin D test results were really good. So I asked what they were. She said 70. That meant nothing to me. Were they really good by one point? So another question and the nurse told me that most women have numbers between 25-28. Interesting. Guess all that outdoor time with my little boy is paying off!

Well, little man, Mommy always thought having a little boy would help me get outdoors more. Little did I know! I love all of our outside playtime together!

2

Two...soon to be three - the number of meetings we have had with ECI (Early Childhood Intervention) so far. While we get excited about every new word that Ian says or signs every month, we (especially me haha) have been very aware that his word acquisition isn't anywhere close to most of his peers. In fact, his monthly speech updates remind me of those of his little friends who are a full year younger than he is. After going back and forth, we decided to call ECI and at least have Ian evaluated.

I have to say, calling them and getting the process started has given me so much peace of mind! The ladies are great and I feel so much better having other professionals in our corner watching out for Ian. The speech therapist came out today with our ECI coordinator and they did his speech evalv. His results at age 26 months came out to be:

* Adaptive (self-dressing, feeding, etc): 16 months
* Cognitive: 17 months (mostly because he doesn't actually point to the pictures in books yet)
* Fine/Gross Motor: 24 months
* Language Expressive: 14 months
* Language Receptive: 14 months (I need to ask on this...it may because of the picture pointing thing...he actually has really good receptive skills!)
* Personal/Social: 19 months (largely due to the fact he hasn't shown much comforting skill yet when someone is upset)

We will see the speech therapist and coordinator again on Thursday and will get a list of his speech goals then. In the meantime, the ones I remember include:

* Working on carrying out two and three step directions (i.e. Go to the table and get your cup.)
* Identifying body parts (they suggested using bath time to practice this...Give me your foot to wash!)
* And a few others that I can't remember right now!

Overall, I think Ian tested pretty close to where he is (except for receptive). It is a relief to know where we are at and that I am not just being an over-concerned parent with unrealistically high expectations.

Ian felt very comfortable with both ladies, which I am really glad that he does! He even crawled up in the coordinator's lap and she said I could take a picture.

I'm curious to see how the first speech session will go on Thursday!

37

It has been a HOT summer! We are now on Day 37 of triple digit temperatures. This coming Friday we will tie the previous record and break it next week Saturday. The weather man seems to think we have a good chance of making it to Saturday.

Honestly, I wasn't too bothered by the heat until this week. We got a YMCA membership so we could take Ian swimming instead of to the park. We stayed inside with the AC on. And then, a cooling fan in my car stopped working and it overheated while I was out of town with Ian. Not cool! (Literally...haha!) Fortunately, my father-in-law was there to take care of it and we got home okay. The shop fixed it, but they taped the connector together and the tape didn't hold well in the heat. So we had to take it back in. In the meantime, Ian and I drove around a lot with the windows down.

This past Thursday, after having my car start overheating again while on errands and having to drive home in the hot, hot weather, Ian and I walked into a very warm house. Uggggg! The house AC had gone out! Fortunately, I was able to get a hold of our landlord and he came out and called his AC guy. Luckily, work was overstaffed and they were letting us opt out of work that night with no attendance penalty. So I took advantage of it to stay with my baby, run errands, and then come back and wait for the AC guy to show up.

The AC guy was running late, so I brought the box fan to the bathroom and put Ian in the bathtub. He stayed in there for an hour! I think we were both so glad to finally have cooled down a bit. It was 93 degrees inside at 10pm after all! After his bath, we sat and watched movies and had some cold drinks until Mr. AC Man showed up.

Fortunately, everything is working again. But I am officially done with all this heat! I'm ready for some rain and cooler temperatures!

6 on the 6th!

This is the only time in our whole married life that we will be able to say we have been married the same number of years as the date we got married on! (Hehe...and yes, I know...I am very lucky to have a hubby who puts up with my nerdy numbers!) Just for fun, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane.

2005

The big day, sealed with a kiss!

Hehe...I was reminded today that six years ago a certain someone ripped his pants at our wedding. Perhaps that is why he isn't smiling? ;-) (I suppose it could also be cause I picked the one picture from the bunch where he wasn't actually smiling...I am such a good sister-in-law!! Love you Russell...you are an awesome bro-in-law and that pants incident just made for some great memories!)

2006

Our first anniversary! We were living in Missouri at the time, so we drove up to Hannibal to see the Mark Twain fun there. We left a bit late and I got us a speeding ticket on the way there trying to make a show on time. Oh how things have changed! Since we didn't make the show, we ended up going through the cave first to see Jesse James' hideout.

Tom & Becky!

At the top of the lookout.

Getting ready for lunch.

And, of course, we had to try the top layer of our wedding cake! We trucked that thing with us over half of Texas, to Arkansas, back to Texas (all on our honeymoon) and then up to Missouri. It still tasted pretty good!

2007

We flew to Colorado to visit my grandparents for the first time in many, many, many years. It was a wonderful trip and we loved going up the mountain!

Waiting for lunch! (Haha...this seems to be a theme...)

Grandma Cookie and Grandpa Grape with Misty.

My younger brother, Kenny, came with us too. Here we are posing with Grandpa Joe and Grandma Billie.

Standing in Grandma Cookie and Grandpa Grape's beautiful front yard.

2008

We had such a great time in Colorado the year before that we decided to go out again! This time, we got to meet up with Aunt Carol and Cousin Sarah too. They all made James and I a nice anniversary cake!

Haha...it was an awesome cake. It covered so many holidays!

Look, Aunt Laura!!! Aiden thoroughly enjoyed his cake!

When we got back to Texas, we headed out to a ranch not too far from home. We stayed in, of course, the beautiful blue room!

We *ahem* really enjoyed the view of the lake!

We got to ride a paddleboat as the sun was setting. Haha - it was pretty windy too!

Our poor paddleboat quit paddling, so my wonderful hubby got out and pulled us to shore!

Looking GQ after braving all that muck and mire!

2009

We had a new little tyke to take care of and Daddy was working long hours at Target, so we just went out for dinner at Olive Garden. My Mom watched Ian and took these family pictures of us before we left.



2010

For the life of us, we couldn't remember what we did for our anniversary last year! It was a good thing we took pictures! Apparently we took Ian over to my Mom's house and then went out to try a new restaurant we had coupons for. Another family picture!

Pop-Pop was in the picture at that point (literally haha!) and being his fun self. Nana and Pop-Pop did a great job keeping our little buddy entertained while we enjoyed a dinner without baby food or spills.

Bella Italia...fantastic the first time we went...hasn't been so much since.

This was sooo good. I guess this is what I have should been ordering the couple of times we have gone back.

2011

We actually celebrated a day early. I drove down to James' new school and met the head band director. He's a great guy and I'm looking forward to seeing the band's show this year. It's still almost a bit surreal that James got this wonderful job out of the blue after trying for three years, so seeing the school was a perfect start to an anniversary celebration! Afterwards, we went to Logan's Roadhouse (teaching drums makes a guy hungry!) and then to Tutti Frutti to meet up with some good friends.

These pictures don't even begin to do justice to all the amazing moments the last six years have hold. We've been through the good, the bad, the ugly, and the really ugly and come out on top! I am so proud of my husband and all the hard work he has put into the last six years to become such an amazing husband and father. I am looking forward to the next seventy years!