Happy Day!

I have some exciting news! Aren't you intrigued? I'll give you a hint:

Now I'll bet you're really wondering!!! Do you remember this awesome couple (who happen to be my older bro and his wife)?

They have gone through so much trying to have a baby and found out about 15 weeks ago that they were pregnant. That was definitely one of the happiest days we have ever had! I hung up the phone after the "We're pregnant!" call and bawled like a baby. After rounds of fertility meds and the initial IVF process, they have been through more in trying to get little Fin here than most women experience in having a whole quiver of kiddos. Lissie has been amazingly open and willing to educate anyone who asks on the IVF process - she has a great blog at lissiesluck.blogspot.com and I highly recommend checking it out! She and Mike are going to be awesome parents and we are thrilled to have a new little cousin for Ian!

Today was another exciting day. Lissie is 17 weeks and 6 days and had her gender reveal sonogram today and...

Fin William is due in April and we absolutely love his name and birth month (I may be a bit biased ha!). Mike and Lissie, we couldn't be more happy for you! We love you tons and can't wait to meet Baby Fin!

Elmo's Trick-or-Treat Adventure!

Our poor little munchkin had an allergic reaction to something today and came home from playcare with puffy eyes, a splotchy face, and dry lips. After some Benadryl and a loooong nap, he was still rather cranky and clingy. Since James had to stay late tonight, I ended up skipping class to stay home with Ian. It worked out just fine though because I was able to join them for a short session of trick-or-treating!

A little pre-trick-or-treating treat. Poor guy discovered our bowl of candy and really wanted more chocolate, not a lollipop!

Getting ready! Ian was Elmo this year (or as he says it - "Eh-bo").

And we're off!

Walking with Mommy. Ian had very little interest in trick-or-treating at first. He made a beeline straight for the park!

Running, running, running with Cookie Monster following. :-)

Beverage break!

Haha - it cracks me up that Ian wanted to just play at the park for thirty minutes.

Swinging with Mommy. Our little munchkin has learned all on his own how to twist his legs to make himself spin a bit on the swing.

Loves for Mommy. I heart his expression!

After trick-or-treating at a few houses, Ian was starting to get the hang of it and was more than ready for a chocolate break.

We stopped by to see his little friend, Isaac, and Isaac's parents. They are wonderful neighbors but it had been a looooooooooong time since we have seen them! As soon as we got to their house, Ian ran as fast as he could right through the open front door. They are always super sweet and welcomed us in. Ian and Isaac had fun playing together for a little while.

Back home, Ian sat down for another photo-opp...er chocolate break. The bucket spilled, but that didn't deter him! Made the selection process easier. :-)

Sweet little Eh-bo.

Cookie Monster and Elmo hanging out - they are best buddies!

It was so nice to get out of the house for a bit tonight! Ian had a blast and was in such a good mood when we got home. We love our little Elmo!

As of Today

In case you hadn't noticed, I'm a little behind on blogging. :-/ Life has been nothing but a whirlwind of craziness around here. Usually when I get this far behind, I back-date posts. I will probably still do that, but for now, I thought I'd just write a post about what is currently happening in our lives.

As of today:

James
*'s drumline has earned Superiors and Division 1 ratings at all their full band competitions!

*Only has three weeks left in marching season and we will get (most) of our Friday nights and Saturday days back.

*Is still taking two online classes and making heroic effort to get the work done in addition to everything else he has going on.

Laura
*is going to DC this weekend for a linguistics conference. Super excited about the opportunity, but rather sad to be leaving my boys. One of my professors knows one of the sociolinguists from Galluadet University who will be there, so I am looking forward to all the networking!

*I have passed my first Phonology test (super hard subject for me!) - thanks for all the prayers and love. I think I might actually survive this class.

*I have also narrowed down the topic for my thesis and am doing preliminary research to see if it will work out. I have two classes left next semester and the thesis and then I am DONE!

*P.S. - James and I have both sworn we will never try to take classes during marching season again!

Ian
*Can accurately identify and say about 15 letters the first time he sees them without any prompting. J, U, I, N, T, C, Y, O, B, D, E, Z, T, & W are on the list right now. I find this kind of funny since he doesn't have 15 words that he says clearly enough for perfect strangers to understand.

*Knows all his body parts, including things like "elbow" and "bottom". This is huge because three months ago, he didn't know any of them! It is amazing what taking him off of dairy has done for his speech.

*Also has apple, coconut, and peanuts on the list of allergies. So far we are coping well, although I still miss ingredient lists sometimes and give him something he is allergic to. Sigh. Up until this past Friday, we had two allergy free weeks though and that was a major milestone for us!

*Is still having issues with pushing other children, trying to get them to play with him. We are working with an occupational therapist to try and deal with some of these sensory issues. More on that in another post. :-)

*Is incredibly sweet and loving and truly enjoying this exploratory stage of two year old life!

This is one of my favorite pictures of him from this month - he was out playing in the rain with his umbrella.

Trash Day!

Ahh...good ole Monday mornings. Means it is time to go chasing the recycle and trash trucks again!

We hit jackpot today and found two of them together.

We heart trash day around here for sure!

Strong-Willed Gymnast

Due to a bunch of scheduling issues with my work schedule and a super duper hard day on Ian's part, we decided to wait a semester on Mother's Day Out. In the meantime, we knew we wanted Ian to be around other kiddos in a more structured environment, so we decided to try gymnastics class. I shopped around online and found a great place five minutes away that had a Tiny Tots class on Saturday mornings. They even had a foam pit (big pit with foam blocks) like the gymnastics place I went to as a kid!

I loaded up Ian this morning and we headed over. I was so excited about it - I was pretty sure he would love the trampolines, foam pit, balance beams, and tumbling mats. And he did. He loved them so much, he didn't want to listen to anything the coach had to say. Initially he was the only one there, so Coach Maci started him off on the trampolines. She had her work cut out for her trying to keep Ian on just one trampoline! A few other kiddos showed up and they jumped for a bit more before heading over to the mats to do a song.

Ian kept running away during song time and throwing fits when I brought him back to the circle, so we went to the bathroom for a little attitude adjustment. When we came out, everyone had moved to the foam pit. Ian loved swinging on the swing into the foam blocks!

Then it was back over to the mats to do centers. There were different skills to practice at each place. This went halfway well.

Ian especially loved this little foam pit and didn't always wait his turn to get in it!

I have to admit, I got really discouraged with how Ian was behaving. He and I both ended up in tears at one point. Fortunately, both the coach and one of the other moms (she has two little boys) were super encouraging and totally non-judgmental. I had really hoped Ian would love gymnastics so much that he would just be happy to do what the other kids were doing. Ha!

I was still in tears when I got home and my sweet husband asked if I wanted to talk about it.

Me: I'm tired of my child being the worst-behaved at every play date, class, and activity we do!!!

Him: Silence.

Me: He doesn't listen. I didn't think we were going to have to fight this hard to get him to listen.

Him: Well, he's two. And two year olds have to learn to listen. (Yeah, but still!)

I sat down at the computer, and James, not really knowing what else to say started working on the dishes!! I thought that was sweet, but I was so upset I went up to him and said, "You know, it's okay to say I'm a great Mom and our child isn't that bad" (and yadada ha!).

Him: Eye roll. Sigh.

And then he gave me a big hug and proceeded to say some wonderful things (and he finished the dishes!).

He found me later curled up in bed (still) sobbing (thank you monthly hormones!) and proceeded to tell me some more wonderful things about how challenging it is to raise little boys (he was a handful himself apparently) and what a great job I was doing. Sigh. I love my little boy, but learning how to parent him is definitely challenging my pride and dignity! I'm thankful that James is such an awesome husband and father and is Ian's Daddy. I am sure we will make it all right just because James is here to keep us grounded!

After nap time, I self-soothed by ordering some great looking books on raising strong-willed children. I am really looking forward to learning better ways to interact with Ian. He is an amazing kiddo and I know great things will come out of his strong-willedness (as long as we all survive!).

No, Mama

Speech therapy with ECI is going rather slowly due a changeover on therapists on their part, so we have been doing quite a few speech activities at home. It really does seem to be paying off. Ian is starting to repeat more words and signs, and while most of them are not very clear yet, he is definitely making the effort!

Since his words are not all that clear, you can imagine my surprise on Wednesday when he calmly looked at me when I offered him another bite of jello and said, "No, Mama". What????? I'm used to "uh-uh-uh" or a shake of the head or my hand being pushed away. But, "No, Mama"???? Whoa! He had in just the last day or two started saying "Mama" and "Mommy". Melted my heart of course, but I wasn't sure he actually knew what he was saying. Apparently, he did! Granted his "no" sounded like "nuh" that day, but it was still pretty clear what he meant!Since then, he has been much more vocal with his no's. I know I will get tired of them quickly, but right now I am loving hearing his sweet little voice say "no" instead of "uh-uh-uh".

We have been working on the words in Ian's picture books for about a month now and he loves repeating them! So this past week, I decided to step it up a bit and bought a lot of produce to match one of the pages of Ian's book. I thought we could match the pictures with the goodies. (Thanks Gramma K for the idea!) Ian went with me to the store and was really excited to see all the produce out on the tray to play with.

He actually did fairly well his first time (although you will notice there is a lemon on the broccoli!).

He was thrilled to put ALL of the carrot sticks on the book!

Later that evening, we showed Daddy our new game. By that point, Ian had caught on really well!

Here's a video of Ian matching everything up.




Signing "banana" with Mommy.

We were really impressed! Once Ian put all his fruits and veggies on the page, he ran and got his sippy cup and started filling up the adjoining page. So we handed him bowls and more cups so he could fill in all the squares. Yay for home speech therapy!

First Friday Game!

Last Friday, Gramma K (James' Mom), came over for Spartan Regiment's first Friday night game. (It was actually their second game - the first one was on a Thursday and we missed that one.)

Gramma K always has something fun for the grandkids and Ian loves it.

This time she brought a phone for him! It counts and sings and Ian enjoys using it like a real phone.

It was soooo nice to have Gramma K at our first game. We sat Ian in the middle of us during half time and Gramma K fed him M&M's to keep him still while the band was performing.

While we were waiting for them to line up, we saw Daddy not too far away. Ian went running down the ramp to meet him. The picture is blurry, but the memory is sweet. :-)

Loving seeing his Daddy!

There's no telling how many hundreds or thousands of hours Gramma K spent taking James to band practices, watching him march at games and competitions, and doing other odds and ends to invest in his music career. James wouldn't be doing what he is today if it wasn't for her and we are very thankful for all her time and commitment!

Pit crew getting ready to bring the equipment to the field.

Clapping to one of the songs.

Spartan Regiment! Their band director is awesome and has enough sense to let the kiddos wear shorts in 100+ degree weather. I wish my high school band director would have realized how smart that is!

The band is doing really well and we love watching them.

Color guard.

Empty bleachers waiting for the students to come back.

Battery.

Whoa!!! Ian loved climbing the stairs while we waited for the third quarter to start!

The drumline played at the beginning of the 3rd quarter.

Then it was a couple more rounds on the stairs and off to Daddy's school to see him briefly (he was unloading equipment there) before we headed home.

Cutie pie. Almost ready for high school!

Ian loves the big open halls at Daddy's new school!

We had such a great time. We are looking forward to many more games and half times this season!