Yesterday it snowed!! We have been having the weirdest weather around here lately and I was actually so happy to see some real winter stuff on the ground. The kids had a blast playing with Adrian in the snow yesterday and I actually got to take a nap, cause Adrian decided to take a half-day off work. A lot of people at his work leave when it starts to snow - all you in the West must think that's crazy - but snow really does slow things down around here. So Adrian picked up Sophie from her half-day at school and came home to spend the afternoon playing in the snow with the kids, drinking hot cocoa and munching on popcorn. It was a fun family day and we ended up having spaghetti and meatballs (the kids fave) for dinner and playing a game of Sorry with the kids before bed. There was barely any whining the whole day, which is a miracle really, and I think only 1 time-out if I remember right. After the kids went to bed Adrian and I watched an episode of "Mystery" together and played Lost Cities. I would say it was our best day of the new year, so yay for that!!
Today we've been taking it easy so far. Nina is still taking her morning nap right now and I'm thinking we're going to try to get out and do something when she wakes up. Sophie and Ben have school and preschool off today and I'm thinking a trip to the mall for pretzels and play in the play area might be in order. I thought of taking them all to a movie, but my courage is waning... Hmmmm, if the mood strikes me right who knows if I might just be crazy enough to give it a try... I'm sure they'll be a follow up blog on that if I do attempt it.
Update: We did go to the mall, but the mood never struck me right to go to a movie. I'm thinking I'll wait till Nina's a little older to go 3 on 1 in a quiet movie theater. Instead we played in the play area, had pretzels, and got some amazing deals on snow boots and snow pants at the Children's place - gotta love their "Monster" sale. The sizes I got will hopefully be a little on the big size this year and also fit the kids next year - it's not worth it to me to just buy snow clothes for one year since we don't get a whole lot a snow. The mall just opened up a new wing with a Pottery Barn and a bunch of neat new stores. I looked in the windows at Pottery Barn, but everything in there looked far to breakable so I didn't actually venture into the store with my brood. For the most part everyone had a nice day out (Nina did get a little fussy towards the end of our excursion) and right now I'm trying to think up an activity for Martin Luther King Day. I'm so happy that Adrian will be home on Monday for the holiday too. Maybe we'll try a museum or something...
Friday, January 18, 2008
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Catch Up Stuff, but Mostly Speech
Whoa, I am seriously behind on the blogs - sorry about that.... I love reading everyones' blogs and I love blogging myself, but lately I've been in kind of a funk I guess you'd call it... Maybe it's the January let down from the holidays or maybe it's due to some other stresses that have been going on, but I've just not been very posty. There has been a lot going on though, so I'll make this a catch up post. (Warning, this may be long and, as I often do, I will probably be using this post as a form of therapy.)
Happy New Year!!
I can't believe it's already the 9th of January 2008.
It just feels so strange. I can't believe we are 8 years out from 2000 - where has the time been going? I swear it's been speeding up! We spent new years eve with lovely friends playing Rock Band - which I am horrible at, and eating yummy yummy treats. It was very very fun!!
Sophie's Recital
Also Sophie had her piano recital on Dec. 30th and it was great. She played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and did a really good job. Yay Sophie!!
Speech
Here's the part of the catch up that's been most stressful for me. SPEECH. Nina's speech. Back at her 12 month check up the doctor was really worried that she didn't babble very much and at that point I was just like "whatever, she's fine". I didn't want to worry about speech at only 1 year old. Then at her 15 month check up the doctor was even more worried that she only had one word (Daddy or "Da - eeee" - congratulations Adrian:)) and was still not babbling a whole lot, so after much urging from her pediatrician, who even wrote the county Infants and Toddler's number on a prescription slip and all but made me promise I would call, I called the Infants and Toddlers program to have her evaluated. This was a hard step for me. As you all probably know I've had ups and downs with Ben and speech issues. He's been evaluated 3 times, but never was delayed enough to qualify for services and sometimes the evaluators were not "gentle" in there evaluations. And so that all made me not want to start again with Nina... She's so little and it's hard for me to even believe she's old enough to be talking at all... I'm sure that's partly due to my denial that my baby is actually a toddler! Crazy!
Anywho, back to the speech story - Infants and Toddlers came out and did the initial evaluation and then because they saw that there were some issues they scheduled a formal eval. The biggest "issue" that the evaluator saw was that Nina should respond to her name much more than she did during the initial evaluation and I've been worried about this too. Nina hardly ever turns toward you when you say her name. I used to think she was ignoring me and she didn't want to stop doing whatever she was doing. The evaluator tried to get her to respond to her name several times and she never did until the woman touched her shoulder and then she looked at her. I do worry about that and she is scheduled for a hearing test this week. So after that initial eval a formal evaluation was scheduled and that was last Friday.
The formal evaluation went as well as I could hope. Nina was in a really good mood and played with the speech therapist as long as I was very close to her. The hardest part for me was dealing with all the questions (that they have to ask as part of the evaluation) like - do you read to Nina? do you interact with her in a happy and excited voice? do you sing to her? I do these things. It's just the questions themselves, it's like if I just did these things more or better she would be talking. Like they are asking how big of a role I, as her mother, have played in her speech delay and that just makes me weary. Guilt. Lots of it. But the therapists were really nice and at the end when they looked over all the forms and charts it came out that Nina is delayed by more than 25% and has qualified for services. One of the speech therapists wanted to wait another 2 months to evaluate her again, but the other one said, "No, she's delayed. Let's start services now." They proceeded to have a discussion amongst themselves (kind of a quiet argument which was a little uncomfortable) and then both said to me that they wanted to start speech therapy as soon as possible. So there it is.. I figure speech therapy can't hurt anything, it can only help and if she has a "language explosion" in the next couple of months which can happen to kids her age with speech delays, then great... They'll stop services and it'll all be good. But for now she'll have speech therapy in our home and I'm happy about it.
So here's the good and the bad of the whole speech thing right now. The bad - having to embark on another journey through SPEECH stuff. Dang. But you do what you gotta do. Then the other bad thing about the whole "speech thing" is the reaction I get from others when I tell them Nina has a delay or is going to have speech therapy. Some people, especially friends have been wonderful and supportive (thank you, thank you, kind friends!), but then you also get 2 other reactions:
Hard to deal with reaction #1 - You must be crazy, why on earth are you worried about your 17 month old's speech, let her be a baby, you are over-reacting, don't worry she'll catch up on her own.
Hard to deal with reaction #2 - (I've already touched on this and I will say this is more from her pediatricians and the speech therapists) She only has 1 word?! Do you talk to her? play games with her? read to her? Maybe you should try teaching her signs and reading to her more... etc. etc.
Both of these reactions are very very hard. On the one hand I want to say, hey I'm not crazy, I don't want to have to worry about my 17 month old's development. Believe me it's a lot of work to try to get her to sign or make a sound before I give her a sippy cup of milk or a graham cracker. I wish I didn't have to do it. Sometimes she cries and throws tantrums when I try to get her to make a sound before giving her whatever she wants. And I want her to be happy and just give her the dang cookie or cup of milk, but it's important for me to encourage her to speak. And sometimes you don't feel in the mood to narrate the whole day...
Happy New Year!!
I can't believe it's already the 9th of January 2008.
It just feels so strange. I can't believe we are 8 years out from 2000 - where has the time been going? I swear it's been speeding up! We spent new years eve with lovely friends playing Rock Band - which I am horrible at, and eating yummy yummy treats. It was very very fun!!
Sophie's Recital
Also Sophie had her piano recital on Dec. 30th and it was great. She played "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" and did a really good job. Yay Sophie!!
Speech
Here's the part of the catch up that's been most stressful for me. SPEECH. Nina's speech. Back at her 12 month check up the doctor was really worried that she didn't babble very much and at that point I was just like "whatever, she's fine". I didn't want to worry about speech at only 1 year old. Then at her 15 month check up the doctor was even more worried that she only had one word (Daddy or "Da - eeee" - congratulations Adrian:)) and was still not babbling a whole lot, so after much urging from her pediatrician, who even wrote the county Infants and Toddler's number on a prescription slip and all but made me promise I would call, I called the Infants and Toddlers program to have her evaluated. This was a hard step for me. As you all probably know I've had ups and downs with Ben and speech issues. He's been evaluated 3 times, but never was delayed enough to qualify for services and sometimes the evaluators were not "gentle" in there evaluations. And so that all made me not want to start again with Nina... She's so little and it's hard for me to even believe she's old enough to be talking at all... I'm sure that's partly due to my denial that my baby is actually a toddler! Crazy!
Anywho, back to the speech story - Infants and Toddlers came out and did the initial evaluation and then because they saw that there were some issues they scheduled a formal eval. The biggest "issue" that the evaluator saw was that Nina should respond to her name much more than she did during the initial evaluation and I've been worried about this too. Nina hardly ever turns toward you when you say her name. I used to think she was ignoring me and she didn't want to stop doing whatever she was doing. The evaluator tried to get her to respond to her name several times and she never did until the woman touched her shoulder and then she looked at her. I do worry about that and she is scheduled for a hearing test this week. So after that initial eval a formal evaluation was scheduled and that was last Friday.
The formal evaluation went as well as I could hope. Nina was in a really good mood and played with the speech therapist as long as I was very close to her. The hardest part for me was dealing with all the questions (that they have to ask as part of the evaluation) like - do you read to Nina? do you interact with her in a happy and excited voice? do you sing to her? I do these things. It's just the questions themselves, it's like if I just did these things more or better she would be talking. Like they are asking how big of a role I, as her mother, have played in her speech delay and that just makes me weary. Guilt. Lots of it. But the therapists were really nice and at the end when they looked over all the forms and charts it came out that Nina is delayed by more than 25% and has qualified for services. One of the speech therapists wanted to wait another 2 months to evaluate her again, but the other one said, "No, she's delayed. Let's start services now." They proceeded to have a discussion amongst themselves (kind of a quiet argument which was a little uncomfortable) and then both said to me that they wanted to start speech therapy as soon as possible. So there it is.. I figure speech therapy can't hurt anything, it can only help and if she has a "language explosion" in the next couple of months which can happen to kids her age with speech delays, then great... They'll stop services and it'll all be good. But for now she'll have speech therapy in our home and I'm happy about it.
So here's the good and the bad of the whole speech thing right now. The bad - having to embark on another journey through SPEECH stuff. Dang. But you do what you gotta do. Then the other bad thing about the whole "speech thing" is the reaction I get from others when I tell them Nina has a delay or is going to have speech therapy. Some people, especially friends have been wonderful and supportive (thank you, thank you, kind friends!), but then you also get 2 other reactions:
Hard to deal with reaction #1 - You must be crazy, why on earth are you worried about your 17 month old's speech, let her be a baby, you are over-reacting, don't worry she'll catch up on her own.
Hard to deal with reaction #2 - (I've already touched on this and I will say this is more from her pediatricians and the speech therapists) She only has 1 word?! Do you talk to her? play games with her? read to her? Maybe you should try teaching her signs and reading to her more... etc. etc.
Both of these reactions are very very hard. On the one hand I want to say, hey I'm not crazy, I don't want to have to worry about my 17 month old's development. Believe me it's a lot of work to try to get her to sign or make a sound before I give her a sippy cup of milk or a graham cracker. I wish I didn't have to do it. Sometimes she cries and throws tantrums when I try to get her to make a sound before giving her whatever she wants. And I want her to be happy and just give her the dang cookie or cup of milk, but it's important for me to encourage her to speak. And sometimes you don't feel in the mood to narrate the whole day...
"Nina, now we're putting on your socks! Socks, socks, socks. Look at your white socks! Do you like your white socks? One sock. On it goes. There you go. One sock is on one foot. Cute little footie! Let's put your other sock on. One sock, two socks, on it goes. Now you have 2 white socks on! Are your feet all warm now?! Nice sockies. You have such cute little feet Nina! Now Mommy's going to put on your shoes...."
Let me tell you it's really fun to narrate like that for like a couple days and then you just want to put the shoes on quickly and not have to worry about talking about everything in a happy exaggerated voice. But that's what I need to do so I do it and try to have fun with it. Sometimes she giggles when I talk to her and that's fun and encouraging. Okay and this leads to why "hard to deal with reaction #2" is so hard - because sometimes I don't feel like justifying all the things I do all day to encourage speech. It's wearisome to say, "No, I really do read to her and talk to her and play with her," in a way in which they will believe and validate all the work that I'm doing at home... Yes, as you can see lots of baggage and I'm just letting it all spew forth - sorry. I really don't mean to whine and that is why I'm going to cut right to the good part, the wonderful thing about this whole speech issue with Nina in the next paragraph.
Through this particular trial and stress that I am in the midst of right now I have felt peace. My friend Corinne taught a wonderful lesson in Relief Society on Sunday about feeling peace and I must say going through this has made me realize how important it is to have perspective and faith. I truly have felt peace and I know that it is a blessing from my Heavenly Father. I feel an incredible love for Nina. I know without a doubt that my little Nina was meant to come to our family and I love her absolutely the way she is. What ever trials we encounter in this life I believe are part of our plan and we should do our best to weather every storm large or small. This may be just one small little drizzle as far as a storm, because in all other ways Nina is a healthy and sweet little girl and I really feel peace that we can handle her speech issue. It may take some tantrums to try to get her to talk or months of speech therapy, who knows, but whatever it is I know I love her and I wouldn't wish for her to be anything or anyone other than Nina. Peace is a wonderful thing and I am thankful for a loving God and Savior who have helped me to feel it.
(This is a recent favorite pic of Nina. She loves apples as you can see. That little smile melts me!)
Through this particular trial and stress that I am in the midst of right now I have felt peace. My friend Corinne taught a wonderful lesson in Relief Society on Sunday about feeling peace and I must say going through this has made me realize how important it is to have perspective and faith. I truly have felt peace and I know that it is a blessing from my Heavenly Father. I feel an incredible love for Nina. I know without a doubt that my little Nina was meant to come to our family and I love her absolutely the way she is. What ever trials we encounter in this life I believe are part of our plan and we should do our best to weather every storm large or small. This may be just one small little drizzle as far as a storm, because in all other ways Nina is a healthy and sweet little girl and I really feel peace that we can handle her speech issue. It may take some tantrums to try to get her to talk or months of speech therapy, who knows, but whatever it is I know I love her and I wouldn't wish for her to be anything or anyone other than Nina. Peace is a wonderful thing and I am thankful for a loving God and Savior who have helped me to feel it.
(This is a recent favorite pic of Nina. She loves apples as you can see. That little smile melts me!)Friday, December 28, 2007
Ben's Birthday
Ben is 4 years old!! Wow, the time has flown by. Here's what we did to celebrate in photo-essay form.
Lunch at Ci Ci's Pizza - a favorite of Ben's.
Birthday trip to Build a Bear Workshop at the mall. This is what Ben wanted to do for his birthday and was lots of fun for us all. Ben choose this cute black bear out of all the options and dressed him up as Buzz Lightyear, of course also naming him "Buzz".
The girls also got to make bears in order to encourage friendly sibling relations.
Dinner and cake at home.
Opening all the presents. He got many from our extended family and from us including: a Frodo dress-up set, Pirates action figures, race track cars, cool follow-the-line cars (neat-O Lori!), money and a book (with the money he plans on buying a light-saber), and more! Thanks so much everyone, he loved all the gifts!!
As you can see the Frodo dress up set was mostly bought for photo-ops!!:)
Then after presents we got everyone into their jammies and drove over to a community Christmas lights display which was really fun. Ben has been wanting to see the "lights" which we pass by frequently every year during the holidays, but this was our first time of actually paying and go through. The kids loved it. As soon as we went out Ben wanted to go through again, but being that it's 20 bucks every go-through we said maybe next year. :)
It was a full day of wonderful family time. Happy birthday to my beautiful boy!!
Lunch at Ci Ci's Pizza - a favorite of Ben's.
Birthday trip to Build a Bear Workshop at the mall. This is what Ben wanted to do for his birthday and was lots of fun for us all. Ben choose this cute black bear out of all the options and dressed him up as Buzz Lightyear, of course also naming him "Buzz".
The girls also got to make bears in order to encourage friendly sibling relations.
Dinner and cake at home.
Opening all the presents. He got many from our extended family and from us including: a Frodo dress-up set, Pirates action figures, race track cars, cool follow-the-line cars (neat-O Lori!), money and a book (with the money he plans on buying a light-saber), and more! Thanks so much everyone, he loved all the gifts!!
As you can see the Frodo dress up set was mostly bought for photo-ops!!:)
Then after presents we got everyone into their jammies and drove over to a community Christmas lights display which was really fun. Ben has been wanting to see the "lights" which we pass by frequently every year during the holidays, but this was our first time of actually paying and go through. The kids loved it. As soon as we went out Ben wanted to go through again, but being that it's 20 bucks every go-through we said maybe next year. :)It was a full day of wonderful family time. Happy birthday to my beautiful boy!!
Our Christmas
We had a lovely Christmas! The kids woke up around 7am but took pity on us (we must have looked tired) and let us snooze for 15 minutes before they really got serious about waking us up to go open presents. I loved the initial ooh and awes as Sophie and Ben saw all the presents under the tree, but soon after they were in a present opening frenzy. We pretty much just let them go for it and I think Sophie actually took it upon herself to make sure everyone was opening the right presents - she definitely has the oldest child mentality now which is very helpful. Nina was very cute wandering around looking at all the presents, but once she saw the ball popper toy we got her she wasn't at all interested in anything else, well except the various chocolate candies in everyones' stockings - I think she tried to steal all the Kit Kat bars lying around. I have to say our family out West was so generous and gave us so many fun and neat presents - thanks to you all!! Here's the short list of what Santa brought the kids:
Sophie - a Kaya American Girl doll and book
Ben - a Darda race track and cars, which he collectively refers to as "cars zoom zoom"
Nina - a doll stroller and ball popper toy
After the opening presents phase ended Sophie and Ben got in some play-time with their presents and Adrian, Nina and I took a nap before going to the early afternoon showing of The Water Horse. It was a cute movie, but a lot more intense than the book which I recently read to the kids. They put in a lot of WWII action and Sophie and Ben were very concerned about their favorite sea serpent "Crusoe" when British soldiers started firing anti-submarine guns at him (none of that was in the book). Crazy. But it all ended okay and everyone had a fun time. Nina was occupied almost the whole time munching on treats so we all got the watch the movie - yay!
(Nina checking out Ben's "Cars Zoom Zoom".)
(Three of the kids :) playing computer games before dinner.)
After the movie we had a relaxed dinner of crockpot pot roast and mashed potatoes and carrots and then played another long game of Monopoly. Sophie seriously loves Monopoly and is so funny about it saying, "I hope you have a nice stay!" whenever you land on any of her properties. We let Sophie and Ben stay up as late as they wanted, which is a first I think, but it made them happy. I think Ben went to bed around 9 and Sophie around 10. I'm usually a sleep Nazi, but I figure once a year it's okay. So that was our Christmas. It was very merry and I hope yours was too!
Sophie - a Kaya American Girl doll and book
Ben - a Darda race track and cars, which he collectively refers to as "cars zoom zoom"
Nina - a doll stroller and ball popper toy
After the opening presents phase ended Sophie and Ben got in some play-time with their presents and Adrian, Nina and I took a nap before going to the early afternoon showing of The Water Horse. It was a cute movie, but a lot more intense than the book which I recently read to the kids. They put in a lot of WWII action and Sophie and Ben were very concerned about their favorite sea serpent "Crusoe" when British soldiers started firing anti-submarine guns at him (none of that was in the book). Crazy. But it all ended okay and everyone had a fun time. Nina was occupied almost the whole time munching on treats so we all got the watch the movie - yay!
(Nina checking out Ben's "Cars Zoom Zoom".)
(Three of the kids :) playing computer games before dinner.)After the movie we had a relaxed dinner of crockpot pot roast and mashed potatoes and carrots and then played another long game of Monopoly. Sophie seriously loves Monopoly and is so funny about it saying, "I hope you have a nice stay!" whenever you land on any of her properties. We let Sophie and Ben stay up as late as they wanted, which is a first I think, but it made them happy. I think Ben went to bed around 9 and Sophie around 10. I'm usually a sleep Nazi, but I figure once a year it's okay. So that was our Christmas. It was very merry and I hope yours was too!
Our Christmas Eve
We had a great Christmas Eve this year. The Turpin's invited us over for a fun fondue dinner (thanks so much Cami and Jake!!) and it was delicious. We even had a super yummy chocolate fondue course for dessert. Mmmm mmm!! The kids loved playing with the other kids and all the parents got to play a fun round of a very intense card game called Whackee 6. Adrian and I are not stellar players at this game and we've decided we need to get some serious practice time in before we try to take on the Turpins again!:) After dessert we stayed for the Turpin's annual nativity play and it was hilarious. Cami quite appropriately played the pregnant Mary traveling to Bethlehem on a donkey played by Jake. After the journey to Bethlehem Sophie played Mary and Adrian played Joseph with the other kids playing shepherds, an angel, and a star. We tried to get Nina to be a sheep by having the shepherds herd her, but that didn't work out so well. There were many very funny moments and it was such a great way to tell the Christmas story and have the kids understand it on their level. I really think we just might have to add a nativity play to our permanent Christmas traditions. The whole night was just lovely and it was so nice to spend it with our friends. I must admit that it is hard to live so far from family especially during the holidays, but we have been so blessed with good friends to help us not be so lonely.
After we got home we got the kids into their Christmas jim jams (a nod to Dawn there:) and got their picture in front of the tree. They all went to bed without argument or whining (yay!) and Adrian and I watched a few Christmas episodes of The Vicar of Dibley while we did all the Christmas preps. "The Christmas Lunch Incident" is my very favorite Vicar of Dibley episode and it seems like we've watched it every Christmas for a few years now. Funny stuff.
Friday, December 21, 2007
11 Years O' Luv
Today is the 11 year anniversary of our first kiss and I guess also the anniversary of when we started "going steady".:) We met at BYU in the fall of '96. We were in the same Heritage Halls ward and he was my home-teacher. I know shocking, right?!:) In case you are wondering - yes we did have the quintessential BYU romance. Adrian even proposed on the grounds of the Provo temple.:) But I'm getting ahead of myself... We started dating during finals and then over Christmas break we fell in love and saw each other every day. I actually think that after our first kiss on the 21st of Dec. we saw each other every day until we were married the next July. I totally ripped off Corinne's idea of doing a slide show to mark the occasion, but here's a bunch of photos that hold lots of loving memories for us. Happy smoochy anniversary Babe!!:)
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Tuesday, December 18, 2007
Our Girly Christmas Tradition
Last Saturday Sophie and I had a mommy/daughter date to see a performance of the Nutcracker. It was fun to get out and have a one-on-one date with Sophie. She was so cute and wanted me to do her hair like a ballerina for the show - last year she had longer hair and I put it in a bun, but this year she settled for part of her hair pulled up and a bow. I should have called Mendy for tips on doing a cool ballerina 'do!:) We went with a group of friends to the ballet and which made it lots of fun. We sat next to Cami and Jeffy and it was a hoot to listen to Jeffy's reaction to the mice and toy soldier part. Sophie's favorite part was the different candy dances and she especially loved the Chinese candies dance. She asked me which part was my favorite and I said the mice, I just love the costumed little mice shuffling around. Oh and I loved the little angels - the little dancers that played them were so tiny and adorable. The performance we went to was a non-professional abbreviated version of the ballet which is just great, cause it's low-key and doesn't bore the kids; Sophie was great during the whole thing and watched very intently.After the ballet Sophie and I went out for a late lunch. It was fun to sit and chat with Sophie and hear all her thoughts on the ballet. I really am lucky to be the mommy of this sweet girl. Someday Nina will be able to go with us too and we'll make it an "all of the girls" tradition. This year Adrian and Ben played computer games (Lego Star Wars) together while we were gone (and Nina was napping) so maybe that will be the boys' tradition.
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