Meme from Miriam

I was tagged by Miriam to do this fun meme, so here it goes...

10 Years Ago: I was a newly-wed of 5 months, a full-time student at BYU in art history and a part-time teller at First Security Bank. These were special times in my life. We lived in a tiny little house that was infested with spiders and had cracked windows... Oh that house was so cold in the winter and sweltering hot in the summer. But it did have a fireplace which we fired up at least twice a week to keep warm... So 10years ago, as of right now (8:20pm), I had probably come home from work about an hour ago, had grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup with Adrian for dinner (that was a typical dinner for us then, either that or Arby's) and was curled up on the couch with a blanket doing homework listening to the crackling of the fire and Adrian typing away doing his computer science homework in the other room. I'm sure at the time I felt stressed and all that, but now I look back on those days and think of just how sweet and wonderful they were.

5 Things on my to-do list today:
1. Register Ben for preschool this fall. (Check, I got to the preschool early this year and was number 16 in line to register - yay! It was a no-stress registration and Ben is all set to be in a great 3-day 4 year old class in the fall.)

2. Return a couple things to Michael's and get a few frames for new picture arrangement on the buffet in the dining room. (Check. Honestly I'm lucky Nina didn't break anything in there - she is so grabby lately, but all things she grabbed and knocked off shelves ended up being non-breakable, thank goodness. Oh she also started pinching Ben's fingers whenever he put his hand on the cart, which is the rule - one hand on cart at all times for Ben. Ben of course kept saying "Ouch, Ouch, Nina no pinch!" I had to keep pulling her hands away from him. Oh, she is getting so naughty! I can't believe the sibling rivalry on Nina's part is starting so early!:))

3. Go to Target and buy a birthday present for Ben's preschool friend's party this Sat. (Check. I also ended up getting a lot more stuff - like the kids' valentines, cereal, eggs, etc. etc. and a pair of baby sunglasses that Nina grabbed and broke before I could pry them out of her little fists.)

4. Go to our dentist for them to fill out a dental form for Sophie's school. (Check. This was annoying. I realize it's important for schools to track whether or not a child is getting dental care, but does the form really need the dentist's signature - don't they trust parents to tell them the truth if their child has been to the dentist in the last year?? I guess they don't. Oh well. It was pretty painless to have the dentist fill out the form, just another round of getting kids out and into car seats again.)

5. Mail 2 packages. (Didn't do. I went to the drive through post office and everything, but they were only excepting cash, and of course I had none, so instead of braving the post office proper with all 3 kids at this point I decided to ditch this to-do item today.)

Snacks I enjoy: apples, string cheese, cheese-its, and now for the bad ones: brownies, and chocolate, chocolate, chocolate.

Things I would do if I were a billionaire: Travel lots, buy some wonderful art pieces, do some good with it. Buy my mom a Porsche! And Adrian too, but if I were a billionaire then I'm just assuming Adrian bought a Porsche back when we were millionaires.:)

3 of my bad habits:
1. biting my nails
2. staying up way too late
3. diet Coke - which by the way I've cut way back on, but when I do fall off the wagon I am a diet Coke junkie


5 jobs I have had/ My first Job Experience:(I think I did this in a meme a little while ago so I'm going to change it up and do my first job experience.)

The first time I got paid to do a job other than babysitting, was working over a spring break when I was 16 at Albertson's giving out samples. A man in our ward hired a bunch of young women to help out just for a week or so. I gave out little mini Wonder Bread loaves and man they were popular. I realized just how much people love free stuff during this spring break.

5 things people don't know about me:

1. One of my most EMBARRASSING moments was during a big auditorium Biology 100 class. I was a brand new freshman at BYU and I was sitting one of the front rows because couldn't see the writing on the over-head projector from further back in the auditorium. I got glasses about 2 months into my college education. Anyways, one day because I was up so close to were the professor was I ended up being asked a couple questions and had microphone handed to me while the whole auditorium quieted and waited for my answers. Here's how it went:

Professor: "Have you read The Old Man and the Sea by Earnest Hemingway?"

Me (very nervously into the microphone): "Yes."

Professor: "What an amazing book...Tell me in one word what that book was about."

Me (I completely blanked out and I was overwhelmed by everyone listening to me in this huge and abnormally quiet auditorium.) : "um....sharks...."

Professor and ENTIRE AUDITORIUM: "Hahahahahahah....!!!!"

The professor laughed and then moved on to the next person who of course answered "endurance" and I totally knew that, but well it was a bad moment for me and I felt like a intellectual loser for many weeks following that. It was then I decided to get glasses so I could move out of the question answering range.

2. I love many Patsy Cline song. "Walking After Midnight" is a particular fave, but "You Belong to Me" and "I've Got Your Picture" are lovely too.

3. I watch the new vampire show "Moonlight" but am hoping they get some more funding and that the writing gets better soon... You can only go so far with a bunch of beautiful actors saying bad lines while sitting on Ikea furniture.

4. I love the board game Lost Cities.

5. I am really getting into politics lately and have enjoyed watching the debates and news coverage - before I found it all annoying, but right now it all seems so exciting and different than past presidential elections.

President Hinckley

President Hinckley passed away on Sunday night. He was an amazing man and had been the prophet since my freshman year in college. I remember the first time I went to a devotional when he spoke at BYU and feeling great love for our sweet prophet. He led the church with kindness and optimism. I was always in awe of how energetic he was and all the countries he traveled to. He was a true prophet and disciple of our Savior and I am going to miss him.

MORE!!

Nina made the sign for "more" on Friday and I was so excited that I got out the camera and videoed her doing it. We've been working really hard on "more" and I was so excited when it clicked for her. All during lunch she used the sign to get spoonfuls of the chicken noodle soup that I was having. But for the video fruit snacks were the bribe of choice. Other signs that we are working on are: baby, open, drink, and milk. She has actually signed "baby" also and it's so cute!!



Oh, and I think I forgot to mention that we did have her hearing checked a couple of weeks ago and she can hear just fine - the little stinker just ignores me half the time!:)

Tekken 5

After many many years Adrian and I once again played each other at Tekken today and it was awesome!! We went to an arcade as a family and I forgot just how much I love playing arcade "fighting games" like Tekken and Soul Edge. Playing arcade games was a huge part of my social life as a teenager and when we started dating it was a favorite activity of Adrian and I. We used play Tekken at the bowling alley in the Wilk at BYU. I was so happy today when we saw Tekken 5 in a quiet corner of the arcade - which was a wild and crazy place, but not too many people were interested in this particular corner which also had Donkey Kong and Mrs. Pac Man right next to Tekken. It was like this little corner was made for our family! Sophie sat at Donkey Kong and played away and Ben sat at Mrs. Pac Man and I think really played it once, but thought he was playing and had a grand time with just the demo screen for a long time.:) So Nina hung out in her stroller and Adrian and I battled away.

As a teen I can flaunt the fact that I whooped almost anyone in Tekken, but my mad skills have gotten a bit rusty... But hey I think the Tekken I played (like 13 years ago) was the original or maybe Tekken 2 and it's changed at lot and has lots of different and might I add super cool characters now. I did pretty good, but Adrian beat me. Obviously the years away from the arcade have dulled my hand to eye coordination. Don't worry though I'm already planning a rematch next time we have a date-night. After we had played a couple rounds a guy came up to us to see if he could play too and Adrian played him first and lost - this guy was obviously quite the gamer. This guy was pretty surprised that I challenged him after he beat Adrian and was equally surprised by my character choice, Sergei Dragunov. The guy chuckled and said, "Man that character looks evil." (Sergei looks like a vampire hence my choice.:)) Well this gamer guy beat me, but before he did I grabbed his character and slammed him down in a fantastic move that made him say "Wow, that was nice!" So I felt vindicated. It was so much fun!! Adrian found it quite funny how happy I was after playing Tekken - it just made me feel all young and silly again and brought back a lot of fun memories. Don't worry though Adrian and I won't become arcade junkies - Nina made it very apparent that a 1/2 hour was her maximum patience for parental gaming fun.
(That's Sergei on the left.:))

A Good Snow Day

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...

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...

"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!)

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!!