February News

As I hinted to last post, we had some "stuff" in progress and would share when we had the outcomes.  As a result to having some challenges with Alex in his preschool and observing some actions at home, we decided to have Alex evaluated for special services in school.  We also brought him in to see a developmental pediatrician to see his views but are still awaiting any diagnosis.  The outcome of the evaluations show that Alex has a slight delay in his fine motor skills, which may be as a result to him having low muscle tone in his upper extremities.  He also has a slight delay in his receptive language skills and its use in his everyday life.  He tested to have average to above average IQ and his vocabulary ranked at a 5 year old's....so not everything is in the delayed spectrum.  As a result to these evaluations, he has been accepted into a therapeutic structured integrated program where the special education teacher and aids are included in a regular education classroom, which meets 5 half days a week.  Also Alex qualifies for speech therapy and occupational therapy twice a week.  He will be riding on a school bus to and from school (in a carseat) as long as he likes it.  All of this is included in our taxes and therefore at no additional cost to us.  When we visited the classroom Alex seemed very happy with the school.  The teachers were very welcoming and there was a great energy throughout.  We couldn't be happier with how this is all turning out.  Alex starts his new school tomorrow.  I'll update you in March on his experiences.

We went and looked at a preschool for Blake as well this month.  We have decided not to go back to the preschool that Alex initially had gone to and toured another that we are excited to send Blake to.  They offer the general academic program seen elsewhere but also include a few enrichment activities that we think fun and beneficial such as drumming and dance. 

Here's a photo of the boys this month...both sat in a box.  They don't get better than this.  :-D

late January post...a day late

Well, my goal is to do two posts a month and well, I'm a day late.  Oh well.  I DID actually consider staying up late last night to make the deadline but my Zzzzz's won out.

So we have been "blessed" with more snow in the month of January than we have since 1925!  A lot of exercise is being had by Dave, as we don't have a working snow blower at the moment... I would help out but he's generally adamant about doing it.  Today, I actually did help out, minimally.  Alex, I believe, has had one day of school in the entire month (being that he goes on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and the snow has just been landing exactly on those days).

What else has happened since last writing.  Well, Dave has celebrated his 26th birthday (again) and we've had a nice visit from Uncle Brent.  Unfortunately our lives get in the way and visits with friends and family are often the first to get pushed aside, so a visit from my brother was a wonderful treat.  I think he & the boys had a grand time together.  One of the highlights of his visit, in Blake's opinion, was putting a big Raisin Bran box on his head and walking around.  Its the little things.  Here are some photos:

Alex

Blake & Uncle Brent

Blake watching Uncle Brent show him how its done

Hilarious

Here, let me try

Super hero Alex

Mmmmm, ice cream sandwich

Mommy & Blake

Mommy & Alex

Blake & Uncle Brent

As for Dave's birthday - days before, Alex declared that he wanted to make Daddy a special birthday cake.  What kind of cake did he have in mind? A Wolverine cake, of course.  Wolverine, for those that don't know, is a super hero that Alex admires currently.  I had every intention on making my little boy happy and surprising his dear old dad by doing this.  The weather was against us and both days following his declaration, it snowed and Dave took our car so I couldn't go and buy vanilla icing/coloring to make it.  I was bummed and told Alex we'll just be making Daddy a chocolate cake.  His response: Yuck!  I was chatting with a friend who reminded me that I could make vanilla icing myself with ingredients I had on-hand.  Well, duh, homemade icing....why didn't I think of that?  I ran to the cake decorating kit that my brother handed down to me and sure enough, there was yellow dye and I knew I had blue dye from when I made Alex's Thomas cake.  Here's how it turned out:

It snowed on Dave's birthday and he called when he was leaving from work.  I didn't take into consideration just how long it would take for him to get home, so timing for his special birthday dinner was way off. It took him about twice as long to get home.  The boys were super excited to show Daddy his cake and sing Happy Birthday, practicing all day long.  He walked in about 7:15 p.m., the boys surprised Daddy with his cake and singing.  Unfortunately with timing, we promised the boys they could enjoy a piece of cake the next day and put them to bed as usual....then ate our dinner.  What was for dinner? Steak, poblano pepper sauce, brussel sprouts and tomato & mozzarella salad....some of Dave's favorites and thankfully it was still yummy despite the delay.  Nope, no picture of this.

Other than that, I've been enjoying my time with the boys and they're growing to really love each other and play more together, which is lovely.  I catch them often now holding hands, ok, dragging each other around the room (walking) or one time I even caught them dancing together.  It makes my heart melt.  I, of course, see how far they'll go and ask them to hug each other and to my delight, they do so.  :-D

Here are just a couple that I love:

So that's all that I'm sharing for the month of January, although there are some other works in progress that I'll share when we find out the outcomes.  I'll leave you with this picture of icicles that are out chilling out front.