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Neglected Blog
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| So how sad is it that it took me until today to realize that my birthday post for Sara-Lyn was only saved as a draft? It seems with all the business of life, and the convenience of Twitter and Facebook, we are never on our blog any more. Just out of curiosity, how many people are still checking us out over here? (Please leave a comment) |
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Happy Birthday Sara-Lyn
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So Sara-Lyn is 3 now. One more of our babies who is no longer a baby. It's a little scary how fast they are growing up. We went to Calaway Park on the weekend with Katy and her family along with another family that Carmen is friends with through Calgary Moms.
For the record, my children are all absolute adrenaline junkies - Hannah and Sara-Lyn have both begun showing a major preference for the more intense rides, all of which require them to ride with an adult: ME (I have also discovered that I can't handle those rides as well as I could when I was younger...)
As icing on the cake, Auntie Kerri and Uncle Jay sent a balloon-o-gram today, and as luck would have it, Sara-Lyn was the one to answer the door |
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Happy birthday Rebekah
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| I know Rebekah actually turned one on Wednesday, but I am in denial. I don't want my littlest baby to be one already. We had cake on Wednesday for her, and she had a blast mushing it between her fingers, and then she opened a few presents on Monday. We have pictures, and I will post them soon. Just not today. |
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Busy month
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| It has definitely been a busy month for us, well more like two months, but whose counting. The holidays were great, I found them a little overwhelming this year with all the traveling we did, but it was well worth it to get a chance to visit with everybody. Hannah has been absolutely obsessed about Christmas since the beginning of December when people starting turning on their Christmas lights. Everyday she asked if tomorrow was Christmas for pretty much the whole month of December. Even on her birthday, the birthday barely distracted her from the goal of Christmas. I had hoped that when Christmas was over the onslaught would end, but it hasn't. She has been making decorations for next year's Christmas tree since the day we took this year's tree down. It doesn't matter how many times I try to explain how far away next Christmas is, she wont be deterred. I'm hoping valentines day may provide some relief. I find it hard to believe that Hannah is 4 already. Ever since her birthday it seems like she is growing up so fast, of course it probably doesn't help that I registered her for kindergarten the other day. Now I have to face the reality that in six months she will be off to school. It seems like too much for my little girl to handle. She is loving pre-school so much that I know she is going to love everything about kindergarten. She is even excited about getting to ride a school bus.
Sara has had a very exciting month as well. She enjoyed Christmas as well. In a different way then her sister though. Sara has been really enthralled with this Santa guy, even now she talks about Santa bringing her candy. Of course it probably doesn't help that Hannah is still jabbering on about Christmas. I think Sara's most exciting news for this month is that she is now officially a big girl. Complete with a big girl party at chucky cheese. We started potty training her last friday, and she was pretty much done within a week. Tomorrow will be two full weeks, and she is doing great. She is very proud of her new panties, and takes great pride in showing off the pictures on each pair. Of course Sara has to add her own brand of independence to everything, and she has already decided that she doesn't need help going potty anymore. When I try to help her she either tells me to go away, or that she wants privacy. While I am proud of her for being so independent, I just don't know if I am ready to let her handle the bathroom all by herself yet. Sara has also started speech therapy this month. It has been an interesting experience. The speech therapist was really impressed with how much Sara had improved from when she was assessed back in November. While she was labeled as severe at the assessment, she is almost into the moderate category now. It is difficult though going to the classes and watching Sara struggle so much with something that should be so simple.
Rebekah is a completely different baby from the last time I posted. Christmas was a big time for her. Over the holidays she perfected sitting by herself. she cut two teeth, and started making attempts at crawling. She still isn't crawling quite yet in the typical sense, but she is fully mobile now, she either pulls herself forward on her belly or scooches herself forward on her bum. Rebekah has also moved into the world of table food, and with a vengeance, she has become a very picky eater, and only wants what we are eating. Unfortunately she also doesn't like some of the typical finger foods you give to a baby such as cheerios, so sometimes finding her quick snacks can difficult. I pretty much have to cook a whole meal just to feed her. In the last week she has figured out how to pull herself into a sitting position from her belly, and she thinks it is very amusing to sit up and push on the bars of her crib, when she should be sleeping.
Me and Dan are doing great. I think the most important thing happening with us right now, is that we are finishing our basement. In the last 2 months we have put down a subfloor, framed in a bedroom, an office, rupus room, utility room, laundry room, and what will one day be a bathroom. We are also two thirds done the electrical. So hopefully we will be able to start putting up drywall soon, and then the fun really begins. |
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Happy Birthday Hannah!
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It's hard to believe that Hannah turned 4 today. We had princess pool party for Hannah this weekend that Kara, Kelly, Elizabeth, Katy, Jayda, Noah and Nana all came to. It was a real splash with everybody:
After that we went back to the house for cake and the princess part of the princess pool party - All in all, a really good day, but looking back, I still can't figure out where the last 4 years went...
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Speech assesment
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| Sara-Lyn had her speech assessment on Monday, and they diagnosed her with a phonological disorder. This is most likely the same thing I had as a child, but they didn't have a name for it back then. Essentially it means that her brain has difficulty organizing sounds into words. She has an amazing level of comprehension, she started getting the questions wrong when they were asking questions from the 5/6 year old set. But her spoken language skills are really low, she estimated that only about 10% of what Sara says is understandable by anybody other then me. Normally a 2.5 year old should be around 50% intelligible. She was pleased with how much Sara was attempting to talk, even if it wasn't understandable. Anyways they put her down as high priority for therapy and she should be starting in January.
Personally I am having a hard time with this diagnosis, I was really hoping to be able to go the speech assessment and have them just tell me that she was a little behind but not to worry she would catch up. Now I have to face the reality that there is something wrong, and while she will one day talk, after all I can talk, she may struggle for a long time with it. Personally I started speech therapy when I was three, and continued until the end of grade 4. I was still having difficulty pronouncing certain words well into highschool. I remember the frustration of not being understood as a child, and then mocked as I got older when I mispronounced words. This is something I really don't want Sara to have to go through. But it seems that I have very little choice in the matter, and she will most likely face the same scenarios. Especially seeing how I went and named her a name she that will probably be one of the last sounds she is able to pronounce correctly. |
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Halloween
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Halloween was a success at our house this year. Hannah and Sara-Lyn both made it all the way around the block and through both cul-de-sacs, filling two full buckets of candy each. So they both now have a gigantic bulging bag of candy. Hannah went to her preschool Halloween party as Cinderella, and had fun decorating cookies, and eating them. Sara dressed as Snow White, and we went to a drop in gym time, where they had a halloween theme. Then of course we went trick or treating. For Trick or treating Hannah wore her Cinderella dress and a pretend pony on top of that. We had decorated pumpkins a couple of evenings prior to halloween, so I will post some pictures of those and their costumes. |
