Christmas

The kids were so excited about Christmas this year. Gyven and Kyra are at an age where the idea of Santa and presents is just about the coolest thing ever. Gyven keeps asking when we're going to do Christmas again, and gets really upset when I tell him it will be another whole year. Today has been rather quiet, just the kids playing with their new toys and hanging out.

Mostly Pictures

The kids are very excited for Christmas this year. Last night we went to Zoolights at the Point Defiance Zoo and Aquarium, and they loved it. Gyven keeps asking if we're going to the North Pole to see Santa. He also keeps asking if we can drive to Iraq to pick daddy up. I'm not sure how to explain the concept of thousands of miles to a five year old.

Elementary my dear Watson!

Who doesn't love a good nap?

One of the tiers on my fake tree would not light up and being as I am too lazy to pack it back up and return it, I've had a sad looking unlit spot on my tree. I fiddled for 20 or 30 minutes when I first noticed it and gave up, because I couldn't find any missing, broken or otherwise dysfunctional bulbs or wires.

Today Sidney walks up to the tree, jiggles a branch, and the tier of lights flickers! He pokes a couple of the bulbs on that branch, and one of the ones on the bottom produces the same response! So I go over there and that bulb's housing is cracked, causing a break in the circuit. I fiddled with it and managed to get the circuit to connect, so that bulb is still out, but the rest of the lights on the tier light up.

Genius baby. Genius.

It's been busy...

This picture was taken as we waited for Gyven's first ride on the school bus. Nothing exciting going on besides Gyven being in school and loving it. Today is the last day before winter break, and he's going to be impatient for it to restart in January.

Sidney was re-diagnosed. He did not have chicken pox, it was a non-specific viral rash. It's resolved and he's fine, but now we're sharing a cold. Poor kid can't catch a break.

Look at that happy pox-covered boy

With the right combo of meds, you don't know he's all that sick. Until, of course, you see the rash.

Because we're not sick enough around here

Sidney got the chicken pox from his vaccine, and Kyra apparently did not get total immunity from her vaccine back in the summer and has caught it as well. So, we're going to hermit it up this week. Poor Kyra and Gyven will be so disappointed to miss school and speech therapy on Monday, but I don't want to risk them giving it out to their classmates (Gyven's been cleared for school on Tuesday so long as he remains symptom free, we just don't want to risk his medically fragile classmates contracting this one). Kyra and Sidney have been prescribed an anti-viral medication and tylennol or motrin as needed, as well as oatmeal baths. So tomorrow we'll sneak out just long enough to pick up some oatmeal bath supplies, and then we'll curl up with some good movies and lots of liquids and hopefully neither of them develop any complications!

Check this out...

He is growing up way too fast all of a sudden.

I keep forgetting to post.

I would post a picture of Gyven, since this post is going to be mostly about him, but I don't have one that's in focus. You'll just have to settle for the cute toddler up there.

Today was not only Gyven's first day of school, but his glasses also came in today! He was in school from 11:45 until 2:20, and that's the plan 4 days a school week (they don't have preschool on Wednesdays). Today he worked on writing his name, drawing, they sang some songs and he ate his lunch (yes, this is the condensed version of exactly what he told me they did). Then after school we went to pick his glasses up. He's struggling to actually leave them alone and look through them, tho hopefully he'll get used to them and use them as intended soon.

I've done the Christmas shopping for the most part. If anything I might add some books to the pile, but they're getting plenty of toys and the like already, seeing as they have tons of toys as it is. I bought a tree topper and it promptly fell off my tree. I'm going to set up the kids tomorrow with some construction paper and we'll make one, since Gyven is insistent that our tree is seriously lacking without a topper.

Poor sick baby

Sidney has a double ear infection. :(

At the doctor's office he was just over 30 inches tall and a few ounces shy of 28 pounds (I was sure he was 30 pounds already, but I was wrong). He's down to 60-70th percentiles for height, and still in the 90s for weight, both following his curve and doing just fine. He needs to go back in January for a vaccine and at 15 months old for his next well check. His cardiologist says his heart is still looking fabulous, and we'll see him again in April or May.

Kyra decorated the living room with a stick of deodorant today. I'm a little cranky about that.

A little comparison

I've been updating this with a new picture from each month and today I added the last one. (Psst, dad, the one in the center is a sneak preview of your birthday present...). The blog wants to crop it, so right-click and select view image to see the whole thing. Silly blog.

Sidney is one!

Sidney turned one today! Poor baby is sick with some nasty upper respiratory infection complete with low-grade fever. Hopefully it is as short lived as the last infection he had, which was less than 72 hours in duration. It's made for a pretty sad birthday, he didn't enjoy much of his celebration and slept a significant portion of the afternoon.

Gyven's ophthalmology appointment was today, his new glasses should be done in a week or two, and we'll go back to see the doctor again in January to see if they're helping. If not, we'll see if their are any other options before surgical intervention.

Tis the Season already.

We bought and erected our new Christmas tree today. The kids are currently up past their bedtime rearranging the ornaments over and over and over and... Currently all the ornaments they can reach are on the same side of the tree, and that side is not the front.

We had a very quiet Thanksgiving, just the four of us, and have had leftovers coming out our ears! I froze the dark meat, still on the bone, and will be using it for soup when the mood strikes me. We've been using up the rest of the turkey slowly on hot turkey sandwiches for lunch. Of the three, I think Sidney has been the most fond of the Thanksgiving food, tho Kyra has put away her fair share of mashed potatoes and turkey.

Today was my birthday, but we didn't do anything special besides putting up the tree and running a few errands. Since I will be making cupcakes for Sidney's birthday in the next couple days, I decided I didn't need my own separate ones between those and pie (and my waistline will thank me). One of my most amusing 'gifts' has been the discovery of my first gray hair.

Next week we have something scheduled nearly every week day, so I might not get the chance to post more than pictures before next weekend.

Gyven wanted to make a turkey after Kyra got to make one at Speech Therapy this week, so this is what we made at home. Ever since, every time he has paper, Gyven traces his hand and makes a turkey.

Kyra has been switched to a different speech therapist and will be doing therapy with a little boy once a week starting in December. They're very close in speech development, and one is ahead where the other is behind, so hopefully working together they will teach each other as much as the therapist will teach them.

Sidney already outgrew the outfit grandpa sent him for his birthday! He hit a growth spurt right after it arrived, and so he fits best in 24 months pants and 2T shirts now. Next week I'll know exactly how big he is, as his 12 month well check is Wednesday morning. My bathroom scale says he's 30 pounds or so. It's so crazy to think he's already turning one! This year has gone by so fast!

Slacker

I'm way behind on this, I know. I've just had one of those 'if it's not one thing it's another' kind of weeks. So, I come bearing pictures and apologies, and hopefully I will keep up better next week.

Gyven is FIVE

Gyven loves birthdays, and he was over the moon when he realized that it was HIS birthday. He was very happy with his cupcakes and his presents, and we got to see Patrick on webcam this morning, which was great.

I finally have the kids enrolled in hourly care as of yesterday so I can get my respite hours. Monday morning they're going for 3 hours and I have an appointment to get my hair done for the first time since March of 2008! Sidney is now walking well, and is walking more than crawling. He got to try a little cupcake today and was very impressed. Now if only he would sleep! He hardly napped all day until 7pm, when he got a solid 45 minutes or an hour, and now he is just settling at 10:30 at night. Normally he is out for the night by 9:30.

Cheese!

This is Sidney's "Cheesey grin." He LOVES getting a reaction out of people, especially making them laugh, so he's become quite a ham. It makes for great photos, especially as compared to his big brother and sister, who hide if I pull out a camera these days.

We're still trucking along since Patrick left. We had a lot of appointments over the last week, among them Kyra and Gyven both had preschool evaluations (I'll know more about them in December when we do Kyra's secondary eval and get the results of Gyven's final eval), and Kyra had her last little bit of dental work done (easy peasy, and all three kids are good to go until their dental check ups in the Spring). We don't have anything else scheduled until the end of the month, so maybe I'll be able to catch up on my neglected house since I'll be in it long enough when I'm not sleeping to clean something!

Sidney says thank you

He says it's very snuggly. Thank you, grandpa!

Happy Halloween

Patrick deployed yesterday. We were handed orders less than 8 hours in advance of the plane leaving, but at least I have a copy. We're going to miss him a great deal, but so far we are doing okay.

Well this is getting ridiculous.

In just over 24 hours, Patrick is supposed to be on a plane headed overseas.

We still have no orders. The comedy is not lost on me, but the frustration is winning out. We've been on this roller coaster of "Yes he's going. No he's not. Yes, he is." and on and on since June. Just once I would like what I have been told and the actual outcome of events to sync up.

In the meantime, we've been filling our time admirably, with trips to a pumpkin patch and the zoo, buying last minute things Patrick might need, and generally just trying to enjoy the time he has if he is on that plane tomorrow. Sidney has started taking steps and is turning into quite the comedian. Tonight we're going to make some more pumpkin treats from our farm fresh pumpkins, let Patrick finish packing and try not to panic too much about the uncertainty tomorrow still holds.

Family Pictures

We had family pictures taken the last week of September right before Patrick was scheduled to deploy. We'd been meaning for a long time to get a new set done, and deploying was the final shove I needed to schedule an appointment with the local cheap Walmart studio. They're not gallery worthy, but I am so glad I have these. Now I just have to remember to schedule portraits for Sidney's first birthday...

PS - Dad, if you want any of the portraits let me know, I have other shots; some 8x10s and 5x7s as well as wallets I can spare.

Patrick was bumped. He'll be home a little longer, tho deployed before the end of the month. Right now it's just a matter of when, tho we don't expect to have him home more than a few more weeks.

Today we took the kids to Build-A-Bear to pick out a deployment bear for each one, to cuddle while daddy is gone. It's usually our birthday activity to visit build-a-bear, but we decided to make a special exception.

We've heard back from the school district, and now we're just waiting on them to evaluate Gyven and Kyra and determine their eligibility and placement. Right now the soonest they could be in a classroom is sometime in November, just because we're going to have to wait a bit for an available evaluation time. Gyven and Kyra are both very anxious to get into school, Gyven has been asking about it constantly since we turned in the paperwork to the school district!

Sidney's diaper here's outer layer is made from the same material as his daddy's ACUs, and we borrowed his patrol cap for this picture. We cloth diaper for lots of reasons (from economical to skin sensitivities), and one of the later reasons we added to the pile was the cuteness factor. In my opinion there's not much cuter than a sweet baby in a cloth diaper. Sidney has made a few milestones this week, he's tried taking a single step, started standing alone without encouragement, and waving. Gyven and Kyra are both only a few interviews away from being enrolled in school before the end of the semester. I'm looking forward to them getting to interact with more people and learn some new things.

We've spent the last week preparing for Patrick to deploy early tomorrow morning, and it's been busy. We're hoping the whole thing goes smoothly, tho at this point he may be bumped to the next flight at the end of October. We won't know for sure until the morning.

And some pictures

For a long time now, everyone had been operating under the assumption that Gyven was on the autism spectrum, as that was what we had been told by our previous developmental pediatrician, and that's what fit based on the knowledge I had acquired. Borderline autism. Well, today the developmental pediatrician we're seeing now sent a shocker to us. Gyven no longer fits that diagnosis! While he does still have delays in the areas of speech and social skills, he's not a good fit for a diagnosis of autism. We're going to continue to pursue speech therapy, and work on getting him in a preschool setting (probably through the public school's special education department). It's looking better and better that by the time he's in elementary school Gyven may be able to function on a similar level to his peers.

In other news, Patrick has been given orders and today reports to a new unit. This unit is currently deployed and under strength, so it is very likely that sometime in October Patrick will receive deployment orders and join the main body of the unit for the remainder of their time in Iraq. Patrick was at first very dismayed, as this extends our stop loss until 2011, but now he's prepared to go if called upon and actually looking forward to some aspects of deployment, tho he will miss us very much, and we will miss him.

Pictures like this really show off how tall Sidney is! This morning at the pediatrician's he was measured in at 29 inches, which is 90th percentile for his age group (meaning 90 percent of kids his age will be smaller than he is). He weighed in at 26 pounds, which was 99th percentile. He's a big boy! He loves the bathtub, so when he's not in a bath, he has to investigate who is and what they're doing. He got his own bath not long after Kyra was done with hers.

Kyra had her second set of dental work done today, but with a twist. Instead of a root canal, the dentist decided that they could save the tooth as there was no decay, and applied a sealant. If the sealant doesn't hold the dentist will do the root canal and crown later, but with the cost of the sealant subtracted from that bill. Kyra also had a filling done. She did so well! Hardly cried at all, opened her mouth good and wide when asked, and she actually fell asleep in the chair while the work was done! The dentist is very good with kids and has done a great job on Kyra so far, I'm very happy we were referred there for Kyra's work.

Busy weekend.

This Sunday we spent all afternoon at various parks around town, and ended with an hour at this pebble beach in Steiliacoom. From this spot you could see the Tacoma Narrows Bridge (the predecessor was the famously nicknamed Galloping Gertie which collapsed in 1940, the current bridges were finished in 1950 and 2007). Despite the hint of Fall keeping the morning cool, it was warm enough by mid-afternoon that the kids could get in the water and we all got a little bit sunburned.

Today Kyra had an evaluation with a speech therapist, who confirmed my suspicion that Kyra does indeed have trouble with her articulation and putting nouns and verbs together, and so tomorrow we'll meet with the therapist again to determine what the best course of action is for getting Kyra on track. We'll probably be doing a group therapy once a week and hopefully a one on one therapy as well, but it depends on the waiting list (currently the clinic we were seen at has a 300+ child wait list, so we'll be looking at other clinics as well in the hopes we can get services for her shortly). The therapist suspects Kyra may have a specific kind of trouble with speech called Apraxia, but it will take more time watching and working with Kyra to determine if that is the case, as it is a difficult condition to diagnose in young children.

We spent last weekend in McMinnville, Oregon with some of Patrick's family. Apparently we don't know how to get in closer for family pictures. We spent most of Saturday at the Evergreen Aviation and Aerospace Museum, this picture was inside the aerospace portion of the museum. The kids had a wonderful time playing with their 2nd cousins and visiting with their grandma and great grandma.

Sidney has cut tooth number 7, and is trying his hardest to stand unsupported. It's not working out so far, but he's trying.

The weather has cooled off again, and it may be that summer is already over here in Washington. We had one last really hot day over the weekend, and since then it's barely broken 70.

Not a lot planned here this week, but next week Kyra has her speech evaluation, which I'm hoping will really give us some direction. The whole month of September is pretty busy for Kyra and Gyven with doctors and dentist visits, hopefully it's all a smooth run!

All fluff, no substance

I am running around today, trying to clean and pack before we are supposed to leave Friday morning to meet Patrick's family in Oregon for the weekend, so I'm just going to post a few pictures this week!

Lessons for Moms

Markers and three and four year olds should never be combined. Ever. I thought the crayon was bad. I was wrong.

At least they were washable!

Too hot, way too hot.

It is currently 91 degrees, and I have no air conditioner. Perfect post to talk about my knitting, right? The blanket Sidney has was started last September, with the intention to finish before he was born. That didn't exactly work out. In fact, it sat 2/3 completed from the end of October until just a few weeks ago, when I decided to complete the last section once and for all. I bound off, seamed and washed it, declaring it completed last Friday night. Since then it's been to hot to even look at my yarn, let alone knit with it, so I haven't made any progress on anything else. I did a lot of knitting this summer, as up until this past week or so, it's been rather cool. In the completed projects pile for July alone there is a sweater, a hat, a pair of socks and the blanket. Not too bad for summer knitting, eh?

Now if only I could fit in my refrigerator, I could knit some more!

Edit: the original pattern for the blanket is from http://www.therunningyarn.com/2008/04/pretty-punk-blanket-free-pattern.html

Neglect

Things got crazy last week. I will give the short version.

This picture is from Organizational Day Activities for Patrick's unit. Gyven is in the yellow, Kyra the green shirt. They went in the bounce house at least a half dozen times.

Patrick is not deploying today. If he goes at all, it will be in October at the earliest. This is wonderful, as we just weren't ready for him to go. He's non-deployable until then for medical reasons.

Kyra needs some pretty extensive dental work. Tomorrow will be her first treatment, where they will be pulling three teeth which have gotten infected, and therefore risk abscess and should not be saved. If there are no adult teeth coming in behind them, when she is older they'll implant some fake teeth in their place.

Sidney recently got his third tooth and has gotten to the separation anxiety phase, which keeps me very busy.

That's that, hopefully I'll do a better job keeping up over here in the future!

Sidney VS the window

Sorry for the terrible quality, as this was taken with my cell phone (my computer will no longer read videos off my camera, which means it may be time for a new camera).



The phone didn't pick up the "thunk" noise made every time Sidney bumped his noggin on the window. He had been doing this for 5 minutes when he finally reached up and beat on the window with his palm until he was convinced it was solid.

Yesterday Patrick legally adopted Gyven! The kids had been woken up early and we waited at the courthouse for an hour before our case came up, so everyone was worn out at the point this picture was taken! Also Kyra was brewing an infection, which she is now on a course of penicillin for. Today Maryanna goes home to her mom's, Monday Patrick goes back to work, which means we hit the real build up to when the unit deploys! Things are going to be quite messy around here the next few weeks!

Kyra is Three!

On Monday Kyra turned three! She's growing up so fast, it's hard to believe it sometimes. As you can see she very much enjoyed her raspberry frosted chocolate cupcakes. She got to spend the morning making a Hello Kitty at Build-a-Bear, with lunch at McDonald's and then she and her siblings ran around the mall play place for a while. After the mall we came home for those yummy cupcakes and then we spent the rest of the afternoon at the park. All in all she had a pretty good day! She definitely approved of her new twirly skirt (made the night before at 11pm, because this mom always does everything at the last minute!).

Today the kids are out front with their dad pulling the weeds in half the flower bed (we found a bird nest in the other half so we're leaving it be for now). Tomorrow if the weather is nice we plan to take the kids to a spraygrounds at one of the Tacoma metro parks. Gyven and Kyra loved it last year.

Vacation!

This past week we went on vacation! This picture was taken overlooking Crater Lake, in Oregon, which stands at 7,000 feet and is the deepest natural lake in the US! We were obviously not dressed for the weather. We drove down to visit Patrick's family in Medford and to pick up Maryanna for her summer visit with her dad, and stopped at Crater Lake on our way home. We had planned on camping at least one night, but the weather stacked against us, and the closest we got to camping was a night in a lodge at Union Creek!

Sidney has made some strides toward crawling this week! He's also more and more interested in food, but he's much more interested in biter biscuits and steamed veggies than he is in purees. All the kids are sharing a nasty cold and cough, but seem to be on the mend. Today we plan to visit a Rhododendron Garden just north of Tacoma. We're trying to pack a lot in to Maryanna's visit, as this year we've shortened it to accommodate Patrick's deployment and a trip Maryanna's mother wants to take.

A bunch of appointments!

Today the kids all saw various doctors, here's the rundown:

Sidney's heart looks great! His cardiologist is very pleased. We'll see him again in 6 months, but Sidney's heart couldn't look better right now. The biggest fear was that now that the narrowing of the valve was fixed that some leakage would result and need to be fixed later on. There is no leak at all and Sidney will not need another cardiology follow-up until he is 12 months old, and probably in another year he'd only need to see a cardiologist once each year.

Gyven is being referred to speech therapy and developmental for evals and possible therapy and to re-evaluate his prior autism diagnosis. He's a good candidate for preschool, however, and his pediatrician thinks his long-term outlook is great. He's been given a clean bill of health otherwise. He was very polite and cooperative.

Kyra was her usual shy and buttheaded self (that's my girl!), so it was difficult to get a clear idea of where she stands, but we've been referred to have her speech evaluated as well. While she is mostly on track her level of intelligibility is about half what they want for her age group, so we're going to re-check her hearing and speech to see what help, if any, she may need.

And now I need to go make some dinner.

Sidney is a big baby!

Sidney had his 6 months well baby visit today. He did just fine, and is a whopping 22lbs (roughly 10 kgs) and 26.75 (67.5 cms) tall! He's doing so well! We have to schedule a separate visit to see his cardiologist and get his vaccines, as the office did not want to do these vaccines even just the 3 days early. Okay by me, if I can do both the same day, all the better.

Gyven and Kyra are scheduled for their well child visits next week.

The picture is from Friday, Sidney's first time in a swing. He was very impressed!

Patrick and Gyven are off on another hike today, while Kyra, Sidney and I hold the fort here at the house. After the last 2 mile adventure I have a feeling I'll keep Kyra home unless it's all flat trails or she suddenly becomes less accident prone. She's about as graceful as me, and that's really not beneficial to long tramps over hilly wooded trails. She fell pretty hard on the hike and needed to be carried a good portion of the remaining hike and being at least 35 pounds she's just too heavy for that!

So while they are hiking Kyra has made me some very pretty scribbles and Sidney is reminding me that since he is now awake from his nap he needs my 100% undivided attention. We'll see how well that goes.

I know what to do!

My dad kind of hinted that he wanted to read my blog. Since I'm not sure I'm okay with that, since my other blog is more like my diary, meet the new and improved, Daddy friendly faerieflings!

So, to start, this is what the kids are up to:

Gyven is getting more communicative, but still struggles with some concepts. He can count to 20 well, and we recently started teaching him 21-30 and we've tested the waters of reading. He's starting to recognize that when the letters line up in the same order it always means the same thing.

Kyra is dressing herself! Her combinations are sometimes wacky (jeans with a frilly dress and winter boots, don't worry, we make her change if it isn't weather or venue appropriate), but she loves to do it and is always very proud of herself. She's working on toilet training, too (I expect her to be 100% out of diapers by midsummer including overnight).

Sidney has cut his first two teeth and is working very hard on crawling and sitting up. He has had his first tastes of solid food and is not dismissive, but not exactly excited. He likes his biter biscuits, as things to chew on are best.

See, daddy? I can totally write a blog for you to read. :D I even included a picture.