Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving crept up on me a bit this year, but it was still enjoyable. We went over to my in-law's house as usual, but my favorite part was the "Turkey Bowl" that morning. Christopher still keeps in touch with quite a few friends from his old neighborhood, and they managed to round up a good sized group of friends and siblings for a football game. Normally this is just a guy thing to do while the girls make Thanksgiving dinner, but Chris wanted me to play, and I had a blast! In many ways, it is nice being the only girl because people don't expect too much from you. I even made a couple of catches! When I picked up the kick off, I started running and said "the best part is, being the only girl, no one is really sure if they want to tackle me or . . . oh shoot . . ." as my husband ran straight at me, grabbed me around the waist, and tackled me on the ground. Stinkin' flirt! I enjoyed watching Chris play- he had a great day, and actually caught a bunch of touchdown passes.

But my favorite thing about Thanksgiving, oddly enough, is that I can set up my Christmas decorations. I LOVE Christmas decorations. Heck, this year, I took down the pumpkins and leaves all over the house and set up holly and reindeer before I even went to bed on Thanksgiving itself. I have two favorites: the nativity set and the tree.

This nativity set is something that Christopher got while on his mission. Each piece was hand carved by a Philipino artist, and it was designed by another missionary in his area. The other Elder requested an angel without wings, and also asked that the manger be empty while Mary and Joseph hold their child. I love that. It seems to much more fitting to me to see the new little family huddled together, inspecting each other for the first time. When Chris saw the set, he went back and asked the artist to make him a set just like it. Right now it lives on my dining room table, which works out well because the angel hangs from the chandelier. I just love seeing the way the light from above shines on our little scene.

And my second favorite is the tree. When we first moved into this house, it was a big fixer-upper. We have painted nearly every surface, and intend to paint it all before we are done. But we loved the bones of the house. And our front room is part of what sold us. When you walk in, the front room and dining room are open, vaulted ceilings that go all the way to the balcony of the second floor. When I took out my decorations for Christmas that year though, I immediately noticed a problem. Coming from a small apartment, we owned a 3 foot, bitty Christmas tree. I just got the box out from the basement and looked back and forth from this tiny little tree to the 16 foot ceilings and laughed. So we stared shopping for a bigger tree. It started at 6 foot, and then we saw some 9 foot trees- hey, our ceiling can handle that! And suddenly, Christopher decided we should just do it. We spent almost all of our Christmas money on this 12 foot monster that year, but it was SOOO worth it. It was as though the house was designed to show off a 12 foot tree in the front windows. Setting it up is a chore, but oh, I do love my tree! Thanks heavens for "pre-lit", or I would lose my mind.

This year we had a new addition too. Christopher came home from Black Friday sales with a train to run around the tree. The only sad part is that it is not built to withstand Kaitlyn, so we can't actually set it up and leave it there. But Daddy and Tyler were ecstatic to set it up in our front room this morning and play with it. Tyler loves "choo choo trains"! He also liked pressing the buttons for the sound, and making it go forward and backward.

Kaitlyn, on the other hand, was absolutely furious. She wanted to grab this thing so badly, it was all either of us could do to hold her back. Daddy is fond of calling her a "monster", and usually I correct him, but she is quite insistent on inspecting everything we don't want her to touch. You can't see it, but Daddy is holding desperately onto her legs to hold her back for this shot.

And finally, we have success! Kaitlyn took quite a few steps today. She has to be distracted enough to not really notice she is doing it, but she did just great. Look out, everybody!

Twilight and BYU football

Friday night was a lot of fun! A friend of mine is really gung-ho about the Twilight series (I like them, but don't love them), and her sister-in-law gave her 4 tickets to see the movie that they couldn't use. And so she invited me and another friend in the ward to go with her and her sister-in-law. It was so much fun to have a girl's night out! I honestly didn't expect to enjoy it that much, but it was really nice to get away from the kids for a few hours and know that Christopher was watching them, so I didn't have to worry about them with a teenage babysitter or anything. We had some adventures, of course- we went to the wrong theater, and missed the first 10 mintues of the show driving to the correct one, and then ran on empty until we could find a gas station, and find a restaurant that wasn't over-crowded to eat at, etc. But it was really nice to just hang out, and not have to be in "mother" or "wife" mode for a while.

Oh, and I did like the movie, by the way. It was WAY sappy. I mean, there are action flicks, and dramas, and romantic comedies- this was pure romance, start to finish. I thought it did justice to the book though, because the book is pure romance, start to finish. The only thing I didn't like about it was Edward. I thought that the entire cast was perfect, except I thought Edward was rather unattractive and his lips were way too red and strange. Oh well.

And then tonight we had a big BYU football party for the rivalry game. I made up invitations and gave them to some friends in the ward a couple of weeks ago, and Christopher posted one at his work and invited all of them. The funny part was that we had a great turnout- but only one person who came tonight actually got an invitation. Three of Christopher's siblings came, a few guys from work, some random friends, and two of my awesome beehives that I mentioned it to. But only one person who I delivered an invite to. I guess if I want people to come, I should NOT give them an physical invitation? LOL. It didn't matter, if anyone else had shown up we would have been out of seats. As it was, I think I counted 26 people here, which is a lot to fit in one room watching the same screen. And yet, we fit them all perfectly. I love our basement! Chris worked hard this morning building the platform extention so we had two couches in our "stadium seating" second tier. Such a good handy man!

And then the game sucked.

But I have to be an optimist, so here is why this night was still ok:
1. Anyone breaking that high into the BCS polls is good for everyone in the conference in the long run. I just keep repeating that to myself, LONG RUN.
2. Our team did well tonight. You know, the team MINUS the quarterback, who threw 5 interceptions and fumbled for a 6th turnover. I honestly think it would have been a tight game if not for that. Who knows, we might have even won it.
3. We had a fun party anyway! We had tons of great food, and everyone enjoyed coming over even if they were in rather foul spirits towards the end.
4. Speaking of food, our "best kept secret" here in PG came through again. Two years ago we discovered that Smith's, the local grocery store that no one else goes to because Macey's is cheaper and 3 blocks away, makes 3 foot party subs for $20. When you cut that into 2-3" slices that feeds a lot of people for the money! But every time we have ordered it on the day of, they don't have the 3' bread. So they give us 3, 18" subs for the same price. Sooo awesome!

Bits of things

There have been little things that haven't fit into other posts, so I figured I should make one random post about what each of us are up to.

Kaitlyn-
*This girl cracks us up lately! Chris likes to call her a "monster", mainly because she is very fond of communicating by growling at us. There are happy "attack" growls, and "I am not happy with what you just did" growls, and "I just conquered this mountain" growls. I have to laugh sometimes when I put her in dainty, feminine dresses and she starts attacking everything in sight.
*She has learned her first sign- "all done!" I remember when Tyler was this age, and I kept telling Christopher's family all about the wonders of teaching babies sign language. Many of my neices and nephews learned sign language starting at about 10 months, and it did wonders for the "terrible twos" because they could communicate even before they could make their mouths work. And then Tyler learned nothing, no matter how hard we tried. I felt kinda silly about talking it up so much. But Kaitlyn picked it up right away! Every time she eats, she munches on stuff for a while, then starts to fling it around, and then turns to me and signs "all done." She also likes to sign "all done" halfway through getting her diaper changed. As in, "hey, can we be done with this yet? I think I would rather be naked here."
*She is sooooo close to walking. She can walk holding onto one of our hands now, and is pretty good at standing. But when she takes steps, she usually just topples over. Sooo close . . .

Tyler-
*I go though cycles with him, where sometimes I want to pull my hair out because he doesn't seem to be understanding anything, and sometimes I can't believe all he has learned. I think it is good to document the successes for when I need the pick-me-up. And he has been doing so well lately! Our biggest problem since the beginning has been that he didn't request things. I have never met a kid with this problem. But even when he knew the word for water, he wouldn't tell me water when he was thirsty. He would just wait until I thought of it and then down three cups of water in a row. But he has been requesting left and right lately! He figured out that if he wants something, he just tacks on a "please" to something, and we hop right up to help him. So now he comes up to me and says "sandwich please". Hooray! And he even has learned to eat the sandwich still together, instead of pulling it apart and making a huge mess. Hallelujah.
*Tyler loves playing with his baby sister. The funniest part is that he is a HUGE cuddler- he comes to me all the time and just says "hugs!" And so he is really intent on hugging his sister- the non cuddler. You can pick that girl up out of a dead sleep, or when she is screaming because she fell down, and it doesn't matter. She is still going to push you away if you try and hug her. But Tyler doesn't understand what her frantic noises mean, and he thinks she is playing a game by trying to yank away. So he hugs her anyway. Priceless.
*He loves the songs that he has learned at his preschool. He knows almost all the words to "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star", and adores "Wheels on the Bus", and is constantly wandering around the house singing those to himself.

Christopher-
*He is loving his new gym membership. He is only gained 10 pounds since we got married, but he is determined to get back down as skinny as possible. His last marathon time was a 3:50, and in order to qualify for the Boston Marathon he needs a 3:12. For those of you not familiar with marathons, that is dang fast. 8.2 miles per hour to be exact. It's not impossible, and he got really close once, so I know he can do it. I kinda miss him for all the time he spends at the gym lately, but I think it is awesome that he is so dedicated to it.

Sarah-
*Has yet to use the new gym membership. I know, sad, huh? But I hate calling ahead and making sure there is room in the playroom for the kids, and the truth is I am just not motivated here. Kaitlyn is still a very picky eater, and so she nurses a LOT to make up for it. Which is good for me, because I eat whatever I want and still lose or maintain my weight. My problem here is that the summer after I had Tyler, I worked out EVERY SINGLE DAY of the week. I busted my rear end off, running for 45 minutes at a time, swimming laps, you name it. I never lost a single pound. Yeah, I know, muscles is more dense than fat, I got more tone, yadda yadda. But that still stunk! And now I am losing weight sitting on my couch with a baby in my lap. I know I need to go back to the gym and get in shape again, but I just can't figure out why!
*I am trying to figure out a new quandry. Every year I enjoy making our Christmas cards on photoshop, so I always need to get our picture taken ourselves so that we have rights to the file to put on the cards. And I just spent a lot of money on the new camera, so we are set there. But if I am in the pictures . . . who is taking the picture? We tried setting a timer one year, but babies aren't going to smile pretty for the blinking light. Yet, it would be silly to pay to have our picture taken, because that's what we bought the nice camera for. I might need to trick a neighbor into helping me or something.

Saddle shoes

Ever since I had my little girl, people have been asking if I have made her any shoes yet. The funny thing is that I kinda stopped making the shoes for a while. I had a problem where the last 3-4 shoes I made were not only the most intricate, as my creativity and skills grew, but also were worn the least. People were excited to get them as gifts, but when I casually asked about them later, it turns out that they didn't fit and were never worn. That's not their fault, and I don't hold that against them. But you can see why I stopped sewing if I spent hours and hours making them and they only spent 5 minutes on a baby's foot.

Anyway, no more shoes as gifts, but I can make them for my own babies since I can measure them against the actual foot and make sure they fit. I started this pair weeks ago, and then lost one of the main pieces after I cut it out. Yesterday I finally gave up on finding the old one and cut a new piece, and today I finished it. Hooray!

Oh, and if you haven't heard about my obsession of making baby shoes out of recycled leather, please see the link in the sidebar.

Chip off the old block

My husband has always been known for his suprising eating abilities. He loves a local sandwich place that does a "24 inch challenge", where you get a free shirt if you can eat 2 foot longs in a half an hour. He made it in 11 minutes once. The other favorite is when Wingers does all you can eat wings every year. Last year, he organized practically his whole company to come out to dinner for a contest. Technically he tied with another guy at 45 wings, but Christopher also ate his fries and the Asphalt Pie. (You should have seen the look on the waitress's face when she brought the pie after about 35 wings or so. I went to have a bite, assuming it was to share, and Christopher told me to "get your own if you want one! This one is mine." The waitress just looked back and forth at the pregnant woman who just got denied ice cream to the guy that is still eating after 35 wings. . .)

And yesterday, we had Tyler's favorite for breakfast - banana pancakes. Just pancakes with mashed banana in them, nothing fancy. Christopher and I each had 4, and felt quite satisfied. Tyler kept asking for "MURE!" until he had gone through 6 and a half. Oh, and he had 3 glasses of water or milk. Holy cow!

And as for Kaitlyn, I technically should have waited until Christmas to take this picture. But things like this are just too much fun to wait that long. You see, this is my Christmas dress. In fact, I took my first steps in that dress on Christmas morning. Kaitlyn wore it to church today, and I was hoping it would prove lucky for her since she can currently stand fairly well but hasn't taken many steps lately. No such luck, but with how much I love before and after shots, I had to make a comparison picture! I honestly don't think she looks much like I did as a baby. Who knows. I wish Kaitlyn had that much hair though. Sorry, the old picture is rather fuzzy, but I had to zoom in.

Hooray for my mommy for keeping my Christmas dress and blessing dress! It has been really fun to see my little girl wear each of them.

An update on Tyler

You might think we haven't been doing much with Tyler's speech development lately, because I haven't mentioned anything on here. But after the responses I got last time, I figured I better have everything straight before I make another blog post. I have spent hours researching everything and talking to specialists, and in the last two weeks Tyler has spent hours and hours being tested by two different groups to measure where he stands. For the last three months, Tyler has had 3 classes a week (each with a different purpose), along with a behavioral therapist and a speech therapist coming to the house once a month each. Let me talk about where things stand right now, and then I can address what we are going to do about it and why.

So far, we have been working with Kids on the Move, a local group that helps kids with any and all disabilities or delays, but only up until age 3. Once kids turn 3, they are turned over to the school district. Since his birthday is coming up, we went down and had him take all of their qualifying tests. We did the same thing when we started at KOTM, and the cut-off is the same for both groups- 7%. That would mean that only 7% of kids test at or below the level he is at, with 93% of kids testing higher. When we started in May, he tested at 5%. And last week, he ended up at 9%. That is wonderful improvement! Since he was tested against kids his age in each case, that means that he has been learning faster to catch up to them.

But-
It means he didn't qualify for the free district preschool. He qualified for their speech therapy, and that means he will have appointments with their speech therapist starting in January. The real bummer is that we can't re-test him for 6 months, and then even if he does qualify when we re-test in May, school will be out for the summer and he wouldn't start until next August. At first I was really upset about that, but the truth is that there are other preschools out there. They aren't free, but many people argue that you get what you pay for. And in a lot of ways, even if we weaseled him into this public school, he would be one of the top students (by the numbers). He would be in there with students who have down syndrome, severe autism, severe ADHD, you name it. Tyler is a big imitator, and so I would worry a bit about him being around kids that have more ticks and bad habits than he does. But if we find a good preschool, then he would be imitating the good habits of kids above him instead, and that might be a very good thing. The KOTM people I talked to all had the same reaction that I did, and in the same order- they were upset he didn't make it in, then they tried to figure out a way to get him in (I tried every shortcut I could think of), and then started to talk to me about the other options and finished with "you know, actually, I think that would be a better fit for him after all. Maybe it was actually a good thing he tested out of it."



Now, with the testing for diagnosing what is wrong, I have been doing a lot of homework there. With each possible name that specialists have mentioned, I have been researching things out quite a bit. And with each of them, there are three common threads that are influencing me here.

1. They are all not diagnosed until this age or later. That means not only am I NOT behind, but they are GLAD I haven't tried to do this before now because they would have missed certain cues that don't appear after x,y and z have developed and possibly given me the wrong label. In many ways, they want me to continue to wait for a few more things to develop before I take him in.

2. The reason they keep throwing out different ideas is that none of them perfectly fit Tyler. On each list, there are things that make me say "OH yeah, that is totally him," and things that make me say "What? He never does that". I have had specialists start to lead me one direction and then hear one detail and literally jerk their heads up in surprise. "Really? He can do that?" Yup. Which takes me off that list, in some cases.

3. For all the different ideas, and after talking to all the specialists, this one was a big key for me. There is NOTHING that they would have me do differently if he was labeled. Not at this stage, and not for a few years. Not for ANY of the different labels that almost fit Tyler. He needs speech therapy and behavioral therapy, and he has been getting both, and I will make sure he continues to get both even once he turns 3. The speech therapist looked me in the eye and said that she would not have changed a single thing she has done with Tyler even if she knew he was any of the labels we discussed.

So what am I going to do now? I am going to research preschools and find one that works on language development and all the other things that Tyler needs help with. If at any point I find a use for a label- a group I think he needs that he can't get into without the label, a treatment that would change - I will have that label stamped. But my husband and I both feel strongly about not stamping this label across his forehead, but something more like stamping it on a little piece of paper we slide to the people who need it. If he fit a label perfectly, I would probably feel differently about that. But when we are trying to cram a unique person into a list that doesn't quite describe him, I only see it as a tool to use to get what we need to get for him. For now, he can get everything he needs without it. So we are going to wait until that changes.

So while I know this goes against most of the comments I got from my family, that is the decision that we have prayed about for our family. And I really think it is the best way to go for us.

Halloween and the flu

What a weekend. I had a longer post written, and then realized I was rambling. So here is the shorter version. (My husband tells me my stories go too long . . . so I am trying to improve!)

In order, here is my Halloween:

*Got sick. Felt like not moving from couch all day.

*Got kids to nap so I could sleep. Overslept.

*Put everyone in costume, and told my friend I would meet her at a Trunk or Treat I saw in the newspaper. I thought that would be good practice for Trick or Treating that night, but not as much walking for me.

*Got stuck in traffic. Ended up so late that I missed my friend.

*Spent close to an hour in line at the Trunk or Treat. The kids were very patient though.

*Rushed home, and collapsed on couch while Christopher took Tyler out to do one street before he had to leave.

*Christopher headed off to his boss's house, since he wasn't sure if they still needed his help or not. His boss LOVES Halloween and creates a show in his front yard every year. The picture is in the local paper here.

*I headed out and did one street with the kids. I wanted to stay on the couch, but what good is creating your own costumes if you don't get to show them off? So I went to the neighbors that know us the best, and the ones that know Tyler laughed about how perfect his costume idea was.

*Then I noticed I wasn't the only one in the group sick of walking at that point. I had forgotten to empty Tyler's candy bin before we left, and he didn't like dragging this up the hill! I got a grocery sack to carry it in, and then a nice neighbor offered to drive us the rest of the way. It was really sweet.

*Since Tyler stole M&Ms on his first Halloween, I thought it would be a funny tradition to give Kaitlyn some as her first candy this time around. It was a hit. I like this tradition because the colored blotches everywhere are just adorable.

Saturday:

*Felt like I wanted to curl in a ball and die. So when Kaitlyn was ready for her first nap of the day, and Tyler was ready for breakfast, I had the worst parenting moment I think I have ever had. I put Kaitlyn down, got some dry cereal and a sippy cup of juice on the coffee table for Tyler, and then went to sleep. Not even a cat nap nearby Tyler: I went up into my bed and crashed. It occured to me later that most people set out a bowl of food for their dogs, not their toddlers, but at least I felt ready to cope with my day when I woke up.

*Spent the entire day on the couch or wishing I was on the couch. Of course, Tyler dumped flour on our front room's carpet, we ran out of bread and baby food, and when I gave up and made Kaitlyn applesauce because she was starving, she decided that she was not, under any circumstances, going to eat applesauce that day. Good thing she likes frozen waffle, or she would have starved.

*Oh, and Daddy was at Moab all day. He was the one who invited some co-workers to go down with him weeks in advance, so he couldn't ditch out and help me. I missed him. Lots.

The weirdest part is that I felt better on Sunday. And even better today. It felt like the flu, with migranes, aches everywhere, and feverish chills. But I still haven't started coughing or sneezing (knock on wood).