Improvements

Some improvements of note:

Kaitlyn . . .

. . . started crawling almost three weeks ago. Well, mostly she just drags herself across the floor. But she picked it up really fast and is already getting into things she shouldn't. Today we were at a backyard party, and she snuck across the grass and snagged my plate of icing left under my chair when I ate my cake! Theif! She has a funny technique where she uses her right elbow and her left foot to propel herself, while he left arm is outstretched to grab the next item she gets to.

. . . has been eating baby food for two weeks. I tried to feed her oatmeal a month ago, but after painfully pumping the milk, mixing the oatmeal, and spending a half an hour patiently feeding it to her with no actual food making it in, I just got lazy. But when I finally started feeding the poor girl the second time, hoo boy! Now she will not go down for a nap if she hasn't had food in addition to her milk. Last night's feeding was an entire 6 oz "2nd foods" tub mixed with oatmeal. She likes food :). She also LOVES to grab the food herself and eat it. Still not gaining extra weight, just pooping more. (TMI? Sorry!)

. . . can get from crawling to sitting and back as of two days ago.

Tyler . . .

. . . has had an explosion of words! I am not kidding here. He is now a pro at labeling everything in sight. It used to be that we only had 20-30 objects that he knew the name of, and each word came after what felt like thousands of repititions. But now we just tell him the name a couple of times and he labels it every time he sees it. The speech therapist asked me to make a list of all of his words a month ago, and I made the list right after she asked me. Then, when we got back from vacation, I opened up the list to update before our visit and gave up trying to write them all down!

. . . has figured out the puzzles that Grandma gave him that we all thought was too old for him. The pieces just fit together with no backer, so no picture of the part that goes on top of it like he is used to. But yesterday he just LOVED working on it, and needed less help every time. If he worked on the fire truck, he would shout "YEAH fiya tuck!" every time two pieces went together and "oh no!" every time he tried a pair that didn't work. It was adorable.

. . . now asks for "hup", or help! For the longest time, we have been working with Kids on the Move to get him to ask us for things. To tell me when he is hungry or tired, or that he wants a toy, or something along those lines. And now he has figured out that when he wants something done and can't figure out how to do it, he brings it to me and says "hup!"

. . . got resourceful at the grocery store the other day. I put all the groceries in the trunk and reached down to get him out of the front- it was one of those carts with the red car attachment on the front. But when I reached down I saw him sitting there with chocolate all over his face and clutching a partially eaten stick of Rolos. He had picked it up while I was checking out! I tried scolding him, but by that point I was scolding him for something he had done 15 minutes ago. And how does he know that everything he sees doesn't belong to him, anyway? So we just had to head back into the store and have them scan the Rolos. Little punk. (Daddy was proud.)

Christopher . . .

. . . is working hard training for the Logan Top of Utah Marathon, which is Sept. 20th. He has been putting in a lot of runs and a lot of mountain biking for some cross training, and is really happy with his progress so far. He just loves being in shape.

. . . spent the second half of our Ohio vacation "swimming in fiberglass" in my parent's attic to help my Dad rewire our house. My dad made good use of having another electrician guy in the house for the week. It looked like hard work. Such a great hubby!

Sarah . . .

. . . figured out enough html code to make this new blog layout! Hubby was so proud. It still doesn't look exactly how I want it to, but I had a lot of fun along the way, and learned a lot for my next attempt. If anyone knows how to make the text and pictures in my posts not 80% opacity like the white box the posts are in, that is my current project I want to fix.

. . . had a lot of fun with my "bow party" the other day. We had a good turn out with about 8 ladies coming to make hairbows. I seriously love projects like this where a group of us can get together and benifit from buying supplies in bulk, like my baby shoes. I mentioned this at the end, but I am serious that I would love to keep doing these parties and would be more than happy to travel to other wards or groups that want to have a party! The more people share the costs, the more colors of ribbon I can buy for everyone. And hey, I am more than happy to gather all the directions and supplies in return for having all of that in my house whenever I want to make something.

Portrait Innovations

Last Saturday, my mom and I took Kaitlyn to Portrait Innovations. The photographer at our family reunion took a lot of pictures of her, but I didn't get a good picture of her in the dress she wore to the wedding. I hadn't tried this place before, but I was lured in by their $10 package, so I decided to give them a try. Previously, I have done the Target and JCPenney studios, and the quality was . . . fine. There are things you can do in a studio you just can't recreate in your lighting at home. At least they were both rather cheap, and that was good. But you always had to drive back 3 weeks later to pick up the prints, and this place prints them out in minutes, which is just awesome.

The Pros.
I was really impressed with their studio! They had two studio areas, in fact, and the place was just crawling. Each studio could fit a large family reunion easily. They had piles of props, more than I have seen at the department store studios, and the backdrops were a lot more life-like. The huge waiting area had 4 different computers with huge widescreens where people were looking at their pictures and selecting their packages, and they were awesome pictures. Almost every kid looked like a model, and Kaitlyn's shots were no exception. When we took the pictures, Kaitlyn performed beautifully and just stared and smiled at the camera. The photographer took 45 shots in a lot of setting and backdrops, and I would have been proud to have almost any one of them on my wall. Seriously, looking at the pictures made us just gasp. Or I might be biased that my little girl is the cutest ever. :)

The Con.
Then you sit down to select your pictures. The high-pressure selling time. They have you narrow down which pictures you like, and they start in on you once you get down to about 12 or so. Basically, their packages are based on how many poses you select. For each pose, you get 3 sheets of pictures, and their are bonuses like 8x10s with special effects and a CD of all the pictures if you purchase enough poses.

But here's my problem- 3 pages of pictures for EACH POSE? Good grief! The $10 package already gets me enough pictures to give out to the two Grandmas and hang on my wall. I don't have anyone else to give pictures to. I am used to Target and JCPenney, where I can buy sheets at $4 or so and get ONE sheet of each pose I just can't live without. But there is no way to do that here. Well, I take that back, there is. You can buy sheets one at a time for $15 each. Ouch. That poor saleslady did everything she could to convince me to drop $80 or more on pictures, but I just couldn't waste that much money on piles of pictures that would sit in an envelope! Just to get 3 poses was $60 or so, as I recall. From there it is like the price of soft drinks at a fast food place- it is only 10 cents more to upgrade sizes. So why not drop another $10 and get another pose? And another? And then you can have 28 sheets of pictures hanging around your house forever? (Lest we forget, by the way, that a sheet could be one 8x10 or maybe 8 wallets or whatever. So we're talking a hundred pictures or so.)

What I really wanted was a package of a few poses, one sheet of each. To be honest, if they had that, I might have actually dropped $60 on pictures that day, which is HUGE for me, because I am a total cheap-skate on stuff like that. But the pictures they got of Kaitlyn were SO cute . . . . As it was, I got the $10 package and then bit the bullet to get one sheet of another pose for the $15. I felt really bad for the saleslady, but I would have had to spend $80 to get more poses, and then had nothing to do with the multiple sheets afterward.


So, bottom line? If you have a ton of people who would like pictures of your kids, go to this place! I loved everything about the pictures. But for me, my brothers have never sent me pictures, and I don't know that any of them want pictures of my kids either. (If you are reading this, and you do want one, boy, do I have a picture for you! Even the one package was tons.) So I guess I will go back to my regular, cheaper studio until this place gets smart and makes different packages.

What's in a name?

We have been having an interesting discussion lately, so I thought I would take a poll. Tyler has been going to Kids on the Move for a few months now, and while they have done a LOT of assesments to see what areas he needs help in, they have never once mentioned diagnosing him with anything specific. Their focus is on working with the symptoms he has - his speech needs help, so we have a speech therapist. He needs some social interaction skills, so there is a playgroup for us.

With the family reunion last week, I was talking to one of my sister-in-laws whose son is autistic. She said that they also went through the early intervention stuff that we are doing, and also found it to be helpful- but only a little. I feel the same. They help, but they don't come often enough or help enough in many ways. She said she would get me the number of a place in SLC she went to. They ran a battery of tests and diagnosed Nathan with autism, and from there she got him into more speech therapy and other things that really opened doors for him.

And just a few days later, my Uncle emailed me about the exact same place, and how much it helped a couple they know with their child's disabilities. He had no idea my Sister-in-law had talked to me.

I guess that means we need to go there. But Christopher and I have our reservations. As a teacher, I was really irked by high school kids who would come in on the first day, arrive at my desk, and matter-of-factly announce that they had such and such disability which meant that they didn't have to turn in all the homework or finish tests on time or x, y, and z. Some of them really did need the help. But a good portion had a different "disability" that hindered them: the label. Their parents had them diagnosed a long time ago, and now this teenager was so programmed that they honestly believed they could not be anything else the rest of their lives. They knew what was expected of them, and it was less than what was expected of anyone else. It made me want to cry to sit in meetings with teachers, parents and the student while the parents sat next to their child and said "they can't do ____, you can't make them ___ like the other students," and such things over and over. Why don't we give them the chance, and keep telling them they can do anything if they work hard enough and don't give up?

Now, don't get me wrong, I am not talking about actual, severe disabilities. Nobody as autistic as Rainman or anything here. My nephew is truly autistic, and has developed leaps and bounds because his parents know what to do with that. I do believe that there are a lot of kids that truly benifit from these programs. In fact, one time I even talked a parent into getting the paperwork for expemptions going because he was a good kid who worked really hard and needed the extra time on tests, and I couldn't make exceptions for him without the papework. I am talking about the borderline kids, who use their learning disability label as an excuse for laziness.

So here we are. I was actually liking NOT having a label on Tyler, because I see him as a "borderline" kid, who is making TONS of progress, but way behind everyone else. I have been operating under the assumption that whatever the cause is, he will just be a little slower than other kids his whole life. And I plan to teach him that that is ok. Other kids can read something once for homework, and he might have to read it a few times, but that is ok. The most important thing to me is to teach him that he just has to put in that extra effort the rest of his life. I am not sure I want a label to make him think that he can't be like everyone else. I want him to know that he can if he puts his mind to it. But when two family members come out like this and point me to the same place that diagnoses the problem, I guess I need to just take the hint.

So what do you guys think? Would you want to know if it was autism, brain damage, or whatever else they label it as? Or would you rather just treat the symptoms?

A Tyler moment

This week, we discovered that Tyler's beloved bulldozers come in a new form - fruit snacks. Daddy was so excited that we now have many many boxes of them to somehow get home with us. Today, after Tyler finished his little bag of "bulldoder shnks", Grandma showed him how to throw the bag into the trash can. Intrigued, he peered over the top of the can, which is only 3 inches below his eye level. He got so excited by this new world he started hugging the trash can. And then, the lid fell down on his head with a metallic "clangggg"! "Ow-wie,*" he whispered as he rubbed his head. Too bad for him Mommy and Daddy were laughing too hard to help him, so Grandma had to come to the rescue on that one.

*The way he says "ow-wie" is just priceless. Just imagine a quiet little tragic voice with an even sadder face.

Ohio reunion!

Man, has this been a busy week. We flew to Cleveland last Tuesday to see my brother's wedding, and the best part was that all of my other brothers also arrived in town on last Tuesday. This marked the first time we had all 6 of us siblings in the same room since Christmas, 1995. Yes, that's right. 13 years. Since then we have had different sets of 5 together for events, but never gotten all 6. This meant that we had family pictures taken where everyone is in the picture- and I am not 13 years old. Hooray for that. So here we go, with another long blog post. But there are so many good pictures!!

Tuesday

The flight went . . . okay. Kaitlyn has gotten very very squirmy lately, and it was like holding a frantic monkey on my lap for 4 hours. Whee. Tyler was, of course, a perfect angel. Luv ya kid! He was a big boy with his own ticket this time.

Once we got there, it soon became obvious just how much Grandma was going to spoil Tyler while we are here. She had a little pile of tonka trucks that she picked up at garage sales waiting when we walked in, a brand new Cars toddler bed with matching sheets that she plans on craigslisting as soon as we leave, and (most loved of all), she had replaced her front room's coffee table with a train table. Tyler has spent almost a majority his time in the house walking around this table since we got here!

I am so jealous. They found this for $20 at a garage sale! Can you believe that? Unfortunatly, there is just no way to get that to Utah, so it will go the way of the Cars bed when we leave I think.

Meanwhile, Kaitlyn fell in love with my brother's cat, Socks. There are good cats and annoying brat cats in the world, and Socks is a great cat. He was very curious about this little being that was army crawling frantically toward him, but he learned quickly that if she caught him she didn't let go. So when she got close he would back up a few feet and sit down again to watch.

Wednesday

One of my brothers headed out to Kirtland that morning, and we were going to go, but the nap schedule just didn't line up. So we hung out in the backyard with everyone until it was time for the rehersal dinner that night. It was wonderful to see the cousins get to know each other, and see the inside jokes and quirks emerge from years past.

Then we all headed out to the Rehersal Dinner, which was great. My kids could have been better, but that is the theme for the week. Life is just rough for toddlers and younger when the nap schedules collide with activities all day long. Oh well.

Yeah, we're goof balls.

Oh, and Maya? She came up from Columbus with that cast on. The poor thing fell off a jungle gym the day before they came up. And then we noticed that Gary gave her two dollars that day. Here's where the story got good. It turns out that, as she explained to the emergency room staff in tears, "I was playing on the swingset and my Daddy bet me two dollars that I couldn't climb all the way over the monkey bars and then I fell down." Sorry, I am laughing as I type this still. I think Daddy learned something that day.

Thursday

Today we headed to the Great Lakes Science Center while the brothers went golfing. Tyler wasn't such a fan of the exhibits, because he often gets frustrated when we are trying to get him to do something specific (hit that button, turn that knob, etc) and he doesn't understand why. And then we discovered Polymer Playhouse. I have seriously never seen Tyler so happy in his little life. He was so excited that he was dancing as he ran around, and at one part started hugging the exhibit while he danced and shrieked for joy. He spend about a full hour in the ball pit, feeding balls into a tube that shot them up into the air.

He also enjoyed the water area outside where he could pick up the little animals and throw them back in with a splash.

And then we found the perfect slide - one he could get up to and go down without any help at all. They had a little mat for him to land on and everything.

We should have been the first to leave, with the youngest kids, but we were there for two hours on our own after the 7 year olds had exhausted meltdowns. We were in that play area for about 4 or 5 hours total.

Once the kids got naps, we had another great evening at the house with the family. The girls did crafts, the kids ran around the backyard, and my brothers once again had to stand back to back and see who is the tallest of them all (you could basically put a level on their heads). Great times.

Friday

Friday was my mom's big day. We had a huge family picnic in the metroparks, complete with family pictures, my brother 's horses, and every game and craft imaginable. Oh yeah, and food too. Of course, my Tyler decides to pick that day and wake up too early, so I missed the horses to drive my kids to the house and back for a MUCH needed nap. But once they had their sleep, they were awesome kids again. And my husband got hooked on a game called Corn Hole, which looked like a lot of fun. I don't have a lot of pictures of this day because we hired a photographer who stayed the entire time. I can't wait to see what she came up with!

Then we all went to the Indians game that night. Kaitlyn did great for innings 1-2, got cranky and tired 3-7, and on the fourth time that I fed her (which I thought was topping off before going home early), she perked up into a smiley, happy baby for the rest of the night.

Saturday

The big day. We had time to hit the Primary activity in the morning (where 6 of the grandkids won live goldfish for my mom to inherit), and a very quick stop at the park before getting dressed up for the wedding. The park bit was my idea, because Tyler once again had a rough time with us trying to tell him how to play all of the games at the church, and I thought he could use a good slide.

Oddly enough, this was the 5th time that one of my brothers got married, and only the second actual ceremony I have gone to. I was there for Scot's, but too young when Mike was married in the temple. Then Kevin basically eloped the first time to Vegas, and Gary eloped in Cleveland without even telling my parents, let alone me. The cermony was great, and they sure did go all out. Huge limo, dove release, the whole thing.

Then we left the 8 kids at home with 2 babysitters and went to the reception. We had so much fun! I bought Kaitlyn's dress before she was even born, when I found it on last year's clearance rack. And it looked just as beautiful on her as I had dreamed. :) My family had a blast dancing like fools all night.

And that was it! Sunday morning we had a quick breakfast, and then Scot caught his plane, Mike and family headed out for the open road home to Vegas, and Gary headed out for his flight home as well. I have to say that while the famly portion of the week was awesome, there was also something awesome about having the house to ourselves today. Now my actual vacation can begin, since I have one more week here and not a single thing scheduled yet. Whew!

Triumph!

In the last few days, Tyler keeps surprising us with new words! It has been so exciting that I just had to share. For example:

*He has been good for a long time at "pointing nouns", as I call them- things he can place his finger on and say the name. Still, it has only been a month since the first time he volunteered information. Meaning, instead of us saying "where's the _____" and him pointing to it out of a lineup, him seeing an object he knows the name for and just saying the name. For the last week or so, he has become obsessed with naming truck, bulldozer and all the other construction equipment he can find as we drive! I know I will be sick of this soon, but I am just thrilled to hear him saying "tuck!" all the time in the car. (Do you have any idea how many pickup trucks you pass as you drive places? Good grief!)

*Tyler's weakness for a long time has been commands. We have been working on "go", "stop" and "stay" especially hard for safety reasons. And ever since Kaitlyn was born, it has been hard when it is time to feed her or put her to sleep, because he didn't understand I didn't want him to make noise or be in that room. So the other night I tried frantically to get him to leave, telling him to "go see Daddy, downstairs!" He knows "Daddy" really well, shouting that out every time he sees him. And he vaguely understands "downstairs". Eventually, he left- and sure enough, found Daddy in the basement! That's two flights down! I was so pumped.

*While I love how easy-going Tyler is, I have wished for a long time that he would tell me when he wants something. For example, he has known the sign and word for milk for a long time, but he won't volunteer that word when he is thirsty. I just know how thirsty he was when I get around to giving him some milk and he downs more than one cup of it. (He doesn't ask for "more" either, even though I make him say "more" before he gets it each time.) But last night he needed a diaper change while some friends were over, and I took him up to my purse to find a diaper without going all the way upstairs and back to the basement. And he said "duh- ahhh". We have never figured out exactly what word he is trying to say, but he says that word all the time when we are going to bed. ("Tyler, do you want to go night-night?" "Duh-ahhhh." ) So I took Tyler to bed. And he went right to sleep, because he was tired. HOORAY!!!

*And yesterday I was tuning out the babbling when I read him say his version of "red". We've worked half-heartedly on colors, but it has been kinda abstract for him (you just told me this is called ball, and now it is called red? What is going on here?), so we haven't pushed. But he was right! So I asked him to point to blue, and he did! When did he figure that out? Granted, he got the next few wrong, but he had it there for a minute, so that is cool.

Hooray for the little man!

Terrific Tuesday

Well, we had our Terrific Tuesday last night, and lo and behold I actually had people make bows! More than one person, even! In fact, I had a few people say that they wanted to make some, but they didn't have enough time that night. And more worrisome, I ran out of blue and white because everybody really liked the huge "planet" bows for BYU games. I ordered more a while back, and it should be here Thursday. Very helpful. So it looks like this hobby is "to be continued", which is just fine by me. I keep finding new ones I want to try. If you are in the area, and want to be invited to our next "bow party", make a comment below and I will add you to the email list.

I think the funniest part of Terrific Tuesday is that it goes from 3-10pm. Yes, that's 7 hours to do all the crafts you signed up to do. And I think about 30% of the people leave having actually finished. I wasn't even one of them. That's how many cool crafts we had! (Or how slow we were, or how much we chatted instead of working, take your pick.) Whatever it was, a big shoutout goes to Merideth and Erica for putting that on. I have no idea how they got all of that coordinated. Thanks a billion guys!

In other news, I just discovered a new blog I think is totally hilarious. Cake Wrecks is devoted to showcasing purchased cakes that went terribly wrong. I don't think a description would do this justice though- just go check it out. Oh, and just as a disclaimer, it is a clean site, but sometimes what is funny about the cake is that they mispelled "luck" by putting on the wrong first letter, etc. I really had no problem with that, but thought I would mention it in case you open the blog in front of your 7 year old or something.

Now that the bow-making has slowed down, I can turn my attention to our next adventure. We head to Ohio on Tuesday to visit my family! Hooray!