Word problem for the day!

I was making a tutu today, and wanted to share the math end of it. I made two mistakes in the first attempt. First, I measured Kaitlyn's waist at 19" when it is actually 16.5". Squirmy girl. And then, when I cut the tulle, I figured that I should add "a bunch" for gathering, and rather than do the math, just went with 36" since the fabric was already a yard long. Me? Skip the math? What was I thinking?!? It turns out that 36" isn't nearly enough, and only made a skirt, hanging down.

So here is the word problem for you. Kaitlyn is 16.5" around, but I went with 16" so the elastic would stretch and hold on. The tutu is 8" long, and unlike the "skirt" I made the first time, should stick straight out when I am done. (Or at least be able to.) How long should it be to make it around the new circumference? The answer will be right after all the back-story for the day.

You know you are a math nerd like me if you actually get excited by figuring it out!

***

I love making Halloween costumes for my kids. For the last two years, Tyler has gotten a "semi-homemade" costume, with bought parts put together with bits I made myself. For his first costume, he was Rocky the boxer. It was an inside joke, since Christopher desparately wanted to name him Rocky in the first place. I got the robe on ebay and ironed on the letters on the back, bought the boxing gloves (which were meant to dangle from a rear-view mirror), and then made him the awesome shorts. I was way proud of those shorts, since the stripes were fun to make.

Then, the next year, I figured that since we already had the BYU jersey, I would just make him some football pants and a helmet. The only sad part was that I couldn't do a facemask or he would just rip it off, so it ended up looking like a bonnet. In fact, when I asked Christopher what Tyler should be this year, his only requirement was that this year, he didn't wear a bonnet. Oh well.

I am just buying Tyler's this year, because how could I possibly make one as cool as this for a kid who loves trucks? I mean, most people make them out of boxes, but I think Tyler is too young to enjoy manuvering around in a cardboard box all night.

But I saw someone online who got the orange, jack-o-lantern onesie from Wal-mart and added an orange tutu and a green hairbow to make a pumpkin, and knew I had to do it for Kaitlyn. I looked up online how to make a tutu, but I didn't want to use the method here. I loved the look when tutus had a ribbon border, and that meant a solid top peice. So I needed a long, skinny section of tulle to wrap around her waist. It should look like this one when it is done, except that it won't cost $40. (By the way, this pic comes from poshtots.com, which has ome of the cutest and most expensive stuff I have ever seen.)

Which brings us back to the tutu in progress.

***

You figure it out yet? Okay, so if she is 16" in circumference, and circumference is 2(pi)r, so that means that she is 5.1" in diameter or 2.55 in radius. We are adding 8" on each side, so the new total diameter will be 21.1", which makes the new circumference 66". Since I don't want it to be pulled taught to make that, I will make it 2 yards (72") long. Which means I only had half the fabric I needed.

And here it is! Now I am just going to work on the "stem" for her head, and we will be all set.

Run, Chris, run!

We had a great weekend trip to Logan for the marathon on Saturday morning. I enjoyed the drive up with my Grandpa, and it sounded like he was just excited to be out of the apartment and around new people for a change. And it turns out that Uncle Harold loves little babies. As soon as we got there to drop off my Grandpa, he took Kaitlyn in his lap and handed her a toy. And bless her heart, she just stayed there and played with the little toy and gave him her very best little smiles. They were cute together.

Then I headed out to have dinner with Holly and Manuel. I hadn't met him before, but he was really nice and I was impressed by how much English she has taught him already! They seem to be just exhausted. I had to re-assure them the parenting does get easier than taking shifts so that someone is physically watching the baby at all times, since the 4 lbs 8 oz tyke (which Holly kept remarking was HUGE and "I can't believe how big she is getting!") has acid-reflux and can't be flat on her back or she will choke. I hope things work out for them!

The next morning, I remembered how much we love this marathon. It is the most organized marathon that Christopher has ever done, which is why we keep going back. A lot of marathons try to save money by not getting enough busses to take runners up to the starting line (a problem compounded by everyone trying to catch the last bus up instead of the first), but this marathon has plenty and starts the busses running hours ahead of time picking the runners up from the Logan hotels. That meant that I didn't have to wake all the kids up and drive Christopher down to the pick up point! He just went out front and got picked up. Chris loves how scenic and gently sloped the course is, and I was even amazed at the aid stations which had not just the usual port-o-potties, water and gatorade, but gu and people to run along and rub muscle relaxant on your calves and vasaline and band-aids. But my all-time favorite is that they text spectators when your runner crosses the 13, 20 and finish lines. That's right, no more wondering where the heck your runner is and waiting for hours in one spot worrying that you missed them or they collapsed somewhere or something. In fact, this time I was waiting at the 17 when it texted me and said he crossed the 20. Imagine how long I would have been standing there!!

And I love Logan- such a cute little town! I remember the last time he ran this race, I hung out with an older couple that looked forward to the marathon every year becuase they loved to just do yard work and cheer everybody on. So I helped them pull weeds inbetween runners. This time I was able to just have a nice hot breakfast at the hotel with the kidlets and then head over. The runners zig-zag at the end, so I could just go straight and catch him a few times.

The best part was that Christopher was really pumped by his time! It wasn't his best marathon ever, but for how much he trained for this marathon he was very happy to get a 3:53. Now he wants to keep running through the winter and qualify for Boston next year, if all goes well. That takes a 3:12. We'll see- I think he can do it! Way to go, hubby!

And in kidlet news, Kaitlyn is not just pulling herself up on all the furniture she can find now, but also scooting along coffee tables and fireplace mantles with ease. Look out! And tonight I noticed that she has a bit of a tooth poking out on the bottom. Tyler has been in love with a "yel-go bus" toy recently that has cemented his 123 and ABC recognition, along with the shapes and colors he has been great at the last couple of weeks.

Tyler also figured out how to put on Daddy's sunglasses.

Tyler usually just scribbles around, but this time he drew for a while and told me this was "up-a-stair", which is what he says when going up or down stairs. And I was shocked to look and see that it actually was stairs! We had never drawn stairs for him before, so that was very random.

Having fun with Daddy!

A few notes

Sorry, it has been a while. And I still don't have big things to write about, just a lot of little things. So here goes.

*I was reminded that being sick sucks, but being sick and having two sick kids sucks a lot more. Mostly the baby waking up 6 times a night for extra feedings and sympathy tipped the scales. Ugg.

*Speaking of sickness, I have taken Kaitlyn to the Gold's Gym playroom twice since she was born. At 4 months, she came home with the stomach flu. And now at 7 months, she brought us all a cold/pink eye bug to share around the family. Grrr. My membership is up this month, and I think we are buying a nicer treadmill with the money.

*Itty-bitty book review: I have recently started trying the "Deceptively Delicious" gig. So far, I like it! Minus the lying part, cause there is no point in that. My husband is happy to have the veggies already in his food so he doens't have to have them separately, and I could tell Tyler about it all I want and he wouldn't have a clue. In fact, in some cases I think I should up the amount, because she makes the recipes so that you can't tell there are veggies in them, and there really isn't that much in there sometimes. The lasagna was just . . . lasagna. It was good, but not unique. The sweet potato in the pancakes made them nice and moist though. And Tyler liked the green eggs, which suprised me. I figured this is a good time to try it, since I can make all the purees I want (thank heaven she leads you through that step by step), and then use them for baby food and now in our food. Two birds with one stone!

*Tyler is learning new things so fast that when we started a new playgroup this week, I didn't know what to tell the lady when she asked what we were working on. He now labels everything in sight, understands choices for the most part, asks me for help and water and whatever he needs, and loves to involve us in his play more than he used to. I just listed all the goals that I had for him when we started KOTM 5 months ago! Eating is a work in progress still, but we are working on that. I feel like for a long time now we have been sitting at the depot watching all the other kids firgure things out and move along down the track. And now Tyler has hopped on, full speed ahead. We are a year behind when everyone else figured these things out, but we are on the train now, and that is all that matters.

*And speaking of day care, they have a "sibling care" place for me to take Kaitlyn while Tyler is in his playgroups, and I adore them! They just fawn over Kaitlyn when I take her in, and by the time I come back one of them is holding her all snuggly in a blanket, fast asleep. How many day cares do you know of that have a good enough kid to adult ratio to have one hold a sleeping baby for a half an hour, no problem? They even work with trying to teach these little 0-2 year old tots. Love them!

*We are leaving tomorrow for Logan to watch Christopher run the Top of Utah Marathon. I am always amazed at how my hubby can pull these off! This one is his favorite one to run, because it is really well organized and a beautiful course. Unfortunatly, Chris couldn't get off work early to drive up on Friday, and rather than pull in with the kids at 9pm, we are driving separately. Originally he wanted to also head home earlier than me to use his tickets for the BYU game, but he finally realized that he wouldn't want to stand in the student section after running a marathon and sold the tickets. Not to mention the game starts 6 hours after the marathon and 2.5 hours away from the marathon. Boys are crazy sometimes!

The good news about separate cars is that I am taking my Grandpa up with me. My Grandfather's brother lives up in Logan, and neither of the brothers are in good health anymore, so they don't get to visit very often. But since I am driving right by, I might as well pick him up! It is hardly out of the way. I think they are both really looking forward to it.

*Also on the Logan agenda is my old college friend Holly. She married a guy in the Dominican Republic and just recently came back to the states with him because they were expecting. But then the poor thing gave birth at 30 weeks by emergency C-Section because of preclampsia! My heart just breaks thinking of them, with no job, and a baby that just barely got out of the NICU. I am looking forward to meething her little family though.

*Kaitlyn is crawling the real way now, and also pulling herself up to stand every chance she gets. And she is still a bitty stick thing!

*And because I hate posts without pictures, here is Tyler helping himself to "cere-ere-alll" from the cupboard. Kaitlyn noticed that he was dropping a few, and crawled over to snag those for herself. Teamwork!

*Finally, a Tyler story for you: One of his new words is "chocolate." He discovered he likes chocolate quite a bit when he found Daddy's candy the other day. And then yesterday, I had the box out to make chocolate cupcakes for Mutual that night. Tyler found the box, and lovingly took it down, staring at the picture on the front. "Chocck-ckk!", he told me. Yes, that is chocolate honey. He repeated it a few more times, and then paused. "HUP!", as he held up the box for me to open it. I tried to explain to him that opening it wouldn't help, since there wasn't cake inside like the picture showed. "Hup!" No, sorry honey. Then he paused, thinking. One of these words I know must work here . . . "keeen up!" No, clean up is the opposite hun- putting it back in won't work! Don 't worry though, he got a "chocckkk-ckk" cupcake in the end.

The second week of my vacation

So, it has been a week, and I have blogged about other things, but haven't actually written about the second half of our trip. The first half was sheer chaos, as you saw below. It was awesome to see everyone, but it was rough for my kids to keep up without their usual naps. Then everyone flew home - but us. We had Jackie and Maya for a couple more days, but that was it. And that week, to me, was the actual vacation part. The part where we hung out all day, and where Grandma continually told me "no! I'll feed her!" (or change her diaper, or put Tyler to sleep) "You go sit on the couch and rest!" No problemo there.

So what did we do? We had dinners out on the deck.

We went to the county fair.

We took walks around the block every night before the kids went to sleep.

My friend Sara came over with her little guy. (And I use that term loosly! What a hilarious little chunker man!)

We went to go see a local restaurant that hosts a motorcycle drive in every single week- they usually get 1000-3000 each week. Wow! We considered it a good field trip for Tyler, since he now can label motorcycles by sight and engine sound.

Dan brought us to a local place called Kleats for a wing night (which my hubby is always game for).

My mom and I made bows.

The cat tried to eat the goldfish.

And Tyler hung out with the cat. My kids seriously adored this cat, so thank heavens it was a very patient kitty who never got mad at them once.

Somewhere in there, my friend Kavitha from high school came over to visit (how did we not get pictures of us together?), the guys wired the house, and the girls had Kaitlyn's picture taken, as previously mentioned. I miss it already!

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?