A new schedule for summer

I'm so excited for summer to start. Not only because I'm ready for some warmer weather (we've been in the 60s to 70s here), but because we're going to be able to get out of the house and have some fun. Landon's birthday will be sneaking up on us soon. He wants to have a fish themed birthday party...surprise, surprise. :) So, I'm trying to find fish party supplies...with no luck. I went online and found some that will work, but I'm not super excited about them. If you happen to see any in the stores, PLEASE leave a comment and let me know where. Wish me luck!

Anyways, we got to talk to Chelli the other day about our schedule for the summer. When she retested him to see where he is for his age, the test showed that he was making a lot of progress, but he still isn't where an almost 3 year old should be. She said that he is "following his own curve". That's better than him not progressing or making too slow of a progression. The problem is that we are playing a continuous game of catch-up. Every time Landon gains a skill that we've been working on, there are others that he is supposed to know how to do just because he's getting older. It's a perpetual cycle...and hard to catch up on. He's doing great though. She said we have nothing to worry about as long as he keeps gaining skills. With that said, she wanted to let Landon's therapies with her drop to once a month over the summer. We will meet with her next week, the end of June and July, and then right before school starts in August. She thinks we might stick to the once a month through the school year, but since the teachers (and the OT at school) will be working with him on things that she would be doing (on a daily basis) we may not need to continue seeing Chelli as much.

I also spoke with Ashley and Penny. They both feel that right now we should stick with the same schedule, and when school starts we may need to cut back or move things around. I know that Ashley definitely wants to keep seeing Landon during the school year, but we may need to figure out what schedule works for him since he will be exhausted!! Especially that first week. She is very willing to work around what would be best for Landon, so we'll see.

Landon did great at therapies this week. Chelli was having him work on picking things up with tongs (to eventually learn how to use scissors), coloring (he made a circle on the paper), and he even built a really big tower with Legos. Ashley was working on the "e" sound as well as the "c" or "k" sound. She also worked on prepositional words like on, in, under, and next to by having Landon place dinosaurs around the hospital. He liked getting out of the therapy room for a little bit. :) Penny worked on Landon being able to pedal a tricycle again. He's really getting the hang of it and can pedal about 6 times before he gets distracted. Before we know it, we'll have to teach him how to steer!! ;) We also worked on the stairs some more and going down the slide. He thought it was fun to go down the slide, but didn't like the work to get there. :)

I hope everyone is having a great Friday!! We aren't doing much this weekend. Just spending time together since Braydon will be going back on alert next week. BOOOOO!!!!!! :( Have a great weekend!

Landon and the fish...

Last week I got a call from the receptionist at Children's telling us that Penny wouldn't be available for our session today. I thought we could take advantage of that time and go to the zoo. Theresa, our nurse, has a zoo pass that she was willing to share with us to get us all in for free.

As we all know, Landon has a little obsession with fish and whales right now. They have an aquarium in the zoo, and as soon as I mentioned that we were going to see the fish (amongst other things) that's all he wanted to see. We strolled into the zoo and made our way to see the monkeys. He looked at them for (literally) a second and signed for the fish. He has a one track mind you know. :) Theresa took a couple pictures for us so we could brag to Braydon about how much fun we had. :)


Landon striking a pose in front of one of the aquariums.


I was trying to show him the fish tank, but there were other distractions. :)


Mommy and Landon


Looking at the jellyfish

We ended up getting a T-shirt and a new stuffed whale for him at the gift shop. Theresa bought him a book which was very nice of her...we knew it would be a hit with him. :)

Tomorrow is back to the grind of therapies and our fun will be over. (thumbs down) On a good note, we find out the results from the testing that Chelli did last week. Then we'll be able to figure out how often we need to see her over the summer. I'm excited for the results.

At the principal's office

I'm not sure that I have shared that Landon will start half-day preschool in the fall! I'm really excited to get him started because I think it will really benefit him to be around some other kids his age. He is a very social little boy and loves to wave at people and include them in what he's doing. I think that going to school will help him build up his social skills, possibly help him with talking, and the dreaded potty training. (That hasn't been going well.)

We've been talking to his early childhood teacher that comes out from the school system. She's been really supportive in helping to transition us from the services we get right now (where she comes to the house) to going to school. We met up with the principal of Landon's school today, along with the school nurse, and the speech pathologist that will be working with Landon (and the other children) in the classroom. They were all so nice and were willing to answer questions and the principal even showed us where the classroom was going to be. It really put me and Braydon at ease. We haven't met his teacher yet (she's a highly recommended new recruit), but she will be arranging some home visits to come and hang out with Landon to get to know him. Her name is Ms. Mandy. I'm very excited to get to meet her.

Last week, Kerry (Landon's teacher right now) took me to observe a classroom of preschoolers at another school in their same district. The school that Landon will attend doesn't have a preschool right now, but Kerry wanted me to see how a normal school day would go. They start off with circle time and sing a song. Then they go into a book and then start organizing jobs for the day (like the milk person and the line leader). After that they play in "centers" where they can play pretend or read books or play with blocks. They also do a "small group" where the teacher splits the class in half and work on two seperate tables on a craft. This helps the teachers focus on things that the kids need to work on. This is where the OT for the school will come in and work with the kids that need a little extra attention. The same goes for the PT. The speech pathologist will come in and work with the kids all together to try to get them all on the same page. The para-professionals (the teacher's helpers) also work with some of the kids that need more help with anything individually. I got to see some of that in action and it really eased my mind. I'm glad they will still be working on the things that we are working on in therapy at Children's with Landon in school.

I'm really excited for Landon. Today, Theresa took Landon with her on a tour with the school nurse, while we finished up the meeting so he could walk around the halls. She said that while we were finishing up Landon was waving to all the kids in the hall. I can't wait to see how well he does. It's gonna be a good change, for sure. :)

Our fabulous deck!!

Ok...so let's try this again, shall we? Here's our adventures building our fancy deck. :)

The first day we spent digging the holes in the ground to fill with cement. We rented a power auger to dig the holes. At first I was a little hesitant to rent a machine, but Braydon told me it would go much faster than digging it by hand. I'm glad we did!!! It wore us all out, but we got done really fast! The picture below is Braydon standing in one of the holes. They had to be 42" deep to get below the frost line.


Look! We're growing "Braydon" flowers! :)


After a day of putting the cement in the holes and letting it dry we could finally start framing the deck. When we first started planning the deck, I just eye-balled how big I wanted it to be. It came out to be a 16' x 16' deck. I didn't realize how big it was going to be until we started framing and put in the floor joists!! Here are a couple pictures of that phase:


The boys...not looking very happy...


Braydon, sporting his awesome farmer's tan... :)



Braydon likes the railings...



Joe and I...in the rain...working on the decking...


Braydon wasn't feeling well about an hour into starting the decking, so I had to step in and finish up. Lucky Braydon got to stay warm and dry. ;)


TA-DA!!! You can see where the stairs are gonna go in this picture. They will wrap around the corner and at the end we are putting flagstone pavers.


You can see how big the deck is compared to the house.


We picked out some solar light post toppers. They light up at night and are really a nice accent. One of them is broken and we have to take it back, but Braydon tried to take a picture of them lit up at night.



We are so happy with how it turned out. A BIG thank you to Joe!!!!

My dad will be coming to help us finish up the stairs, but for right now, we're just enjoying what we have. :)

Busy, Busy, Busy!!!

We've been terribly busy the past few weeks.

My mom came to visit for my birthday at the end of last month. It was good to see her. We did a little shopping and did some hanging out. A lot of good, quality girl time. :) I had a great birthday and I wanted to thank everyone for the cards and gifts. I realize what wonderful people I have in my life that care about me. It feels good to be loved. :) Thank you!

Landon enjoyed his "Nonna time". He recognized her and gave her lots of love the first day. My mom hung out with him and did a lot of his favorite activity...looking at books. Sometimes he likes you to read them to him, but most of the time he just wants you to keep him company while he looks through the pages. :)


Here's a picture of the first day my mom was here. Landon was showing her everything out the window...and giving her a little love. :) Sorry the pictures are a little fuzzy. I'm still learning how to use the different settings on my camera.


These two are showing just how much my boy likes books. It's pretty much all he likes to do. :) He was showing Nonna his stash of books in the cupboards...


And playing with Wubbzy stickers in the kitchen...


While my mom was here, Landon had a little bit of a cold. We took him to see Dr. LaCroix to see if there was any medicine she could prescribe for him. She just told us that he had a bad head cold and to give him a little Benedryl if he needed it. There were a few days that I didn't get a lot of sleep with getting up to suction him in the middle of the night, but as soon as the Benedryl started to kick in, he would sleep for a good while and started to feel better.

Unfortunately, Landon likes to share his germs. So, both of the nurses, and I got the same thing. It was a really bad cold...no wonder Landon didn't want to do anything but snuggle. We were all sick for about a week. Then, it was Braydon's turn. :) We had all of this going on at the same time that Joe was here to help us with the deck!!! Thankfully, as I was getting over my cold, Braydon was getting his. So Joe always had someone to help him. The boys did a good job getting things started and then I had the privilege of getting to help finish it....in the rain! Yes, if things couldn't get any worse, it started raining the day we were trying to finish. All. Day. Long. All three of us were ready for it to be over. However, we got some good pictures as things moved along. ...I have to upload those later, the website is down right now and being difficult. :)

Anyways, we've been enjoying the deck and have been trying to get out and enjoy it in between the rainstorms. :)

Other than that, we've been trying to slow down since we've had a crazy couple of weeks. My dad is planning on visiting in the next few weeks and helping us finish the stairs on the deck and put some shutters on the house. We've got projects galore! I'm just glad we have families that are willing to help us! A big THANK YOU to Joe who spent his time off helping us! He said to me that he needed "a vacation from his vacation"!