Hearing Test

We went to the School for the Deaf to have Ethan's hearing tested today. Maybe you're wondering how you test a 2 1/2 year old's hearing? The audiologist had a set of ear phones that he played different sounds at different pitches. He closely watched Ethan to see if he'd look over at the ear phones. He also had stuffed animals in the room and asked Ethan to point to each animal.

Ethan passed the test, but the audiologist said he was pretty hard to test. He gave Ethan some toys and he was so zoned in on those toys that Ethan wasn't listening to him. He had to catch Ethan at the right exact moment and Ethan would do what he was asking.

Ethan tunes me out all the time! Sometimes I think he's just stubborn and won't listen to me, but I now realize that he gets so engrossed into what he's doing and ignores everything around him.

Speech Evaluation

Ethan had his speech evaluation done today. It was nice because the speech therapist and other evaluator came to our house. I guess the whole church nursery thing traumatized Ethan and Mia because the second they walked in the house, they both started screaming bloody murder, which they've never done before. They must have thought that I was going to leave them with the two ladies.

They did physical tests with him which he passed with flying colors. He needs no help that way. They also had him follow directions, like take the block out of the container, put it back in. I'm surprised he listened to them. He doesn't listen to me that well!

The speech therapist showed him pictures and asked him where the cookie, ball, baby etc were. Ethan was able to point almost everything out for her. She asked him to say baby, puppy, kitty and a few other words. I think he knows more than what he lets on! I told her that when I try to get him to say something, every two syllable word comes out as "dahdah." She said that he should be putting more words together than he is now. He did qualify for speech therapy through the Birth to 3 program but barely. He was one point over what a 29 month old should score, so they kind of changed his score a little bit so he would qualify now. Otherwise, we would have had to wait a month to start therapy. The therapist said that he'll get 6 months of speech therapy. It's 45 minutes per week and they come to our house. We're also going to get his hearing tested to make sure there are no issues there. He did have a stubborn ear infection when he was younger that needed a couple rounds of antibiotics. I think he hears fine, but we want to cover all our bases.

They had a miniature baby and a bottle that Ethan wanted to keep badly, along with a plastic spoon, a bear, and a coffee cup. He snatched those items and ran downstairs when his testing was over. I think he was hoping I didn't see him take those things. He threw a huge fit when I gave them back to the ladies! It's funny the weird things he takes a liking to.

Happy 4th Birthday, Noah!

My nephew, Noah, celebrated his 4th birthday on May 17th. Everyone met at Chuck-E-Cheese's, which is a pizza arcade for little kids. It's where I'd want my birthday party if I were little! It's got every game you can imagine! We chowed down on pizza and french fries and later had funfetti cake with chocolate frosting. It was a pretty fun time! Our kids liked all the games but were too little for most of them. They still liked watching everyone else play.

Playing skeetball. Ethan stole one of Noah's birthday presents. You can imagine what Noah said about that. (Ethan and Noah have a love/hate relationship.)

A nice lady offered to take our picture. I think Mike and I look a little goofy.

Jude, aka Dobby.

Jude is about as high-maintenance as Riley is.

My niece, Janai.

The birthday boy, Noah.

She actually let me put her hair in pig tails.

Waiting for the cake. He chowed down two pieces and part of mine in a matter of a minute.

14 Months for Riley

Another month older. She's getting so big so fast. Riley really tries to to imitate everything her big brother and big sister does. She gets to be quite naughty at times. Ethan and Mia taught her to take her diaper off. She's pretty fast at it. I have to battle her to keep it on. I'll have to get the duct tape out when she learns to take her clothes off!

Riley has been off her bottle for a couple weeks now. We slowly took one bottle away per week. The toughest one was her night time bottle. I can tell when she still wants one, but I try to avert her attention elsewhere. I've all ready packed her bottles up. It's kind of bittersweet. I want her to grow up and be more independent but it's still sad.

Riley is saying a few more words. She now says "more" when she wants more food or something to drink. She can say "peek-a-boo" and "ball." She seems to catch on to things pretty fast.

You can add ranch and ice cream to her favorite foods list. She's crazy about them both. I had a bowl of ice cream last night and the three kids were surrounding me. I gave Riley her bite and before I could go to Mia, Riley was saying, "more, more, more" and wouldn't stop saying it until I gave her another bite. Ethan was standing in Riley's spot, so Riley pushed him and he fell over. She's a tough little cookie.

Riley is getting better at walking. She walks farther and farther each time she takes off. She's still a little wobbly and falls quite a bit, but she's getting faster. Her main mode of transportation is still crawling. I'd give her a couple more weeks and she'll be walking everywhere. She'll be much happier when she's able to keep up with Ethan and Mia.

Riley has such a goofy personality. She fake laughs all the time, especially if someone else is laughing. She loves to scrunch up her little nose and show off her teeth. Riley gets jealous if Ethan, Mia, Mike, Elsa, or Rusty are near me. She'll try to squeeze her way in between me and whoever is on my lap. She tends to get her feelings hurt despite being a tough little girl. I can tell she's liking Mike more and more. She'll actually crawl up to him and hold her arms out for him to pick her up. She loves to play and rough house with him.

Riley takes one nap a day for an hour or two. She usually goes to bed between 9 and 10. Sometimes she sleeps through the night and sometimes she doesn't. Sometimes we can lay her down and she'll go to sleep and other times, she wants to be rocked. She's a pretty high-maintenance baby.

I bought one of those headbands with a huge flower. It's cute but she won't keep it in her hair. $7 wasted! :)

Yummy birthday cake.

Getting ready to eat cake at Noah's birthday.

Riding the horse at Chuck-E-Cheese.

I want out.

A Nice Relaxing Weekend

It was a nice relaxing weekend. In fact, it was one of the best weekends we've had since December. We've been working on house projects since Christmas, and this was the first weekend we took off. We didn't have anything planned the entire weekend. It was so nice!

We took the kids to a duck park right by our house. Ethan and Mia are fascinated with birds. We brought bread so they had fun feeding all the ducks and geese. It was nice to let them run loose and not worry about cars or bothering other people! We took the triple stroller along. It fits in my van, which I was wondering about since I've bought it. A couple of ladies commented on how big it was. We get a lot of looks when we use it!

We bummed around the house on Saturday. Mike took a long nap with the kids and I went to my favorite store, Target. I could spend hours there looking around. And I only spent $100 that trip. Isn't it sad that $100 is a "good" trip? We did a little bit of weeding on Saturday. We're way ahead of where we were compared to last year. We're slowly adding plants in on our yard. Mike calls our acreage his farm. It does take a lot of our time, but I love it! I don't think Mike loves it as much as me! :) The kids and I watched the second "Transformers" movie on Saturday night. They couldn't keep their eyes off the screen. I could tell Ethan was a little scared at first but continued to watch it. Mia loved all the robots as well. Four o'clock that morning, Ethan woke up screaming. He had a bad dream. I had to get up and rock him. I asked him if he dreamt about the robots, and he whispered, "l-yeah, bot bots." I had to stay in his bed with him until he finally fell back asleep.

My parents came on Sunday for dinner. My dad is very spontaneous and decides the day of that they're coming. We didn't have anything planned anyhow, so it was nice to see everyone. We kind of invited ourselves over to Sarah's house for supper, and she made everyone spaghetti. It's always nice when I don't have to cook.

We went to church on Sunday and tried the nursery for the very first time. I stayed there for ten minutes and Ethan and Mia were clinging to me like crazy. The nursery lady finally suggested I leave because they'll just cling to me the entire time I'm in there. I left and I could hear them SCREAMING down the hall. Mike went and checked on them 30 minutes later and they were still screaming. One of the ladies was holding Ethan and one was holding Mia. The nursery lady does in-home daycare and I was thinking of asking her for her number, but I highly doubt after that screaming episode she would want to watch them! Ethan and Mia were so pissed off that they screamed the entire way home and were still screaming at home. That was the first time a stranger has ever watched them. We usually have family watch them when needed and they never scream like that. I'm sure it was scary for them to be dropped off in a strange place with strange people.

Ethan's bottom two-year molars came in. I'm hoping that's why he's been so ornery lately. I hope he starts being my sweet gentle boy again. Then again, it could be a stage he's going through. I hope it doesn't last. He is so very stubborn. Ethan likes to have control. If I want him to do something, he refuses to do it for 5-10 minutes until he's ready to do it. It really gets on my last nerve. How do little kids know what buttons to push? Mike wants me to set up an appointment with a speech therapist, so I'm going to do that this week. There are periods where I think Ethan is improving with his speech and then he has periods where he doesn't. It's like he's afraid to try and say the word. We'll have to see what the speech therapist says. He's going through that stage where he never wants to wear clothes. The only time he'll get dressed is if we're going outside or going somewhere. Otherwise, if I try to put clothes on him, he rips them right off.

Mia is still my easy-going sweet girl. She has her moments, but she is a really easy kid. She loves to sit on my lap and would do it all day if I'd let her. We're still having problems with her scratching Riley, but I put her in time-out as soon as I see her do it and that is helping tremendously. She's the mini-parent around here. If she sees one of the other kids doing something naughty, she'll say, "Ri-Ri stop. Don't." She's my little imitator. Our cat meows all of the time and it really gets on my nerves, so I'm constantly saying, "shh" to our cat. Now, as soon as the cat meows, Mia says, "kitty, shhh" or "kitty, stop". It amazes me how much she pays attention.

We're at a stand-still for potty training. They both go and hide when they have to poop. It's pretty obvious what they're doing, but they don't want to sit on the potty. I don't want to traumatize them with the whole process, so we're taking it slow.

Mia was pretty cautious around the geese. If they started hissing at her, she backed away immediately. Ethan, however, wasn't bothered by the hissing. He kept right at it.

Trying to feed the geese some bread except that the geese didn't want any.

We brought some stale shortcake for the birds. I guess Riley didn't care it was hard as cardboard!

Happy Belated Mother's Day

Happy Belated Mother's Day! I know I'm really late with this post. I had to work the entire weekend, so it was a pretty quiet Mother's Day. The kids bought me some flowers and a card, which I love. We had grilled ribs, stuffed potatoes, asparagus, and bread for dinner. It was very good!

Mike's Birthday

We celebrated Mike's 31st birthday on May 5th. The kids helped me bake a chocolate cake for him. They love cooking, so they had a good time. Aunt Sarah watched Ethan, Mia, and Riley while we went out to eat for supper. We went to a Brazilian grill called Carnaval. It was a neat restaurant. Gauchos walked around with different meats on skewers and shaved pieces off when we were ready for more. It was nice getting out of the house and away from the kids for awhile. They love going over to Sarah's house and getting into all of her stuff. We don't hear a peep from Ethan the entire time. We sat and visited with Sarah and Steve for the remainder of the night and then went home. It was a quiet birthday, but I guess that's what happens as you get older and have little ones at home!

Yes, Ethan has a black and blue forehead. He hit the area right between his eyes on the rocking chair. His entire forehead was swollen.