my to do list for the week (caution, this post might put you to sleep)

so here is my to do list for the day/week/month/life, etc. Just wanting to feel accomplished in some ways...

• pay for sara's orthotics (Dave Ramsey would be proud, I waited until scott got paid on Friday and put it on the debit card))
• take my mom to Costco so she can buy beer for my dad's b-day party
• go to bed on time
• finish our family budget for Financial Peace University (aka, find an extra 800 a month)
• put away the rest of the laundry
• resist having my crops harvested on farm town (facebook) so the girls can do it tonight.
• figure out dinner for scott, sara, and myself.
• take a shower
• unload dishwasher and re-load with dirty dishes waiting in the sink
• invite friends to come over and play thursday morning
• finish scoring my spiritual gifts inventory from yesterday morning
• get sara to take a nap
• start redoing my itunes playlists (stupid itunes wiped them out for some reason)
• make and take sara through an obstacle course of sorts in the house so she can practice stepping up and down.
• clear out more clutter in order to make walking through the house much better
• water the compost
• run the roomba and the scooba
• practice raspberries and tongue clicks with sara at least twice a day
• continue to take sara to many different parks/places to give her different experiences
• cancel maid service since we can no longer afford it
• call exterminator and set up appt. time for our quarterly service
• put up at least one tub of clothes/toys/junk every night
• put away winter clothes for the summer in order to free up more room in my closet
• exchange dress I bought on saturday
• email sangria recipe to my mom
• order 2 boxes of contact lenses
• find and put in a safe spot my new glasses prescription
• clean out under couch and find sippy cups that have rotten milk in them. suck it in and run them through the dishwasher
• figure out and purchase birthday present for my dad
• lose weight
• stop cheating on my gluten/soy free diet
• find someone besides scott who I can talk to about all this crap....plus other stuff...
• go to the grocery store to buy milk and corn chex (so excited that these are now gluten free)

sara is a water girl even though she is a Leo

Via scott's phone...

http://twitpic.com/7yb7w - Sara at Wet and Wild!

so far so good

so since sara started walking yesterday she has been happy to oblige me when I let go of her hand and encourage her to walk on her own. She has fallen a couple of times but picked herself up off the floor and gotten back to walking again. We went back to My Gym today, and sara loved it more than she ever has. She was all over the place. I think she will be ready to graduate up to the next age group when she turns two. She still screamed and fake cried some while there. The thing is moms always stare at us when that happens. Are their children perfect or something and never have attitude issues? Do they not have opinions that differ from yours? I have always wondered about that. Maybe those kids save it all for the teenage years. Just some thoughts...

the video of walking

we're walking, yes indeed

So for anyone that is not on twitter or facebook but reads this blog...sara is walking! She can take multiple steps w/o holding on to something multiple means 20+. She did it for the very first time in PT today and has not stopped being willing, yet. I am sure her stubborn streak and two year old attitude will reappear in the very near future, but I am thrilled for now. So in honor of her walking here is my list of things I am looking forward to not hearing again about sara (at least in terms of walking)...

she is just stubborn,
she has her own time line,
she's working on other skills,
she is cautious,
she was carried to much as a baby,
she's just spoiled,
she's your first so she doesn't have to walk.
you don't want her to walk b/c then your life will be over (in the manner this is said, my life was over when she started crawling --- over a year ago),
she isn't caught up yet (in terms of being a preemie),
my kid was a late walker (oh yeah? were they almost 2 when they started walking by themselves),
doesn't your insurance cover the therapy or isn't it free (yes, insurance covers some, but we have to wait months to get checks to be reimbursed -- early childhood intervention is "free," but they did nothing for sara. Their approach did not work well for sara nor did she like her ECI PT. As scott said "it was like talking to sandpaper" when you tried to have a conversation with her. If you know scott he does not say bad things about people very often, he gets along with just about anyone, etc. I love that about him. You know it's bad if scott says that.
she's just a climber (I even said this one for a while)..it is true, she likes to climb, but that had nothing to do with her not walking.
she must not have gotten enough tummy time as a baby (oh really? do you know how good of a parent I was trying to be when she was an infant? I was all about plenty of tummy time.)
She's faking it (yes, she is a bit of a drama queen, but she was never walking behind my back...kids her age aren't that creative in doing things to spite their parents)
Do you just keep in a car seat, stroller, crib, what have you all the time or just sit and watch TV? (ok, this was never said to me, but some looks that were given to me when people asked her age meant this)

I am sure there are more, but this gets the statements I get a lot!


The great thing about sara walking is it gives me hope. Hope for our financial situation, hope for sara having a "normal" childhood, shoot this morning I probably could have held hands with everyone around the world and sung kumbaya or we are the world w/o a sarcastic thought entering my mind. That's what a relief and great hope this gave me for the future. Short term it also gives me great hope for my summer. I had made a promise to myself that I would work as much as possible with sara this summer to help facilitate walking. Here it is, our third week of summer, and I seem to have accomplished this goal. So many things will be much more fun now for sara....the park, the splash park, the playgrounds, my gym, play dates, etc. It's crazy how many things are centered around kids walking. It feels like kids cannot do fun things until they are walking. The looks I get at the playground for bringing a crawling child are ridiculous. Seriously, people, did you just want me to not let sara do the same thing as her peers?

On another note...sara's b-day part will be taking place August 1 from 10-12 at our church's gym. I am very excited about it because we will be able to invite friends. woooohooo I also do not have to worry about the weather. Can you believe sara is turning 2? As for me, I can. I live with the 2's every day. She definitely acts her age (not her shoe size). Speaking of shoes...she got fitted for orthotics on Monday. We (the PT and me) hope this will accelerate her gross motor skill development and make her more stable. Not a total surprise that she has to have these since I got them when I was in middle school. Scott also had foot/leg problems as a kid and had to have corrective surgery to help him out.

I will try to get some video footage and post it at some point so other people can witness our amazing daughter!

what have we been up to lately?

This week marks the 2nd full week of summer for us. So far the relaxed schedule, sesame street, errand running, house cleaning, pajama lounging, and practice walking have been just fine with sara. I think she is enjoying the extra mommy time. She has always been quite clingy to me so this fits her. Honestly, I was worried about going from a twice a week mommy break to no scheduled break was going to be difficult. Well, so far so good. I am sure there will be a post a few weeks from now asking if summer is over yet. The good thing about staying home a lot more is it helps assuage my guilty feelings that I do not do enough practice walking (or other suggestions from the PT) with her.

Sara is so close to walking. I am realizing though this is a continual journey with her despite the fact that she has everything physically in her toolbox she needs to walk. Now my goal is to get her more comfortable with moving in free space. So that means making her walk places just holding one hand. It is chanllenging to me b/c despite the fact that she does a great job of walking this way she fusses the whole time. It is hard for me to deal with in public especially around people that know her but not the whole situation that well. Like I told scott, though, I keep saying to myself, PT costs $270 a week and speech costs $90 a week. So we've got to work hard with sara at home!

Scott and I are working hard on a budget for us to generally follow so we can help reduce our CC debt. The problem seems to be finding any room for anything other than the bills plus food. Well, as scott and I put it PT and speech are not optional for sara so we will deal with going into more debt for as long as it takes to get her "caught up." So if you do not see much of us here lately or we become extra boring well then this blog post explains why. We are at home trying to entertain ourselves to save money!

guess what?

After PT and speech therapy this morning sara and I stopped by ouisee and papa hank's house. Sara was playing with the big exercise ball. She let it go and took about 2-3 steps on her own! Amazing!

Hopefully more steps will follow. Sara worked very hard at PT and speech today. She walked a toddler marathon on the treadmill, swung on her tummy in the "hammock" style swing (you know the ones where you usually sit in them), walked up and down stairs and a ramp, sat on a big exercise ball while the PT messed with her balance, fed a stuffed animal some bananas, eggs, mac and cheese, milk, and juice; ate a piece of orange flavored liquorice so the SP could get sara to use the right side of her mouth a little more, plus other things I cannot remember.

All this means is this: you have one very tired mommy on your hands who was stupid enough to not lay down and take a nap right now while her daughter is snoozing away. le sigh. I never can predict when she will take the long naps. I am happy though about everything above. Yea for progress! yea for hope! yea for confidence! "I have confidence in confidence..."

My miserable attempt at "supermommyhood" today...

So here is how my wed-fri. have played out so far...

wed:
go to PT and speech therapy for thing in the morning. We are there from 10:00 until 11:30 (did I mention we have to leave the house at 9:30 to get there on time? sara has been "sleeping in" here lately until about 7:45, 8ish. That is a huge treat considering the fact that facebook sucks me in until after 10:00 every night and nothing gets accomplished after the 7:00 hour in our house. Did I also mention that scott gets home from work between 6 and 6:30 (last night it was closer to 7 -- he usually leaves for work around 9)

After our therapy morning I slack off and go to lunch with my mom and sara. I am good and turn down the invitation to stay and visit a while in attempts to go home and get sara to take a nap (but guess who does not take a nap??? hint: it was a creature of the two legged variety not 4).

So then, sara so lovingly has a humongous dirty blowout style diaper that needs to be changed. I quickly get that done so we can head out the door to go play at the CDC playground with my mom to mom friends and friends of friends. We play until sara turns bright red (despite the fact that I had sprayed both of us down with spf 55 sunscreen until the hair on my legs lay down quite nicely). I had been a good mom and stopped at Sonic's happy hour and gotten us drinks to have while playing. Of course sara refused hers most of the time. Then I stupidly accused Scott of forgetting about our sara hand off deal we had worked out for the evening when I called him and his phone was turned off. We had agreed before he left for work to meet for dinner and switch cars and sara b/c I had a meeting at church that evening. OK, so then we rush through dinner, switch cars, praise God scott's car started and the engine was not revving. I get to my green team meeting about 5 minutes late. ugh. I made up for it by correctly guessing a "green" trivia question and winning a door prize. Go me! If you want to know what it was about, follow the link here...muhahahahahha.

OK, so obviously when I got home that night sara was asleep but did I do anything of use? NOPE!

after some sleep I took sara to mother's day out. I did go to yoga against my own internal monologue (and enjoyed the practice). Then I slacked off the rest of my time w/o sara and hung out with my mom. So you would think after sara gets home from school that I would pay so much attention to her? nope, facebook sucked me in when I got home so I played with my computer while she played in the playroom. She did try to draw on my computer so that is when I decided it was time to shut the puter down. After that I did some straightening up while she watched 2 TV shows, and I started dinner cooking. Since Scott was not home by 6:15 I gave sara a bath and put her in her PJ's. It was going to be an early bedtime for her kind of evening b/c she seemed very tired when I picked her up from MDO. So Scott did walk in the door just in time to "listen" to the story I read to sara. Off to bed she went...and guess what? once again nothing productive happened. (FYI, my house once again looks like a tornado hit or it hasn't been lived in for a while -- we have ants and fruit flies that are trying to make their home in our house, you cannot walk through the front door w/o tripping over something, laundry is piled up on the chair and couch, junk mail and bills are scattered all over the floor and the computer desk, and you can barely eat at the Kitchen table)

So this morning at 10:00 was physical therapy. Then after a snack sara and I headed to Arbor Hills playground to play (along with half of Plano and their kids, it was pretty crowded). Sara and I both enjoy going to different parks and different playgrounds all over the city, but the gas/money/time it takes sometimes takes it toll. The Physical therapist did say it was important to go to many different places to help sara get to walking.

On a more positive note, sara did go from crawling to standing in free space (in a normal manner that kids her age stand up). She did it 3 times in a row for me. That was a great moment to see that all the $$$ we are paying is worth it.

So after once again turning red sara and I headed off from arbor hills to get some lunch. Yes, I cheated for the gizzilonth time on my gluten/soy free diet...and had cicic's pizza. That's probably a big reason I am so tired, is that I have been eating gluten here lately. That plus stress. Anyway, I had big plans to mow the yard while sara took a nap (which she should be extremely tired after walking on the tread mill and playing outside). I got the front yard mowed (easy peasey there) and guess who has not slept a wink besides 5 minutes in the car between the park and pizza place? Once again, it is a creature of the two legged variety. le sigh. I had awesome plans to be superwoman today, but they are just not working out. Maybe one day my house will be straightened up (not just the maids coming in and throwing everything that looks out of place in a bag then me tearing it all up the next day to try and find the stuff that was left out).

Now onto figuring out the rest of our afternoon and what will be for dinner tonight.

life...

we started speech therapy yesterday. I think sara is really going to enjoy speech therapy more than physical therapy. I mean, it seems like all play to her. She has two people completely focused on her and neither of them are making her practice walking! Sara was diagnosed with "overall low lip tone" basically our steps will be similar to physical therapy in which we work to build up her lip strength and have her more comfortable with moving her tongue around. I have a feeling sara will progress quickly in speech therapy since she loves to watch and imitate as much as possible.

The conference I had with sara's mother's day out teacher went much better than I had made it out in my mind to be. Her teacher said she has made huge progress in terms of her gross motor skills over the past month or so. That makes me feel wonderful because that is about the time we started private physical therapy.

Physical therapy homework is nothing new. Keep her wearing the hip helpers for a hour a few times a day. The therapist encourages us to "rough house" with her so she is used to moving through free space in different ways. I "torture" sara quite often now by making her practice walk. The great news is she is tolerating it a lot more than she used to. I don't know how soon it will be when she walks on her own, but I cannot wait for this day! I will be so proud of her, relieved, and will be celebrating her acting like other kids her age. I am beginning to have hope that it will happen one day. I can finally imagine what it will look like.


Our days are busy but fun! Sara is blossoming and learning so much everyday.

IMG_0381

IMG_0381
Originally uploaded by jendog37

LOVE this picture!

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IMG_0357
Originally uploaded by jendog37

Not me Monday!!!

I know it has been a while since I have done this so I thought I would go ahead and inform you once again, that I am a perfect mother!

I do not have to pick up my house every other week the day before the maids come. I always touch papers only once before they head to the recycle bin.

I always clean up spills with towels. I would never call my dog over to clean up some spilled milk so I could get back to my computer time sooner.

I do not need to take an online course with 164 other women just to help me unravel a little and learn more about myself

I do not buy presents for people's birthdays or babies and then forget them.

I care enough about the swine flu outbreak to think twice about going to my mom to mom group today and leaving sara in the nursery. I always put my kid before my own desires to be away from her for 2 hours.

Therapy/Accomplishments update

So sara has been making some big strides this past week. All of this going to the park, sliding down as many slides as possible, getting bloody noses, and being a "mean" mommy seems to have helped.

Here is what she did today in therapy...

she stood, on her own in the tub of beans...you know that one that she screamed so much about the very first time she went in. This time she sat in it, ate goldfish and played with the dried beans and rice. So awesome!

She is standing on her own more in free space. It goes like this...she pulls up on something (which she is pulling up on different things which is awesome, will slowly let go, then stand there for about 30 seconds or so before she moves on to another activity.

Sara is also saying more words. Ball, and other sounds seems to come out now.

Another awesome thing is sara is letting me do some practice walking with her. That used to induce a holy terror temper tantrum...now it is taking longer to induce that. Awesome!

Please forgive any extra spaces in this post. my keyboard has been acting up here lately, and I am too tired to take out all the extra spaces.

This weekend I will try to get some more pictures of her up on her shutterfly page. I have some from school, but I have not gone through them yet and saved the ones of sara.

We have busy days ahead of us...tomorrow it is school for sara (hair appointment for me -- we'll see what my hair dresser does. Last time I joked with him about doing easter egg stripes in my hair when he said think about a change for our next appointment). Ouisee is going to pick her up from school then we will play at her house for the afternoon (b/c both of us are going to an event at church that evening) and daddy will pick her up and get her in bed.

Friday morning brings therapy. Then saturday morning we have a friends 3 year old b-day party at the church. What fun!

We're going to crash at ouisee's house saturday night b/c scott is having a guy's night at our house.

Hip Helpers

Here is the link to the website that explains the bike shorts/hip hugger contraption I was trying to explain in an earlier post. http://www.hiphelpers.com/index.htm

therapy lately

so we have been going to therapy twice a week for a solid 3 weeks now...

things sara, her therapist, and I do while there and away...

go down slide after slide after slide. Sara is scared to death to go down by herself. She loves it once it is over. The hard part is she tries to flip herself over onto her tummy to sop herself or grab at me. Today, she got a bloody nose doing that. It was not bad at all (the blood never went lower than her top lip), but I still felt bad for her. I keep hoping it will sink in one of these times that going down slides by yourself is fun!

roll over upside down on an exercise ball. Once again, sara hates this feeling of being out of control.

On Monday, sara "walked" on a treadmill. I had to keep "reminding" her legs to move along with the treadmill, but she did great! (Dora on TV and constant feeding of goldfish to her mouth seemed to help, also)

She wears 1/4 lb. ankle weights 3 times a day for an hour to help create resistance (in order to build strength in her legs) and give her the feeling of weight through her feet (which she doesn't love that much)

The big thing coming up is going to be these...bike shorts/hip huggers that basically have an extra low seam that makes it impossible to crawl in the manner that she does. She will be able to walk and crawl in the correct way. If I can find a picture of the shorts, I will post them in aother post.

The therapist is proud of sara's progress, but sara still has a ways to go before walking comes along.

feed the birds...

This evening Scott, Sara, and I decided to make a good end to the day by taking sara to the park to feed the ducks. This is the first time we have ever done this with her, and she loved it! Here are some of the pictures from the occasion. The full set is on shutterfly.

Sara throwing some bread




Sara trying to crawl down into the creek


Sara and mommy



Sara and daddy watching for ducks...

Listening to sara not sleep...

Since I am sitting here at the computer listening to sara try to think a 15 minute nap is enough for her I will write this post...

Homework from today's PT session:

• More of the same at the park...getting her to do things I want (like standing, sitting correctly)
• Help her build endurance in crawling reciprocally (meaning the correct way) by "forcing" her to crawl that way over long distances (I see us spending some time in the backyard in order to accomplish that -- that means some more pooper scooping -- woohoo)
  
• Work on eye contact and taking turns by playing with puzzles and other manipulatives on the floor at her level.

The start of private Physical Therapy

Today marked sara's first day of private physical therapy...here is a highlight of things the therapist had her do...

• stand or sit with her feet covered up in a box of dried beans in order for her to get used to the sensation of something being on her feet
• swing, swing, swing...all sorts of different swings. She had her swinging sitting down, standing up, squatting, etc. in order for sara to experience different sensations and moving through space. Sara screamed her head off, of course, but she calmed down pretty fast and enjoyed parts of it. That was great to see.
• She had her sit on a big exercise ball and have her experience different sensations there while also working on some core strength/balance.
• Last but not least she did some standing and playing with toys at a table type of deal.

The sessions are only 30-45 minutes so only so much can be accomplished, but I felt like sara did great! My instructions are to keep offering her those new experiences little by little and let her get used to them. Also, I have worksheets that show me how to help sara hold herself properly when in different positions.

Today we also had a visit with the ECI speech therapist. She is going to start coming to visit sara every other week. In the meantime I am supposed to work with sara on imitating sounds and licking her lips. The second is in order for her sara to get used to the sensation of her tongue coming out from her mouth further.

On another note, we had a whole day yesterday without any reflux (at least that I could tell). So today we are bringing the antibiotics back in to test out some theories. Sara hasn't had any dairy the past two days so that may be the culprit, also. We will see tonight.

That's my latest update on the sara happenings. This morning we watched the movie about the Easter bunny that Nana and Pop gave her. So now we're getting ready for the Easter bunny to come. Rumor on the street is that the Easter Bunny went to Target and got some Yo Gabba Gabba stuff.

Such cute imitation

Sara made doing this load of laundry so much more exciting...

As most of you know our washer and dryer are in our garage. So my typical loads go like this: grab things out of our dirty clothes baskets in the bedroom, throw them over the gate and they pile up in the hallway, then pick them up and take them to the washer. Today, sara found a large canvas basket in the hallway that we usually put our clean t-shirts in. So she gathered up ALL the laundry on the floor in the hallway and put it in the basket. Next thing I see is her pushing/walking the basket down the hall towards the garage. So Scott and I helped her help us put the laundry in the washer. Scott held her in his arms while I handed her the light weight stuff. She would throw every single piece towards the washer. So sweet! Just had to share.

giggly girl

sara has been very giggly here lately. I love it!

Two examples from this morning...

she woke up at 7:15 with her normal wail. So Scott went to go free the sara. That is our terminology for opening the door and making sure the footstool is in the proper place so she can easily get out of bed on her own. Then he runs back to our bedroom (it's more of a flat footed shuffle this time of day -- who can really run that well first thing in the morning), props our gate open to the bedroom and climbs back in bed. We always pretend sara will actually give us a few extra minutes of sleep. It hasn't happened yet, but we try every morning. So this morning we propped open the gate with her basket of little people toys. They were in our bedroom when sara and I were trying to play in one room while the maids cleaned the rest of the house. So sara got out of bed and crawled towards our bedroom. The moment she saw that gate propped open by her toys she thought it was hilarious. She just let out a fantastic giggle. It was so sweet and made my morning!

Later this morning it was time to change her dirty diaper. So I got her all wiped and went to the bathroom to do the diaper rinse off. She of course grabs her kitty that her cousins gave her for x-mas and crawls to find me in the bathroom. I'm trying to block her with my legs so she doesn't try and play with the yucky toilet water. She let out some big giggles there as we played a little blocking game. As I was getting the washer started to wash a load of diapers she kept crawling around the house totally naked letting out screams of delight. I would "chase" her and she would crawl away then look back at me with this look of "I am going to crawl away really fast any second, you can't catch me..." look. Too funny! She has been very silly devious here lately. Definitley learned that from both scott and me.

The other big thing sara has been up to here lately is practice walking. You see once she discovered she could walk behind a walking toy a couple of weeks ago her walking confidence has sored. She now finds any object she can hold onto and push while walking at the same time. Here are some of the objects she walks behind or attemps to walk behind...

her toy shopping cart of course, her highchair, a t-shirt crate basket, a rolling toy basket, and many others I cannot recall.

These past few weeks have been amazingly fun with her. She just seems to be catching onto life in the fast lane. Sara is learning things so fast here lately that you can almost see the synpases firing through her brain. It's awesome. I feel like we are coming out of winter hibernation into a spring of growing, learning, and blossoming. yahoooooooooo!

Her favorite signs and things she wants to talk about these days are her dog and cat. She does the sign for dog for just about everyone. We wonder what she really wants to talk about. I cannot wait until sara and I figure more out about communicating to each other.

Not me Monday (who knows how many this makes)

time flies when you procrastinate...

guess what? it's Monday.

time for everyone to know what I did not do...

I did not tell everyone on facebook and twitter that I had a case of the Mondays. Nope, I would have learned from office space that is annoying. I have not lost count of how many times I have watched that movie.

I did not let sara walk up and down the storage tubs aisle at target today with a rolling bin. Nope, I will not let my child play with things I have no intention of buying. I especially would not let her do that for an extended period of time while I figured out what storage box I really wanted.

My house is always neat and tidy. I would never have to clean so the maids could clean. This would never take over an hour.

I would never have a chair that you cannot sit in at my house because it is full of laundry. This is also not a comoon occurence.

Happy Monday!