School days!!

I cannot believe that my girls are so big! Avery is in her last year of grade school this year and Miranda is in her first. It dawned on me as we were on our way to school that morning that this is the only year that my girls will ever be in school together. That realization made me a little sad.

They both had a great first day- Avery really likes both of her teachers this year, especially her math teacher. She is a little nervous because she is in 6th grade math and spelling, but I'm sure she will do awesome. She is such a smart little cookie!

Miranda, oh my Miranda. So far school for her has been all about the social aspect. Who she is friends with and who she plays with at recess. So far I have had no information what so ever about what she has learned at school, but that is just totally Miranda.

Ofcourse I was a little camera happy as usual- here are the pictures! Enjoy and Happy school days to all my friends with kiddos that are back in school :)

The girls were ready to go about 30 minutes before we actually needed to leave so they decided to sit outside and wait :)



Can you tell that she is super excited?



Avery's all ready for 5th grade! Her last year in Elementary school- I cannot believe it!



The girls walking up to school.



Miranda with her good friend Sragvi



The girls in front of the school!



Miranda with her teacher! She was the first kid from her class at the school so she got to hold her class sign :)



Miranda waiting with her class



Miranda saying "Bye Mom!" we were not allowed to go to the classroom on the first day- but she was great about it and didn't want me to come!

too funny!!

Soooo I just read my friend Diana's blog and realised that we were at the same concert and didn't know it.

I was just coming here to blog about it and post some pics as well- wonder how close we were to eachother?

Oliver's speech evaluation

Well first off and foremost the little man will definetly qualify for services!! That is great news, but as a momma it is really hard and emotional to go through the evaluation process and read the write up afterward. You just never want anything to be "wrong" with your child.

I thought I would give some highlights on what was written- I have about 9 pages so I won't be writing everything :) I'll spare you guys!!

This was the summary statement~

" Oliver is a 27 month old little boy who demonstrates relative strengths in visual problem solving skills adn gross motor. He struggles with paying attention to spoken language. He likes to follow his own agenda and gets easily frustrated. Oliver doesn't have any words to communicate. He qualifies for early intervention services to address these needs"

Now any of you that know or have been around Oliver know that he does have some words- he probably has around 25 (still not enough for his age) but the little stinker did not say 1 word the entire time that they were here doing the evaluation!! Such a boy :)

Here are his evals levels~

* Cognition- 27 months- Oliver pretends objects are something else and puts things away where they belong. Oliver points to his image in the mirror and he will pull over something to stand on if he cannot reach an item.

* Receptive language- 14 months- Oliver identified 1 object and gave a toy upon request. Mom shared that he follows routine directions. He preferred to follow his own agenda and got easily frustrated when models were provided.

* Expressive language- 8 months- Oliver babbled 1 time at the end of the evaluation. Otherwise he played quietly or screamed when frustrated. Mom shared he says mommy, daddy and ball. He can reportedly do animal sounds, but not use words to name his sisters or to communicate.

* Social-Emotional- 26 months- Oliver scored within normal limits. Oliver varies his play with toys and plays near other kids. Oliver also engages in familiar activities like pretend sleeping and talking on the telephone.

* Self-care- 31 months- Oliver can undress completely and attempts to put his shoes on. He puts on simple clothes without assistance. Oliver discriminates edibles and unwraps candy. He sucks through a straw and uses a fork to eat.

* Fine motor- 23 months- Oliver stacked 8 blocks and imitated horizontal lines. He placed pennies in horizontal and vertical slots. He didn't have attention for imitating a 4 block train. Oliver got easily frustated with nut and bolt.

* Gross motor- 27 months- Oliver walks up and down steps and runs well. He kicks a ball by swinging his leg forward


All in all- it was pretty much what I was expecting!! He is on target age level for everything but his language so now the next step is the actual therapy-yay!! I'm so glad that I listened to my mommy instinct on this one :)

Memory Game!

I'm on board. If any of you are playing the memory game I would love it if you wanted to join in on the fun. Here are the rules...

In my comments section leave a memory you and I share… then I’ll return the favor either in a comment back or if you post a memory tag on your blog. It’s been fun digging up memories from old friends. I’d love to hear yours!!!

love em- hate em- can't get by without em!!

Computers- ugh!!!!! What a pain in the behind. Ours was acting kinda funny recently- the pages would freeze up but I was just assuming that it was our internet service (comcrap) nope- not so much. Finally the thing just flat out died on me. I couldn't get it to turn on for nothin! So I brought it to our local bestbuy thinking that something on the hard drive was screwy- nope, the whole flippin mother board was shot- NICE!!!! To repair it would cost more than it would to just replace it so thats what I spent my day doing. Buying and installing a new computer!! It runs really nicely and has a 3 year warranty so hopefully we are just good to go for a while now.

Two things that I'm not happy about though- first one- no spider solitaire :( booooooooo!!! Second one is that all of my itunes music is gone. this is tragic- seriously. I'm not gonna spend $90 for bestbuy to put it all on a disc for me- but I'm just really really bummed out that I'm gonna have to go back through all that hard work to find my groove again!

Anyway- main news is that I'm back- hope you all didn't miss me toooo toooo much!!

Anybody out there??

Just wondering if anyone even reads this thing??

If so- leave me a comment to let me know!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Oli's speech

Just thought I'd give a little update. Oliver had his 'intake' appointment with the infant and toddlers program here in Maryland yesterday for speech therapy.

It went really really well and I am happy to have the ball rolling and to get things underway. He really is a pretty smart little cookie- he just doesn't talk much yet and I wasn't all that worried about it until it became apparent that he was getting frustrated by his lack of being able to communicate his needs with us.

Oliver is a pretty social little guy, but for some reason he doesn't like new people all that much - especially blonde ladies. So, when Kelly came to do the intake appointment he wasn't happy to work with her. She was able to tell me what needed to be done so that I could work with Oli- ofcourse he didn't really cooperate with me either. When I showed him the picture of a ball- which he says about 500 times a day he completely ignored me- when it was time to see if he could use a crayon on paper and draw a line instead he hid the crayons in the couch. That is just how Oliver operates :) He did however sit with me to try and string some blocks and really concentrated on it and loved doing it.

His 'case' will be presented to the area team from I&T on Wednesday and then I will be getting a phone call to set up an appointment for his evaluation- which has a deadline of August 1st- wish us luck that it all goes well!! He needs to be 25% or more delayed to get services. It is a bizarre twist of fate to be wanting your child to be a certain percent delayed- if he isn't 25% or more delayed we will have to do private therapy which right now we flat out don't have money in our budget for- but I'm sure we'll make it work and do what needs to be done for our little man!!