Never a dull moment...

So, I left Tommy and Anna alone in the living room while I went to my room to do some work. I wasn't in there long before Anna burst in yelling "Tommy took off his diaper!" This has happened many times before, so I went searching for the naked kid. I found him running around in circles in the living room happy with his newfound freedom. I quickly diapered his bottom and went searching for the old diaper, but I couldn't find it anywhere! I glanced into the kitchen and saw the diaper, face-down in all it's poopy glory, on the kitchen counter! Ahh....the joys of motherhood!

Here's a box picture, finally.

Rainy Day Fun

This weekend is Anna's Fall Break, and since it's been raining, we haven't been able to go outside and do a lot of playing. So, I pulled out some boxes, and the kids had a great time! Tommy loved hide in the box and pop out laughing like a maniac, and both liked to climb in and around the boxes, pretending they were all sorts of different things. There's nothing like empty boxes to stir imaginations! (I'll post pictures as soon as Blogger lets me!)

Tommy's ECI Review

Last Monday, Tommy had his one-year ECI review. They evaluated him in five different categories: cognitive, communication, social, emotional, and adaptive behaviors. He scored at 29 months or above in each category (he's 27 months), except in communication, and he scored only at 21 months! Yikes. So, he is continuing with ECI. Now that he's 2 he has been assigned a real speech therapist. We just had an Early Childhood Specialist, who's main job is not really speech therapy; she just deals with minor developmental cases. She was great with Tommy, and we made some progress, but I'm glad to have an actual speech therapist now. When Tommy was being evaluated, the speech therapist was able to tell me so many more things about Tommy's development than our ECS ever did. I hope we can now make a lot of progress with Tommy's speech!

Another Interesting Discovery

I was pruning trees and bushes Saturday morning, and freaked out when I first found this guy because I picked him up with my other branches! He blended in perfectly! We looked him up in our bug book, and we think he will become a sphinx moth. You can't really tell by the pictures, but he was pretty big. He was more than 3 inches long, and about 1/2 inch wide. Isn't he so cool?

YUCK!!

On Conference Sunday, mom gave me these beautiful lantanas to plant in my front yard. They were in a vase of water, so they needed to be put in the ground as soon as I could get them there. As soon as we got home, I went straight to the yard to plant them. It was almost 8pm, so it was getting dark. I got the first one in the ground with no problem, but when I went to plant the second one, I smelled something really bad. Almost as if something had died. I thought that it was probably just a little bunny that crawled under a bush and died, so I continued to plant the lantana. As soon as I finished planting it, I decided to look for the reason for the awful smell, and looked just to the right of me. And there it was. GROSS!!! It was a large, white bird! It was less than 2 feet from where I was planting the lantana!
I could barely see it because it was so dark outside! YUCK! Danny got to take it to the trash can, lucky guy!

Anna lost her tooth today!

Anna was eating her lunch today at school when she lost her tooth! She didn't cry, even when she was sent to the nurse's office to get cleaned up. The nurse gave her a cute tooth holder that she could wear as a necklace, and her teacher gave her the special "I lost a tooth" bag. Each student who loses a tooth gets to take home the bag and fill out a special page in a scrapbook about how and when they lost their tooth. They also write about what they think the Tooth Fairy will do with the tooth. Anna said that she thinks the tooth fairy will turn the teeth into daisies. Hmmm...interesting. The bag also has silly books about teeth and the Tooth Fairy. Anna has also discovered that she has ANOTHER loose tooth! She's growing up so fast! Oh, and her face is dirty in the close-up picture because she just finished her snack. She didn't get to finish her lunch at school, so she came home starving!

Tommy's New Bed

Tommy has a new bed! ( Thanks to mom, and her dead-beat renter.) He was getting out of his crib every night and coming into my room, so Danny and I decided the crib needed to go! Besides, we didn't want him to hurt himself climbing out of his crib in the middle of the night. So, the first night with his new bed, we stayed up and did the SuperNanny thing and put him back into his bed everytime he got out. Well, that didn't work too great because we were up until 1:30am putting him back in his bed, and he wasn't slowing down! So, we decided to take turns with Tommy in his room, sitting next to his bed. That didn't work out too great either, because he would wake up and cry everytime we moved, thinking we were leaving him! It was a miserable night, but it was Friday night, so we didn't have to worry about school the next day. Saturday night was a little better, and so was Sunday night, but he just wasn't happy in his bed! He would get out of his bed crying and come try to sleep on the couch! By Tuesday night, he wasn't waking up in the middle of the night crying, but we would find him on the couch each morning! Finally this morning we didn't find him on the couch! He was asleep in his bed! He did wake up at one point last night, but he went right back to sleep when I put him in his bed! Growing up his hard for kids AND parents!

Anna's Dance Class and more

Anna is taking dance from a friend of mine who lives out in Wylie. She teaches out of her home, and only charges $20 a month! Anna's dance class is Friday at 4:30 and it seems to be a great end to a busy week of school for her. Anna is now in her 3rd week of dance class and she loves it! She dances around the house, and loves the fact that she's now a real ballerina.

Anna also has her first loose tooth! I can't believe she's growing up so fast! I'll let you know when she finally loses it! She's also doing better with her alphabet. She is required to know all of the letters, upper and lower case, so it's been dificult, but everyday she makes some improvement.

(In the second picture, you can see Tommy with his notorious spoon!)

Nothing much

Well, there's not much going on right now. Anna is struggling a little in school to learn her letters. She knows 3/4 of the alphabet, but struggles with R, K, U, V, E, F, G mostly. I can understand because R and K look so much alike, as well as U,V, and E, F. We have to go over each letter every night, so she can finally master all the letters. She gets frustrated, but she is making improvement. Our goal is to have her reading by Christmas.

Tommy has decided that he doesn't like to sleep alone, and that I am the ONLY person in the world that he can sleep with. He did this Monday night, and refused to sleep at all unless I was with him, and again last night. It makes it harder that he can get out of his crib now. I'm hoping that this is a phase and soon he will stop waking up at 2 in the morning wanting mommy! I'm not quite sure what to do about this. I can't let him cry it out, because he can get out of his bed and hunt me down, and a dark house is not a safe place for a toddler. Any ideas? I kid you not, I had only about 4 hours of sleep last night because of Tommy! It sucks.

That's it for now, I'll post some charming pictures of my kids as soon as I find some more extra time!

Just Stuff

So, Anna is really liking school. She did great the first week, but we are still struggling to get into a good routine. She wakes up around 7, but she plops in front of the TV to watch cartoons, and doesn't really want to start getting ready. So, by 7:45 I'm rushing to get Tommy AND Anna ready to walk out the door by 8. We live really close to the school, but we have to leave before 8:10, to get her to school before the 8:20 bell sounds. (we walk) When she gets home from school, she is REALLY grumpy! She will take orders from no one! She's just so tired of following instructions all day that when she gets home, she just wants to relax. So, now she comes home, and has to go straight to her room, or the office, to play alone, until she can handle following orders. That has been working best for all of us. She gets the alone time she desperately needs, and we don't have to hear her screaming at us.

More first day pictures

My little girl is growing up!

Anna's first day of school!

Today is Anna's first day of school! It took her a long time to get to sleep last night, so I was worried that she would be sleepy and grumpy this morning, but she woke up with a smile on her face, and was excited to go to school. She was ready in 15 minutes! That includes breakfast and brushing her teeth! We walked to school, which is only 1/2 a mile away, and got there about 10 minutes later. (Tommy is a slow walker, and likes to take detours.) Anna was great. She went straight to her classroom, found her seat, and started on her first assignment of the day, which was to draw a picture of herself, or someone she knows, and put her name on it. Tommy was a pain, though. He threw himself on the ground and screamed and cried because he couldn't play with the stuff in Anna's classroom, and he REALLY wanted to go to the playground. I didn't get to say good-bye to Anna because of Tommy, but she had given me about a million hugs and kisses before we left for school, and while we were walking to school! I did okay, too. I didn't have time to cry because I was dealing with Tommy. I am a little worried about Anna and how her first day will go, and if she misses me. We'll see when I pick her up at 3:20.

Mr. Cool

Tommy loves to wear his sunglasses, even when he's eating his mac and cheese! We call him Mr. Cool although he looks super cheesy.

Anna's Birthday Party

Anna's birthday party went really well! Anna invited 9 girls, but I had 7 of them RSVP, and only 5 of them showed up! It was nice to have a small party, though. These girls are quite loud and VERY silly, so it seemed like there was more than 6 of them! Mandie was so great to come and help; I don't know if I could have done it without her! We had finger foods for lunch: chicken nuggets, apple slices, and carrot sticks, and we didn't have a cake, instead we had cupcakes. The girls loved the food, and it was easy for me to clean up! The jewlery boxes were a bigger hit than the jewlery, I think, but we all had a great time!
(Don't you just love Anna's super-cheesy smile?)

Happy Birthday Anna!

Yeah! Today is Anna's birthday! Too bad she has Strep! Yep, that's right, Tommy gave Anna an early birthday present! I checked her temperature yesterday morning and she was fine, but after lunch she suddenly had a fever of more than 101 degrees. I got an appointment with my favorite doctor just an hour later, and it makes a HUGE difference! She still has a fever this morning, but hopefully it will break soon, so she can enjoy her birthday. Tomorrow is her party and she is so excited! I hope it all turns out well!

Strep...again.

Well, it's official. Tommy has Strep for the third time this year. He also has an awful cold to go on top of that! That is why he was so grumpy on Sunday. He had no symptoms whatsoever, just a cough and sneezing, which indicated that he has a yucky cold, but he was SUPER cranky, so I took him to the doctor. (FYI-NEVER go to Dr. Stanton in Plano! He's awful!) There are 5 doctors in the office that I take Tommy to, and his regular doctor wasn't there this morning, so I took the first available appointment and it was with Dr. Stanton. He did a Strep culture just because it's policy when there is a little redness on the throat, and it was positive. Yuck. I will disinfecting my house for the millionth time tomorrow!

Kindergarden Pre-Screen

So, Danny and I were worried about Anna's Kindergarden Pre-Screen because they were going to ask about tying shoes, upper and lower case letters of the alphabet, and recognizing numbers. As it turns out, they didn't ask about tying shoes, and Anna did really good with her counting and letter identifying! Her teacher is really nice, and said that Anna will not be starting out behind the rest of her classmates. She is one of the youngest in the entire Kindergarden, though. There is only one other kid who has a birthday in August. Anna is really excited about school starting, and thought it was neat that her school teacher looks a lot like her Primary teacher!

What do you think?

New light

Old light
We bought a new light fixture to replace our kitchen light that goes over the sink. Our previous one was ugly (as you can see in the second picture) and didn't put out much light. We bought this one at Ikea and spent only $25! We found similar ones at Home Depot for twice the price! So, what do you think?

Anna's party invitation

Here's Anna's birthday party invitation. It turned out really cute! I blurred out my address and phone number, just in case you were wondering what was going on there! Anna didn't like having her picture on the invite, but she's SO cute!