Time To Start Blogging Again Thursday - New Year's Day

I decided I'm going to start blogging... I've been away for a while and decided it's something I want to do again... Lots of changes have happened since I last wrote... So, I'll be spending the coming weeks catching everyone up... I hope you all are well and leave a comment so I know you are reading... Feel free to leave any questions you may have... I'll answer them when I can... See you again tomorrow...

Tooth Tuesday

If you hadn't guessed by the title of today's message... Linebacker has his first tooth coming through on the bottom right... I don't think I've ever seen a cuter tooth! Amazing how we can take the most joy in the tiniest things... He has to show his tooth off to those he meets... The children are all excited and now they think he can eat all kinds of things... ::smirk:: I had to explain he needs lots of teeth just like them... He does eat his far share of items without the aid of teeth... Some of his favorites are bits of chicken and waffles...

Today is Fat Tuesday... To celebrate I ate a whole regular size Baby Ruth... It was delicious... I'm going to switch Tasty Thursday to Tuesday starting next week... I think I'm going to share my Northern Pike Cakes recipe... It is simple and oh so Tasty... Thursday will be Thankful Thursdays when I list 10 things I'm especially Thankful for that week... If I don't limit myself it would be a very long post... ::grin:: I have no staff today because it's the staff birthday... He waited till late Sunday afternoon to say anything so no replacement staff could be found on such short notice...

I had all three conferences today... Monkey is doing AWESOME... The district had tried to hold him back a year because of his delays but I'm so glad I pushed for him to be in Kindergarten this year instead of a year of Head Start before starting Kindergarten next year... He is doing well in ST, OT and PT... He will probably not need OT or PT at all after 1st Grade... That is very exciting... In general academics in November when writing the numbers 0-20 he could only write 6... He can now write 17 out of 21... Upper case letters in November he could only write 2... He can now write 13 of 26... Lower case letters in November he could only write 5... He can now write 17 of the 26... He won't need ESY this summer but we are looking into a delayed students summer program through the local city park district... He has had wonderful improvement...

Next was my oldest Conference... He is doing very well too... They found a way to help him write... He builds the letter/number using wooden pieces then he writes the letter/number... That is a huge improvement over last year... It was a struggle to write just one letter or number for anything... He is also working on putting his shoes on correctly (left on left foot) and tying... He can put his shoes on his correct feet 75-80% of the time... They also noted he had only had 5 time outs in about 60 days... Where it was 20+ in a month... He would only work for 5 minutes or less... He can now work up to almost 1/2 hour with minimum disruptions... All amazing improvements...

We loaded up and had to drive across town for Peanut's conference... She is also doing very well and won't need to attend ESY this summer... She will need to come in for ST but only once a week... I'm hoping to work it out with my oldest ESY schedule... She has mastered since she started in September words that end with M and T... She has also mastered the concepts in/out, on/off, over/under, big/little, up/down and open/close... She still needs to master words that end with D, P and N... She is also still working on the concept of behind... She spoke in understandable sentence length in September of 2.5 words... She now speaks in an understandable sentence length of 3.95 words... It surpasses her goal of 3.5 words...

Linebacker showed off his gross motor, fine motor and social skills... I'm not sure if I wrote about this but he was screened last week and had to score a minimum of 48 out of a 100 to not be developmentally delayed... He scored a 78... The test is only up to 11 months so he is advanced at 9 months old...

I'm finishing off today with fighting the laundry and watching Out of Africa...

My Thoughts

I was very ill early this week and with our computer troubles it took me a while to start up a new blog again after what happened with the old one... I've been thinking about what I want and don't want to include in my new blog... It will probably be very similar to my old blog but more about what I enjoy doing vs just daily ramblings about what happened... I hope I feel better so I can really have this thing up and running... My blog looks so naked without all the extra things... The about me just 'popped' up so I didn't have to do that... I had my 15 wk OB check up today... Everything is going well and baby's heartbeat this visit was 150 even... I will leave you all with some pictures of snow from the 1st of the month (about 8-10")... We have more now but I haven't felt well enough to take any pictures... It was actually snowing while I took the PICS... The children are really enjoying it when they weren't sick... It is quite chilly (not as chilly as it can be but cooled down fast)... We are in the single digits and sometimes low teens above zero during the day... Minus teens at night... The funny thing is all I can think about is what I'm going to do in my garden with the snow melts... LOL!!!