Baby Pool!

One good thing about being on Team Green (not finding out the sex of the baby) other than driving you people crazy, is that the baby pool is WAY more fun!! Take a shot people, see how close you come!

Bubbles by Oliver Goss

Where do bubbles go when they fly?
Do they go up, into the sky?
Or down below into the earth
To fill earthworms with their mirth!

Where do bubbles go when they're gone?
Are they somewhat here, or else beyond?
Does it matter what they believe,
or when they go do they just leave?

Is there a bubble heaven, and a bubble hell?
And is there a bubble Nirvana for Eastern blown bubbles as well?
Does it depend on the breath with which they are blown -
Or on the air on which they are flown?

Like the bubbles are you and I.
We all want to know where we go when we die.
For when we "pop" I know one thing well
No bubble is around after they go to tell!

The Christmas Blahs

Bleh. You know that feeling when you just want to punch an elf? When you think if you hear Christmas in Sarajevo ONE. MORE. TIME. you are going to throw yourself from your car? When all the presents you were so excited about giving start to look like junk and you can't tell whether your White Elephant gift is funny, too nice or actually just some piece of junk you found in your garage? Yea, thats how you know you have it. The Christmas Blahs.

Your intentions to have a festive season starts off good enough. You get swept up in the excitement of shopping and caroling and decorating the house with lights and a tree, and baking all sorts of things you would never even think of attempting at any other time of the year. You may even get ambitious and decide to buck the Target system and handmake all of your gifts. Then, inevitably, you get tired. Cause these things don't just appear!! In order to decorate the house you have to make three trips to the attic, bug your husband to help you find the the right hammer and nails for light stringing, and become close personal friends with Gloria down at the Hobby Lobby searching for that perfect wreath or blow up Santa in Helicopter lawn ornament. Making a batch of cookies and start a family tradition with your toddler son, requires kicking your oven, 14 trips to HEB, cursing your oven, borrowing cookie cutters from better moms, and finally requesting that Santa bring you a new oven. Picking a tree becomes a real v. fake philosophy discourse. Santa becomes either a rebellion or a web of lies depending on how you were raised and scarred for life. Christmas isn't Christmas until someone has cried, someone has threatened divorce, and someone has gotten drunk (not necessarily in that order).

Also when did the tradition of whoever is youngest has to travel to see all the older family members start? I would like to give that person a stern talking to! If you don't have a child under the age of 18, you should be the one to get in YOUR car and visit all of your kids. Exceptions will be given to those who are bed ridden, infirm or recovering from major surgeries. It is unfair also that since parents decide to divorce, the kids are then shuffled from one house to another on Christmas. Default to the children. It is ONE night people, suck it up and have dinner together, you had babies together, you can stand to give this ONE DAY to your children. Same thing goes with inlaws. My perfect Christmas is one where only children get gifts, my ENTIRE family gathers in one place, and no one treats anyone's girlfriend, wife, friend or other acquaintance with anything but love and goodwill. I firmly believe there isn't an argument alive that can't be solved with some Scrabble.

Every year the week before Christmas I have a meltdown and threaten to boycott Christmas next year. And every year the day after Thanksgiving I get sucked back into the racket because of all these dang Christmas specials and that 24/7 carol station on the radio. Every year I say I won't be a consumer, and every year my knitting needle breaks around the same time I do and off to Target I go with the masses to buy shit no one will ever use, no one will ever remember I gave and will look at for 32 seconds (if I am lucky) before moving onto the present that they ACTUALLY wanted.

Bah Humbug.

The Evaluation

We had our speech and nutrition evaluation this afternoon and three hours later, we have some answers.

First, the nutrition portion of the evaluation. The nutritionist was VERY supportive of extended breastfeeding, and Oliver's decision to tandem nurse once the sibling arrives. She mentioned nothing about weaning, and thought it was fantastic! I asked her about the milk issues, and she said pretty much that yea, we could be right, the sugars in milk (cooked out of yogurt and cheese) can upset the tummy at night but during the day the child is so distracted they don't notice. So, no milk still for the Oliver. She does want him to eat more calcium rich foods, so he will probably go back on Soy milk for dinner, and yogurt for snacks. I am really excited because she confirmed that for kids this age, fruits=veggies for the most part. So if your kid is a fruit lover but not so much with the green stuff, its okay, just to make sure that they get enough vitamin A. We also got a chart of nutrient rich foods which would be AWESOME to put on the fridge, if things stuck to our fridge, but I am sure it will just get shoved in a drawer somewhere. Sigh. She also suggested that since his snacks and lunch schedule is somewhat non-existent, we might try a more strict preschool like schedule to help when the baby comes. She said a lot of the time, kids will ask for food for attention when new babies are introduced and to nip it in the bud with a set schedule they are used to. He is 26ish pounds and 33" tall which puts him at 50%ish. Oliver enjoyed sitting in her "boat" (scale) and laying very very still for her measuring tool. Thus ended the nutritionist evaluation.

When the nutritionist left, two more people came to evaluate Oliver's speech and social development. There are two types of language, receptive and expressive. Receptive language is following requests, comprehension of vocabulary, listening skills, etc. Expressive language is the ability to talk back. After many many questions and tests (stacking cups, choosing the eating tool out of three objects, giving two commands that are unrelated, etc.) it was found that he was at a 3 year old level in regards to receptive language (!!!!!), but at a 20 month level in regards to expressive language. The three month delay he has doesn't qualify him for their program as he would have to lag behind at least 6 months for that, but they gave us some tips on how we can work with him. For instance, being very animated when we talk to him about words, not forcing him to repeat, and giving him words for the signs. They said if he doesn't start to learn 2 words a week within the next two months or so, we need to have them come out again. I can't imagine him all of a sudden talking, it blows my leetle mind! Of course, while they were here he said "mine", "this not that" and other phrases, so the evaluation was a bit skewed as to what we deal with on a daily basis. I believe Oliver is trying to have me committed.

He did score pretty low (18 months) on certain "self helping" skills. Such as getting dressed, getting undressed on his own (never has done this), potty communication (related to language), etc. He could have been signed up for the program for that, but I think we will just work on it more on our own. They gave us some ideas about how we can encourage him to be more self sufficient such as, pulling his pants half way up or down and encouraging him to do the rest himself. I chalk this lag up to me being terrified of walking into his room and seeing that he did some finger painting with his poop. Of course, as soon as they left, he took off his shirt and pulled down his pants, no joke.

Other milestones he reached today was talking on the phone with his grandmommy!! Well, he said "hi" and really really tried to say "banana" since he couldn't use both hands to sign it because he was holding the phone.