worrying and imagining

Yesterday after story time, the kids were playing with puzzles and the librarian that runs the program came up to me offering a book called "living with autism."  It took me a few seconds to figure out what he could be talking about before I vehemently insisted that Jason does NOT have autism before I rushed the kids out the door.  He kept trying to convince me that there were great diagnostic tools in there as we were rushing away.  I was so furious and had to get out before I said something I might regret.  I'm sure he is remembering back to how Jason was slow to talk and saw that as a sign of autism.  It is a great case of how a little knowledge is a very dangerous thing!

Jason has been speaking for over a year now and his speech teacher said he picked it up faster than any other kids she had seen.  He is shy, but his social skills have been emerging more and more every day.  His imagination blows me away (more on that later!)  I don't think very much of this guys opinion, so why was I so pissed?  It probably had something to do with why I knew all these warning signs of autism.  I'm so glad that information about autism is getting out and parents are learning more about what to look for, but it certainly can freak out a mom who worries too much (like most of us do.) 

 

Speaking of his imagination I love hearing him play now.  He is always making up stories about what is going on with his cars or trains or anything else he is playing with.  His sister loves to get to join in!  Elizabeth has always wanted to play with anything her brother is playing with, but is just coming into playing with some of her own toys.  She has recently been really into cuddling her babies and putting them to bed.  They both of course love to play outside and Jeff taught Jason freeze tag and he has wanted to play it every time we got outside lately.  Thank goodness we have been having some beautiful weather recently.

hard new year!

My poor boy had such a hard new year.  We returned from holiday trip to San Antonio on Sunday December 30th.  Jeff and I were unpacking the truck and it was pretty cold outside so we brought the kids inside to run out energy pent up from the 5 hour drive.  Aparently Jason's idea of buning off energy was to grab his sister's cart and run it under her nose, so of course she had to grab it back.  As I said Jeff and I were in and out of the house bringing stuff in so some of this has been pieced together.  What we think happened was Jason was standing on the elevated brick fireplace pulling on the cart and Elizabeth was below him and she pulled him off balance.  We think he fell face first onto the brick, but we know he ended up with a nasty gash on his forehead. 

Jeff and I walked in with our arms full to Jason crying in the other room.  Jeff found him saying I think I got an ouchy.  I cleained him up and realized it was really deep so we hopped back into the car to head over to the ER.  I was about to say that I'm pretty proud of us for keeping him out of the ER for almost 4 years, but I forgot his trip when he was only 3 days old for jaundice.  When we got to the ER it was a bit of a wait, but we were bumped to the front of the line.  Aparently a 3 year old with a bleeding head wound gets you the premire service at the Fairfield Emergency Room.

The doctor had hoped he could just use glue, but the wound kept opening up so they had to hold poor Jason down and give him 3 stiches.  Funny enough when it was all over Jason said the worst part was having the light shined on him so the doctor could see.  It was difficult to keep him to leave the bandage and most recently the scab alone.  He got the stiches out on Saturday and we are hoping the scar won't be too bad.

Very Merry Christmas

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas.  Jason was not feeling well at all on Christmas Eve and after a trip to the doctor we found out he had a pretty bad ear infection.  We were worried that it would ruin his Christmas, but thank God for modern medicine, he was feeling much better the next day. 

Santa has been here!

We were all pretty spoiled this Christmas, we must have been pretty good this year.  Jeff got some tools, games, and shirts.  I got lots of stuff for the house (vacuum, steam mop, towels, pillow and sheets), necklaces and books.  Jason must be taking after his father because he got lots of games, trains and construction equipment.  Elizabeth is drowing in little people (house, circus, princess palace and car) and dolls, with some clothes thrown in.


Elizabeth loved opening any and all gifts!


This was a very popular gift! I think there were 4 of them by the end of the morning

Jason in his new cowboy slippers and opening his scooter

very happy Grandma


Elizabeth loves playing in the house from Aunt Michelle

Jeff showing Jason his new drill

Jason's favorite toy: his remote controlled train!


Elizabeth and I opening our matching quilts

We were just so thrilled to get to spend this time with each other and our family.  We wish you a wonderful new year!

Christmas trains

This season always gets so busy.  Right now I am in my bake-a-thon, but I needed to sit down for a bit so I figured I would post some of the photos from this weekend.  We headed into Dallas to finish up the last of our shopping and to see the trains.  Every year at North Park Mall Ronald McDonald house puts on Trains at North Park.  We went last year and it was amazing.  I was really looking forward to going again this year and we weren't disappointed.  Jason loved chasing the trains back and forth and even Elizabeth got in on watching the trains.  They were worn out by the end of the afternoon and we had a very quiet drive home.






He was SO excited


This is the train that Jason chased everywhere


Daddy providing a bit of non-train entertainment for Elizabeth

Santa's Lap

It is pretty classic that little children freak out a bit when they sit on Santa's Lap and our Elizabeth was no different.  We were in Virginia to celebrate my dad"s retirement and since the kids were all dressed up to go to the ceremony we decided to get pictures done with Santa.  At first Elizabeth was willing to follow her brother, but eventually she decided that she was not okay with this Santa guy.

And then there was one!  At least we did get a good photo at the beginning.


After our Santa attempt we headed over to Grandpa's retirement ceremony.



Earlier in the weekend we got to see my cousin Chrissy and her family.  We all headed over to the Air and Space museum and the Natural History museum on the Mall in DC.  We don't get to see them much so we really enjoyed spending time with them!




We also celebrated my brother's 26th birthday.




It was a great trip back to Virginia, but it is nice to be home again also.  Jason really enjoys being able to play with all his trains again!

The most amazing husband or why I'm a klutz

Our house was starting to look gross so I decided to clean it from top to bottom.  It would be nice to return from Thanksgiving to a clean house then get decorated for Christmas.  When it opened I called the hand surgery unit because Elizabeth's wrist, where they took the skin graft from for her hand surgery, was taking longer than expected to heal and was possibly looking infected.  I sent the nurse a picture and she said she would talk to the doctor and call me back.  So while I was waiting I went back to cleaning.  I had just finished moping the kitchen and was moving all the cleaning stuff to the bathroom.  I grabbed the paper towels, cleaning spray and my phone so that I could catch the nurses return call.  As I turned to head out of the kitchen it happened, I dropped my phone and spash, of course it landed in the mop bucket!  I could not make that shot if I had tried!  I grabbed it out and worked on ripping off the cover. 

After looking on the internet I found out that there are a few things you are NOT supposed to do if you drop your phone in water:

• Turn it on
• plug it into the power cord

Before I saw this guess what I did...turned it on.  The screen had dark spots on it and the sound wasn't working, but I could and did text my husband freaking out about what I did.  Then I remembered I had heard about people using rice to help dry out waterlogged phones.  I realized that the rice was getting lodged in the crevices for the power cord and the headphones so I plugged it in and put in the headphones to avoid getting rice stuck in there.  Then I looked online and realized I was doing everything wrong and expecting miracles too soon.  So I ploped it into a bowl of rice, left it alone and went back to cleaning.

I was just finishing all the cleaning when I heard the garage door open.  In walks Jeff and says so what happened with your phone?  I relate it all to him and he asks if going out to lunch would make me feel any better.  Yup I numbed the pain of my loss with yummy food for a little bit.  Now I'm going to leave my phone in the rice until Wednesday when we leave for San Antonio and hope it will work!

I get it!

You know when you have been struggling with something and then you finally get it?  My mom used to say "light dawns on marble head."  Well that is how I felt this week.  I have been trying to get better at photography.  Not like I want to become a professional photographer, more like I want to capture my kids really well.  I know the most important part is understanding my camera and how to make the most of my photos straight out of the camera, but sometimes things don't work out right.  So I have been wishing I knew more about some photo editing software.  We were gifted Photoshop Elements and it had been sitting on the shelf until I decided to install it.  Now what?  I opened it and had no clue what to do!  So a couple of months went by and I ran across a tutorial by accident and the light dawned.  I'm slowly (very slowly) learning to figure this stuff out.  So you get to be tourtured by the fruit of my work:

I've always wanted to learn how to do this!




Something else I'm loving, Jason's imgination!  Lately when Jeff comes home he has been begging Daddy to play Pooh and Piglet.  Sometimes Elizabeth is even let in on the action.  They go to the "thoughtful spot" to figure out if they are going to play chase, go ice skating, go fishing, listen to Owl read a story, or do a dozen other things Jeff is wonderful enough to think up.




And of course we need some focus on my sweet girl wearing a headband for about 5 seconds!