New Adventures

This year, Gigi enters first grade. She is six now and it's time for her to become more socially involved with her peers.

With this in mind, we have signed her up for Karate classes through a local Homeschool co-op as well as Girl Scouts. i believe we will involve her in more activity, possibly a sport in the Spring (we're thinking t-ball or soccer). She has expressed tons of interest in voice lessons, but I have not been able to find an instructor that will take on a 6 year old - the ones I have contacted will only begin lessons at 7 years old.

Little man will be attending some classes of his own this year. Our local Family Resource Center provides some great group classes for little ones. We will be participating in Little Amigos (Spanish class), Music and More and Wonder Years (Skills for 2 and 3 year olds) on a rotating basis. I am also planning on signing him up for our local Tiny Tots program which is ran by the Parks department. Gigi was in this program for 2 years and loved it. It's a drop-off class, twice a week for 2 hours each time. This will not happen until January though as he needs to be 3 and his birthday is not until the end of October.

In addition to these outside activities, we are also keeping our annual family passes to Busch Gardens and we have added annual family passes to MOSI (Museum of Science and Industry).

As far as school is concerned, I recently posted about our goals for this year on our Homeschool blog. I have a separate blog for school because I need to show certain things at the end of the year to our evaluator and it just makes it easier. You can read about that through this link if you want.

Until next time, here are some random pictures of the kids:

The Sleeping Bear Awakens...

Okay, so I know it has been over a YEAR since I have posted anything new on this blog. I have not been totally under a rock though. For the past year I was running my other blog where I was providing lots of product reviews and giveaways. It was loads of fun, but then reality set in and I realized I was spending WAY too much time on the internet. So I decided for the sake of my family (and my eyes) to back off.

So why then am I back on the computer, blogging again just somewhere else? Well, I will tell you this...do not expect to see daily or even weekly updates on what's going on in our home. I will definitely not be posting very often - just trying to be real here.

I just wanted to let everyone know that we are doing well and I do hope to get on here occasionally to update you on what we are doing.

So for a very quick, quick update here are just some of the things we have done over the past year:

We finally found, and bought, a new home. this house is literally double the square footage of our last home with two more bedrooms and one more bathroom than what we had. We also now have a pool and tons more storage space.

We are now in our second official year of homeschooling and I LOVE it!

Gigi is currently doing a basic Girl Scout mini camp over the Summer and we are hoping to get her into a troop in the Fall. She has had another birthday and is now six years old. Her last party was a mermaid/luau theme.

Gigi is scheduled to start Karate lessons (we are finally ready to give this a second chance) in August.

I am attempting to teach her some basics on the piano this year and she is still deciding if she wants to play soccer or t-ball this year for her outdoor sport.

She has finally learned to sleep all through the night in her own bed - seriously just about a month ago! So, as a reward we got her a "big girl" bed - a twin size!

behavior issues still arise on a daily basis, but we are much better at handling them now and can usually squash an outburst before it turns into a full on meltdown. She is still not medicated at all for her ADHD.

Gigi continues to need glasses and we are still patching her lazy eye. Her vision has greatly improved but we are still patching just to make sure she does not slip backward.

Little man celebrated his second birthday (an Elmo theme) last October. He has had a couple more seizures since I last wrote, but the neurologist says it is something he will eventually grow out of.

He continues to have some speech delays, but is getting better everyday. The comprehension is definitely there, so it is strictly an articulation delay. We have had his hearing tested extensively and the results were always great.

This year he will be participating more actively in our homeschool lessons where he will begin to learn his numbers, letters, shapes and colors.

He is very much a boy in many ways - loves to climb on everything, is quite rambunctious, and loves cars and trucks.

However he is also in touch with feminine side thanks to big sis. He has his own little boy baby doll that he cares for and he loves all the Disney Princesses.

Hubby and I are doing great. We are continually discovering ways to sneak in "grown-up time" and enjoy each others company. We are both happy that in our new home we each have our very own space separate from everything else in the house where we can pursue our own hobbies.

Hubby likes to paint and listen to his music in his man room as well as play with his various instruments. I have my own space in the guest room where I can sew, scrapbook and walk on my treadmill.

Well, that's a quick review of some of the important things going on.

As I said earlier, I will not be posting anything on a regular, scheduled basis, but I will be updating at least once a month.


I'm looking forward to sharing our homemade happenings with you again soon!

Elmo Love

Trying Some New things for Gigi's Behavior

Ok, so Gigi's behavior has been improving but it is a very slow and long process. I know that these things take time, but i can't help but think that there is more that we could be dong to help her.

So here is what we have done over the past year;

- Although we do not stick to it 100% of the time, we have changed her diet to follow along the lines of the ADHD Diet the pediatrician had recommended last year. Like, I said, we don't follow it perfectly and we don't follow it all the time, but we stick to it as much as possible and it's now been a year. She had warned that this would not be the total answer, but I honestly hoped to see a more dramatic difference. the thing we most failed to follow was the dairy. Gigi LOVES milk, cheese and yogurt and I just couldn't bear to take away these things that are in every other way very healthy for kids.

- We have had regular appointments with a behavior therapist. Unfortunately, he really has not suggested anything we had not tried before but he does force us to have accountability. Knowing that we have to go back into his office and report on what we have done and what has worked/not worked makes us try harder I suppose. It's a little sad to me that I need this push, but hey, I am only human. Anyway, he has suggested some breathing techniques to her to try and control her emotions, listening to some calm music with headphones to take her away from surrounding distractions and frustrations, reward charts to visually show her how she is behaving day to day and a visual routine board on what is expected throughout the day.

But, as I said earlier, I keep feeling that there is more we can be doing for her. So, being the internet junkie that I am, I began to surf the web. I came across some forums for parents of ADHD children where they discussed what worked for them. I wrote down a few interesting options and then did some independent research on each.

Namely, I looked into DHA supplements, Vitamin B, some balm for sleep help and an herbal tea for sleep as well.

Well, I went to our local health store and began searching. I spoke with one of the associates in the store about what I was looking for. I never mentioned the specific items I was looking for, only that I was looking for some things to help my ADHD child. She immediately recommended DHA. So, I picked up a bottle of liquid DHA made specifically for children. It is said to help with focus. The associate also recommended another supplement I had not heard of; Behavior Balance - DMG, also in liquid form. This is for improved behavior patterns and social skills and contains Vitamin B which I wanted to get anyway. Together the supplements totaled nearly $50, but I am really hoping to see a difference in our little girl.

I also wanted to pick up a really good multi-vitamin that is free of artificial colors, dyes or sweeteners, but there were so many choices I felt overwhelmed. My dad's wife is a dietitian and nutritionist and she had sent us some chewable vitamins a few years ago that were really good - maybe I will ask her what they were called and stick with those.

So, Gigi is to have a 1/2 teaspoon of each supplement a day. I gave her the first dose today so I will give it a couple weeks before reporting back on how/if it is working.

The other thing I looked into were some things to help with her sleep. She has a very hard time winding down at night, something I have learned is very common among ADHD children. I read about a balm that you rub on the temples that has some aromatherapy qualities to calm and relax. The health food store didn't have any of this though. The other thing I had read about was easy enough to get from the local supermarket; Celestial Seasonings Sleepytime Tea. Tonight was the third night I have given it to Gigi, but already I have noticed a big difference. I hope it continues.

If you want to know more about this tea and our experience so far with it, you should check out my new blog (yes, I have yet ANOTHER blog) at www.busybuzzer.blogspot.com.

Well, I think that is all for now. Hopefully at least some of this will work!

Gigi's Fifth Birthday!

On May 27th Gigi turned FIVE!!!! I can not believe she is already five. I don't know why, but five seems like such a milestone birthday.

Anyhow, her birthday fell on a weekday this year so we had her party the Sunday before - on the 23rd. She wanted a "Hannah Montana" party and so that is what she got! I have been slowly collecting items for this party for about 6 months!!

Just for her party, I made a tutu in her party colors: pink purple and blue. I also embellished a shirt to with it. I appliqued the "Birthday Girl" to the front with Hannah Montana fabric. Of course little man had to be rocking out too - check out his "faux-hawk"!

Since we are not currently in our own home, I rented out the community clubhouse for the day to hold the party. I decorated using pink, purple and blue. With my trusty Cricut machine, I created centerpieces for the tables as well as some little confetti type cut-outs to throw on top of the tablecloths.

We had a pinata.

I set up a craft table where the kids decorated little cloth tote bags that they used to catch their pinata goodies. On one wall I hung a store bought mural where I took pictures of Gigi and all of her friends together.

For food we decided to make our lives easy and we just order some pizza pies from Pizza Hut.

I was not too happy with how the cake came out. I don't have any of my own kitchen stuff here - and definitely don't have any of my normal baking things. But it was Hannah Montana so it worked out.

In the end, all the kids had a blast and Gigi got tons of great gifts.

Last day of VPK

Thursday was Gigi's last day of VPK. To "celebrate" the school had an end of the year party for the entire school - but students only. Parents were not invited to this end of the year party.

The school also did NOT acknowledge that the kids in the VPK class would be going on to Kindergarten next year in any way - no graduation, no certificate - nothing!!

I will go into more on this whole disaster another night. It makes me so angry thinking about everything and I just don't have the energy now.

In short though, I am HIGHLY disappointed with this "school" and it's directors and I really feel like Gigi had gained NOTHING from this entire year - not even social skills.


Details to follow later....

Gigi's Five Year Well Check Up

Gigi had her five year old well check up today.

My little peanut is now 26.8 pounds and 37 inches tall!!!! She is so tiny!

Her blood pressure was great at 78/60 and she passed her hearing test with flying colors.

Physically she is doing fantastic. We are still working on the behavior issues, but we are making progress. We are also working on sleeping through the night in her own room. All in good time, I guess.

The good news is, she is very healthy!!