Homemade Happenings: She's Alive!!

WOW!! It has been an unbelievably LONG time since I last posted..wow.. but I am still alive!! I don't even know where to begin...I guess I should start where I left off..

First of all though let me just say that I do not have access to all my pictures right now. I am working solely off the laptop and all of my pics are saved on my desktop and to disks..which are in storage (more on that later), so I will not be able to post pice of everything I would like, but you'll get the ideas :)

Updates on Gigi....

August was the start of Preschool for Gigi. Sending her to preschool was an internal struggle for me. First off, it's not mandatory or even necessary. Anyhow, in the end we signed her up and off she went.

She is attending a Montessori school, which was the compromise. If she was going to school it was going to be a child led school that allowed her to choose her activities. She only goes from 9am to 12pm Monday through Friday.

Here she is on her very first day:

She seems to like, but honestly she is not learning much academically. Socially on the other hand, we have had issues since the start. She can not sit still during circle time and often is removed and either placed into time out or made to sit by the teacher. She has been sent to time out numerous times for kicking, pinching and pushing other kids. She rushes through her worksheets and therefore makes careless mistakes. Her handwriting is very sloppy only because she rushes. Although she does all the activities correctly, she rushes from one thing to the next.

These are all classic signs of ADHD, but again her pediatrician does not want to officially diagnose her yet. We are waiting to see if some things are just due to immaturity. On that note, we have also been seeing a behavior therapist to try and combat some of the issues we have been having.
We seem to be making some progress but there is till lots of work to be done. We have already been told that there will probably come a time when we will hit a brick wall simply because Gigi can not focus on us long enough to know what behavior is expected. She is getting better though..at least in public a little. :)

So with that being said we now face the question of kindergarten. Again, hubby and I cam to a compromise. I do not want my child spending the majority of her day sitting in time out away from her peers nor do I want my child labeled a problem child for disrupting the rest of the class etc. So, we have found a charter school really close by (Charter school is a school that is run like a private school - smaller classes, more one on one attention, they make their own curriculum etc - but it does not cost us anything.) We have applied for this particular school because they have a great way of including ADHD children into ALL daily activities (no time outs because they can't sit still in circle time etc) SO - if Gigi is accepted into this school (it's a random lottery drawing unfortunately ) then this is where she will be attending kindergarten. If she does not get in, then I will be homeschooling her for kindergarten. Now it's just a waiting game.

Gigi had another appointment with her eye doctor in January. Her vision is 20/20 with glasses. Her prescription has been changed to something weaker and she only has to patch once a week now. Yay!!

Hmmm..what else..she is starting to read, but will only do it when she is in the mood - SO her :) Though not always neat, she is writing and loves to write notes to everyone!

She is drawing beautifully!! I am really amazed sometimes at how well she draws. I will have to scan some of her stuff and upload it for you to see.

She is still taking gymnastics and although she is no natural at it, she really has fun so we will let her keep going.

When she is having a good day she can be such a sweet girl. I am sad to say that those days are outnumbered lately but they are still there. On the good days she is a great little helper to everyone, including her little bro. She will give lovey hugs and kisses. We are working on getting that precious girl back full time :)

Ok...now J:

J is now 17 months old!!! He is about 28 inches tall and almost 18 pounds. He has 6 teeth. And yes, he is still nursing and we have gone to all day cloth diapering using disposables only at night. he took his first steps on Christmas Eve and is now running everywhere. He is a great eater - eats everything in sight! He does not say very much. He can say Mama super clear. He calls hubby "baba". He JUST started (like last week) saying "nana" for banana. He says "u" for up. That's about it :) He does know some signs - he can sign "bath", "more" (acutally he uses the "again" sign), "cracker"and "drink". We actually recently had him evaluated by a child psychologist that specializes in child development. For speech he actually gave J credit for the signs he uses because it shows he wants to communicate, but even with that he is slightly below the minimum of what he should be doing for his age. the dr's recommendation was to wait until he is 20 months and bring him back for another evaluation to see if he has improved. I think I will get a second opinion - if he is going to need therapy I would rather do it sooner not later.

In January, J had a seizure. I swear it was the scariest day of my life. He and I went by ambulance to the hospital. They determined that it was a febrile seizure . HE had a temp of 100.2 when the emt's arrived. They did all kinds of tests, ct scans etc and this was the only explanation they could give. The downside of this is he is more likely than other children to have another seizure now. The plus side is usually kids who have a febrile seizure DON'T have another. Keeping my fingers crossed this doesn't ever happen again.

Other than that he is doing great. He may not speak, but he babbles plenty and always seems to get his point across. He gives the most squishy hugs and the sweetest kisses. He blows kisses too. Much to daddy's dismay he loves to wear his sister's shoes, boas, tiaras and purses.

He is such a sweetie pie! Unfortunately he is very stuck on Mama!! He is back in our bed for half the night. He goes to sleep with no problems at 7:30 every night, but he is up screaming at about 10pm. I put him back down a couple times until I decide I need to go to sleep and then I give up and take him to bed with me - bad mama!! Oh well.

Updates on the whole family!

Ok...let's see..towards the end of the year we decided we needed to make some kind of move towards our goals for our family. We want to move out of state for quite a few reasons - the biggest reasons:

We want a bigger house with more land
We want to live somewhere that has actual seasons!
We want to live somewhere that has a better school system

Unfortunately our current house has us stuck here. the housing market has tanked so horribly in our area that we owe much more money than our home is actually worth right now. Still we wanted to make a positive move in the right direction. So, we rented out our house!! We signed a one year lease on January 1st. We then moved the majority of our possessions into a storage unit rental. We moved the necessities and personal items (photos, file cabinets etc) into my mom's house, which is where we are now staying. My mom has a 4 bedroom house and lived there alone so we were able to take over two bedrooms - one for hubby and I and one for the kids to share - and one bathroom. Our rooms and bathroom are on the opposite end of the house from her bedroom so we have a little separation which is nice. So the plan is to stay here for a bit while we pay off debts and build a savings account. When we have a comfortable amount in our savings we will then move out of state and rent there until we can actually sell our home here. We moved in at mom's about a week before Thanksgiving. So far we have managed to pay off our credit cards so we have no credit card debt now - YAY!! We are now working on paying down a personal loan we took in 2008 and building up our savings. So far so good.

Well...that is the important stuff I guess.. I'll just overload you with some random pics of the months I was M.I.A. now!!

Just before Christmas..standing, but not taking steps yet :)