Happenings

I promised you last night I would finish up that post so here I am. It is currently 3:30am so I am hoping this makes sense. A lot of things have been happening with our family over the past month. Where to start...

Pepper: We took her to an eye doctor for her cross eyed problem and his diagnosis was Congenital Esotropia. If she was just far-sighted then she would just need glasses to correct her cross-eyed-ness but unfortunately that isn't the problem. We will be taking her down to Primary Children's to see a specialist on the 15th, and we're told it's very likely she will need surgery to correct the issue. I'm a little nervous, I won't lie. We've had Pepper evaluated by an early intervention team to help her develop her gross motor skills. She will be 11 months old in a few days and has yet to roll over more than once let alone sit up or crawl. Her fine motor skills are right on schedule for her age group, and her social skills are actually above average. Her muscles are very stiff. We were assigned a physical therapist who will be coming to work with her every week or so. The team hasn't given us an official game plan yet, so far they have just been to our home to get to know Pepper and do a few tests. They told us there are a couple of red flags, she failed her hearing test and obviously her eye test, and then the stiff muscles. We're hoping that her lack of gross motor skills are just an effect of her depth perception being off, and that she doesn't have anything more serious going on. She also had a very gunky nose on the day of the hearing test, and I was told that she may just have an ear infection, thus failing the hearing test. I'll be taking her to the doctor soon just to be sure. Other than those few things, she is doing just great. She has two cute little bottom teeth now and is eating most everything we eat blended up a little in the Magic Bullet(LOVE that thing!). She says Dada, Mama, Baba, and glurg(my personal favorite). If you say No to her she shakes her head. Cutest. Thing. Ever. She's kind of like having a little puppy.

Ashton fed her his fun dip lik a stix. 

 Jared is so incredibly cute and sweet and such a good boy. He is fascinated with all things having to do with the ocean. We purchased "Sea Monkeys" at the store on Saturday and yesterday they finally hatched. He is very very excited. He loves our aquarium. I put it on the bar so that the kids can watch the fish while they eat.

Dave bought me 6 new baby angelfish for Christmas!  

We just got a 55 gallon tank with all accessories off of Freecycle (! I know, right?) and he is DYING to put the fish into it as soon as David finished the stand he is building for it. Actually we are all really excited about it. It is double the length of the one we have now!
Anyway, Jared has really been struggling with his homework. It has been such a nightmare for him. He just hates it. He can do it, and doesn't struggle with understanding it, it's just "sooo booorrring!" and he tries everything he can to get out of it or put it off. I've done reward charts, toys, treats, basically every positive incentive you can think of but it only lasts a day or two before he loses interest. He'd rather go to bed at 5:00 than have to do his homework. It seems like every night there is yelling from Daddy and tears from Jared and I don't know how to handle it! I spoke with his teacher about it last week and she told me she had no idea he was struggling with it so badly. I've told her a couple of times already. She did tell me that he is really behind the rest of the class in reading and that she literally has to sit directly in front of him and keep telling him to stay focused just to get him to do his schoolwork. She is concerned he may have a form of ADD and wants to have him tested for special needs. I very much disagree with putting him into resource. I told her to go ahead and test him, but he doesn't need to be put into the special needs class. When I told Dave he just about lost his head, he was put into resource as a kid and he said he felt like everyone had just given up on him. Jared is very intelligent, he just really struggles staying focused. I am considering taking him to his pediatrician to have him checked and then go from there. I know there are several people in Dave's side that have dealt with it. I'm hoping there is some kind of behavioral therapy that can help correct it, we absolutely will not be medicating our child.

Ashton is doing so great. I love that kid so much. He is very very friendly. Everyone at the grocery store we go to knows us because of him. He invites everyone to his birthday party in November. He already has it all planned out, and everyone is going to bring him Transformers. This is his usual dialogue when he meets someone new:
 "Hi, my name's Ashton, what's yours? Oh, cool. Hey guess what, you can come to my birthday party and we live in a gray house and we have a blue car and a red truck, but if they aren't in the driveway you can't come over."

Currently we are working on boundaries and listening skills, and not interrupting people. He is extremely talkative, a lot like his mother was at that age:) His new favorite thing is playing Plants VS Zombies and I have to limit him to 15 minutes or he would just sit and play it all day. Funny kid. Most of the day he just plays Legos by himself in the livingroom. I'd really like to get him into preschool, but it's not the budget currently. He is so ready for school.

As a family we have been playing more games together. We just got Jenga and Candyland and they are huge hits. The boys are super excited to make paper hearts for Valentine's Day and hang them all over the house. I made this bunting out of old pillow shams and fabric scraps. I love VDay, if only for the reason that it's the one holiday I can get away with filling my house with tons of pink decor!!

My front door really needed something so I took an old chocolates box from last year and used only the bottom, pulling off the raised part, painted just the middle with a mixture of black & white craft paint, added a little scrap of tulle, and one of Pepper's felt flowers I messed up on. "Chalk" is actually a white colored pencil. Can you believe I don't own a single piece of chalk?? Neither could I. 

I got adventurous last week and colored my hair dark. I LOVE it. I get so sick of boring old hair all the time. People always tease me and say I'm never "happy" with my hair, but the truth is, I get bored. Life is too short to be boring. Hellen Keller said "Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing."

Here are some random pictures I took down at the river banks. The top two are straight out of camera, not edited at all. That is just how colorful it was. Moss is so cool.

As you can tell, (since the photos above were only taken a couple days before the ones below) the weather has been all over the place. It's cold, then warm, then snowing then raining, then sunny. I'll take any of it, I like variety. The boys got these adorable hats from Dave's sister and her girls for Christmas. Aren't they adorable? Where's mine I say? I want one!!

PHEW! I'm all caught up! Remind me to never go that long without blogging EVER again! I know some people think that blogging is a silly waste of time, and I had questioned that myself. But I lost everything on my hard drive in December, and all photos from 2009-Dec 2011 are GONE(let's not even talk about the videos we lost), so I am so so incredibly grateful that I have been such a faithful blogger and photo-poster. All the important photos are on here. I'm printing this entire blog into a series of hardcover books soon, so the kids can look at them whenever they want to. From the age of 12-18 I was a very faithful journal keeper,  and I recently pulled them all out and spent a good 4 days reading them from beginning to end, and holy smokes. I learned so much about myself, and it felt so good to see how much I've grown and how my life is so much more awesome than I could have ever hoped. I haven't been very good about journaling since I got married, but this blog has been the closest thing for me. Of course I don't get very personal or talk about problems very often, but maybe that's a good thing. When I look back through the blog, I only see the happy memories, and the bad things slowly fade away in my mind. Happy Wednesday everyone!