MY FUNNY LITTLE BOY!

It's Carlos again. . .I am sure no one is surprised!  


So this afternoon while all the boys were supposed to be having quiet time in their rooms, Carlos came out.  I asked him to go back to his room and he says, "I just want to. . .  I just want to. . . "  And then I finished off by singing, "I just want to get away, get away. . ."  Then he says,"No, no, no, Mom sing Jingle Bells Swimming all the way".

WHAT IS LEVI UP TO!!

Besides trouble,  Levi is doing so many funny things these days.  


His favorite activity is wrestling and he will take down anyone regardless of size.  Last week at church he found a little friend who has the same vigor for fight as he does and lost his first match with a scratch to the nostril.  We could not keep the two apart.


Levi takes every opportunity to wrestle.  Watch out if you are laying on the floor.  Be prepared for an unforeseen body slam or two.  He stands up next to you as tall as he can make himself, with his hands in the air and then drops all of his weight right on you.


He has also created his own dance.  Turn on any music and you are guaranteed to see him do his latest moves.  He bounces around on his knees for a while, then at one point, sticks one leg strait out to the side while balancing on the other bent knee, stiffens his body and rolls forward on his stomach.  He remains stiff as he can as he crookedly rocks back and forth on his belly 'til he stops, still in the one leg strait and one leg bent stiff position.  We all start laughing at him and he proceeds by having the best laugh of us all as he starts his 'move' all over again!!  Would love to video tape this one day!!


 He is all ready to be the clown of the WWF!!

LDS.org - Liahona Article - Where Do I Make My Stand?

LDS.org - Liahona Article - Where Do I Make My Stand?

CHILDREN LEARN WHAT THEY LIVE

If children live with criticism,
               They learn to condemn.
          If children live with hostility,
               They learn to fight.
          If children live with ridicule,
               They learn to be shy.
          If children live with shame,
               They learn to feel guilty.
          If children live with encouragement,
               They learn confidence.
          If children live with tolerance,
               They learn to be patient.
          If children live with praise,
               They learn to appreciate.
          If children live with acceptance,
               They learn to love.
          If children live with approval,
               They learn to like themselves.
          If children live with honesty,
               They learn truthfulness.
          If children live with security,
               They learn to have faith in themselves and others.
          If children live with friendliness,
               They learn the world is a nice place in which to live.

LEVI'S HAND PRINTS

By tradition, I do all of the kids hand prints with a hand prints poem when they are 15 months.  Today I finished the last one.  Levi was actually the most difficult of the four to print.  In comparison to the other kids Diego's prints were the largest, then Levi's & Carlos' and  Alex's were the tiniest by a long shot.  When Levi turns 18 months I will add a picture to the work of art.  My! how time flies, he is nearly no longer a baby!

Priceless Little Parts

These little hands will grow to be

big and strong and helpful, you see

Teeny-tiny little toes,

will carry this body that grows and grows.

This precious, sweet radiant smile,

will help me go the extra mile.

. . .And deep inside, a soul and heart, 

destined to be special from the start.

CAAAARLOOOOOOS!!!!!!!

So, if you are not surprised, Carlos did the funniest and sneakiest thing today.  We had gone to Golden Corral to celebrate Diego's Kindergarten performance. No matter where we go or what may be in Dad's cup, Carlos always captures the cup at the moments that 'no one is looking' and steals a swig of what is usually Pepsi or Coke. Tonight, the waiter was missing in action and so we were going up to the waiting area requesting our drinks.  I was tired of taking the kids up for more water and lemonade and sent Carlos and Diego so that Carlos could request more lemonade. Then I heard the little voice say 'Pepsi, please'.  Dazed for a second, "He knows what Pepsi is?"  - I found myself racing to the counter to make the save!!


                                                              

I LOVE ALEX'S SCHOOL TEACHER

I love Alex's school teacher for many reasons, like she spends so much one on one time with him; like she conferenced with me at the school yesterday from 7pm til 9:45pm last night.  Well anyhow, yesterday during our little conference we were on the topic of how speech could help more. I was telling her about my calls to the Dept of Ed and their continuous comments on how speech should be tied to reading, but that over two years of attempting to get this done, I have given up on it.  She asked why I gave up on it and I said, "well, you can't teach an old dog new tricks."  Then in a semi-monotone voice she said, "Well maybe the old dog should be dead".

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CARLOS!!

Carlos turned four today. In the morning when he came to our room I started to sing happy birthday to him and he sat there with a little grumpy smile on his face telling me to stop the whole time as if he were turning 40 or something.  For lunch he requested to go out to pancakes with Dad and me. As we were going to pick-up Dad, I asked him how old he was and he said, "3".  I said, "No, your 4." And then he said,"I can't be 4 with out Alex and Diego!!"


So here are some pics from his family party.  We are hoping for a friend party soon. Hopefully it won't get to October this year and he is still telling people about this wonderful CARS party his parents are going to give him for his birthday!

The top picture is a sit and spin.  I have no idea where he got this from, but he calls it his 'but exerciser'!!  He is so FUNNY!!

CARLOS'S BIRTHDAY

As we were eating dinner we were discussing ages.  Saul had the boys guessing how old he was.  Alex said 22, Diego said 20, Carlos said 4. . . Then dad said it was older. Alex responded 122, Dad laughed a bit and then Carlos said to Alex, "Alex you're such a stinker."

WE WERE REALLY TIRED!

So tired we fell asleep on the wood floor!

DIEGO GOES TO A PARTY

Diego is going to a party today.  He was so excited about it that he got dressed and came to our room at 7:00 ready to go! Ready to go?  

I am supposing he put on the pair of socks easiest to find in his drawer and went from there.

WAY TO GO DIEGO!!

Diego has been asking us for at least a year now to take off his training wheels.  Today, tired of waiting, he decided to do it himself.  He asked Dad a couple of times, but when Dad did not do it, he got the wrench out and did it himself.  To top it off, after Dad balanced him, he even took off on his own too!!

LEVI TALKING ON THE PHONE

This is not a very good picture, but I think it shows what I am trying to say.

I just noticed today that every time I get off the phone, Levi puts his hand over his ear and says, 'AAAhhhh'.  I realized he was imitating me talking on the phone. (Yeah, I've been on the phone a lot today and it is only 10:00am.)

WHAT ARE WE SAYING?

We went to a picnic for Walmart Information Systems Division employees (Saul's Job) on Friday and Alex said a couple of sentences that were (again) exciting to me.


We had taken our time in leaving for it, because it was a long day for me.  I was called at 11:00 to show the house between 12:15 and 1:00 after no visits for 5 weeks and had 1 hour to clean the house, polish the counters, and put out the 'showcase' elements.  So running wildly non-stop, I cleaned the bathrooms, straitened the kids rooms, remade their beds, filed papers, and prepped the house; luckily I mopped the day before.  In my sweat and glory I loaded Carlos and the baby along with a single basket of a few unpaired socks in the car at 12:00.  We left the house, it was shown, and we returned with little time before Alex and Diego got out of school. After picking them up, Carlos spilled a half gallon of milk I got to clean up and an hour later Levi pulled over a couple bowls of cereal that the kids left on the table.  After mopping the kitchen two times and bathing a sticky kid, I was in need of a break.  Alex thought we were never going to leave.  So when we finally left he said 'I knew we were going to go'.  'Knew' is past tense and abstract, but he used it correctly! 


When we got to the picnic, there were several sirens that would go off for different games there.  He turned to me and asked me 'is there a police man around here'.  'Around' another abstract term, but he used it correctly too!


Hearing Impaired children do not use abstract terms. He never used these kind of terms in his speech before he got his hearing aids. He's coming along!!

HEARING AIDS AND ALEX

This is the best picture I could get of his hearing aids.  They are absolutely tiny and are great for him.  Anyhow, we wanted to give an update of how he is doing.  When we first got them the Audiologist started them at half the strength, so that he would not be overwhelmed with sound.  Today we went in and she turned them on all the way.  Again, when she asked him how he liked the way they sounded afterwards, he just smiled his million dollar smile.  I love seeing him smile like this in reference to his hearing aids.  It just is reassuring to us that they are right for him.  


We were also having problems with one of the aids for the last week and a half, because a connection was loose.  We told her about it and she was actually able to pull up how many hours a day it was functioning.  The right side was on 9 hours and left one only 3, so there really was a problem.  He really was not getting any benefit from the left aid.  But she fixed it and he is good to go again.


I know that most of you are really interested in hearing updates on speech progress with these, so we will tell you what we have seen so far.  It is really neat to listen.  He has started to use prepositions (the small words of the sentence that help with understanding) and has used many abstract terms.  For his birthday he got a game and he told me "we have to figure it out." I was like "OH, Really, where did you learn about how to use 'figure' this way in a sentence?" (Children with an impairment that existed before speaking, typically do not use prepositions or abstract terms). Today he was counting his money in the car and said 1 dollar followed by 2 dollarS, 3 dollarS.  It was amazing to me to hear him using plurals - adding the S at the end- and correctly identifying the rule of use.  When I told Saul about it, he commented, "yeah, I know.  I was listening to him this morning and he told me he slippED".   It is so nice to hear these word endings coming together! And that is only after having his aids for 3 weeks with 1 of them not working 1/2 the time. 


I can't wait to see how he will be next month! 

CARLOS, CARLOS, CARLOS. . .

So as we were leaving OKC Carlos saw the sign for this pizza place.  It was the same cartoon man here, but he was holding a pizza.  Carlos just sort of chuckle/giggled and said, "That man is not so very happy with his pizza!"  By the looks on this characters face, he is right.  I wonder how business is doing for them?!

OKLAHOMA CITY SCIENCE MUSEUM

This weekend we went to the Temple.  We always try to do something that is considered 'fun' for the kids.  This time because they were on a break from school we decided that we would stay an extra day and go to the OKC Science Museum.  It was a big hit!!  Here are some of the wonderful moments.

This was a cool exhibit that the boys all really liked.  It is a heavy barrel hanging from a pole and on the side of the railing there are strings with magnets on them.  You are supposed to usse the magnet to get the barrel moving back and forth.  It was difficult for them and they semi succeeded a few times, but they really enjoyed trying this.

This was Carlos's favorite exhibit.  It seemed every exhibit we went to he would disappear.  The first few times we panicked, but after a while we just knew where to find him.  If you cannot tell, this was made with pullies in mind. He was able to attach the big hook clip to whatever block he wanted to and then use the handle to real the rope up.  When the block was reeled all the way to the top, he got to let go of the wheel and watch the block fall to the floor. Four people could do this at a time.  I found it very interesting that it was his favorite, even though he was not able to reach the handle to turn the wheel.  None the less, I wish we had one of these at our house.

They all loved the firehouse and the tractors of course.

Also well loved, a lego version of the Pinewood derby.  

They got to make their own cars and then race them down the track.

The bucket was Levi's favorite part of the entire museum!!  

He sat here for a long time going into the bucket and then popping out.

Other favorite exhibits.

There was also an extremely cool playset that was three stories high with a spiral slide coming down through the middle and several strategic locations with a catapult to launch soft blocks.  Underneath the bottom floor there was a collection of several ropes swings and tire swings the kids could play on.  It was another one of those exhibits I would love to have in my home. Beats McDonald's  playland any day!!

A BROKEN LAMP AND A CONTRITE SPIRIT

Little ol' Carlos was doing flips on the couch (after being told not to again) and kicked one of our lamps off the side table and on to the floor.  It was one of the lamps we bought at a fair in Mexico about 8 years ago and likely cannot be replaced.  It did not survive, but fell to the floor in many pieces.  We immediately sent him outside to jump on the trampoline, but he had already lost his enthusiasm for jumping anymore.  Instead he chose to sit and watch the baby birdies in the nest on top of our fence.


This afternoon he went to Dad without prompt and apologized for breaking the lamp.  At a different time, he came to me and apologized for breaking the lamp.  What a sweet and good little boy we have been blessed with. What an example he is for us. 

MOTHERS DAY

Mother's day has been wonderful!  My boys are so cute (even my BIG boy)!  After church they eagerly presented me with a large bag of goodies. . .and I mean goodies!! Chocolate.  Lots of chocolate.  At the bottom of the bag, however, there were three small bottles of fingernail polish. Bright pink, turquoise, and silver, all with glitter.  They have been asking me to paint my toe nails all afternoon (I don't bite them, so I can paint them = ). Carlos (3) got tired of me putting it off and told me he would go get the brush.  He went out in the garage.

PRAY FOR US

I was discussing my frustrations of trying to sell our home with a friend this week who had just been through the experience herself. She told me they came to an 'urgency' to sell their home, which translated to fasting and prayer on their part as a family and in addition their need to ask of their ward, family, and friends to pray and fast on their part.  As I spoke with her, I felt we have no urgency.  Lo and behold, the Lord can produce urgency (or any thing for that matter) when it is needed. 


Today, on this wonderful mother's day, instead of writing about my wonderful Mother's Day on our blog, I am writing about our 'Urgency' to sell our home.  After attending our church meetings and as 'amen' was being said for our final meeting's closing prayer, we got a call.  The call came from the owners of the home we are seeking to buy.  They will be listing the home. I immediately felt discouraged, we put out a lot of effort in selling our home already. We just signed with an Agent who came with a tremendous background and recommended highly by many people we know. Needless to say, however, we are definitely amidst 'URGENCY'.  We really need to sell our home (like yesterday)! 


Please pass our urgency along, keep us in your prayers, tell everyone you know to pray for us, give the flyer for our home to everyone you know,  send our blog link to every one you know; the Lord will help us if we help ourselves.  I am so glad we already had a temple trip on our agenda this weekend.

ALEX'S 9th BIRTHDAY

Alex turned 9 this week (I am a little late getting this post up, but was debating whether I should put it on his page or as a post).  The theme he chose for his friend party was an Army theme and it turned out really fun.  I found a decoding game with multiple tools required to break the code that the kids all really enjoyed.  We divided the kids into 3 teams so that everyone would be able to participate.

This is Alex and 3 of his friends from school attempting to break the code.

By way of tradition, we always have a pinata at the party.  The boys always love it, but this year's pinata was probably the last one for Alex. I cannot believe that he will be 10 next year! My little boy will be in the double digits!

The boys had so much fun with the pinata, both as they were breaking it and after.  They took the cones that made up part of the pinata and were wearing them like hats afterward. I was just thinking about how much the 'hats' looked like princess hats and if they knew it they would not be wearing them!  It was so fun to watch all the kids.

SEEING THROUGH THE 'CAMOUFLAGE'

If you read my last post, you know then that in pursuit of public home school for Alex, we are in a position now that requires us to consider it for Diego instead. We have been thinking through having Diego at home for school versus having Alex at home.  We have come up with  many good reasons why it is better to bring Diego home for school than Alex. Perhaps the most important is the amount of pressure that will be on me versus the school. If I took Alex home I would have a lot more pressure on me to perform and heaven forbid it did not work. 

It makes a lot of sense for many reasons to have Diego home. 

• He is very close to grade level; 1-1 teaching would likely prove all he needed to prevent him from dropping further behind.
• What if the program did not work for Alex and he got even further behind.  The first year we were Bentonville schools, they felt that Alex was behind only because we were in Decatur Schools and so they did not take his disability seriously; cannot risk this happening again with a program we haven't tried even though it has great feedback.  
• One of my fears in bringing Alex home was that school would be less apt to help Diego, because they would expect I would take him home if all failed. Could I handle both at home? 
• Alex is much more driven by people and competition, home will not give him this
• Diego is not as social and does not care so much if others are around him, he is going to do what he wants because he wants to rather than work to please or compete.
• Alex has excellent behavior and is very easy going for others who teach him, rarely has a complaint on behavior.
• Diego is always in trouble for not following directions.
• Alex has hearing aids now and we are feeling that the school has been putting out more for him since we have gotten them.
• Diego's hearing is still not severe enough for hearing aids; He will be harder for us to make sure he is given the appropriate attention in the public domain.
• I have already established myself and my views with respect to Alex's disability with the school personnel.   I have not had much opportunity to involve myself for Diego, because it was so difficult for me to carry the load for both of the kids in school.
• By having one of them home (regardless of which), I will only have to worry about helping one child with home work after school (homework was a disaster to me this year, because there is so much of it, both of them require the one on one help to complete it, and there is only one me.

I think that it is key that Diego's number on the wait list is 3, because it will give us just enough time to think out the reality of the situation, before we jump in with both feet w/o return. Likewise, if he made it and was not on the wait list, I may have turned it down without thinking about it.  If Alex made it, we would have never thought things out in the reverse respect; we have only thought about only Alex or both. We are thinking it looks good now and will likely remain a good thing.  

BUM DEAL?

A few years ago Arkansas Department of education started a program that would allow children to attend public schools from their own home.  It became known as ARVA. Through last year I had been at two different doctors appointments and ran into families using the system and they really were greatly impressed with the program.  We also had a couple of friends (or friends of friends) who had been using the program.  So this year we looked into it. We found that through ARVA a child is allowed to go at their own pace, a teacher would not come into the home unless requested, they would pay for a 'PE' class, and some cost of internet. It seemed fantastic and a great possibility for us to keep our boys, especially Alex,  up in school.  So we signed up.  Because of the demand of the program and the fact there is only 500 places available, there is a lottery to place students. We originally were going to only enroll Alex, but at the last minute, decided that we should enroll Diego just in case something came up.  


Three days ago we got the call.  It was an automated call and the only thing it said was that our child was on the waiting list.  It did not tell us which child or what spot.  So I called around trying to find out what our status was and they told us that with in 48 hours we would receive a call with just that information.  How's that for SUSPENSE. Anyhow, today I found out that there were only 85 open spots of the 500 open for this year; Alex is number 47 on the waiting list and I was told his chances of getting a spot, even by the end of next year, is slim to none.  Diego, on the other hand is number 3.  We can't even switch their spots in line.  So it looks like we need to brace ourselves for another year of Bentonville Public schools (which would not be a bad thing for your average student or even your average special needs student). Who knows maybe its a blessing in disguise totally camouflaged beyond my imagination. We must wait and watch!!

HOW MANY PEOPLE DOES IT TAKE TO START A LAWN MOWER?!

Alex wanted to mow the lawn. . . ALL BY HIMSELF. . . But then, the lawn mower would not stay still so he could start it.  He asked for some help from Diego. . . But the lawn mower still would not stay still.  So he positioned Dad in just the right spot so that it might stay still.  but IT JUST WOULD NOT START!!  (I am not sure which was more stubborn, Alex or the Lawn Mower).  So Alex asked dad to start it, but to let him do the mowing.  Lets see if the eagerness endures the coming years!

Dad of course stayed pretty close the whole time, they both heard the motor outside the house and all I heard inside was:

Yep, it is Dad's Fault. . . AGAIN!!  When he can see Dad out the window, Levi is happy; when Levi can't see Dad, Levi is screaming as if Dad has fallen off the earth!!  So we go through a few minutes of screaming followed by a minute or two of quiet, repeating about 50 times!

YOU ROCK!!

This week was teacher appreciation week at school.  Everyday of the week they did something different for the teachers and really it was a week of purely catering to the teachers.  They provided a luncheon on Monday that included substitute parents for a couple of hours so that all the teachers could attend and pedicures, manicures, and lots of food through the week.  So last night we got an email around 9:00pm that was asking us to dress Alex 'rocker' style for today.  The theme for the day in his class was 'You Rock'!!  The teacher this was being set up for really does 'Rock' (in our mind). Being that late at night, I could not just run out to the store to find something that would work, and I could not find even a single black shirt.  If Alex and Carlos wore the same size we would have at least been able to get him a pair of pants with some great natural holes in the knees, but . . . they don't. So we had to rely on hair alone.  Alex liked his new do:

LEVI AND THE LITTLE FINGER

Levi is such a Daddy's boy.  He has his dad wrapped around his finger.  The moment Dad walks in from work, Levi is there.  If Daddy doesn't pick him up he cries and will crawl right behind him til he picks him up.  If I am holding him he reaches out for Dad.  When dad is around all he has to do is whine and Dad gets him what he wants.  I think he actually gets more attention from his dad than me! SO this morning Levi was sitting at the table eating his cereal.  His cereal was almost gone as Dad was walking hurriedly into the room Levi whined as he held up his last piece of cereal and Dad stopped in his tracks and went and got Levi more cereal.  Levi sat in his chair and did his little happy dance.

ITS A WIN - WIN - WIN SITUATION

Originally the boys would always fight over who was NOT going clean the toilet, so we figuratively drew a line down the middle of the toilet and Alex would clean the left side of the toilet including the sideboards and floor and Diego would clean the right side of the toilet including side boards and floor.  That worked for a while, but then they both could not get enough of cleaning the toilet and every time I sent them to clean the bathroom one would come out crying or upset because the other is cleaning the whole thing.  So today, Diego was really upset that Alex was cleaning his side of the toilet.  In order to solve the problem,  I offered to let him clean our toilet.  Everyone was happy including me.

NOTE TO PREVIOUS FOLLOWERS:

I have rearranged my Blog.  The new set up is a series of three Blogs.  The primary Blog you can now find on the left hand side of the Screen under 'Blog Tree' and is titled My Pursuit of Excellence; it introduces you to the concept behind my entire 'Blog Tree' and is the 'Faith/Self Improvement' focus of my life.  If you are looking for my Audiology notes you can find it on the Blog entitled 'My Work'.  This site will be strictly for the kids and fun stuff!