Isaac's Swimming Party!

Perfect weather, perfect collection of family and friends, perfect pool location.  Perfect.

The End.

Do you all (all five of you who read this blog...hi mom, hi joan) remember my post from last August (if I had any idea how to link you to it I would!) where I confessed that sending Isaac off to 3K was really tearing me up?!  Just something about your first born putting on that big backpack and heading out to an experience that is all his own.  Well, here we are in the last week of school already.  I can hardly believe it.  In fact, I was in complete denial about it until dropoff this morning.  Isaac's experience in 3K has been more than we could have asked for. 

We debated long and hard about whether or not we would even send him this year.  He only made the age cutoff by 6 weeks.  That would be young in any class.  But in this particular class it was SUPER young as 11 of the 13 of them were 4 by January.  And Isaac has Apraxia, we knew he wouldn't be able to communicate with the kids as well as he'd want to and worried that his age and speech disorder together might be too scary of a combo for this year.  Perhpas better to red-shirt him.  But with the gentle urging of both our speech pathologist and nanny (the only 2 people who spend as much time with or more time with Ike than we do), we took a leap of faith and sent him, hoping the classroom would give him a loving, safe place to practice his speech with others.  I figured the worst thing that would happen is it would become evident very early that he wasn't ready and we'd just try again next year.  And we had every intention of repeating 3K again next year anyway. 

Well, here we are, a full school year later and Isaac has grown immensely and is enrolled in Junior Kindergarten for the fall.  They say a child will never grow or learn as much again as they did that first year in life.  I'm not so sure.  I think that's different for kids with any kind of special need.  This year for Isaac has been one of such immense growth.  I will always look back at 3K with a special place in my heart - the year our boy was able to unlock his ability to communicate verbally.  I'm not sure there will be another where such a monumentous change takes place.  Ok, ok....there probably will be because all I keep learning is that these kids just keep getting better with time!

Anyway, I'm going to miss our normal morning dropoff routine in 3K - the familiar faces of slightly exhausted preschool moms, the faces of joyful and energy-filled 4 year olds, the little siblings wide-eyes taking in this special place and the kind and gentle words and encouragement of Mrs. H.  I have to stop, I'm crying at work.

2011-2012 3K, Central Christian School

Celebration Week!!

What a week!!  Jeff's birthday, Mother's Day, Isaac's birthday.....all in 1 week!  Squeeze in there Isaac's Field Day and end of year field trip at school and Audrey turning 15 months and we've had quite a lot of fun.  I'm not sure we could possibly eat any more cupcakes/cakes/ice cream or pizza (or drink any more beer or wine for that matter!).  Not possible.  And to think we still have Isaac's swimming birthday party for all his friends next weekend.  Whoa.

TUES: Happy 34th Birthday, Jeffy!!  Maggie and Isaac made him a cake.....Isaac is going through a pink phase (much to Jeff's dismay) so he picked pink frosting and spelled out his own name in purple candies.  Teeeeheeeheee.

And for Jeff's birthday we got him a new bike!  A Specialized Hardrock Sport Disc - not that that means anything to me - I haven't ridden a bike since a spin class that went poorly years ago.  Thankfully my brother in law is a cycling enthusiast and my sister does the advertising for Specialized.  If left on my own he would have ended up with a Huffy.

FRI: Ready to take on 3K Field Day!  Confession - he probably shouldn't have gone to school that day.  His 102 fever had only broke the night before.  But I couldn't let him miss it, he was so excited!

SUN: Happy Mother's Day to me!  I love Mother's Day.  What a great day - I get to be pampered just for doing what I love most, being a mom.  Dinner/bonfire/cupcakes with the inlaws, brunch prepared by and cleaned up by the boys, a trip to the garden store and flower planting.  Love.

WED: And somehow my little man turned 4.  4 years since that moment in time when we became parents and started this wild and crazy ride.  

Happy 4th Birthday, Isaac Walter.  We love you to the moon and back.  Your 4th year is going to be a good one, I can tell.  You are so fun!  You are crazy.  You are inquisitive.  You are kind.  Your words have been unlocked and you sing and pray loudly, which warms our hearts.  We are so proud of you and your never-give-up spirit.  We knew you had that spirit after your first 8 days in the NICU.  You came out fighting.  And I have a hunch you'll never stop :)

   

Cake 1

Isaac's birthday star day at school!  Line leader.

Page turner.

Show and teller of the "mystery bag".

 Cake 2

Cake 3...getting ridiculous.

And the reason for Jeff's new bike.....Isaac's new bike!!  He became a master at the strider bike we got him last summer (purpose of the strider - learn balance, no pedals).  I wasn't convinced that he wouldn't need training wheels and would use that balancing skill to pedal effortlessly on a real bike, the strider's claim to fame.  Holy cow.  Second time out - riding on his own.  No training wheels.  Unreal!  Specialized Hotrock to match Daddy :)

http://youtu.be/HuEjcXAYSPY

THUR: And not to leave Audrey out of the celebrating we hyped up her 15month birthday.  Why not eat more ice cream at this point, the damage is done?!  26lbs 5oz at her well baby check.  Yup, still enormous.  "Thriving" we like to call it :) 

Whew!  Are you exhausted?  We are.

O HI O

Last weekend Auds and I headed to Columbus to visit with my friend Alicia and her family!  In my new forgot-the-camera-because-I-can't-find-anything-in-our-new-house-to-even-put-in-a-suitcase-wait-where's-the-suitcases style, this is the only picture I have (taken via phone) from the whole fabulous trip.  Grrrrrr.  It's taken at a trendy Columbus restaurant on Saturday night when Alicia and I depended on her hubby to watch all 3 kids and we went out and pretended we were as fun/hip/cool as we were when we lived in Chicago together!  Always wonderful to be with the kind of friends that you only see a few times a year but every time you're together its like no time has passed - I'm thankful to have so many of those kinds of friends in my life.  I must have been doing something right in my college years/early twenties (and the 6th grade) to have befriended those kind of people.  Thanks Collins family for taking me and my girl in - we loved every second.  Sammy/Animal, your godmother loves you to pieces and I just know we'll be good buds your whole life.  Will/Kermit, your skeptisim about this crazy lady in your house is what I love most about you - always have your own opinion! :)

And that left my boys at home to fend for themselves.  Isaac referred to this as "mans weekend".  Jeff kept me posted on their adventures via iphone.  I came home to dishes piled high in the sink, dirty socks everywhere, toys all over the floor and a brand new stain on our brand new rug.  Oh well - I don't even care because I know Isaac will keep memories of man's weekend forever.

Out cold in the car from all the fun :)

Trash Talk

We did it!!  Woo-hoo!!  We successfully made it through all of the trash days this week and all of our refuse got picked up properly, no neighbors were pointing and laughing at our garbage piles and the garbage man didn't ring the doorbell to yell at us!!  Major accomplishment.  Nope, not kidding. 

Ever since I left my parent's house at the age of 18 (where I most certainly was never on trash duty) I have lived in a place where there are dumpsters available at all times to throw away your trash in the alley.  Therefore, trash collection has never in my adult life been on my radar screen.  Move to the suburbs and viola!  There is a world of trash collection I knew nothing about.  Glendale is very strict when it comes to this trash thing.  Holy moses.  Monday is recycling and yard waste.  Wednesday is trash.  Some day I can't figure out (first Monday?  third Wednesday?) is bulk trash.  And some other day (first Monday?  third Wednesday?) is bulk yard waste day.  We can't recycle things that we could recylce in the city (like the plastic containers strawberries and blueberries come in or pizza boxes) and if the collectors open your 65 gallon properly marked recycling bin to find those items they will not take any of it.  Yard waste cannot be mingled with anything else (read: dog poop) or they will not take any of it.  And the container must be marked with an X or the words YARD WASTE.  And any limbs/branches must be bundled in twine and no more than 4ft long by 6" in diameter.  And cardboard moving boxes must be bundled in twine and broken down and no bigger than something we never did figure out.  And the yard waste container on the right side of the driveway and the recycling and garbage containers on the left side (or is it vice versa?).  I'm confused again.  Is your head spinning yet?  Because there are more rules I could throw out here but I'm feeling anxious about it again just writing this!  Now, I consider my husband and I to be very highly educated, high functioning members of society......why in the world can we not figure out the trash?!  Ridiculous.  Glendale, you got me.  Note that we learned all of this from trial and error.  Perhaps a nice packet about trash pickup could have landed in our mailbox from the city of Glendale lying out all of this information?  Too much to ask I suppose.  So I must thank our neighbors for their help (post snickering with each other) and my mother who spent a week with us and took the brunt of the garbage man door bell ringing.  Sheesh.  We did it.  Take that!!