This weekend marks the start of Ace’s birthday celebrations! He’s going to be 2 on Wednesday. Wednesday is a doctor’s appointment, Thursday is his party (a trip to the movies to see Polar Express and then pizza and cake with his friends at our house), and then Friday, Papa and Grandmere are coming up to celebrate! What a fun week this is going to be.

This weekend my parents came up to visit and help with installing our new french doors (more on that later) and organizing our utility room.

While visiting, we celebrated Ace’s birthday with them including a sugar-free pudding pie (my mom has diabetes) that was really really good! We ate dessert on Superman plats and he got some cute Superman toys and he said “Superman” all day…do you get the picture that he really likes Superman??!! Ace got to open presents from them. He is still trying to figure out this whole gift thing. The opening present part was a breeze. He loved his toys. We thought we’d share some pics from our gift opening and subsequent dressing up adventure (he now has “boy” dress up clothes…no more wearing Cinderella dresses).

The favorite for the day was the Superman “action figure” (aka a Superman doll). He had to go night night with Ace for the night.

Ace got some cool cowboy guns and real baseball caps…which he chose to wear backwards…not sure why.

Dressing up as “The Thing” from Fantastic Four. He looked so cute with all those muscles…I mean handsome.

Is thing on?  I finally got a second to try my hand at this blog thing.  Ya’ll come back now, ya’hear?

Mark

Liam, Ace, Zoe, and I met with the physical therapist today for an
observation. Since this is a new model of therapy (coaching), we’re all
trying to figure out how it works. Mark and I love being “trailblazers”
or “guinea pigs!”

Anyways, this physical therapist was really nice and worked really well
with our family. Meaning, she involved Zoe and Ace in her observation.
We discussed what I wanted to see Liam doing (i.e. sitting up without
support, rolling from belly to back consistently, using his left side
more, being able to carry him on my left hip without him flopping
forward or leaning forward). She also stated that she didn’t feel any of
the stiffness in his hips that the other pt felt.

Up next, the team (meaning the service coordinator, early intervention
specialist, and physical therapist) will have a meeting on Monday at 8
and then they should be contacting me to set up a time for all of them
to come out and do an assessment and hopefully complete the IFSP
(Invidual Family Service Plan…the stuff that says what we’re going to
do) at the same time so we can get services started. This physical
therapist seemed to really want to advocate for Liam…that makes me
feel good that there are people on our team working to get services
started soon.

I’ve been a little frustrated because I can tell even more with each
week that he’s getting behind developmentally but we haven’t been able
to get steady help to get him where he needs to be (our friend who’s
been helping has been really busy with family, work, etc). I know we’ll
get him there soon though so I’m trying to hold tight and pray for a
speedy process.

Here are some fun pictures of the kids!

Zoe and Ace are learning new chores. This is one of them. They get to wash the breakfast dishes in the morning. They both enjoy it. Zoe washes, Ace rinses, and we all get wet!

Zoe had her first sleepover with her friend, Nicole. Lots of fun and to answer the question…yes, they slept and they slept good! Here they are practicing to be ballet stars. I think they look a lot alike with their haircuts.

Ace loves giving Liam lovin! Lots of kisses and hugs all day. We have to watch to make sure Ace doesn’t squish him though.

We traveled this past weekend (July 7th) to Oxford to visit with the

Characters…all the Characters. Mark’s brother and sister-in-law came
up too with their kids. So here’s a roll call…Mark, Me, Zoe, Ace,
Liam, Ben (Mark’s brother), Betsy (Mark’s sister in law), Jonathan,
Oakley, Gwendolyn (their children), and Grandmere & Papa (Mark’s
parents). We had a great visit. All of the children had a good time and
got along.

On Saturday, Betsy and I left and traveled to Birmingham to attend a
homeschool curriculum fair. All the kids (except Liam) stayed with the
dads and grandparents. I don’t think they missed us much. They went to
the pool and to the playground and had a visit from their great
grandmother and great aunt and picked blueberries, etc!

Betsy and I had a great time, too. I found curriculum for preschool and
looked over what Mark and I had been discussing using for K-4th grades.
It’s called Weaver from Alpha Omega
<http://www.aop.com/weaver/index.php> and it’s unit studies that use the
Bible as a basis and “weaves” it throughout all the subjects. We’ll have
to purchase math and phonics/grammar separately. I also got a lot of
good information and gleaned some wisdom off of all of Betsy’s research
on the different types of homeschooling.

We attended church on Sunday and literally “filled a pew” with all of us
there. It was a good time of worship with our family.

Here are some pictures from our trip:

The Early Intervention Specialist completed the developmental assessment on Liam today. It seems that his main delay is in gross motor skills (sitting up, rolling over, etc). Of course, Liam didn’t roll over or do any of the tricks he can normally do. Very frustrating. The specialist asked me how I had heard about the Babies Can’t Wait program and I told her that our pediatrician had referred us and then went into my little spill that I had been an intern at the agency that had contracted to do EI service coordination, etc. She told me that they were about to move to a new model of services…from a therapy model (the therapist does all or most of the work) to a coaching model (where the parents are taught how to do a lot of the work). Personally, from an involved parent’s perspective I’m all about the Coaching model and was really excited when she asked me if I was interested in that model for our plan, etc. I jumped at the chance.

She told me that with the new cases, the therapy model would not be available and all cases would be using the coaching model…ughhh! That’s going to be hard. A lot of parents either don’t have the capabilities to be coached or the want to be coached to help their children. This new model “assumes” that the parent is competent enough to take care of the child’s needed services. That’s a little frustrating and not in the best interest of each individual child.

Okay I’m done with my rant for the day. Now back to the therapy issue for us…both of the reports are due back on the 14th and then we should hear back from EI the next week (since the 14th is a Friday). They have 45 days (I think from intake) to complete all evaluations and have a Individual Family Service Plan (IFSP) in place. So services should start by the end of July…ughhh…I am very thankful that we have had a friend showing us some exercises and working a little with Liam while we are waiting. Liam would have been even more behind having to wait two months for services.

Just wanted to test out this title thingy. Still learning my way around. We still can’t figure out how to put links on the side bar. Mark will have to delve into the world of html to help me out.

An Introduction of sorts…
Well, I thought I would make a good official post to include an introduction of us. Mark and I have been married six years. We have three children, Zoe (born 2002), Ace (born 2004), and Liam (born 2005)…now do the math…that’s right three children three and under! Yes, we “have our hands full.” But not completely. We wouldn’t have it any other way.

Mark is a computer engineer but he’s really a sound engineer in hiding. God has called us to serve full-time in church technical ministry but we’re waiting on Him to say “Go!” For now he uses his spare time to spend time with family and to do volunteer work at our church…West Acres Baptist Church.

I stay at home with Zoe, Ace, and Liam. I also volunteer at church as the Mothers of Preschoolers Coordinator. This is our first year of MOPS and it should be interesting and full of ups and downs.

Zoe and Ace are rather interesting. They enjoy playing and fighting with each other. They are big helpers. We are organizing our chores around the house and they enjoying working alongside Mommy and Daddy. Zoe wants to be a ballerina, ice skater, singer, and a mom. Ace wants to be “football” and loves to play just like a boy. Zoe is going to start ballet this fall with Ron Jones Ballet Academy (a great Christian ballet company here). Zoe and Ace are both going to start preschool with me (and Mark) in August. It should make for an interesting year!

Liam is growing great. He is currently being evaluated for physical therapy (pt) through Early Intervention (EI) due to a little bit of a lag in his physical development. If they find that he is eligible for pt through EI, then he’ll receive pt twice a week. A Early Intervention Specialist is coming out tomorrow to do a developmental assessment to make sure he is on target with all of his other developmental milestones (cooing, etc…all the things a six month old does). Besides the pt he is a beautiful, healthy growing boy. He is very easy going and a little bit of a flirt.

So, Mark’s brother has set up a blog for us. Something I’ve always wanted to do but never have. Now I can bore everyone with my adventurous days and stories of my adorable children.

Mark is 27 today!!! Yippee! He celebrated by going to work at SRS. Now he’s at his volunteer “job” at church working on sound stuff. We’re planning on going out to eat tonight with the kids and then having a sleep over in our room cuddled up watching a movie. He received his birthday present from the kids and me last week when we returned from vacation…a new headliner for the interior of his car. It was surprise when he took a trip in it the weekend we returned from Hilton Head. I’m so sneaky!!

Hi Mark and Abbie,

Just testing your new blog. Hope you enojoy it.

Ben