Kendal's Birthday Party

I am super tired, so mostly this post will be the pictures of Kendal's lego party.

 These balloons show the color scheme.

 The "lego" wall hanging.

 Kendal woke up to find ballons all over his bedroom floor.

 The birthday boy in the birthday chair

 The cake table

 Clear vase filled with legos and a lego #3

 The lego candy dish with Kendal's favorite candy- Hershey Kisses

 Kendal's lego name sign

 The lego block cake.

 The lego candy cake

 Both cakes

 Fork and spoon holder

 Lego juice boxes

 One of the only things Kendal asked for was "a big green present"

 Opening his presents.

 Blowing out his candles.

Preschool is over, now on to Kindergarten!

 

Back in May Kizzy graduated from Preschool. She is officially done, and will be a kindergartener this fall.  She is enrolled in Connections Academy, the online public school. We had some major concerns with our school district's schedule and bus system so we researched what our options would be and found Connections Academy. Kizzy will be a very young 5 when the school year starts, so if online school is not a good fit for her, the worst case scenario would be a repeat of her kindergarten year. Most of the children the same age as her within a week or two of her birthday are starting next year anyway, so repeating Kindergarten wouldn't be so bad for her. She is ready for the academic challenge though, and we are excited for all that CA has to offer.

 

 

Kizzy on her first day of Preschool

 

                                                        Kizzy on her last of Preschool

Home

People have requested pictures of our new home, so here they are!

 

 

Dining Area -note my fireplace in the corner

                             From this view you can see our sliding glass door and our patio beyond

 My kitchen as viewed from the dining area. Forgive the mess, I was taking pictures while baking cookies. I love this room! I have so many cupboards, all the cupboards have pullout drawers and organizers. I also love my low bar stool area, it's so nice for kids art projects and lunches.

                                                   View of the kitchen work area.

                                                  The entire kitchen/dining room

 This is the living room. It's too large to catch the whole room in one picture, so this is the front half.

 This is the second half. The wall backs up to the kitchen if you are wondering about the layout.

 View of the entry of the living room. That door you see is the coat closet at the top of the entry stairs.

                                            Basement guest room. (Also being used as an exercise room)

                                                         Downstairs guest bathroom

 1/2 of the family room, with the window seat. We have painters tape up because we are working on painting the trim and eventually the shelves. I plan to cover the window seat with new fabric. And hopefully soon we will have our couch down there and the tv hooked up!

 The other half of the family room. Above the fire place is the cut out for the TV. The room opens up into another area we've named the "library"

 Kids area! I love that it's down in the basement and I'm not tripping over it all the time!

                                                                    Our "library"

                                              Downstairs bedroom turned play room

               Downstairs bedroom turned office space. This room is still a work in progress. So far Kyle does his personal studying down here, It still has a ways to go before it can be used as a home office for either of us. And when the kids get older it will probably be the first to be turned into a bedroom.

                                              Back upstairs this is Kizzy's bedroom

 Directly across the hall is the kids bathroom. The bathtub needs to be replaced and is unusable, but the rest of the room is exactly what the kids need. Behind the door is a linen closet that is huge!

                                                     Karter's side of the boys bedroom.

                                                    Kendal's side of the boys room.

 This is a fraction of the walk in master closet. I couldn't get a good angle of the rest of the closet, but it is enormous! There's a window, built in ironing board and more than double the amount of organizers than you can see.

 Master bathroom. The tub is jetted and there is another sink I just didn't take a picture of it.

                                The master shower. Around the corner is the separate toilet area.

                                           The master bedroom. I love our stained glass window.

 This is currently our only hooked up tv, so this area of the master gets pretty messy from the kids. The door you see leads out to a patio that over looks the swing set. If you look in the ceiling you can see our skylight.  It's hard to see, but Kizzy is sitting in the lovesac watching something.

                                                The other half of the master bedroom.

                                The first patio off of the kitchen through the sliding glass doors.

         The second patio from the other kitchen door, the steps up lead to the area outside the master.

            The view of the swing set. I love that I can see it from the kitchen and the bedroom.

And there is the virtual tour of our home! Now come see it in person! We'll take visitors any time!

Celebrate!

Lately we've been celebrating this wonderful boy. It was Kizzy's idea to have a special night where we celebrated Kendal because he's officially potty trained! So last night after dinner we made homemade milkshakes and celebrated. He is a remarkable 2 (almost 3) year old.  I think he averages about 1 temper tantrum every 6 months... maybe. He always wants to help me. He's the first to put toys away, wash dishes, fold laundry, put clothes in the hamper. He also has been known to get the vacuum out all by himself and vacuum the living room rug. His all time favorite is mopping the bathroom floors with the swiffer.  Kendal is the best brother Kizzy and Karter could hope for. When ever he earns a potty treat (his pick, Hershey kisses) he always breaks the tip off and gives it to Karter. He's quick to give his big sisters hugs, and if she's sad about something he goes out of his way to find something to make her happy, even if it means sharing his beloved blankie. Whenever I pick up Karter to take him to another room Kendal will shout, "don't take my baby brother away! I want him!" If Kizzy is ever given an assignment, (eg. pick up your room, put this toy away, pick up your dirty clothes, etc.) more often than not I find that Kendal did it for her.  He has such a funny personality. He's extremely possesive and protective of his family. He is 100% a daddy's boy and cries everytime daddy goes to work.  I love my little guy and am so proud of him! (not to mention thrilled that I only have 1 kid in diapers.)

Lucky day

So February 8th is officially my lucky day. On Feb. 8, 2007 I was offered and accepted a ring from an amazing man, the love of my life and my best friend. Now 6 years later on Feb. 8, 2013 we are signing a contract on our very first house. Not just our first house, but our first home after living in my in-law's basement for the last 3.5 years. Yes, I like Feb. 8. It's a good day.

Speaking of...

So here's the latest on Kizzy's speech. We had her evaluated by a different speech therapist in December. This lady took some time to actually listen to our concerns. By the school district's standards, Kizzy still does not qualify for speech therapy, yet. If she tests the same after Feb. 19th (her half birthday) she would fall in the bracket of needing therapy. But an answer to what the root of her struggles might be came just today. I had wondered (mostly to myself) if her very slight tongue tie had anything to do with her unclear speech. Well Kizzy went to the dentist for the first time today. She has no cavaties (hooray!) but the dentist gave me a quick assesment and a very casual statement he made suddenly made everything make SO much sense. Kizzy has a crossbite. You can see it in her sweet little smile. It's not a big deal. Nothing that braces when she's older can't fix. But when the dentist told me about it, I noticed it for the first time and I suddenly got a very clear picture in my head. So I did a little research, found a few articles and medical journal publications and this is what I found: A crossbite is when teeth are not alligned properly. Notice how on one side of Kizzy's smile the lower teeth jut out over the upper teeth. This causes the room inside her mouth cavity to be too crowded for her tongue. She frequently bites the inside of her cheek and her tongue on accident. This is because of her crossbite. And since her tongue is crowded her words are not clear!  This is how she literally can pronounce each and every sound in the english language. Her "l"s are more pronounced than some 6 year olds I know. And yet her speech is so slurred.  While it's not a solution on helping her clear up her communication, it's a relief to have a WHY.

Kizzy's Speech Evaluation

So Kizzy just had her speech evaluation and I could just cry. The only test they had was to evaluate how Kizzy says individual words. Example: Kizzy would repeat words like duck, dress, bathtub, toothbrush, tree, zebra, jammies, cookie, cracker, puzzle, etc.  That was it. That was the test. On their bell curve of where she would qualify for speech therapy she was a fraction of a percentage above. Meaning, that of kids who DON'T need speech therapy she is at the very very bottom of the curve. On top of that my concern is not at all whether or not Kizzy can repeat specific words. She can. The few things she mispronounces are things such as "bafftub" or "cwayon". Not a big deal. The problem lies in when she's talking to people. Out of a ten word sentence all the words she says are so slurred together that you can maybe pick out 4 key words. Enough to structure what she was saying, but unless you are really trying to focus on understanding her, most people have to ask her to repeat herself. Sometimes she repeats what she said 5 or 6 times before they either finally get it, or ask me to interpret. I find I have to interpret about 90% of what she says to people in the community. 80% to her own grandmother and 50% to her own daddy! With that comes a great deal of frustration for her and for me. She has thrown herself on her bed sobbing because Grandpa didn't understand her. If heaven forbid I'm struggling to understand something it is the END of the world, because I'm the only one who consistantly understands without asking her to repeat.  Can you imagine how frustrating your life would be if literally every word that came out of your mouth people asked you to repeat?Not just once or twice but multiple times? And add on top of that there are some people who I shall not name, but those close to me can certainly make a wild guess who, they don't even try. They blow off anything she says to them. They've even gone so far as to make fun of how she pronounced her sentence.   I feel like she sometimes doesn't try to articulate because she knows that people will just ask me what she said, so it's like a crutch to her. At the same time, I'm not sure how to help her communicate with others unless there IS an interpreter for her. People who spend alot of time with toddlers tend to understand her better than those who don't. But at the same time the only difference between her speech and Kendal's is that Kizzy's sentence structures are more complex. Which that doesn't do her a whole lot of good when her sentence is so slurred together that people don't understand her. 
I told the Speech Therapist today that my concern is NOT if she can make certain sounds, or if she can parrot words. My concern is that people don't understand my daughter. I hear 2 and 3 year olds that are more clear than her. Communicating is HARD. I'm certain it effects HER comprehension too. The only thing the speech lady could do was reccommend a second evaluation done by a different speech therapist for a second opinion, because the ONLY test they had was to see if she could pronounce specific sounds or not.  My opinion on that- how dumb. Speech is so much more complex than just sounds.  What about articulations, sentence structure, and so on? The fact of the matter is Kizzy can prounounce every single sound in the english language. The few individual words that come out wrong are very very typical for her age. But when she talks, telling stories, asking questions, communicating with others in general, people do not understand her. Even the speech therapist a few times had to say "what? OH! you said your brother. Ok." Someone who's entire career is helping kids with speech problems and she had to take pause. She had to ask, "what?" and then she could piece it together. So no, I didn't interpret, but she still didn't understand right away. She still had to take a moment to put it together.

So, there is my rant. There is my frustration. It's off my chest and now we'll just have to wait for the next eval.