Wild Wild West Part 2

As always, lots of animals to entertain us.

Grandma and Mackenzie checking out some horses.

The "babies" (about 6 months old) - Ricochet and Shooter

Violet the cow and her new baby boy. He was born while we were there and I think his name is going to be Burger. (a predictive name you could say). I dared to jump the fence while Violet's back was turned to pet him. She was on to me though and with a little warning, I jumped that fence again pretty quickly.

Sue and her new pal Sundance.

Mackenzie with one of the eggs she gathered.

We ate like royalty, as always, but Mackenzie liked the chocolate cake best, can you tell?

My favorite part was riding horses one evening. We had a great time even though I had one of the spunky horses. I prefer the mellow ones, but Bailey and I got along just fine.

Wild Wild West

We headed to the Ranch for a long weekend and had another great time. We had perfect fall weather and there was lots to do. Friends came to do some pheasant hunting and they all did great. They didn't quite get their limit each day, but it was fun none-the-less. Here are the pictures!

The first day Rylan, Mackenzie and I hiked down to the river to throw rocks and sticks in the water and I got some good photos of them at sundown.

Sweet baby "Lella" got lots of attention and love! She is such a honey!

Hiking, hunting and playing with new friends.

Me, Mackenzie, Amos, and Rylan

Bruno, Amos, and Rylan

Running on the hay bales

Amos, Rylan, Mackenzie, and Christy

Cook-A-Doodle-Doo

My kids LOVE books, and we love that. Even on nights when it's getting late, we always try to read at least one book, because we don't want to sacrifice that time spent with them. We hope they will always have a love for books!

Mackenzie gets to bring a book home from her classroom library every day and she often brings a favorite book to school for show and tell every week. She definitely loves the repetition, because she will want to read the same book every night for a week or so then pick a new one. She is the one always asking questions, wanting to talk about everything on every page. Any way to get her talking is good, but sometimes I just have to tell her to be quiet until I finish reading the page. She has a great sense of humor and loves silly books we can laugh about.

Rylan has library day every Tuesday at his school and he has brought home some awesome books so far. I'm pretty sure he chooses his books very carefully. Next week, his class is also starting the backpack reading program so he will get to bring a classroom book home every night. He is really excited about this! We have a ton of books in our house, but you can never have enough. He could sit for hours and listen to someone read books. We often have to tell him how many long books and how many short books he can pick for the night, otherwise we would read all night long. He has such a great attention span for books. I can't wait to read him longer books like Harry Potter when he gets older, hopefully he will still want me to read to him then.

The latest book he checked out from the school library was "Cook-A-Doodle-Doo" by Susan Stevens Crummel and Janet Stevens. It's an adorable story about a rooster and his friends baking a strawberry shortcake. I had the honor of attending a session at a teaching conference by Susan Stevens Crummel a few years back. And while it was aimed at elementary teachers, she was a great speaker who was hilarious and personable. I was going to buy some of her children's books at the conference for my kids, but of course they up the prices a bit at those things and I wasn't going to pay that much. So I was thrilled that Rylan found this book at the library!

At the end of the book is the recipe for strawberry shortcake and of course Rylan asked if we could make it. I think I surprised him when I said yes. So on Friday afternoon, that's just what we did, just he and I, baking strawberry shortcake! It was an easy recipe and we had a great time. However, I had never had true shortcake and I didn't realize it's more of a biscuit than a cake. It was good, but I don't think I will make it again, or at least I will add more sugar. Rylan said he liked it, but he hasn't asked for a second piece yet. Nick preferred just the strawberries with whipped cream. Kenzie wouldn't try any of it! However, I think I get points for presentation, it looked good!

Check this book out and others by this wonderful author!
www.susanstevenscrummel.com

Lunch Time

When Rylan started Kindergarten, one thing we were encouraged to do every morning was talk about the lunch options for the day. In our school district, there are usually 2 different hot lunch options every day, along with a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables to choose from. Also an option every day is a sunbutter sandwich, which is a PB substitute made from sunflower seeds. (Our district doesn't serve peanut butter anymore due to allergies.) Anyhow, so at the beginning of the year, we would go over the lunch choices every morning and explain what some of the items were. Rylan was never very excited about this discussion. Every day after school I would ask him what he picked that day, and it started to be sunbutter sandwiches every single day. So I made a rule that he had to pick something else 1 time a week. I figured if he just started trying things, he would like them, but he was hesitant to pick something new. Then he told me that he never picked any vegetables and he only sometimes picked a fruit. No wonder he was hungry at the end of the day! I was starting to get concerned about his nutrition when I came across a blog one day. It's called "This Lunch Rox" and I have it linked on my blog to the right. It's written by a mom who packs her kids' lunch every day and takes pictures of it and blogs about it. Sounds boring, but she does some pretty cool themed lunches a couple times a week and not only are they healthy, but they are adorable! While I never thought that I would pack Rylan's lunch every day (because I always ate at school and I really never even thought about it as an option) I found myself getting more and more excited to do that very thing. I asked Rylan what he thought and he was even more excited than me about bringing his own lunch to school. So, we looked through the above mentioned lunch blog together and talked about some things he would like to try in his lunch.
The first week, I used a variety of rubbermaid and ziploc containers to hold his food, but soon found it wasn't the best idea. He had trouble getting them open and it was a pain for him to keep track of it all. We needed something better. One of the posts on the lunch blogger's site was about all the "stuff" she uses; lunch boxes, thermoses, ice packs, cookie cutters, etc. From all her reviews, I decided to try the Go Green lunch box from gogreenlunchbox.com. So far, we LOVE it! It's easy to open, everything stays fresh in the individually sealed compartments, there is room for the water bottle right in there, and it can hold more than enough food for Rylan. Here are some pictures of a few of the lunches I've packed for Rylan.


This first lunch has crackers, cheese and pepperoni, fresh strawberries, celery with peanut butter and raisins, honey cinnamon almonds, and milk.

The next one has a PB and J sandwich on honey wheat sandwich thin bread, strawberries and blueberries, a cheese stick, red and yellow bell pepper strips with ranch dressing, and milk.

The last one is half a sandwich thin, pizza sauce, mozzarella cheese, and pepperoni, celery with PB and raisins, grapes and milk.

And here is the insulated bag the lunch box goes in. There are a wide variety of colors and prints to choose from for the bags on the website.

While I'm not as creative as the author of This Lunch Rox, I'm thrilled to be providing my son with a lunch that has a variety of healthy foods every day. I don't know if I will continue to take pictures of Rylan's lunches, but we'll see. Oh, and you may be wondering about me putting peanut butter in Rylan's lunches. His school isn't a peanut restricted campus, so kids can still bring peanut butter in their lunches, they just don't serve it in the cafeteria.

My Little Hobby

A couple years ago I decided I wanted to learn to sew. I had never done any sewing other than in Home Ec. class in middle school. So Nick got me a sewing machine for my birthday and it sat on a shelf for a couple months before I got the courage to try something new. I know, dumb that I asked for it but then took so long to get started. Anyway, I've really enjoyed learning and trying new projects. Sewing was one thing I looked forward to doing more while being a stay-at-home Mom, and I've been on a little sewing frenzy lately. Here are the little projects I've done.

I hemmed a pair of pants for Rylan.

I patched the knees of another pair of Rylan's pants.

I fixed a ripped seam in Mackenzie's sweatshirt.

And then I went a little crazy making baby tag blankets. I love giving these as gifts, but I usually don't make one until a baby is born. I buy fabric and it just sits in the cupboard. So I tried to use up little pieces I had left to make a bunch of these to keep as inventory. They are all about 18x20" in size and all have flannel on one side and super soft minky dot fabric on the other. One of the first tag blankets I ever made was for Mackenzie and she still sleeps with it every night. Here are the blankets I've been working on.

The last two look the same, but they aren't. The left one is patches of the elephant fabric and light blue stripes(which looks sold white). That one has a solid blue minky back. The one on the right is patches of green and blue minky with the light blue striped flannel on the back. I love how the patched ones look, but they are more work so I only do those to use up remnants that I have.

My next project is a poodle skirt for Mackenzie for Halloween, then I'd like to try using a pattern to make a dress or something. I've never used a pattern so we will see how it goes. I watch a lot of YouTube videos for learning techniques and tips, but I'll probably need a pattern for a more difficult project. Stay tuned!

Kenzie-Girl: Part 2

Development/growth/health thing #3

In the packet of pre-registration info from the hospital I got during Mackenzie's pregnancy, I vaguely remember checking a 'yes' box to being contacted about the county's Right Track program.  It is a free program from the county that includes monthly home visits from a child development professional to check up on the development of your baby.  After Mackenzie was born, they contacted me asking if I still wanted to participate.  I figured why not, it was free.  The gal, Sara, we had at our house was great, always easy to talk to mom-to-mom and had advice on what things we could work on or exercises/games to do/play.  Shortly before Mackenzie turned 2, which was last summer, Sara noticed that Mackenzie hadn't made much progress with speech.  Mackenzie would no longer be eligible for the program when she turned 2, so Sara referred us to the Infant Development program.  I had no idea what this program was about, but we made the first appointment and went from there.  They did a full evaluation on her development in all areas, not just speech.  The day of the evaluation, I felt Mackenzie did great, that she did most all things they asked her to do, besides talk.  A week later when I had the meeting to discuss the results of the evaluation, I was hit by a ton of bricks.  

Very calmly and nicely, a room full of people I had just met told me my daughter was behind in all areas of development; speech, cognition, gross motor, and fine motor.  I couldn't believe it.  I held it together in the meeting, but completely broke down in the car and bawled all the way home.  I didn't know what to do.  I contemplated quitting my job suddenly to stay home and work with her, or bring her to appointments she would need with specialists to be able to catch up.  I'll admit I was being rash at that point, but I didn't know how to handle what they had just told me.  I felt like a bad mom because we hadn't been very concerned about her development before this.  We figured she was just a late talker, so to hear that she was behind in everything was really hard to hear.  I know I shouldn't have worried so much at that point becuase all the conclusions about Mackenzie's development were taken from a 2 hour eval with strangers.  How would they be able to make judgements about her development from just 2 hours?  And they did mention that, but there was no doubt that she was behind in speech. 

After much more crying and talking with Nick and my mom, we continued life as usual but obviously had a lot more to think about as we entered a new chapter in our lives.  Her evaluation results made Mackenzie eligible for the Infant Development (ID) program and we started with weekly visits by our case manager and various other child development specialists to give us ideas on how to encourage her development.  All the people we have worked with have always been wonderful and I can tell they care very much about Mackenzie.  They have wanted to see her make progress and I've always felt they have our best interest in mind.  They always came with new techniques to try to encourage Mackenzie's speech and were very helpful in putting us in contact with other resources and opportunities we would never have known about otherwise.

The first few months of home visits I think were to primarily to get to know Mackenzie to determine what services would be best for her.  It was decided that she would benefit from speech therapy, so we started seeing a speech/language pathologist twice a week.  With both Nick and I working, it was going to be tough to get to those appointments, but thankfully, we found an SLP who was willing to visit Mackenzie at her daycare so as not to disrupt her daily schedule too much.  We were thrilled that it could work out that way, but I also wished I could be at her visits with her. The SLP and I stayed in contact over email and she would tell me what they worked on and what we should continue at home, and for a while, it was mainly working on baby sign language to get Mackenzie to communicate her needs and wants.  She picked up on it quite quickly and learned lots of words.  I think it was harder for Nick and I to keep up with the signs she knew!

As we approached spring of 2011, we had to think about what was going to happen when Mackenzie turned 3 as she would no longer be eligible for the ID program.  That didn't mean we were helpless, but we had meetings about our options and another big evaluation coming up.  I was really nervous for this eval because while I did think she was making progress, I didn't want to be blindsided again with the results.  In my eyes, she will always be my perfect little girl, so it's hard when other people tell you something is wrong.  She did great on the day of the eval though and was only behind in speech.  They not only used info from that particular day, but also from all the other visits and what they really knew she could do.  Her motor abilities and cognition were right on for her age.  Well, actually they scored her down for motor abilities because she didn't go up stairs without hanging onto the wall or railing.  I thought that was BS because who wants their 2 year old (she was 2 at the time) to go up stairs without holding onto something?!?!  Sorry, I've never worked with her on that, it's because I don't want her to!  I want her to be safe and hold on!  So, I consider her motor abilities to be just fine.  Her cognition was right on though, which is what we've always known.  She is a smart little bugger, but it's hard to see that unless you spend a lot of time with her because she doesn't talk.  She was answering questions correctly that were scored at ages 3 and 4, so we know she understands everything, she just has trouble getting her words out.

With all our options, we decided to continue with the private speech therapy through the summer and with her speech delay, she qualified for the Preschool Special Needs program through the school district which she would start in the fall (this fall).  It was nice over the summer that I could attend all her speech sessions and do the same techniques at home with her.  It was over the summer that we really saw progress with her speech.  While her speech delay was never diagnosed as something specific, her therapist said that with most kids like her, the speech explosion happens from ages 3 to 4, primarly in the latter half of the year.  She felt that we were already seeing that explosion of words and was encouraged by that.

When school started a month ago, we decided to stop the private speech therapy as she would be seeing a speech therapist during her school days.  If we feel we need to start the private speech again, we will, but for now, we will see how this goes.  Mackenzie continues to say new words and attempt to say new words every day, so we are pleased with her progress.  Her main difficulty is putting sounds together.  We can go through the alphabet and she can say all the individual sounds, but putting them together in words is the struggle.  She uses a 'g' sound for the beginning of many words.  For example, 'bye-bye' is 'guy-guy'. I will have her watch my mouth and I'll say "buh, buh, bye-bye", emphasizing the 'b' sound.  She will then say, "buh, buh, guy-guy".  So we just have to keep working on things and when she gets it, she gets it.  It just takes practice.  It's funny though, because some times she really just does not want to practice and she gets all sweet, trying to distract me.  The other day, we were practicing words and I was on the floor so we were face to face.  She put her hands on my cheeks, got the sweetest look on her face and gave me a big kiss.  I thanked her for the kiss, then tried to practice words again.  With the same sweet look, she said, "I gove you" (I love you).  Now I knew what she was trying to do, the little bugger, so I told her I loved her too but we needed to practice.  Her next tactic was to hold my cheeks again and say, "kiss, kiss", then repeatedly kiss me all over my face.  Do you think she's already learned how to be manipulative or what? :)  I can't help but laugh at her.

I've spent a lot of time worrying about Mackenzie's future, scared of what's to come, scared that she will always struggle with speech/communication, worried that people will treat her differently and sad that she may face discrimination.  I think up to this point, I've tried to keep everything somewhat of a secret because part of me was worried what people would think.  I don't want anyone to judge her based on the fact that she's labeled as having a disability.  I want everyone to see the beautiful, smart, charming little girl that I see. I don't want people to feel sorry for her and I don't want her to have limited options in the future because of all this.  I always wonder if I did something during her pregnancy that caused it, but I guess I'll never know.  What I do know is that God chose us to have Mackenzie and ever since the day she was born, I've always felt so blessed to be her Mommy and I've always felt like she was meant for something special.  I can't describe it, but there's always been something I feel when I look at her that I know she was meant for something big.  So I will do my best to help her through everything, giving her all the opportunities that I can, and teaching her to be a strong woman to go after what she wants.  I don't know if she will overcome all this one day or if she will always struggle, but I will be there for her every step of the way.  She will always know that we love her no matter what and that God loves her and He made her just the way it was meant to be.

I know that God is with me along this journey too.  Whenever I'm feeling sad about it all, I see someone in public or I come across a news story about someone who has far greater challenges.  It reminds me that we're completely blessed and things could be a lot worse.  We can handle this!  Mackenzie truly is one of God's masterpieces!

Kenzie-Girl: Part 1

"Kenzie-girl" has been Mackenzie's nickname since she was an infant and while I don't call her that very much anymore, it's still a special little name she'll always have.

This post is all about my Kenzie-girl.  It's bound to be long, so come back later if you don't have time to read it all now.  I've been working on the next two posts for some time, debating whether or not to publish them, but I want everyone to understand her better so I'm going to pour my heart out.  It's also a little like therapy as each of these things have been emotional for me along the way.  Writing everything down is a sort of release and reading it all again makes me realize that we can handle it and everything is happening according to God's plan. 

Development/growth/health thing #1
When Mackenzie was 6 months old, the Dr. commented about her weight gain at her well-baby check-up.  In 2 months, she had dropped from the 50th percentile for weight to the 10th.  She hadn't lost weight, but she wasn't gaining the way most infants do.  However, our Dr. assured me he wasn't concerned because she was still at the 50th percentile for height, so she was still growing just fine.  I wasn't really concerned either, but from that point to 18 months, her percentile kept dropping.  Keep in mind she was still gaining weight, just not as fast as other kids her age.  At first I questioned my milk supply since she was exclusively breast-fed, but even when we started on solids and she ate everything in sight, she remained low on the weight charts.  But still, her height remained between 30-50th percentile.  It never really bothered me until other people, strangers included, would comment on it.  People would ask if I was feeding her enough, if the Dr. knew, etc.  I even had a stranger ask me if it was possible that she had worms!  "Seriously?  Did that just come out of your mouth?"  I had to let things go in one ear and out the other because I would have gone crazy.  She was just my petite little girl.

It seems she has finally caught up though, and has been growing like a weed this past spring/summer.  Last fall, I bought her a bunch of new clothes, some pants were size 24 months, but most items were 2T.  Now almost everything I buy is a 4T!  At her 3 year check up, she was in the 70th percentile for both height and weight!  I'm thrilled that she's growing so well, but I wish she would stop now!  :)
Development/growth/health thing #2
You all know Mackenzie wears glasses.  You can re-read my early blog posts about those  here, here, here, and here.  She is doing great with her glasses and I feel we've finally come to a smooth spot with them.  We have spent more than I want to know on frames and lenses, but it's okay because she needs them.  She wears them no problem, but sometimes she uses them as a play toy, especially if she gets bored in the car.  She can take them off her head and pop the lenses out in one swift move.  She has lost lenses in the car that I have never found. (yes, I've searched the carseat - taken it out and damn near dismantled the whole thing)  So as long as she doesn't play with them in the car...., throw them during a tantrum....., or have them knocked off during a fight with her brother, we are good!  We recently had another check-up on her eyes and she finally sat still long enough for the machine to get a good reading on both eyes!  Our eye Dr. has always done a wonderful job of dealing with a squirmy toddler and he has been confident about her prescription, but it was nice to get the second "opinion" of the machine to know that her glasses are just right for her. We will keep going back for check ups every year to see how things are progressing.  Her prescription should change (get less intense) as her eyes grow so all we can do is keep monitoring.