Never Dull

Life it seems is never dull around here. You know how you read something and you think, "Wow! That's crazy/funny," but it's only funny because it's not happening to you and you know it'd never happen to you because things like that always happen to someone else? Well, that's my life. I'M the one who those things happen to! Kyle's been gone on a business trip to Germany for the past week and the kiddos (mostly Hannah) decided to really give it to me while I was doing my single mommy gig. Before even a day had elapsed Hannah had cut her hair again! I believe this is the 7th, maybe 8th time she's done this. This time she decided to cut the bangs she had created the last time she got ahold of the scissors completely off. She has maybe an 1/8 on an inch right at the front of her forehead left. Then she got into the baby wipes and scattered them about the toddler's room for the dog to shred. Seriously, shouldn't that phase have passed when she was like 2? Next she decided to douse the cat in baby shampoo. Let me just say that the cat was both angry and humiliated. I still haven't managed to get it all rinsed out of him yet and I'm covered in scratches from the attempts. It's quite difficult to hold a cat by the scruff while also wielding the sprayer and trying to scrub the shampoo out. Finally, a few nights ago she figured out how to pick her door lock (the door alarm still isn't in yet so we HAD to switch the door knob around while I was here alone) by prying a nail out of the wall and using that to pop the lock! She did it several times one night before I finally figured out what she was doing and where the nails were coming from. Now all pictures and nails are removed from her room. It's starting to look pretty bare in there! Oh, and just to be sure I preserve everything, a few days before Kyle left Hannah was supposed to be doing a job card chore. I had to supervise the toddler so she was left alone for periods of 5 minutes at a time. After one of those 5 minute intervals I went to check on her and it was like all heck had broke loose in the basement! Paint was smeared on the walls in several places. The paint bottles themselves were coated in paint and then doused with glitter. The dollhouse roof had been repainted. The floor was covered in glitter. There was paint on the carpet. AND she had left a trap for me of a pool of paint on the bathroom floor for me to step in and track all over the place. This was actually the 2nd trap she had set for me. The first one she made a trail of Q-tips leading to behind her chair to try to fake me into thinking she was hiding behind there instead of in my bathroom getting into my body spray. I'd say I made a fatal parenting error by allowing her to read Roald Dahl's book Matilda!

In other news, the school system finally did thier full evaluation of Hannah for her IEP eligibility. The information the psychologist gave was no surprise. We already knew she is freaking brilliant. He mentioned that she has some executive function deficits, but that at the moment they really aren't much of an issue due to her age, but will most likely become more of an issue as she gets older. That was the first I had heard of executive function problems. We actually thought we had managed to dodge that bullet. I guess not. The big kicker was the OT's report. They assessed her fine motor skills, her sensory system, and her vision. I had no idea that OT's dabbled in the vision arena, but apparently they do. Her fine motor skills were perfect. No surprise there. She showed significant sensory issues. Also not surprising. What was surprising though was that the OT felt that she had some visual processing problems. She said that her two eyes do not work together correctly and that that could be the cause of some of her hyperactiveness. She also said it could cause reading problems down the road when the type gets smaller and the white space on the page lessens. She recommended she have an evaluation by a behavioral optometrist for possible vision therapy. UGH! That's all we need, more therapy. I read up on vision therapy since I'd never really heard much about it and I can't say that I'm convinced. A lot of what I've read seems a bit like voodoo science and there seems to be no real evidence to back it up. We are definitely going to have to do some thinking about that before we jump into something else. Anyone else know anything about vision therapy or had your child do it?

Finally, Wednesday we have Hannah's evaluation at the severe behavior clinic. Apparently, even if she does qualify for the program, we will be put on a waiting list for services. It could be quite awhile before treatment could begin. Sigh. . . .

Hannah seems to be settling into sisterhood well enough. She's had her moments of jealousy and still gets quite clingy, but I see her enjoying our new little one as well. Whenever something annoys her, such as crying, I try to put it into the perspective of how she used to do it when she was a baby. That seems to help a bit. She's been very curious about how she was when she was the baby's age. We've watched some old home movies of her at that age and then compared the two of them. Boy was that a shock. She wasn't nearly as physically competent, but boy was she a lot more verbal!

Photo Notes: All of these pictures are from December. We've got swim lessons, Christmas, and working in the shop with Pap.

Moving News

Boy oh boy! I have been really bad about posting. I have LOTS of updating to do. First off, our house is officially for sale. We've had one showing and an open house that brought in 4 couples, but so far no takers. With the real estate market the way it is we are really worried that we won't be able to sell our house for what we have left on the mortgage. Things have tanked that badly here in Rhode Island as far as home prices go. We aren't even attempting to get what we paid for the house. We simply don't want to have to do a short sale! On the flip side, we are benefiting from the depressed market in terms of buying a new house in Nebraska. We found an AWESOME house and are so excited to move in. So far things are going along swimmingly on that part. All we have left to do is get an appraisal (which should be a piece of cake since the sellers are actually losing almost $100,000 on their house because they HAVE to sell and it's been on the market for 2 yrs) and a termite inspection done. All the other inspections have come back fine. Kyle is already in Nebraska so it's just Hannah and I holding down the fort here in Rhode Island and that has been tough on both of us. Hannah really misses her daddy and it totally shows in her behaviour. Lots and lots of meltdown and sneakiness. She's also back to having accidents at night. More laundry is totally not what we need while trying to keep a house show ready every single day. UGH!

Hannah's most recent stunt was sneaking my cell phone into her room and making about 45 calls! She came into my bedroom during her nap time to "give me a hug" or so she said. I took the hug and then sent her back to her room telling her that rest time wasn't over yet. She went back without a fight which was in itself unusual, but I didn't think too much about it because I was really tired. Then, when nap time was over she came back into my room and said, "Mommy, nap time is over, but I'm still really tired. Can I sleep until 5:00?" Then she marched back into her room. I was in a bit of a daze having just woken up, but when I sat up and my head cleared the warning bells started going off. Never has my daughter EVER ASKED to go to sleep. I immediately burst into her room to find her chatting away on my cell phone! She quickly snapped the phone shut and prepared to chuck it across the room, but I nabbed it before she could. A study of my recent calls list showed that she had made 45 different calls and had either left messages or had conversations with many different people! The crazy thing is that she's never been showed how to use a cell phone or how to look people up in the address book. I guess that's one of the down sides of having a 4 yr old that can read and is way smarter than I am. She can figure stuff like this out and totally knew exactly who she was calling each time. These most definitely weren't random calls! UGH! The little stinker.

The Great Escape

So my little escape artist is at it again. Since we have a fully fenced (4ft in some places and 6 ft in others, wood not chain link) back yard and I have a window over the sink in my kitchen through which I can view the majority of the yard I often let Hannah play outside in the yard while I fix dinner. I leave the back door and kitchen window wide open so I can hear her call or scream and I make sure I can see her every 2 minutes or so. I have a difficult time opening the large heavy gate that hangs on it's hinges and drags the ground to get out of the yard so I knew it would be next to impossible for Hannah to open. In my mind there was no way for her to get out of the yard other than coming through the house and I'd be able to see that. She was safe in the yard. Earlier in the week after a particularly rough day I sent Hannah out to play while I fixed dinner. As usual I checked on her out the kitchen window every 2 minutes to be sure I could see her. Unbeknownst to me, while I wasn't watching Hannah was hatching a plan to get out of the yard. She managed to move a large heavy duty trash can (the big grey kind people keep in their garage) off our deck and across the yard over to the fence and place it up against the fence just on the other side of our rolling trash barrels. Then she used two of her sand buckets to build a flight of stairs to use to climb up to the top of the fence and then over onto the top of our other trash can. She then slid down the side of that can using the pull handle to help her. Next she got her tricycle and pulled it out to the sidewalk and was getting ready to take off down the street when I made my next check and realized I couldn't see her in the yard. I ran into the backyard and was able to see her out by the street. Instead of having remorse for what she had done, she was actually proud of herself for figuring out how to get out of the yard! I didn't think it was possible for her to get out of the yard, but this just goes to show that where there's a will there's a way and with a seriously smart, stubborn preschooler who's mad at mom there is definitely a will! She was dead set on getting the heck out of dodge! Besides being amazed at her ingenuity, I can't believe how quickly she carried out her plan. She had to have thought out all the steps in her plan before she carried it out because she only had 2 minutes to get everything in place and get out before I noticed. That's quick and takes some preplanning! What on earth am I supposed to do now? Now I have both a dog and a 3 year old that can scale the fence and escape! That means they are currently both on house arrest which is a bit of a pain. Here's to hoping that eventually I can trust them both again to turn them loose back in the yard!

Yesterday Hannah about gave me another heart attack, but this time it was because of two things she said to me. First off she told me that, and this is an exact quote, "Jesse really loves me. When he grows up and when I grow up he will be my husband and I will be his wife and we will be married." Oh my gosh! She's starting a little young don't you think? Jesse, by the way, is a little boy in her new class. Then, she followed that doosey up later in the evening after commenting that her PJs might be getting too small that she thought she was growing a baby in her tummy!

My Little Fish

Apparently Hannah's Finding Nemo room has made an impact on her because I discovered this week that Hannah is part fish. We started going to a Mommy and Me swim class at the YMCA and Hannah loves it! She splashes and kicks around like she was born to be in the water. She even dunked herself on Monday on accident and didn't get upset about it at all. That being said, Hannah is not half the swimmer that her friend Evelyn is. I think if Sarah let Evelyn go she would actually just start swimming around! The instructor even commented to Sarah on how good Evelyn was doing and she's even the youngest baby in the class!

Besides swim class, Hannah and I have been playing outside as often as possible and I think Hannah has finally gotten over her distaste for grass. In fact, I think she has literally acquired a taste for it! I have to spend a good portion of our play time keeping Hannah from grazing! You will all be happy to know that Hannah broke in her new play clothes this week and has her very first grass stains on the knees of her play jeans! I'm such a proud Mama. Maybe, just maybe she won't turn out to be a city girl after all.

Hannah's cold is pretty much gone although she still has a runny nose. The snot is perfectly clear though which makes me wonder if she has allergies. Her nose seems to run more when she is outside and her eyes water some too. Tiffany has allergies so I suppose it isn't far fetched to think that Hannah might have some as well. If it gets any worse I may take her to the doctor just to talk to him about it.

Hannah's hand-eye coordination continues to improve and she can now easily put the rings on her rock and stack on the first try pretty much all of the time. She's even started experimenting with other things that might go on there like the blocks from her shape sorter, teething rings, the lid to the shape sorter, the list could go on and on. Books also continue to be a love of hers. We read dozens every day (sometimes the same book dozens of times!) and she also spends quite a bit of time looking at them on her own. Yesterday she was obsessed with her Five in the Bed book and asked me to read it so many times that I couldn't stand the thought of reading it again so I hid it under a stack of other books on her shelf and then distracted her with another toy. Eventually when she wanted another story and I told her to go get a book I assumed she would take the top book on one of the stacks and I would be spared another go round of "Roll over, roll over," but much to my dismay she rummaged through all the piles of books until she found the Five in the Bed book and then brought it over to me and signed for me to read it! I was absolutely shocked that she searched through the piles to find it. I had always thought that her choice of books was random and she just picked up whatever book she happened to get her hands on, but apparently not. She seems to actually be choosing books based on her interests for the day. That is so crazy for me. It seems so odd to think of her as a little person with actual tastes in literature already, but she is growing and maturing so quickly that I shouldn't be surprised.

I'm back again and now it's Wednesday. Hannah and I just had a battle over a nap. I eventually won, but boy did it take it out of me. While her sleep at night is getting much better, naps are becoming more and more of a struggle. She just wants to go go go all the time and now that she can stand up in her crib she will hold onto the bars and shake them and scream and scream. Before if I left her to cry it out and fall asleep at least she was already laying down. Now while she's screaming standing up she has no chance of just drifting off to sleep. It's such a hard problem to figure out. I feel like such a meanie letting her cry. :( I know she's tired. She knows she's tired. But she just doesn't want to miss a single thing that might happen while she sleeps and so she fights. Hopefully this stage will soon pass before I get too many grey hairs.

Playful Little Girl

Hannah has become very playful lately. She likes to chase me around while I crawl on the floor or be chased by Mommy or Daddy as she quickly tries to crawl away. She's started to initiate these games herself and will ask for more playtime by signing when she doesn't want to be finished! The other day I got a video of her playing with Kyle that is really cute. She also likes to climb all over us. She thinks it's pretty funny to wiggle over the top of our belly and flop onto the floor on the other side. Once over her only objective is to wiggle herself right back over to the other side again! As her crawling speed increases she is getting much harder to keep track of. If I turn my head for a second or look away to answer the phone or yell at the dogs she can be in another room when I turn back around! We finally got around to ordering and installing baby gates and I must say that it was not a moment too soon! The poor animals are really taking the brunt of Hannah's new found mobility. She loves to chase them around and pull on their fur. Hannah's grandpa's dog, My, has really been a trooper. Hannah is constantly pulling on her face and tail and loves to body slam her. We were initially worried about how My would react to Hannah's affections, but so far she hasn't seemed to mind a bit. We still keep a close eye on her though. Today Hannah ousted Abby from her crate while she was taking a nap. Poor Abby seemed pretty confused when Hannah came crawling right into the crate with her. If only my camera was ready when she did it!

Since the weather has been so nice we've been taking Hannah out on little adventures whenever Kyle gets home from work. Lately Kyle has been running with Hannah in the jogging stroller and I ride my bike along beside them. Yesterday I finally bought Hannah a bike helmet so we decided to take her out in her bike trailer that she and Kyle got for Christmas. Unfortunately Hannah was not very cooperative about wearing her helmet. We think it was uncomfortable for her because it kept her from resting her head back against her seat in the trailer. It kept getting pushed forward out of position so we had to take it off about half way into the ride. She was much happier after that, but Kyle and I really didn't like her out riding without a helmet. We are going to do some fiddling with the helmet and the trailer to see if we can get them both to be more comfortable for Hannah so she will keep her helmet on. Until then Hannah's grounded from riding in the trailer until she will safely wear her helmet. We've also taken Hannah out in her baby backpack that she and Daddy got for Christmas and she enjoys that quite a bit. This Friday we went to hike at Happy Hollow Park and Hannah even fell asleep in the backpack with her head resting on Kyle's shoulder! It was so cute. One thing I have determined though is that I am unintentionally raising a city girl! Hannah hates to touch grass or dirt! If I set her down in the grass she refuses to crawl or even set her hand down and touch the grass! If she does happen to touch the grass by accident she pulls her hand away quickly and starts to whine. She's going to have to get over that as I'm not having a sissy city girl for a daughter! It looks like she's going to be spending lots of time getting dirty this spring and summer to get her over that. I even bought her some sturdy play clothes!

Lately Hannah has seemed hungrier than usual so we have upped her formula back to wear it was a few months ago and increased her solid food. We are also trying out a new feeding schedule to see how that works. I'll let you know how things go with that after we have a chance to see what happens. We also increased the amount of regular formula Hannah has been getting and decreased the amount of the special formula for her reflux. So far things have been going well and we have NO spit up! YEAH! We will be quite happy if she has grown out of the reflux and so will our pocket books since the special formula is quite a bit more expensive than the regular type.

Hannah continues to really love eating her veggie puffs and still objects to being told she's finished with them, but we are working through those tantrums. The other day I gave her some diced cooked apples and she liked the taste, but hated how they felt in her hand. She didn't want to touch them at all, but wanted me to feed them to her with a spoon! We had this big drama/battle of wills (which I actually won this time!) Where I was having to make her feed herself a piece of apple each time so that she wanted another veggie puff. It was so funny to see her bargaining with me and trying to see if she was persistent enough if I would give up. Eventually she would just immediately pick up and eat another piece of apple and then sign more and look straight at the puffs! She knew exactly what she had to do to get what she wanted and she wasn't eating even one extra piece of apple than she had to! She's also been learning some new signs and one she doesn't like is don't touch. When I was teaching her it she thought it was pretty funny, but now that she's got a taste of what it means in the real world she's not sure it's funny any more!

Wednesday I made and decorated a practice cake for Hannah's birthday. I thought it would take me many tries to relearn my past cake decorating skills, but it all came back to me pretty quickly. I even made my own icing using Grandma Frye's recipe! The only thing I needed help with was knowing what it meant to cream the icing (you all know I'm not a baker) and I wasn't sure how to get the cake out of the pan once it was done. Luckily my friend Sarah who is an excellent baker came over and helped me out. It turns out the cake just plopped right out of the pan with no problems thanks to my over abundance of PAM I sprayed on the pan before I poured in the batter! Oh well, the result was what I wanted-a cake that came out looking like the shape it was supposed to be!

Here are some more videos of Hannah. Just click on the link to watch the video. Enjoy!

This video is of Hannah in crawling position a few days before she actually learned how to crawl.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3099214653381785705&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah getting Abby's tail.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7063141752235499658&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah up on her hands and feet.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6225684448042506562&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah getting into her toy box in the living room. Now she is so good at it that she can reach in and pull out exactly what toy she wants!
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6738846765201688024&hl=en

Here's a video of Hannah during her early crawling days.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-1108997020772836036&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah playing with the curtain in the living room.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=5078664550190036618&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah playing with the cat food cans and using them as drums.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=449859735977477255&hl=en

This is a video of me chasing Hannah.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-7930391173202380766&hl=en7930391173202380766&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah and Kyle wrestling. Be sure to listen for Hannah's snorting and battle cry as she runs head on into Kyle!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=463341155982036785&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah and Evelyn playing together.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=230016395839137529&hl=en

This is a video of Hannah kissing Kyle. Hannah loves to give kisses with her mouth wide open!

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3035677524243555356&hl=en

Working Hard

Hannah has been working really hard this past week to learn lots of new stuff. On Friday alone she managed to learn several new tricks and kept me hopping the entire day. First off, she's turning into quite the eater. She's now had sweet potatoes and carrots and loves them both. Tomorrow she starts squash and then I think we are done with the orange vegetables and will probably move onto the green ones. Those won't be quite as sweet so I'm curious to see if she will still like them. I figure pretty much anything has got to be better than her cereal so they probably won't be a problem.

Hannah has gotten much steadier standing over the last week and really enjoys standing holding onto the couch. I was using the coffee table, but she almost cracked her head on it the other day so now I'm sticking with the couch which is much softer until she is just a tab bit more stable. Going along with standing, she's learned that she can pull herself up from either a laying or sitting position using my thumbs as something to grab a hold of. She needs absolutely no help from me at all to get up either. I was absolutely shocked the first time she did it. Of course I then tried to get her to pull up on the couch or coffee table, but she just can't quite do that yet. I think the difference is that if I offer her my hands to use, my hands are at the same level as her hands as opposed to the coffee table which is above her head and she has to reach her hands way up to grab it.

Now that she's a pretty stable sitter she's been playing lots and lots with her toys in the sitting position and doesn't like to be on her back playing as much. Yesterday while sitting she learned how to point at something she wants me to look at and look at something that I point at! She also started raising her hands up above her head as I walk by when she wants to be picked up. I nearly cried the first time she did it! She's been reaching for Kyle when I am holding her for quite some time now, but this was the first time she ever reached for me! She's really been getting some mileage out of that new trick. She's definitely learned that she can manipulate mommy to do what she wants if she does that. Along with the reaching to be held, she's also started to give hugs. That of course melts my heart as well.

She got a rock-n-stack for Christmas from Uncle Kevin and she's really been enjoying playing with it. Lately she's been running experiments with the rings. She's testing them out to see if they sound different when she bangs different ones together. Also, she's quite confused by them because one ring has balls in it that roll around and make noise when you shake it, but the others are just plain plastic. She can't quite figure out why it makes noise, but those other stupid rings don't do anything when she shakes them. It's funny to see her test them all out and get disgusted as one by one she tries them each and throws them to the side until she finds the one ring that does make noise. She hasn't quite figured out that it's always the same ring and which one that is yet, but I'm sure that will come.

Today she was running experiments on some balls that she got for Christmas from one of Kyle's aunts. They all make different noises when they are shook, dropped, or twisted and she loves to do side by side comparisons of them. She'll have a different ball in each hand and shake the right one first. Listen to it and think about it. Then shake the left one. Listen to it and think about it. And finally shake the right one again to make sure that it really was different! Then she drops them both, and picks up two different ones and starts the process all over again.

She's also been looking quite cute in her new Christmas clothes. Once again our friends and family really came through for us and managed to set Hannah up with a whole new wardrobe just in time. She was on the verge of out growing pretty much her last set of clothes that she had received from her multiple showers and then Christmas came around and she got lots of 12 month and 12 -18 month outfits. So, now pretty much everything she wears is size 12 months except for onesies which are nice and stretchy and 9 month ones still fit. It's so hard for me to believe that she's only 6 months old (today actually is her half birthday!) and already wearing 12 month clothes. At Clod Christmas we stood her up next to her cousin Makinley and she was already taller than her and Makinley is a year old. If she's this big now I can only wonder what size she will actually be wearing when she does turn a year old, 2T maybe!

PS. I just want to be sure that if you are reading this Becky that you notice that I finally got that picture up of you and Hannah playing on the floor!