Rain, Rain, Come and Play!

Atlanta (and most of the south) is getting some much needed rain. While it's great for the water basins and plants, seemingly never-ending rain can sometimes be a challenge for kids who are currently addicted to riding bikes and scooters. Not so yesterday!

Friday morning found me twisting my back yet again into some sort of painful contortion , so I was forced to abandon our plans of a trip to the jumpy house with friends followed by errands. Needing to stay seated - or best yet, flat on my back - I opened the garage doors and invited the kids to ride bikes in the garage and to take "Rain Baths" in their jammies.

They laughed and ran for almost an hour, totally soaking themselves in both rainwater and overflowing joy. We followed this natural bath with a warm shower, fresh jammies and hot chocolate. Not bad for a rainy day.

Two for the Price of One!

Scene setter: I'm peacefully sipping a cup of coffee in the kitchen while working on a grocery list. Brady and Parker are snuggled in my bed watching a tivoed episode of "The Future is Wild" on Discovery Kids. Brady comes running into the room, breathless.

"Hey Mommy!! Hey Mommy!! If we order Aqua Globes today we can get two for the price of one and they will water our plants for us! All we have to do is put water in them and stick them down into the soil and they'll water our plants for two weeks! And they won't make a mess on your table!! Two Weeks, Mommy!! Can we get one?"

For those of you with little ones who are still perfectly satisfied with PBS Kids, Disney mornings and Noggin, enjoy it while it lasts. I sure miss those simpler days of commercial-free early childhood programming.

Now excuse me while I reheat my coffee and contemplate the fact that I actually have no living plants in my house. Maybe I do need an Aqua Globe...

Oh, whatever

My two boys (especially that big one) are always coming up with something - some game, some plan, some make-believe world. Most of the time it's healthy and creative fun. Sometimes I feel the need to put a kibosh on it, in order to protect them, the dogs or my house.

Lately they have taken to hanging out on furniture upside down. The couches in the kitchen, the sofas in the living room, our master bed, it doesn't matter. If your bum is supposed to sit on it, then they have decided your head should be placed there instead. When they first started doing this, I ignored it. It would surely pass, right? Wrong.

Weeks later they are still flipping themselves "ass over tin cups" every time they reach a piece of furniture. And Bill and I have decided our course of action... Oh, whatever. There are so many things in this world to worry about, why should I care if my children want to giggle and say that Mommy and Daddy are standing on the ceiling?



That said, when they pulled it today on Aunt Mindy's couch, she was rightly quick to point out that perhaps we shouldn't teach Landon that trick right now. Let's first teach him to to get on and off the couch the old-fashioned way ... without hitting his head.

But when it comes to the privacy of our house... sometimes it's just best to say Oh, whatever.

It's Official: Brady will be a St. B's Oak!

While we are still waiting on formal confirmation that the Oak Tree will in fact be the school "mascot," it is official that Brady will enter kindergarten at St. Benedict's Episcopal Day School in August!

We are excited about the many opportunities this new school offers, and we are looking forward to helping develop and build its foundation. You all will no doubt read and hear much, much more in the coming year, so I'll save you the lengthy post today. I just wanted to share the great news, and show you Brady's cool new chapel tie (though I must admit it looks better when not draped against a red and white polo shirt!)

P.S. Yesterday Brady had his fourth spelling test... and received his fourth perfect score. Way to go, Brady!

Hold that pinky finger down!

This blog will be in two parts:

1. Some thoughts from my mommy heart, and
2. Pictures from our happy celebrations

Forgive me, I need to verbalize it. But I promise not to dwell too long.

Parker's birthdays have traditionally been a little rough for me. While they are a time during which I celebrate his life - and trust me, I do! - they are also a time during which I relive the dark hours (i.e. days, weeks and months) shortly after Parker's birth. It's a time when I am forced to give pause, to remember and to offer thanks - in a way, my personal Thanksgiving Day.

Parker is the sweetest of lambs, though he entered this world with a lion's roar. My first memory of him is of his toes since I was unable to see his face from the gurney as they wheeled me by. And the poor little kid remained nameless for awhile because I refused to confirm his name until they allowed me to hold him. I had to say his name to his face to make it real.

While Parker was in the NICU and we were trying to manage my backlog of pain, I was basically kept separate from him. As Grandy laughingly remembered recently, Parker was a funny sight in the NICU. He was a strong, healthy, pink baby, and he filled that NICU bassinet completely. Our separation seemed to be an eternity, though it was probably less than 48 hours - my memory is pretty foggy on specifics, and I would need to consult Bill for anything concrete about those days.

In any case, when I was finally given my baby and allowed to hold him, nurse him and hug him tight, he was pure perfection.

This special little guy, with the funny pouty face, bowl-cut blond head and hugs that can squeeze with the best of them - is my own private miracle. And I am so blessed and grateful that I can share that miracle with the world. Happy Birthday, Baby Love!

And now on to the happy stuff:

Parker celebrated his third birthday with a fun-filled, friend-filled, and family-filled series of celebrations! We hosted a group of his little buddies here for a Batman party, Grandma and Grandpa came for a visit, and we extended the celebration to the following weekend when Nana and Grandy returned from their travels.

And while we are still working on holding that pinky finger down to get "3" correct, our big boy turned three with great gusto!

Docter, Docter, give me the news

Today Parker and I ventured to a place where we thankfully do not frequent - the pediatrician's office. While I do like Dr. Ellerine, I am also happy to note that Parker has not been there since June and not since his two-year check-up last February before that.

If you ask Parker about his visit, he will tell you two things:

1. He got a "shot" on his finger (a finger prick for blood), a shot in his arm and a shot in his leg, though when Daddy came home he had forgotten about his arm and claimed instead to have gotten a shot in his face! We quickly corrected him... don't need him spreading that story!

2. He also got a green lollipop.

The visit included a little more than that, so here are some additional highlights. After ushering him into the little room and stripping him of everything but his Spiderman undies and baseball socks, he happily headed to the weigh-in area.

At age three Parker weighs in at 30 pounds and 38 1/2 inches (75th percentile for height and 30th percentile for weight.) Dr. Ellerine was pleased with the "long and lean." She asked him a series of questions, and he complied easily. He told her that his favorite foods were blueberries and egg salad, that he is a boy, Mommy is a girl and Daddy is a boy. He informed her that Mrs. Plaugher is his teacher and correctly named a few quizzed colors as well as some spacial relation questions. He also proudly told her that he pee-pees and poo-poos on the potty, though he told her that he still pee-pees in his pullup at night. She assured him that was OK.

He jumped, counted and drew a circle. When asked to sing a song he chose "Colors, Colores" (a Spanish color song) during which she looked at me for interpretation. Parker's English can be tough enough to understand, let alone his "second" language! He did however have the rhythm and the beat, so she was pleased.

She was happy with his vocabulary and sentence structure, agreeing that his articulation issues appear to be developmental and should continue to subside as he grows. I told her that in December Parker had been tested by a Cobb County Schools speech pathologist and (based on their developmental charts) he had the vocabulary and cognitive level of a four year old and that his articulation was NOT poor enough to qualify him for services within the school system. Thus, we were denied speech services. She agreed that the level of delay the school system requires in order to provide service generally falls beyond what many parents would tolerate and encouraged me to continue with Miss Kim as long as our insurance would cover it - which we hope to do until we suspect he will get dropped from coverage at the end of May.

All in all, the visit was enjoyable and uneventful... minus that shot in the face, of course.