Blizzard (continued) and booboos…

So we are now on day 5 of Blizzard 2010 and here comes part two…tonight we are expected to get anywhere from 10-15 more inches, O M G! I honestly don’t know what the streets will look like with this additional snow as the plows haven’t yet cleaned up the prior snow, our culdesac is still a mess and in fact the HOA hired a bobcat to come in but even he couldn’t remove all the snow. So basically noone knows what to do…ack ack ack! We do love the snow but this is getting nuts. Being stuck in the house with a very active toddler is not ideal in the least.

So I present you with exhibit A:

A blizzard is an excellent time to empty out your entire toy bin

and Exhibit B:

Today Brendan got his first what I would consider major booboo. Not really sure how it happened all we saw was the little bit of blood, heard the cry and saw the tears. He has a bit of a bump and was back to his old self in a matter of seconds. I only mention this because you will see it in pictures and I don’t want anyone to worry

Some people are pet lovers and some aren’t, we are and Brendan especially is. There is something very special about a relationship between a child and their pet that you can’t put into words. Cherokee and Brendan are inseparable. They play games with each other that only they seem to know the rules too it is funny to watch them in action.

haha I got your ball

here take it ....

here take it....

just kidding you can't have it

Brendan would pretend to give Cherokee the ball then take it away, Cherokee would do his crazy freak out run..Brendna would laugh they did this over and over again

We have been working on doing puzzles for a couple weeks now.  He is getting the hang of it, we give him a ton of praise for getting the piece in the correct spot or for trying …..

here he is putting the square piece in the correct spot...Yay Brendan!

Today we introduced Brendan to rice cakes. To start him off we got him cheddar flavored ones so far he loves them but he will not share them with his buddy Cherokee. Instead he shows them to him, waves them in his face and then takes a bite…eek not so nice.

can you see the smirk on Brendan's face?

Brendan got some mail today…a Valentine’s day card from his Aunt Beth..

The great digout and Superbowl !

Today was the second day of the dig out from the blizzard. Our neighbors are not being too kind with this and have piled all their snow in front of my car! Luckily the Jeep is free and clear so haha to them. Devin spent the better portion of today doing damage control on the house …removing snow from the small and medium sheds outback, checking the roof, clearing the heat pump and moving tree branches. We heard a rumor that our HOA (homeowner’s association) is having a plow bobcat come in to remove snow on Tuesday before the next storm comes in…I hope so!

This afternoon Brendan decided he couldn’t be trusted so he put himself in a timeout while I finished up the chocolate covered pretzels and chocolate covered Oreos for the Superbowl party….

covered in milk chocolate then drizzled with each teams colors

Tonight we headed over to our friend Milo and Laurens house for a Super Bowl party a first for Brendan.  Because of the storm only us and one other person showed up.  There was a ton of yummy food, great drinks and they all fawned over Brendan.   It was a great game, Congrats to the Saints fans on your win!

Lauren helping Brendan eat a pulled pork sandwich...he loved it

Milo and Brendan having a chat

OMG did you see that touchdown!?!

Shawn, Milo, Lauren, Brendan and Devin

eating Shawn's blackberry

he loves his daddy

It was a blizzard!

The weather people weren’t wrong for once.  We were hit with a winter storm that turned into a blizzard…predictions at first were for 12 inches by the end of the week they had upped the totals to anywhere from 22-30 inches.   The snow started for us early in the afternoon on Friday continuing through until the sun set on Saturday.  Devin put a piece of pvc pipe out back marked it at 24 inches (that line is covered!) , we have snow drifts that are higher then our neighbors cars but still we had fun in the snow.   Devin was out shovelling a couple times, he was helpful and did a few of our neighbors houses too.  After the snow stopped we bundled Brendan up in footie pajamas and his skeleton sweatsuit from Halloween to snap some pics of him in the snow then we went for a ride in the Jeep.   The rides are ok, not great but perfect for us and our Jeep.

Also today Brendan got to talk to his Mommom and Poppop H on Skype in Florida

Hope you all are enjoying the snow or sun!

the view out our backdoor this morning at 9 a.m. when the snow was still coming down in full force

Cherokee had a lot of fun running around like a lunatic in the snow.

munching on a waffle before heading out in the snow. And yes he ate 90% of that waffle I was shocked!

the view from the window in our bedroom...it's a lot of snow heehe

he did not like how cold the snow was hahaha

Brendan is our measuring stick ...the snow officially goes up to his shoulders

ok guys I am ready to go back in now

our pvc measuring stick...it's 30 inches total... we figure we got about 26 inches total

play area and a blizzard….

We live on the East Coast, the area that is being hit by the 2010 blizzard with predictions of snow totaling up to 30 inches for us this weekend. Now many aren’t excited about this but Devin and I are since we have Brendan and really we can enjoy it. This morning in anticipation of the impending storm we were up early so we could get out before the store arrived to get Brendan to the mall to burn some energy. We took him to the mall play area it has a cute theme of Maryland stuff like a lighthouse, crab, etc…. which is quickly becoming a favorite place for him. It is also becoming a favorite place for us because not only does Brendan love it but it wears him out! After that we came home and the snow was falling, the cities were beginning to shut down and we were luckily ready to settle in for the storm. I am all set to bake and make treats for a SuperBowl party we are going to Sunday and Devin is set to shovel while Brendan supervises. Hope you all enjoy your snow, sunshine or whatever weather you have this weekend!

Cautiously checking out his new "friend" I got for him. It's a Valentine's puppy that plays a version of Shout and flaps his ears...Brendan LOVES him!

this wheel is his favorite part of the play area

crawling through the lighthouse

here he comes!

climbing the Maryland blue crab

contemplating climbing up the slide the wrong way ...bad boy!

this older boy was nice. He saw Brendan eyeing up the dragon .....

so he helped him up

he fell asleep on the way home

trying on his new cowboy boots

watching it snow

he brought his puppy over to check out the snow too

Devin…. and more of the daredevil!

Well it’s now official and safe to put it out there.   Devin got a new job and we are ecstatic.  This one has been almost a year in the making, 11 months, to be exact.  He will be leaving one federal agency to go to another but is sure to be much happier in his new job.   Congrats Devin as always we are very proud of you and they are very very lucky to have you on their side!

two buddies sharing a peanut butter sandwich

apparently he needed something off Cherokees crate

he was standing on his bongos watching Cherokee eat the snow

Look Mom no hands ::giggle:: ::giggle::

Visit with early intervention ….

Tuesday morning bright and early the Early Intervention team arrived to assess Brendan’s gross, motor, fine , cognitive,social & emotional and communication/speech skills. To say this was a stressful day is putting it lightly luckily Devin was home with me for the meeting. There were 3 women and they simply played with Brendan, asked us questions and came up with a plan to help Brendan. Because he is a preemie he automatically qualifies for services with Early Intervention. We started off with the rundown on my pregnancy, his birth and his life up until this point.

Things he would do: stack blocks, turn pages in book, “write” with a pencil, put object in cup, remove object from cup, turn pages in a book, hide n seek with an object under a cloth.

Things he couldn’t do: feed a baby doll, stir spoon in cup, put lid on cup, mimic sound, follow direction, point to body parts.

After that they wanted to see him eat which is when we discovered that he doesn’t chew like a “normal” toddler, shocking!  We found this out by giving him a cracker.   When Brendan eats he takes a bite and let’s it soften in his mouth before chewing whereas toddlers/grown-ups start chewing immediately.  So this is something that we are set to work on immediately.

That’s the short of the visit.   So basically what it all boils down to is Brendan qualifies for every service they offer because he has a delay in every area.  Now this does not mean he has a severe delay in every area but it’s enough that they want to work on it and make sure he doesn’t fall more behind and we (me and Devin) are okay with that.

Brendan will be receiving speech therapy, going to a playgroup every week with other EI kids, storytime and we are going to once again enroll him at Rolly Pollie  this coming Summer.

The team also suggested getting rid of some of his toys. No, not throwing them away but putting them away for a bit and just leaving the ones out that don’t make noise.  The theory is that children these days don’t need to talk because the toys make noise for them.  This theory makes total sense to me so we are going to put a lot of his toys away for now.

To help with his eating the team suggested feeding him foods that can be cut into strips: toast, green beans, carrots, cheese puffs, etc.  So we got Snikkidy Snack fries (organic), pretzel sticks and will be getting more stick foods this coming weekend at the grocery store.

Work with him on teaching him his body parts, basic children’s songs (itsy bitsy spider, wheels on the bus, etc) by doing the motions.  Also speech therapy will be teaching us some sign language to help lessen not only Brendan’s frustration but ours while he is trying to communicate with us.

The team was so nice and helpful they will be back again in 6 months to check his progress.  We have an official copy of Brendan’s IEP (individualized education plan) and a plan so here’s to hoping we have a communicating chatterbox in the coming months!

******  The team did give permission for me to take and use their pictures for this blog *****

snowy day

The weather people really goofed big time with todays forecast.  They were calling for us to get 1 inch of  snow but it started snowing at 9:30 this morning and is still snowing as I type this (11:50 p.m.) I think the last total I heard was around 6 inches.   Believe me I am not complaining I love the snow, I love how much Brendan loves looking at it and how pretty it looks.

watching the snowflakes falling

it's very cool to see his little imagination at work

Yes he is in a container, no I didn't put him there and yes he was in there for awhile... silly!

he loves playing with his see n say

Preemie awareness….

Back on December 10th a pretty famous family, The Duggar’s, welcomed their 19th child into this world.  She was born 15 weeks early and everyone kept saying she was fine.  These kind of reports caused quite the uproar in the preemie community and many preemie moms took to their blogs to voice their opinion on the matter.  The fact is that a baby born at 25 weeks gestation is not fine and won’t be fine for awhile.   The Duggar Family have a show on TLC called 18 19 Kids and counting I watch it all the time.  For the birth of their 19th child Josie the cameras kept on rolling there will be a special airing on her progress and life in the NICU.

Duggar special

There is also an article in People magazine this week .  

Duggar article

It is unfortunate that the Duggar Family joined the ranks of us other preemie families but it is great that they are using their fame to help with awareness.

A boy and a boombox…

ok not really a boombox because I don’t think they even make those anymore. But yesterday Devin was working in his man cave he has this little ihome thing for the ipod when he brought it in Brendan was playing with it. To say he was fascinated is an understatement…in seconds he had figured out all the buttons had it opened and was attempting to remove the ipod, help us! haha. He really enjoys listening to music and bopping his little head while giggling like a silly boy. His new thing is this fake laugh it kind of makes his face look scary but in a cute way. He just laughs and laughs.

having a snack while listening to some tunes

wrestling Mickey...Brendan won!

but they are still buddies!

he shares his dinosaurs with Cherokee

these two are trouble...big trouble but boy do they have fun together

First haircut!

Today we took Brendan for his first haircut. I was holding out hope that his hair would be curly like his dads but blonde like mine. Well I got the blonde part right but the hair never got really curly just funky curly in a non cute way. So off we went to get it cut at a cute place in Annapolis called Pigtails and Crewcuts. The girls in the shop were really nice, luckily because we went mid afternoon the shop was empty except for us and one other customer. They have chairs that you can sit in and hold your child or that your child can sit in alone in a police car, firetruck or airplane. The other little boy was in the police car so we put Brendan in the airplane. They had a Thomas the train movie on, gave him some magnets and animal crackers and we had brought a sippy cup with milk. He was leary of the scissors and clippers but there weren’t any tears. He looks so grown up now The girl put some of his hair in a little bag for us to keep and I of course took some pictures

getting all cleaned up for his haircut

all ready for his haircut