This Tuesday was Ian’s third birthday. Since we spent all of last week in Arizona, and didn’t get back until Monday night, we waited until today to have his party, but the presents have been trickling in all week. Here are some assorted pictures of the birthday festivities.

Some random recent pictures:

And a special bonus video:

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Maybe one of these days I’ll get around to finishing up my Thanksgiving and Christmas posts. *sighs*

Ian has a little play cooking set that his great-Grandmother ordered for him for Christmas last year.  One of the items in it is a play muffin tin with 4 little plastic muffins (or cupcakes, as Ian calls them).  Tonight when it was almost bedtime, Ian noticed it sitting on the table and wanted to take it into his room.  He carried it in and set it on the floor near the foot-and-a-half-tall plastic lawn gnome that hangs around his room as “decoration” (and playing with).  I suggested that he should share his muffins with the gnome, so he pushed it over near the gnome.  A few minutes later, when he turned around to get his diaper out of the drawer, I reached down and pocketed one of the muffins, and said “Oh!  The gnome ate a muffin!”  Ian looked at the gnome for a couple of minutes, and looked around for the muffin, but then went back to getting jammies (”jeebies!”) on.  A few minutes later, when he went in the bathroom to brush his teeth, I pocketed another one, and when he got back, told him that the gnome had eaten another one, and that the gnome said “Thank you” and “that he made very tasty muffins.”  He took a long hard look at the gnome, so I told him that the gnome also said that he would stay in Ian’s room and make sure he had a good sleep.  He grabbed the other 2 muffins, and climbed into bed with them and said he was going to share them with Mister Bear.

When I got up to give him his hug before bed, I snuck the other two muffins into my pocket and told him that Mister Bear also said “thank you” for the muffins.  He once again looked dubious, but rolled over to go to sleep.  A couple of minutes later, though, his curiosity got the better of him, and he climbed down, claiming “need to go pee!”, but made a point of picking up the gnome on his way.  He then proceeded to take the gnome into the bathroom, turn it over, look very carefully in the bottom, and then set the gnome on his training potty while he went pee so the gnome could go pee too.

Then he carried the gnome back in to his room, climbed into bed, tucked the gnome in next to him, and went to sleep.  So sweet.

(Of course, I’m sure this little episode will come back to haunt me later, but still … so sweet.)

We took the kids to Sears for their Christmas pictures yesterday morning, and aside from the photographer being double-booked and us having to keep the little people occupied for half an hour while another family with a cranky 2-year-old got their photos taken, it was a decent session.  Leah is still hard to get to smile on demand, without some coaxing, but we got a few decent ones.  Prints have been ordered for family, and I’ll post the full set when I have a bit of time, but for now, here are a couple of my favorites.  (Aside from looking like I have plastic hair.)

In other notes, if anybody wants to buy these cute kids (or their cute parents) some Christmas gifts, I’ve posted some ideas here.

Since winter is coming on, we decided it was time that Ian move on from a twin mattress on the floor, where he’s been sleeping for 9 months or so, to a big boy bed.  So last weekend we went bed shopping.  We found a great deal on a little boy’s dream bed, and after some help from Shawna’s parents getting the box home, since it wouldn’t fit in the car, we got it home, and it’s been sitting in a box in the living room since Tuesday. Yesterday morning, we assembled it.

He managed to sleep in it last night without falling out (we did put a higher rail on the long side), and spent a fair chunk of yesterday putting his stuffed animals down the slide (along with other, noisier things) – I think it’s a winner.

We were using Pooh stickers to bribe Ian to pee in the potty (to poo, too, I guess). We ran out of Pooh stickers, which is fine, because Ian is pretty much potty trained. He just pee’d on Justin’s tomato plants, but other than his, uhm, love of nature, it’s all good.

So last night, Ian asked Justin for a sticker, so Justin gave him some address labels from the local animal shelter. (I gave them $35 three years ago, and they’ve been sending me address labels ever since, in the hopes of getting another $35, and they’ve probably spent my original $35 spamming me to get more money.) The labels have cats and dogs on them, so Ian was happy.

Today, I was trying to rock Leah to sleep, and Ian was once again bugging the everlivincrap out of me. I finally told him that if he didn’t calm down and let me get her to sleep, I’d put a gate up in the doorway and lock him out of her room. He finally disappeared, and was so quiet I knew he was doing something he shouldn’t be. I finally got Leah out, and went to find Ian… he’d climbed up and found more address labels. Of course, next to the labels, there were some very temping pretty stickers with berries on them, so Ian put several of those with some address labels on his shirt…

What’s the going rate for mailing 35 pound odd-shaped packages?

Yes, we are still alive, and have even finally gotten around to posting some new pictures.  More words later, for now, enjoy some pictures.  (We’ve reorganized the gallery, but pretty much everything in April onwards is new.)

Since Ian had chronic ear infections, and wasn’t talking at one year, his doctor ordered tests — to have his ears checked by an ENT, and his hearing checked at the children’s hospital.  The ENT said Ian’s ears are fine, and he doesn’t need tubes (although he’s had at least 4 infections since that visit), and his hearing was excellent.  His comprehension was also excellent for his age.  I was happy with those results, and didn’t think Ian needed any more intervention, but the woman who runs the speech pathology department at Children’s Mercy insisted that Ian needed speech therapy, and his regular pediatrician was encouraging therapy, too.  But there was a wait list for ST, and our insurance didn’t cover it anyway, and I didn’t think he needed it, so I didn’t worry about it.  That was last November (yeah, his pediatrician wrote the referral for his hearing test last April, Children’s Mercy has a 6 month wait list).  In January, I got a call from the speech therapy coordinator, saying, “Hey we have 3 openings, this this and this time and day, pick one NOW or we put you back on the wait list.”  Wow, ok.  So I picked a day, because I didn’t want to lose the spot, but I knew we couldn’t pay without insurance.  The coordinator sent me paperwork for a grant, and we qualified before the first appointment, so it was all good.

Anyway, I took Ian to speech therapy, even though I didn’t think he needed it.  Ian and I spend so much time together that I always know what he wants, even if he can’t talk.  To me, that’s fine, because if I hold out for him to say a word, it leads to a tantrum, and I just really don’t want to deal with that.  The first thing the therapist did was show Ian really neat toys, and then force him to say a sound or use a sign to get the toy.  Leading to… tantrums.  Yeah.  Ian hated therapy.  I hated watching him go through it.  He wouldn’t cooperate, he’d grab for the toys, the therapist and I would tell him no, and it was just sad.  I didn’t care if he couldn’t talk, I knew he’d do it eventually if there was nothing physically or mentally wrong with him.  But then the therapist would ask what Ian calls me, and I’d have to admit that my toddler couldn’t say “mama,” and I’d get sad about that and consent to more therapy.

Ian didn’t make progress in therapy for the first few months.  He learned a few signs, mainly “want more” and “cookies,” (yeah, the SPEECH therapist started off by teaching him sign language), but Ian wouldn’t make sounds–except “kaboom.”    Of all the words he could have picked up in therapy, why kaboom?  I’ll never know.

Speaking of cookies… part of her process was to offer Ian either cookies or juice, and get him to say/sign for one or the other.  Ian always chose cookies, but then couldn’t talk while chewing.  Then he’d get thirsty, but couldn’t/wouldn’t ask for juice, and she wouldn’t just let him have it.  That drove me crazy, because I knew the poor kid really NEEDED a drink and couldn’t get one, and I was too uncomfortable to speak up for him.  I thought maybe it was just my reaction to therapy, but Justin and his mom both went to sessions and agreed that it wasn’t working for Ian.

By his second birthday, he knew maybe 5 signs and 5 words.  Then Leah was born, and I couldn’t give Ian my full attention, and I couldn’t follow him to see what he was pointing at.  Then Justin’s mom was here for a week, and she was very interested in Ian’s therapy.  She came with us to a session, and worked with him the rest of the week, trying to get sounds out of him.  The next two week’s after her visit, we didn’t have therapy.  Guess what?  Ian started talking.  Non-stop, like a parrot.  He’d repeat everything, and he started retaining sounds and words.  It was amazing. (more…)

I’ve apparently been reading In the Night Kitchen to Ian too much – I woke up Saturday morning seriously wanting some morning cake. Not feeling like going out to get doughnuts (and that not really being what I wanted anyway), I dug around in The Joy of Cooking and came up with this, based on a modification of a couple of recipes. As Ian would say: Yum!

Shawna’s grandmother (Ian and Leah’s great-grandmother), Norma Nave, passed away in her sleep last night at the age of 90. It was not unexpected, she had been in poor health for some time, but had remained remarkably feisty throughout her health problems. She will be greatly missed.

Edited to add: Obituary at  The Examiner