Category Archives: Link Love

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Classes, starting with a full load

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The results of Sophia’s evaluation have come in. The only delay she shows is with her speech, which is 40% behind her peers. Everything else was marked as zero delay. They’re recommending Speech therapy intervention and an in house referral to nutrition and feeding.

The day of the evaluation I was told about some classes offered there, some are free, some have a small free, and others have a fee but would be free to us because Sophia qualifies for therapy. I signed up for three classes. I may not stick with all three, but I’m trying them out. One class is a preschool/play group. We’ve gone to that class twice so far. The first time didn’t go so well, but she improved a lot the second time.

The next class can very loosely qualify as a gymnastics class. Sophia definitely doesn’t need help with her gross motor skills, but I signed up to give her yet another opportunity to play with other kids her age since there is some free play incorporated in it. She was leery of the class in general, but she really latched onto the teacher. That was completely unexpected. I liked that she wasn’t hanging onto me for dear life, but it was odd.

I took her to the playground nearly everyday during the summer to help socialize her, and she does well in an environment where children outnumber adults. She’ll take off without me and play around and sometimes with the other kids. One time she found an older girl (about six or seven years old) on the playground to adopt as her big sister by taking the girl’s hand and just shadowing for the entire time we’re there. The girl was a part of a summer camp or YMCA group or something and one of the adults later told me that the girl had a sister Sophia’s age. Sophia must have just known. ;-)

At friend/family gatherings Sophia is very clingy and will cry if adults try to engage her. I generally have to take her to a quieter corner so that she can observe things. After a while she’ll usually get comfortable enough to take off and play with/beside the other kids, and when it’s time to go I can get her to wave bye-bye and high-five everyone.

I’ve had Sophia enrolled in swimming consistently since she was ten months old and she just recently started lean towards the instructor indicating that she wants to swim with her. It’s a very nice change of pace and it shows me she’ll be ready for the next swimming level when that time comes. I was a little worried, so when we started this new class and she tried to monopolize the attention of the teacher it was bizarre! In her case, I think that class might be more about learning to take turns.

The last class I thought was kooky. I chalked it up to being about as useful as alternative medicine type things like magnets for improving blood flow. I was wrong. Of the three classes, this one is definitely a keeper.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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Building Vocabulary

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Sophia’s current baby signs are: milk, more, eat, apple, banana and water.

Her actual spoken words consist of: hi, daddy, cheese, hello, no, bye, book, shoes, Petie (dog’s name), kitty, one, two, and apple.

I haven’t heard her say hi or daddy in months, and now instead of saying cheese she does the sign for banana (string cheese sort of peals like a banana). She has also said, “momma“, but only on a couple occasions.

She loves to pull out her book, “Go, Dog. Go!” by P.D. Eastman and babble through the pages until she reaches the somewhat odd scenes of conversations between two dogs. In the book, the dogs greet each other with hellos, and then one asks if the other likes her hat. The second dog always replies with, “I do not” and then they each say, “Good-by!” Upon reaching this section as Sophia reads to herself I hear, “Hello. No! Bye.”

The sound of her hellos range from, “Leh-Low” to a British sounding “Eh-Low” depending on how excited she is, sometimes it is a very clear “hello”. “Book” she began pronouncing, “buh” and now it’s more like “buhk”, and shoes are “shush”.

Sophia loves to help, so even though it slows us down so much that we might as well undo things, we let her whenever we can. Kurt began letting her help him feed the dogs. Her job was to dump the scoops of food into the dog bowls and Kurt would count them out. I think that’s where she learned the words, “one”, and “two”. She began counting two weeks before her birthday, but I’m not sure she truly understands the concept. The first time I heard her, she was flipping through the pages of a book saying, “un, two, un, two” as if she were marching in the military. Now I’ll catch her pointing at things and saying, “un, two, two, two”. That’s how she counts to four.

Her favorite book for a while was, “Mr. Brown can Moo, Can you?” and from that book I heard her say the sounds, “klopp” and “buzz” a few times. Now she really likes a new potty book I purchased a couple months ago, “A Potty for Me!” by Karen Katz. From that book she says, “uh oh”, and “whoosh”. She’ll read the book to herself and say those words on the page they actually appear.

If I count the four sounds, but don’t count the word apple twice (once for the sign and once for the actual word), there are only twenty-three words for the nearly twenty six month old. *sigh* Next on the vocabulary list is Antidisestablishmentarianism. At least it’ll be an impressive word. :P

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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H1N1 vaccination form

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make your markMake sure to mark the box that says, “seizures”. We don’t know for sure that she had seizures, what the doctor told me was not an absolutely official diagnosis. But he said it certainly sounded like I was describing a seizure. I actually have not seen an episode since her eighteen-month checkup. I buckled her into her car seat and was about to back out of the parking spot at the doctor’s office right after that checkup. That was it. I told the doctor about them and they disappeared. I wish more medical things worked that way.

Anyway, the first rounds of the H1N1 vaccine were supposed to be administered on the 31st of October. I’m not worried about the swine flu, but if there is a vaccine and I have a kid in the *high risk* age range, you bet I’m going to get ready to stand in line for Sophia’s shot. I don’t care if I’m there all day. I printed out the form we have to fill out and marked that she has had seizures, just in case that is what those episodes were, so that she would get a shot of the dead virus and not the live virus nasal spray meant for those over the age of two.

I located the nearest vaccination clinic, and mapped out my route. I got ready for that day about a week and a half before hand and it was a good thing too. The next day I stayed up late and just happened to surf over to the local paper to see the headlines for Friday’s paper, the clinics were to open a week early for children under four years and pregnant women. This news came out only a day before the event. I knew with such short notice not everyone would get the news but I still planed to get there early and did. To our surprise, they actually opened early and we were in and out within fifteen minutes. After the event, the paper had reports of low turn out. I can’t imagine why, with only 24 hours notice. There were 17,000 doses available between nine sites and only 5,000 doses dispensed. Because of Sophia’s age, she needs two doses with four weeks between each dose and now there are no more mass vaccination clinics. Now it’s an appointment with the doctor…if they have any.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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55 Flash Fiction Friday: Running Joke

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My guest and I met with a mutual friend, of sorts. Midway through the visit, I asked my guest, “Have you noticed how he must always RUN up all the stairs?”

“Hmm…”

I attempted to recreate the scene, but failed. Later we passed a StairMaster. Silently, I pointed it out, and we cried with laughter.

55 Flash Fiction Friday
Flash Fiction Friday is hosted by g-man. You may also visit Flash Fiction Friday 55′s, a blog dedicated to hosting 55 Flash Fiction Friday posts.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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March McDonalds Madness

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Kurt’s mom came to visit back in March. Sophia, nearly eighteen months old at the time, was only tolerant of the visit. There were no hugs for Grandma. I think the closest they got to a sweet picture moment was when Grandma sat on the floor playing with Sophia’s mega blocks and Sophia got in the action by handing Grandma the next block slated for use. I wish I had captured the moment but that would mean leaving the room to grab the camera and risking a change in focus from Sophia. I think Grandma enjoyed seeing Sophia play and have fun around her even if she couldn’t hold her, but hopefully she’ll be more social at Christmas time.

We are fast approaching the time of year where activities are best done indoors. Until recently I worried about that because the majority of indoor social activities require either, a long drive, a lot of money, or both. I now have a long list of activities and services to keep us occupied through the winter. The only thing we could think to do back in March when Kurt’s mom was visiting was to go to the McDonalds play land. It was fun to watch Sophia, climb up and up and up, but then it became a problem because when she wanted out she would look down and know that was the way, but continued up.

Let me give the mother’s of newly mobile children a bit of assvice for a moment… You don’t want to send your kid up in the McDonalds gerbil trail unless you’re sure they know how to climb back down again because you’ll NEVER want to go back there EVER again if you have to go through those sewers to retrieve your darling. It’s really fuckin’ gross in there and we were at a rather new McDonalds.

Up the ladder
Down the rabbit hole

The other free place to visit and play is the mall. Sophia loved playing with the shopping cart. We wanted to rent one but couldn’t figure out how much is cost or where to go to rent it. I later learned that it cost five dollars and they keep your credit card until you return the cart. I guess that’ll keep people from spending too much. ;-)

Car shopping, kid style

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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Forgetfulness and other odd behaviors

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In the locker room after Sophia’s swim class the other day, we did our usual routine. We went to our locker got out the soap and shampoo, then to the shower area, and washed off all the chlorine. Back at our locker, I grab our bag and claim a section of bench for us. I towel off the toddler and then go digging for her clean diaper. I keep digging. I go back to the locker and rifle through the clothes I left behind. I go back to the bag. Surely I didn’t forget the ever-important poop containment system? Shit Fuck Damn! Hoping that she’ll hold it at least until we get to the car where I keep a fully stocked diaper bag I put the darling in some pink toddler sweatpants. She peed before I could get my own undergarments on. I didn’t look like she peed though because the super fleecy sweatpants didn’t change color at all, but pee was coming out of the bottom of her pant legs. She thought it was fun and started splashing in the puddle she was creating.

Sophia has developed a habit of shoving her hands in the back of her pants, sometimes on the outside of her diaper and sometimes on the inside. Yesterday, I didn’t notice what she had been doing and she came up to hand me something. I stupidly accepted the gift on blind faith. Why, why don’t people talk about these things? Why didn’t anyone ever tell me before I got pregnant that someday my child would hand me a little brown nugget that she made herself?

Thank you dear, I’ll treasure it always. I should have taken a picture of it or better yet, dry it out and make a poop nugget necklace.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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Dora Laura Muppet Couch

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The Laura as you know from yesterday’s post is our couch. Last year my parents bought Sophia her own couch and it’s pink with Dora the Explorer all over it. We dubbed it The Dora, it’s The Laura’s illegitimate child.

Drinking milk on Dora couchsitting up on Dora couchSitting on Dora the Explorer couch

We keep some of Sophia’s toys in the living room. We can mostly push them back and sort of make them blend in. The Dora is not something that blends well. It’s not that we don’t want it to look like we have a kid, we just don’t like making it look like the kid took over the entire house. Dora has lived largely in Sophia’s room. That is, until not-a-nanny (AKA Smarmoofus) came to visit this year.

Kurt and I had talked about covering The Dora so that Sophia could have her couch in the living room but we never got around to doing anything about it. Smarmy dragged me to the fabric store and I found three yards of red upholstery that somewhat matches The Laura and three yards of a mossy color upholstery that somewhat matches The Farris. All of it was on clearance and all for nine dollars.

Smarmoofus and I finished most of it before she left and Kurt and I finally got around to putting the finishing touches on it Sunday.

The Dora next to The Laura and Tasha
The Dora in front of The Farris
The Muppet Couch

We figure Sophia will be able to relate to the new Muppet Couch since she has watched all the first season Muppet shows. She’s never seen the Dora the Explorer show, and that’s not a hidden request for Dora videos.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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La-Z-Boy Laura vs. Ikea

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For two years after Kurt and I moved in together we had two couches. One was his red leather couch, which our cat was slowly destroying with his back claws as he dug in for powerful lift-offs across the room, and then there was my couch. My couch was some black velvet-like 80’s couch with rainbow colored glittery pinstripes. Don’t laugh it was free! I promptly covered it. The cover for my free couch cost $50. You may laugh now.

Almost six years ago we bought our current house and soon after that sold Kurt’s couch because our living room was too small for two. We needed more seating so we purchased two Ikea chairs. About three years ago, we decided it was time to toss the free couch and buy a real couch both of us liked and that wouldn’t get destroyed by our cat’s jackrabbit impressions.

We probably went to every furniture store in the county and a few outside the county. We went everywhere! Finally, we went to La-Z-Boy. I always thought they only sold recliners and had cheap furniture. Not that I wanted something super ‘high end’, but I didn’t want anything that would fall apart after a couple years either. Turns out, I just don’t know jack about brand names and such. I absolutely fell in love with a curved couch and the huge ottoman in front of it. We looked at everything in the store, but I kept coming back to that one.

La-Z-Boy doesn’t refer to their furniture by model numbers. They use proper names, so anytime the sales lady heard me refer to *that couch* she would say, “The Laura”. “Umm yeah, that one. The curved one, with the ottoman.”
“The Tasha”

After Kurt sat on everything in the store at least twice, including the recliners that tilt forward to help old people back onto their feet, he finally agreed that was the couch for us. We picked out colors and fabrics for the couch and the pillows and then went through the process of completing the sale. One of the other sales people stuck up a conversation with us while we waited for paperwork.

Our sales woman to sales man: They’re buying The Laura
Sales man: Oh, are you buying a chair too?
Kurt: No, not yet, but once we see it with the Ikea chairs we’ll probably come back

The man looked like Kurt had just killed his favorite pet right in front of him and ate the heart.

Sales man: You’re going to put Ikea chairs next to The Laura?
Kurt: No, we’re putting The Laura next to Ikea chairs. We had them first.

If it hadn’t been for that exchange we would have never bothered to remember the names of our furniture. We did go back weeks later for a chair and bought the Farris.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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Hunger Challenge Cornbread Weakness

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I planned everything out. I did all the shopping the day before the hunger challenge began leaving very little wiggle room. I bought plenty of food. If I needed to I could get creative and still make meals for all day tomorrow with what we have left; however, there were some transgressions.

On Sunday, Kurt told me that one of his co-workers was leaving and therefore he had to take him out to lunch on Monday. Did I mention he wasn’t really into this whole challenge thing? I figure I bought enough for him for that day and he would not have staved so I was still in the game. He also bought a Coke at a convenience store, which brought my total up from $122.32 to $124.32. *grumble*

On Thursday, my daughter and I attended a class for her and a snack was served for the kids. I couldn’t turn it down nor substitute it for a snacks I had purchased for the week because one of the things my toddler needs help with is eating new things. Friday there was yet another class for her and this one was specifically to help her through some food issues, so again I couldn’t turn down the snacks.

Aside from the $2.00 Coke, none of those were really avoidable. What was avoidable was the caffeine fix I needed after my daughter’s end-of-class toddler-meltdown on Thursday. I spent $3.80, which would put me over our allotted $18 a day by $2.12.

If I hadn’t bought that mocha I could have purchased a couple boxes of Jiffy Corn Muffin Mix at forty cents a box to go with the Chili I made for Friday and today and still had eighty-eight cents left. But I didn’t have the restraint. I didn’t really want Jiffy mix anyway. I have a much better recipe.

I like sweet cornbread with some texture and whole kernels of corn in it. It took me years to find the perfect recipe. I finally found it in Peter Reinhart’s, “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice”. It is nirvana! I already blew it with the mocha, so why not? I went ahead and made my cornbread muffins. I don’t even know how far over that ingredient list put me over. Some of the ingredients I had from this weeks purchases and the rest I had in the pantry or freezer. All I needed was buttermilk.

November, 30 posts in 30 days nablopomo.com

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