Home for the Holidays

This year was our first year spending Christmas with just the 3 of us.  It was so nice not to be traveling and to enjoy the days leading up to Christmas.  Brad's been so busy with school and interviewing that we've mostly enjoyed just spending time together as a family.

It's been fun to see Nathan catch the excitement of the season.  He has learned to say "Merry Christmas" and it just about melts my heart to have him greet us with a "Merry Christmas" when he sees us.  He has also liked giving his therapists a little gift from us to them and drawing them Christmas cards.

For Christmas Eve, we had a Christmas brunch with some friends from our ward.  There was about 9 or so families together at the stake center.  Nathan loved running around the cultural hall with all the big kids.  That evening we had our big Christmas meal and Nathan got his Christmas jammies.

On Christmas morning, we started right off with presents.  Nathan opened a remote control bus first.  He thought it was pretty cool until he tried rolling it by himself and it wouldn't roll backwards.  Nathan went into full meltdown since it wouldn't do what he wanted.  He cried, screamed, and threw the bus.  He had such a huge tantrum over it we thought we had ruined Christmas.  But after a quick reset with some French pancakes and opening a new toy we were back on track.  Nathan was so spoiled by lots and lots of presents.  He was in heaven.  He was way more into opening presents this year than he was last year.  It was a lot of fun to do presents with a toddler because he would want to play with each new toy and it really stretched out the fun of opening presents.  I think we finally finished opening the last gift around 3:30.

 The bus that almost ruined Christmas

Luckily Nathan got another bus for Christmas 

Thanks cousin Anna!  Nathan loves his new matchbox cars 

Nathan loves to ride his new bike

I hope everyone had as merry a Christmas as we did!

O Christmas Tree

Longwood Christmas 2014

I'm going to miss our Christmas tradition of going to Longwood.  It's one of the things I look forward to every year.  This year Longwood had a birds theme and it was so fun to see all of the variations on that theme.  Nathan loved seeing the lights and would point out, "Red lights!" and , "Green lights!" to us.  It was so fun to see his enthusiasm.

30 Months

That's 2 1/2 years old!  Is he really?  Here's a little bit of what Nathan's like at 30 months.

- We just discovered Nathan can sing "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star." You have to sing really slow, but most of the words are there.  He'll even do little hand motions.
- "Stinpy." Same word for sticky and stinky.
- Somehow he has learned the word scary.  Lots of things are scary now. The cars are scary.  The blocks are scary. We don't think that he really knows what it means.
- After a long struggle again nap time, he's back to being my great napper.  Which mommy really appreciates these days.

- He calls this his "daddy shirt." It's probably his favorite.
- His speech continues to grow!  He says a lot more phrases now so that you can understand what he's trying to communicate.  His vocabulary was increasing a lot, but it was mostly nouns and I was a little worried he was just learning to label things.  Now since he is using phrases you can tell he's understanding a lot more of how to use language to help him communicate.

- His thinking face.
- New favorite food: canned pears!  We had some at grandma's house over Thanksgiving and now he's asking me for pears at snack time.  He gobbles them up.
- Checked in with his pediatrician and he's weight is doing better.  He gained 5 lbs in the last 6 months which means he's now up to the 7th percentile instead of the first.  He also grew 3 inches which moved him for the 9th percentile for height to the 31st.  He's been doing a lot of growing.
- He likes it when we do "Wheels on the Bus" and "Head, Shoulders, Knees, and Toes" together.

- Still a big Nemo fan.
- So in love with cars.  He plays with those all day long.  He has tons of little matchbox cars and a few bigger cars that he will play with forever.
- While Nathan likes going to nursery, he's been struggling a lot with transitions and sensory overload  while he's there.  One of our therapists actually offered to go with Nathan to nursery to help see if she could help problem solve.  One of Nathan's problems is doing a lot of pushing to start social interaction.  He doesn't do it to be mean, we think he's trying to actually get kids to play with him. When our therapist came she was able to redirect Nathan to have him ask for high 5s which has worked great.  He even had kids coming up to him asking for high 5s.
- Nathan's been great with the Christmas tree.  He keeps calling the red balls "apples."

- One night I was reading to Nathan a story when Brad came home from school.  Immediately Nathan was up and asking daddy to read him the story.  He really is a daddy's boy.
- Nathan threw a fit in the grocery store because he wanted broccoli.  Yes, broccoli.
- He can count to 10 but consistently skips six.
- Nathan plays this game we call the Awchew game, as in the sound you make when you sneeze.  You put something on your head, and then sneeze it off your head.  Repeat.  It makes him laugh so hard.

- I was in Home Goods looking for stuff for baby girl when Nathan started screaming for blankie.  I didn't have him with me and Nathan kept pointing after something.  So I let him down and low and behold he found a pillow that looks just like his blankie.  Yes, we came home with it.
- The monkey made it out of his crib today for the first time.  He would not stop throwing out blankie and doggie so I took them out of the room.  He got so mad he got out of his crib and came running to get them from me.  Now I hope he doesn't ever do it again.

- Still in love with coloring.  He's getting pretty good at it.  Today he drew a ghost with eyes and a mouth.  Can you see it?
- Finally learned to say orange.  Now we just have to get him to stop calling white black and then he'll know all of his colors.

Making French Pancakes for the first time.

- He absolutely loves helping me bake in the kitchen.  He's pretty careful not to throw the mix out of the bowl when he's stirring and doesn't try to put his fingers in the batter anymore.  He loves to count out ingredients and pour them in.
- He's a full on two year old responding to everything we ask him with "No!"

- He loves looking at books and having them read to him.
- Nathan was playing with cars in our room while I was putting on my makeup for the day when all of a sudden he stood up and asked, "Where baby girl?"  I don't know how he figured out to ask that, but it made me laugh.  I had to explain that baby girl is still in mommy's tummy.  I don't know if he understood, but he went back to his cars.
- Another great phrase from after his nap, "Oh no! I feeling sicky."

- He loves to play with all our pillows.
- Nathan loves to play his version of Hide and Seek.  It starts with him saying, "Now tount (count.)"  He runs off into the kitchen to his counting spot and counts to ten.  He then says, "Where mommy?" He then systematically looks for me asking himself if I'm hiding certain places.  His conversation with himself usually goes like this, "Shoes? No. Chair? No. Pillows? No. Toys? No. Couch? I found you mommy.  Now tount." And off he goes again.
- He's been showing so much more of his little personality with being able to speak more which is a lot of fun.  He's such a funny little guy.  He sometimes says things out of the blue that make us laugh. We sure love our funny boy.

Twinkle Twinkle Little Star Shower

These wonderful ladies threw me a baby shower for baby girl.  It turned out so cute and it was a lot of fun to get together with friends.  I'm feeling a lot more prepared for baby girl to come.  Thanks ladies!  

Macy's Christmas Lights

This last week for playgroup we went to see the Christmas Lights at Macy's (#15).  They have a lights show with Christmas music played on the world's largest pipe organ in the world.  And it's narrated by Julie Andrews.  I've been wanting to do this for years and I'm so glad we got to see it before we leave Philly.  Nathan was in awe!  He loved leaning back and watching the lights.  The only bummer was that my phone died as soon as we arrived at Macy's so I wasn't able to connect with the other girls from playgroup, except for one friend as I was wondering around.  It was fun at least to get out of the house for therapy that day since we brought our therapist with us.

Minnesota Thanksgiving

We got to spend Thanksgiving in Minnesota.  I love going home to the Packer's.  We had a white Thanksgiving!  Philly just doesn't feel like the holidays when I can still see green grass outside.  When we left Philly is was 63 degrees.  Minnesota welcomed us with a chilly 15 degrees.  While it was beautiful and snowy outside we enjoyed just looking at it from inside.

We had a great Thanksgiving day.  Turkey with all the trimmings and lots of lots of pie (we were at the Packer's after all.)

Nathan loved playing with "Grawma" and Papa.  When I would get Nathan up for the day, the first thing he would ask is, "Where Grawma?"  He has asked for them both lots since getting home.

Nathan did go adventuring in the snow.  We got him snow pants and boots and he looked so cute all bundled up.  He was a little wary of it at first, but soon he was stomping and kicking the snow.

While we were there we helped get ready for Christmas.  We decorated not one, but two live Christmas trees while we were there.  Janet has helped me so many years with my Christmas tree so it was a lot of fun to help her get up her trees.  The boys also helped bake several trays of Spritz cookies to be used as refreshments for the upcoming Nativity display at church that Janet is in charge of.

We did so much while we were there.  We went shopping, ate so much good food, made treats, put together puzzles, had dinner with childhood friends/neighbors, and so much more.  We had such a great time.  We are so thankful for our wonderful family and that we were able to see them for Thanksgiving.

Life Right Now

Brad's looking into residency programs which is so exciting.  And stressful.  And nerve racking.  But also totally awesome!  Brad has applied to lots of programs in Pennsylvania, Minnesota, Colorado, and Utah.  And he's already had 4 interviews which is great.  He's got several more lined up as well in the coming weeks.   In all he's had 7 offers for interviews! All of these residencies are in the match program.  Basically we rank our favorites, the programs list there favorite candidates, magic happens, and then we get told which program we will be going to.  We get no final say other than ranking our programs.  Crazy!

Nathan is doing awesome!  We just got his 6 month report from ABA and Nathan is now up to 140 spontaneous words which is awesome.  6 months ago Nathan only had maybe 10-15 words, most of them were imitative (we said them first and he repeated.)  He's also doing better with his sensory problems.  He does a lot better with different textures and he is eating a lot more because of his progress.  We also had Nathan's 6 month follow-up appointment at developmental pediatrics (where Nathan was diagnosed with autism.)  The nurse practitioner we saw was on the evaluation panel when Nathan was diagnosed and she was so pleased to see the progress that Nathan has made it the last few months.  She was so happy that we were able to get so many therapy hours through Early Intervention and she could see what a difference it has made for Nathan.

Nathan working hard at therapy

I have official made it into my third trimester.  Only 9 more weeks!  Which freaks me out a little bit with all I need to do to get ready.  And then I try to remind myself that 9 weeks is still 2 months and I have time.  I'm feeling good and still have energy which is great with trying to keep up with Nathan.

I've been in full on crafting mode for baby girl.  Quilt #1 is all pieced together and has been sent to Utah to be quilted.  I have this crazy idea that I want 2 quilts for baby girl (I couldn't decide on just one design and Nathan had 2 quilts,) but the second quilt is much more time intensive than the first.  But I'm really really excited about it so hopefully that will motivate me with all the hand appliqué I will be doing.  I just finished baby girl's mobile and I am seriously in love with it.  Love, love, love.  I also found some fabric online that is the perfect fabric for baby girl's nursery.  Two shades of pink, green, and yellow, the exact colors I wanted.  The fabric is from one of my favorite fabric designers.  I found it for 60% off and so I ordered enough to make crib sheets out of it.  I was beyond excited when I ordered the fabric, which Brad just didn't understand.  He looked at me like a was a little crazy.  I mean, it's designer fabric that is perfect for baby girl's nursery.  What's not to be excited about?   I'm also mostly done with a knitted blanket and partially through a baby bonnet to go with baby girl's blessing dress.  I think it's time I start completing a few projects.

Quilt 1

Quilt 2 - That's 120 individual "leaves" to be hand quilted.

Designer fabric for crib sheets

So that's life right now.  It's a little daunting to think how much life is going to change over the next couple of months.  Brad will have matched with a program and we'll be planning a move.  I'm looking into some new programs for Nathan that would start in the New Year.  And we'll have a new baby in February.  There are lots of exciting and wonderful things to come.

Happy

Right before we were going to lay Nathan down for bed tonight we were giving him hugs.  I was telling Nathan, "I love Nathan.  Daddy loves Nathan.  Baby girl loves Nathan."

Nathan's response was to point to himself and say, "Happy."

Yes, little boy, that makes me happy too.

Fall at Longwood Gardens

This time at Longwood we tried something a little different.  There's a couple hundred acres of meadow in Longwood that we haven't ever explored.  But the beautiful fall colors were calling me to go take a look.  We hiked around until we found this leaf strewn path that just demanded to be played in.  Nathan did so quite obligingly.

It was also Longwood's mum festival while we were there so we did see that as well while we were there.

And don't forget the trains.  We had to stop to see those too.

I seriously love seeing the wonder in his face.

What are we going to do when we move away and can't go to Longwood anymore?