Evelyn at 5 Months

- I love calling out Evy's name and having her beam in recognition that I'm talking to her.  And she loves the attention.
- Let's me dress her up and put bows in her hair.  I love it.
- Getting better at naps since we're been moved into our new house.  Living in hotels and running around house hunting didn't help to get her on a good sleep schedule.  Not to mention changing time zones.

- Since she has learned to roll over she likes to sleep on her tummy.  Just like her brother at this age.
- Also, since she can roll over she finally likes tummy time.  When she gets really excited she'll lift both hands off the floor. It's amazing the stomach muscles babies have.

Nathan decided Evy needed to have a blankie too

- Evy loves to watch her brother.  She'll turn herself around so she can see what he's up to.
- I get so many comments on her while I have her wrapped in our baby carrier.  Not very many people have seen the kind of wrap I use and everyone is impressed to see how much she loves it.  And that she sleeps in it.  I love that I can get out of the house and let her sleep if she needs to while we are out.

- Everything must go in her mouth.
- Her hair is starting to grow.  She has these random hairs that are super long on top.

- Trying to sit up on her own.  She loves being able to sit up and see what's going on.
- Likes to play with more toys.  Her favorite right now is her plastic keys.

- She doesn't like to be tickled (she gives this little grunt when we try), but when you get her giggling it is the cutest sound.
- Evelyn sometimes likes to snuggle against your shoulder, but most of the time she loves to be up and looking around.  I love when she pushes up and she's my face and instantly her face lights up.

Funny Little Boy

When Grandpa came to visit he taught Nathan a new trick, Pound it Turkey. Now everything is celebrated with a Pound it Turkey.

After Evy's surgery, I was grabbing everything out of the car to go inside.  Nathan was trying to patiently wait for his mommy to come inside, but he turned to his daddy and said, "Mommy slow.  Daddy it's a problem."

Today in sacrament meeting, Nathan was acting very naughty.  Brad told him that he was going to go to timeout.  Lately timeout have mostly been for hitting mommy or hitting baby sister.  So, when Brad told him he was going to timeout Nathan screamed, "Daddy no hitting!" Great, our new ward now is wondering if we abuse our child.  And it doesn't help that his leg is in a splint. But it sounds like the no hitting lesson is sticking.

4th of July

Nathan's Broken Leg

Usually people have great stories about how they broke a bone.  Nathan was simply climbing up our back steps and he tripped.  He really bashed his shin pretty good so I brought him in to take care of him.  I cleaned up his owie, got him bandaid, and then I brought him back outside so he would go back to playing and forget about his scrape. But he just sat and cried.  I tried getting him to at least stand up, but he wouldn't bear any weight on his leg.  So I took a closer look.  He was holding his foot pretty funny and was still very upset.  He did not like me touching it.  And since he wouldn't put any weight on it, I called our pediatrician who said to bring him into the ED for an x-ray.

We went to Children's and had them take a look.  Brad works in the building right next door so he was able to come help his buddy.  The doctors were getting a little confused seeing Brad in his scrubs.  They thought he was the doctor!  Nathan was still quite distressed.  They got him in pretty quickly and did an x-ray.  Sure enough, Nathan had a fracture on his tibia.  They wrapped him up in a splint and sent us home with the instructions that the splint can't get wet and that Nathan shouldn't walk in the splint.  Nathan hates water so the first instruction we could manage.  As far as the second instruction goes, you try telling a 3 year old autistic boy not to walk.  The silly boy would try to walk on our hardwoods, but the splint had no traction so he would slip.  He thought it was the funniest thing and made a little game of slipping.  We were so worried he would break something else slipping all over the place.

After the holiday weekend we were able to get him in with the bone doctor and get him in a walking boot.  He actually loves wearing his boot.  I think he really likes the sensation of the compression.  He's been really good about wearing it, but he does walk with quite the limp.  He'll wear the boot for a couple of weeks and then he'll be good as new.  

Lookalikes

Little Miss Evy has her own little look.  It's hard to place who exactly she looks like.  I've heard lots of suggestions.

A lot of people think she looks like me.

Some people think she looks like my sister, Malinda, as a baby.

Not very many people think Nathan and Evelyn look alike, but every once in awhile I think they do.

But if you ask me, I think Evy and Grandma Janet as a baby look a lot alike.

What do you think?

Moving to Denver

The second leg of our trip was not very eventful.  We were now driving two vehicles and I had both of the kids with me.  Nathan seemed to get more into screaming the 2^nd half of the trip and would subsequently wake up Evy from her nap and make her scream.  And we had some crazy rainstorms to drive through.  But we made it all the way to Denver in about 13 hours (split up in 2 days.) We had to make it to Denver early enough on Friday to be there when the pods would be delievered.  Our moving company had warned us that it could be as early as noon.  It was a good thing we made it to Denver so early in the day. 

We stopped by the leasing office of our new apartment to finish some paperwork and get our keys.  We were both struggling with cell service while we were doing the paperwork, but once we got into our apartment we lost all service.  We couldn’t even stand by the windows and get service.  We headed out onto the balcony and still couldn’t get service.  While we were there we heard the unit above us on his balcony talking to another apartment building about sending over his security deposit for a new apartment.  Not a good sign.  There were other things wrong inside the apartment.  There were huge stains on the carpet everywhere.  I’m talking 2 feet x 1 foot.  Huge.  All over.  Nasty.  I had been assured that the whole apartment would be professional cleaned and have the carpets shampooed before we arrived.  There were several things from maintence still in our apartment.  And there were a few other things that were not done properly.  All in all, the place would not be liveable for us, especially with the problems with cell service and Brad being on call at the hospital.  I was feeling physically ill from all the things we were discovering to be wrong with the apartment.  So as gut-renching as the decision was, it really was the only thing we could do.  We decided not to move in and find a different place to live.

Brad marched into the front office (because we couldn’t call) and told them we weren’t going to move in.  They tried so see if there was anyway to make it work, but we were firm in our decision and they let us out of our lease.  They were actually surprisingly nice about it.  We did try going to see other available units to check if our service was any better, but we still had no service.  Even the leasing agent who was showing us around had to step out of the building to make calls back to the main office.  We ended up chatting with some of the maintence guys who came to look at the problems in our particular unit.  They told us there were a lot of problems with the cell service in the building and they didn't get service in a lot of the units.

So after a crazy day and finding ourselves homeless, we did the only thing we thought might cheer us up.  We went to Café Rio.  I’ve been dreaming about having Café Rio as our first meal in Colorado for months (I’m not even kidding about that,) but it just wasn’t the same.  We weren’t really in the mood to enjoy our meal.

We headed to a hotel for the night.  My mom and sister had driven to Denver to help us move in, but ended up helping us take care fo the kids while we were house hunting.  They were lifesavers.  We couldn’t have done as much if we would have been bringing Nathan with us. Especially since the poor kid was sooooooo done being in a car.  My mom and sister took Nathan to the park, kept him entertained, gave him new toys and books for his birthday, made sure he was fed, and helped him deal with all the craziness.  We couldn’t have done it without them.

Keeping Nathan entertained with forts in our hotel

Brad and I then took on our housing search.  We spent several hours our first night looking at ads, emailing, and maping out potential apartments to go check out.  It was also so nice to have our friends the Lakes and Brad’s cousin Matt here to get recommendations from.  They were amazing!

Saturday we headed out bright and early to start our hunt.  We looked all day long.  Oh what a long day.  We saw a lot of duds that day.  And by duds, I mean stinky, smelly, smoky, dirty, falling apart, peed on, and just downright unacceptable.  It also made me laugh to go look at an house that was asking for non-smoking tenants and then have the house reek of smoke!  We had seen some places that could work as well.  But when we saw our house that afternoon it was such a nice difference.  It was clean, spacious, and in good working condition.  The landlord was there weeding the yard and taking care of a few other things around the house.  And it just had a good feel to it.  We put in an application that afternoon. 

The landlord warned us it could take up to 48 hours to hear back from her since she did a background check and was going to call our references.  So we continued on our search.  We saw another apartment we liked.  It had a nice floor plan and we liked the neighborhood.  The only drawback was it was a 2 bedroom.  And the apartment would need a special cleaning treatment to get rid of odors so we couldn’t move in until Thursday (meaning more days of being in a hotel.)  But we needed a place to live.  So we put in an application there as well.  But we were both hoping that we would get the house.  We knew we were up against other applicants and had been told that the Aurora renter’s market is super competitive so we needed a back up.

Early on Saturday, I had tipped off our old landlord that we were house hunting and that he might be getting calls.  Billy really came through for us.  In our new landlord’s words, Billy gave us “glowing praise.” Our landlords' were so impressed that they offered to let us rent their house!

We came over again for another walk through of the house.  We were able to meet our landlords husband and talk about the house.  The new landlords seem great.  They want the house to be kept up so anything we want to do to the improve the property (as long as they approve it first) they will pay for.  They were very nice when we told them our concerns about Nathan around the basement window wells and put in new covers so that Nathan can’t fall in.  They also put in new carpet right before we moved.  The carpet did make it so we were in hotels a few days longer, but now we are loving having the new carpet.  Aww, carpet.  It’s been a long, long time since we’ve had carpet.  And a garbage disposal.  And air conditioning.  And a garage.  And doors that actually shut.  It’s AMAZING. 

So now that we’re here and have a roof over our heads, we really like Aurora.  We live in a nice area of town, there are several Mormon families in our subdivision, we have all the stores and restaurants (including Café Rio!) that we could want, a temple relatively close, and the weather has been great.  And I should also pay homage to the city planners who put in 3 lane roads everywhere.  It’s such a difference from Philly’s crazy roads.  The “ghetto” parts of town that Brad served his mission in are not that ghetto compared to Philly.  Aurora really is a nice town.  I can’t wait to get to explore our new home more.

Visiting in Minnesota

It's always so nice to be in Minnesota.  And it was nice to have a break from moving.  Nathan loved going outside in Grandma's big backyard to explore.  We even made it to the park one day.  And Grandma has a huge tub of Brio tracks which was perfect to go with Nathan's new Thomas trains.  Nathan and Brad would set up the most elaborate tracks. We wish we could have stayed longer, but too soon it was time to be on the road to Colorado.

Evelyn at 4 Months

I better get this up since Evy turns 5 months in just a couple of days.  A little bit about Evy:

- She likes to sit up in the bumbo so she can see what's going on.
- The 4 month wakeful period is real.  I'm ready to go back to sleeping through the night.  And taking regular naps.

- Evy learned to roll over!  She's gotten pretty good at it and can get herself in some unusual spots.
- Bathtime is getting even more energetic.  Can she teach her brother to like the bath?

- She loves to get her toes in her mouth.  Really she just loves to put everything in her mouth.
- Still loves baby wearing.  I can get her to sleep anywhere in our wrap.  Including church.  Nathan never ever slept at church.  But she gets a good nap while I have her wrapped up.

- She has the cutest little squeaky voice.  She loves to talk to us.  Nathan will squeak back to her and they will get going back and forth.  Nathan will giggle and let me know, "Mom, Evy squeaking."  I love seeing them interact.
- Her 4 month stats: 14 lbs, 6 oz (64th percentile), 25 inches (84th percentile), and 40.6 cm head circumference (61th percentile.)  She is so tall!

- Still likes her binkie!  Since she's putting everything in her mouth these days I've noticed her sucking on her fingers, but luckily it hasn't stuck like Nathan's finger sucking.
- She has a sixth sense about if I'm leaving.  When we were in Minnesota, we'd go to run errands while I had her down for a nap.  But as soon as I went out the door she would start crying for her mommy.

- We thought Nathan was an easy baby, but Evy is just a little bundle of joy.  Always happy and easy to take care of.  We all love to coo over her and snuggle up with her.  We sure love this little girl!

Nathan at 3 Years

- Nathan has loved trains for a long time, but he has recently discovered Thomas.  He has a new level of love for trains.  He can play with Thomas all day long.
- He is a little smarty.  He knows his last name and has been learning his letters.

- Nathan finished tumbling class a few weeks ago, but he loved it.  He'll try to do forward rolls on his own.  I think we need to find a new class in Colorado.
- With the move, he's said goodbye to nap time.  Sad day.  I will miss you.

- Loves to be outside.
- Absolutely a daddy's boy.  He loves it when Brad gets home from work.

- Nathan loves his sister.  He is usually so soft and nice to her.  He loves to come give her kisses on the head and seeing what she's doing.
- Nathan's IEP went ok.  There are things I'm really excited he is going to get and there are things I'm going to have to be ok with.  We decided to place Nathan in a reverse mainstream classroom, which means he will be in a class that has 50% normally developing kids and 50% kids with disabilities.  I've done a lot of research on what kind of classroom I wanted for Nathan and this is exactly what I wanted.  But since Nathan can't function on his own in a classroom yet, we have an ABA aide who will come to class with him.  I can't tell you how happy I am about this.  He'll also get pull out time for speech and OT.  The one thing I'm not super happy about is his OT hours.  Nathan showed problems in every area of sensory testing.  And yet he is getting less time for OT than he is getting for speech which he barely qualified for.  I'm hoping I can work something out with the new school district so Nathan gets more one-on-one to help with his sensory issues.

- Moved up from the 1st percentile for weight to the 23rd.  Yay!  All the extra calories and working with him to eat is getting us somewhere!  His stats at 2 years are 29 lbs, 2 oz and 35.5 inches (8th percentile.)
- Hates bathtime.  We still struggle with getting him in the tub and staying in there while we bathe him.  But we've seen little bits of progress so we're hoping he'll learn to be ok with bath time.
- He has such a great memory.  Sometimes I'm shocked with the things he remembers.

- Likes doing crafts with mom.
- He has recently been interested in the toliet.  Not in learning to go to the potty, just in playing with the toliet. One day after I changed Evy's diaper I found him shaking a pompom in the toliet, shaking toliet water all over the bathroom.  Eww, eww, eww!
- Nathan asks to go on walks all the time.

- He is really starting to repeats everything.  Time to really watch what we say around him!
- Nathan will also repeat phrases that he's heard.  He's recently been saying what sounded like "Friendenemy." We couldn't figure out where he would have heard it.  Until we watched "Toy Story" and he started singing along with "You've Got a Friend in Me."

- His hands have become super sensitive.  It got to the point were Nathan refused to touch food.  We're been working on helping his hands not be so sensitive so we've seen some improvement, but occasionally he'll still freak out when there is stuff on his hands.
- His hand sensitivity has pushed him to use utensils more and he's gotten way better at using them.
- He is excellent at playing by himself.  Which is great when I need to go nurse Evy or take care of something.

- He's getting better at following directions.  He likes to help mommy with his baby sister so I can usually get him to follow directions if it is for Evy.
- He loves his therapists. He still asks for them.
- Since our move he's asked a couple of times, "Blue car. Nathan house," meaning he wants for us to drive in our car to our old house.  It's taken him a while, but he's now understanding that Nathan has a new house.

- Things are always interesting with this kid around.  His mind works in such an interesting way and sometimes the things he tells us makes us laugh.  We sure love our little Nate Nate.