Blogging on the go

My new years resolution is to blog at least one time per week. I just got my iPhone so perhaps I will blog on the go and actually do it! Crossing fingers. I am going to work on my year in review
Post. I missed doing it last year and really enjoyed doing it two years ago. . Perhaps I should do two years in review. See ya soon.

Happy holidays from our family to yours!

Stationery card

View the entire collection of cards.

Current Events

I think I am going to end up flip flopping between current and past events so that I am not perpetually behind.

Today I took Little E to a historical house (well really the grounds).  It is super pretty there and they have sheep and chickens that we can go and check out.  I ended up taking some pictures of the girl.  I am pretty proud of some of the shots.  I used to take tons of pictures of my friends kids but somehow I never set out to take so good shots of E.  So today was the day.  It was beautiful in the 60s and sunny.  Here are some of my favorites.

Birthday

E's Birthday was one of the highlights of the summer.  I  can't believe that E is two already (although by the temper tantrums I would say not so hard to imagine).  We had her party at Mimi and Bubba's house in NH.  The weather was great and I think everyone had a wonderful time.  The theme was pinwheels and I am proud to say I repurposed a lot of the decorations from Ella's owl themed 1st birthday.  We borrowed a friends bouncy house and had a sprinkler for entertainment.  A nice lunch and some cake and we were good to go.

some pinwheel decorations (I made them all!)

I took the owl off her sign and put a pinwheel on.  How green am I!!  

Party favors of Balls and Pinwheels.

Another repurposed decoration.  The Letters are from last years banner.  I made the pennants out of scrapbook paper and added some pinwheels and put it back on the ribbon.

The tent with decorations!

Street sign.

Ella's pinwheel outfit I ordered off etsy.  She looked so cute!

Yummy Pinwheel Cake!

The family!

Enjoying the spinkler!

Bounce!!!!

My girl loves her some cake!!!!  She ate the whole piece and wanted more!

I

Summer Recap???

Tons has happened since last I blogged...like a whole season.  Geez I really need to get back into this.  Since the only way I think I will remember anything is if I write it in the blog.  Poor E will wonder what the heck happened her second year of life.  Only 17 posts in 2011 so far.  Whoops.  Really E stuff happened I promise.

We had a great summer with lots going on including moving and a nice vacation to P-town.  It was nice to be together as a family although I would not recommend leaving for vacation one week after moving.  The week going into the move was really hard.  The move was really hard.  The week following the move was hard and the week after coming home from vacation...hard.  But we are mostly moved into the new place which is great.  We spent the remaining weeks of the summer playing at the pool and getting used to the new place.

I must say it was bitter sweet moving from our old apartment.  I mean it was beyond time as we had outgrown it a long time ago but it was Shazam and my first apartment together.  We got engaged, married, pregnant and brought a baby home there.  There were so many memories tied their.  It just seems strange that we don't live there anymore.

The new place is great though.  Lots of room and tons of storage.  We have so many closets it is great.  I really love the layout and the kitchen is works very nicely.  I am enjoying having a gas stove again after 5 years.

We are back to the grind here with Shazam in her second year of grad school an me back to teaching 6th grade.  E is in daycare 4 days per week this year and I am doing drop off 3 days per week as well as pick up every day.  I am a very tired woman by the time the end of the week comes around.  Shazam is loving her internship at The Brigham and while is hard work ( she is on the gynecological oncology service) she is learning a ton and it will also be very good on her resume.  School for me is going very well.  I had tons of changes with my team this year but it is going really well.  It is nice to teach something for the second time around.  We also have really nice kids this year which is a total bonus.

Little E is doing great.  She still is a little mini but has been gaining weight and now is 27lbs according to our home scale.  She is wearing 2T tops and 12-18 month pants.  The child has the stumpiest legs and a very long torso.  She is enjoying art projects at home and I love getting projects together for her.

She is talking so much more these days (although it is often hard to understand her) and is coming up with more and more multi word phrases.  Her favorite right now is "That's cool."  She is two and is filled with tantrums over the smallest things but is also filled with so much joy. She loves to dance and sing.  She is enjoying books with real plots which is such a nice change from the books with one word and pictures on a page.  I am happy to report that some of her favorites are some of mine as well.  My sister got her Crictor at some point last year and she finally loving it.

 She is also a fan of More Spaghetti I say. 

 I love that she asks for books and our nightly reading sessions are such a nice way to wind down the day.

My goal is to write the blog two to three times per week.  I think I will have to do a bit of a photo dump to highlight the summer at some point.    I really need to find a way to document our time together as a family.  Until next time...

I am a ridiculously bad blogger

I totally fell off the 30 day challenge wagon but June is never a good time for me to start a project.  I am always so tired at the end of the year.  I have been on vacation for about 3 weeks now and am feeling recharged so back to the blog I go.  We are deep into getting ready for the move.  Boxes are piling up around the apartment and with one week to go I really have to get a move on.  Shazam is over at the new apartment painting the living and dining room.  It is turning out well although it is a little bluer and less grey than I expected.  I guess we are in a blue faze since Little E's room will also be blue.  We bought a new rug for the living room and the study and picked up a nice desk on craigslist.  Shazam's study should be a nice little retreat.  I really can't wait to have more room to work with.  I mean our dinning room is currently our only place to eat, our office, and play area.  We have a table and chairs, credenza, china cabinet, bench, computer desk, cat climber, and wing chair in there.  I can't wait to send all the non dining items to their new homes!  There is still so much to do but it is going to be worth it.  I was in our bedroom and Shazam was in the living room and with me yelling she hardly heard me!  This is going to be nice for when one of us gets up with Little E in the morning and lets the other sleep in.  Currently it doesn't really matter who gets up because with the layout of our apartment once E is up it is impossible to sleep.  The kid is loud!  Last night we tried to eat at the new apartment but all E wanted to do was run around and with wet paint around we had to bail and finish eating at home.  No worries we will have tons of time to eat at the new place in the future.  Well the little lady is awake so I must run.  I need to catch you all up on E's 2 year appointment and birthday party.  I will do that over the next few days.

Little E's Big Girl Room

Now that we are moving I have begun to think about changing things up and giving E a big girl room.  I love E's nursery and was very happy with our choices but in some ways that room never developed into what I dreamed it to be.  I never really had the intimate moments I imagined in the room.  Most of my dreams of quietly nursing a newborn Little E were lost in the months following her birth.  Even when she was home we just never spent much time in there.

Since we were team green we have a very gender neutral room of browns and light green with an elephant theme.  It is super cute but I want a little girls room.  I love the color combination of light blue and red.  I just love the idea of a tranquil pretty light blue room.  So I started looking for bedding.  Since E is not close to leaving her crib (I would keep her there forever if I could) and it converts into a toddler bed I started looking for some cute toddler bedding.  I must say it is very lacking.  Most of it was cheap character crap from places like Ta.rget.  I found several sets I liked at a place called babybedding dot com.  The sets are not too expensive and they have some cute modern patterns.  Last week I was hot to trot on the following patterns.

While I think the patterns are cute they just were not what I was looking for.  Obviously I liked the bird patterns.  The first one seemed too busy.  The second had a solid black back on the comforter that I didn't love.  The third seemed like it might be too baby and cutsie.  So off to Etsy I went.  I found loads of places that make custom bedding for babies and toddles but many are soooooo expensive.  Also I just couldn't find any fabrics that I loved.  I did find that the 2nd fabric came in different colors and went searching for a blue version of the Starling pattern.  I found it but it was more purple than I liked.  This lead to that which eventually led to.....

Sherbet P.ips

Oh how I love thee she.rbet pips

The whole collection is super cute and I love that it is girly but not overly so.  So now I have to find someone to make some bedding.  I think it will be so cute.

Moving on up

Shazam and I have been in the same apartment for four years.  It was great when we first moved in with each other. While the outside of the house was not in the best condition the inside was fine and had plenty of room for us.  Over the past few years our family has grown and we have grown out of the space of our two bedroom apartment.  Not only are do we need more space in out current place but our land lords have done nothing to keep the place up.  The roof is literally falling off.  Our neighborhood isn't great and our dog was killed in the road outside our apartment.  Those factors added to the fact that we share a house with twenty somethings has made us ready to move.  When our land lord told us our rent would be going up $100/month we really wanted to leave but knew it wasn't in the cards.  We would never be able to swing the money for a bigger place in a better location.  Rents for 2-3 bedrooms in the next town over where we wanted to move were out of our price range at this point.  So we told out land lord that we would be staying put she told us she would mail us a new lease.  But then a great opportunity came our way.  The math teacher on my team owns a two family and his second floor apartment became available.  It is a 3 bedroom plus a study and two bathrooms for only $100 more than our new rent.  The apartment is not perfect but there were so many more pros than cons.  So we took it and we will be be moving at the end of July.  We are beyond excited and are so looking forward to more space and a fresh start.  So I am trying to wrap up the school year, find a mover, and start to pack and purge.  We are looking at paint colors and figuring out what we need for the new place.  I can not wait until we are in our new place.

Freedom???

Tonight is the first night since Little E came home from the hospital that we will be baby free.  Gulp.  I am cureently home alone since Shazam is dropping Little E off at Mimi and Bubba's house for the night.  We are going to a party tonight and needed a baby sitter.  Since we will be headed up to NH tomorrow for a our nephew's birthday party we decided this would be a great time to let E have some time with her grandparents and for Shazam and I to have some alone time.  It just is strange.  I miss her already.  I am worried she will wake up and need me.   I worry I will wake up and need her.  I am sure there will be some tears tonight lets hope they are just mine.

Need a smile?

This made me laugh out loud. If you need to a lift watch. If you don't like the f word don't.

Day 7-what it doesn't go 2, 7???

Where the heck have I been?  I want to blog but life keeps getting in my way.  Pretty much this darn job is really cutting into my blogging time.  Since miss E decided to wake up early and it is just 6 am I have a little time to do a little catch up.  So starting with 7 lets see how much I can catch up until I have to get ready for work.

Day 7 – What’s your favorite thing to eat for breakfast, lunch and dinner? If you have children, what are their favorites?

Ok so this is kind of a mean post for me since we just started we.ight watchers yesterday.  I should write that my favorite thing to eat for breakfast is a no fat yogurt, fruit and some water.  Lunch would be a green salad and grilled chicken and some water.  Lunch grilled chicken, grilled veggies and some water.  But what I really want....

Breakfast-  I actually hate breakfast.  I rarely eat before 11 am but my dw loves breakfast so we do go out (used to go out) for breakfast.  When we do I love to get pancakes with a side of bacon.  I actually crumble the bacon on top of the pancakes.  A sweet and salty masterpiece.  I really think that they should offer bacon bits as an option in your pancakes.    I mean really if you can put all sorts of sweet things in pancakes why not the savory.  One day I am going to actually ask them to do this.  I could start a new craze.  

Lunch-An Italian sub with everything (including hots), toasted.  Yum.  There have been two times in my life I could not have an italian sub.  The first was when I was living in N.C.  for the life of me I could not find a decent one.  It was one of the reasons I had to move back home.  Seriously it made me so homesick every time I had a crappy italian sub.  I would have my mom have one in the car when she picked up at the airport.  The second italian sub free time was when I was pregnant with Little E.  We joked that the first thing I wanted when I gave birth to the baby was an italian sub.  That was all the "push" present (which I think is so stupid by the way-the reward for childbirth...the holding your god dam baby).  Anyway things did not go as planned and I was neither in the mood or healthy enough to have my italian sub after little E was born.  I actually refused to eat one until she came home from the hospital.  It just seemed wrong to celebrate her birth fully until she was home.

Dinner-I would say anything italian.  I love pasta (boy does ww suck right now).  My favorite place to get pasta from is Comella's.  It is so yummy.  I get Grandpa's Mess.  Which is a whole mess of different pasta's red sauce, cheese, meatballs and italian sausage.  Yum Yum Yum.


So now that I am starving....I will go take a shower and eat some non fat greek yogurt and think of how much better I will look and feel when we get to family week in p-town the first week in august.  Anyone else going to be there?  I would love to meet up.

Day3 Guilty Pleasures

Sorry to all my vegetarian and healthy readers.  I love me a quarter pounder with cheese!

I don't think I could have gotten through E's nicu time without lifetime movies.  I watch so many when I got up to pump and couldn't fall back to sleep.  Truth be told though...I loved them long before the nicu. I love the waste an afternoon watching slutty ladies, murderers and kidnappers.

Day 2 blog of the day 2

Wow I am on a roll today.  I am actually completing day 2 on day 2!  Thanks for checking in.  I am glad to see that my hiatus did not cause me to lose all my readers.

Day 2 -Describe your high school self.  What extracurricular activities, if any, did you participate in during high school?

This was me at 14 in Europe.  I was such a brat.  My sister and mother also look like they are having a delightful time don't they!  The scariest part that is was during the first few days of the trip.  I can only imagine some of the pictures that were captured towards the end of our two week adventure.  Please remind me of this picture when Shazam and I decide that a European vacation is a great idea when Little E is 14.  


This picture really isn't a true reflection of who I was in high school but I certainly had my moments.  I was actually pretty happy in high school.  I wasn't part of the popular crew but I had a core of great friends.  I was a gymnast and most of my non school time was taken up by practice and competitions in both my Y team and my high school team.  I often went from one practice to another.  I was in phenomenal shape and ate about 6 meals per day.  I was an average to above average student and pretty much the same type of gymnast.  I didn't mind not being the star.  I work really hard for my B grades and was diagnosed with a learning disability in the 11th grade.  This really made a difference for me and made so many of my struggles make sense.  Once I more fully understood how my brain worked it was amazing how much easier school was.  It made senior year and college so much more productive and successful.  High School was not the best years of my life but it was fun.  I don't miss being a teenager but I think I came through pretty unscathed.


Since you have not seen any photos of Little Miss E I will leave you with a few recent shots.

I am back

So I took a blogging vacation.  Not because I didn't have anything to say but because perhaps I had too much.  I decided I was going to blog starting on the first of June.  Perhaps doing the blog challenge so many of us are doing but last night I was overwhelmed with watching the serious thunder storms and tornado warnings on the tv.   So I am a day late on the first blog challenge and this blog really says nothing about how we are all doing.  I promise I will let you all in on the exciting and not so exciting adventures our family has been on for the last 2.5 months.

Day 1 – Provide a picture of the space where you normally blog


























Well since I have not blogged in so long I thought instead of the cute pictures everyone else had up I would leave a blank spot.  I am currently in my classroom.  Should I be working yes but instead I am getting back on my blog wagon.  I wonder if there is anyone still reading.  I would love a quick comment that I am not writing to the wind.


See ya later today for day 2.

Signs of Spring

 It has been a long, cold, snow filled winter here in the north east and I am ready for spring. Mostly I am ready for weather were Little E can play outside. March is always a tricky month around here. I always think we should have turned a corner in the weather department and ma always disappointed when it is still crappy. Some signs that the nice weather will return have been sighted. First the snow melted and we saw our lawn and the curbs for the first time in months! Then we had a few days above 40 degrees! Followed by seeing a flock of Robins singing out side of school! Unfortunately this was trailed closely by my allergies. Although I am not enjoying feeling stuffed up and loosing my voice. We have been taking advantage of the warm temperatures and getting outside. Last weekend we took E to Drumlin farm to walk around and see the animals. It was great., E loved it. She was entranced by the chickens and kept running back to see the pigs and cows. I think what she really enjoyed most though was being able to run free and splash in the puddles. We had a great time and I am so glad we have a membership so we can go back as much as we want this summer. I have a feeling E will be spending a lot of time with these animals this summer. I also figured out that my parenting might be a bit different than other parents. While most of the parents spent their time trying to steer their kids away from the puddles I was actively encouraging E to get right in and get muddy.  Spring in New England...Mud and Snow piles...with the hope that flowers will follow!

What a week!

Nothing big has happened but geez am I glad to have this week over.  The kids are taking a quiz right now so I have a minute to blog.  So what made this week crazy?

• Shazam is in the middle of mid term papers so is working her butt off at the library all the time.
• Shazam is sick and feels like poo.
• Ella is teething.
• Work for me is hell.
• Shazam had a very important interview for her 2nd year internship.
• Shazam hates interviews.
• I had no time this week to get anything done at work because as I mentioned above work is hell.

The good news is that Shazam is making some progress on the papers and she got the internship!!!  This is great news.  She really wanted a hospital placement and she got one at The Brigham.  Not only will this look great on the resume but the program seems really awesome and it seems she will get great experience and the support that seems to be lacking at her current placement.  There are some drawbacks to this placement like the fact that she will need to take public transportation and that I will most likely need to to daycare drop off really early before school and then get to school just as the day starts.  Not ideal but we will make it work and it will put Shazam in a good place for interviewing for a job next year.

On top of teaching a new grade level with curriculum I have never taught but our team this year is "special"  we have lots of special needs and the mean girls.  Our days have been filled with meetings with kids, with parents, with other teachers and counselors this week.  I swear this is the only time this week I have sat at my desk.  At night I have been trying to write quizzes and planning my days.  I just can't seem to catch up.  I was going to go to Maine and visit my cousin this weekend but the weather is going to suck and I really don't want to be trapped in a small non baby proofed house in the rain and sleet all weekend so I am rescheduling.  My mom may still go up.  If she doesn't I think I may be traveling to her house so I can have help with E since Shazam will be at the library all weekend.  As much as it will stink to be separated it will be nice for Shazam to have some peace away from E and her crazy activity.

As for E I hope some teeth pop up soon her hands are in her mouth all the time.  Other than that she is well healed from her lung issues and off all the meds.  Which is good since they made her a crazy person.  The only thing we are still dealing with on that front is that the radiologist who read E's chest x-ray noted that she was osteopenic.  What this means we are still trying to figure out.   When she was at the doctor last week we had lots of blood drawn she wanted to look at her Vitamin D, calcium, phosphate and some other things.  All tests came back normal which is a good sign.  The doctor spoke with a pediatric radiologist at Children's who thought this might be because it was not a pediatric radiologist reading the xray.  She has a call into the pediatric endocrinologist to see what our next steps are.  One probable cause is her prematurity.  It seems that bones calcify in the third trimester which E missed most of so it would make sense that her bones would be not as calcified and dense.  What this means we don't know yet.  It may be that her bones are typical of a 20 month old 30 weeker.  It may be that all she needs is some calcium and vitamin D supplements.  It may means she needs to see the endocrinologist to figure it out.  The doctor is on top of it so I am just waiting to see what the deal is and not freaking out (which I am not and I am very proud of!)  Oh prematurity you are a gift that seems to keep on giving!  So now I need to run and figure out if I can send one of my classes to another lunch period since we have a class split by lunch and a quiz which does not mix well.   It is always something.

Early Intervention Evaluation

The short story is that she doesn't qualify. She needed to be at a 14 month level in at least one category and her lowest score was 16 months. So yeah!

Here is the breakdown she is 19 months actual right now.  Her last evaluation was at 14 months actual I will
put last evaluation in (green)
Fine motor-20 months (13 months)
She did very well and they were impressed with her grasp with a crayon. Only did a 2 block tower vs a 3 block tower.

Cognition/problem solving- 18 months (14 months)
She still didn't do the bloody 9 cubes in a cup task but I still want to see them put 9 cubes in the cup. She put as many in the cup until it was filled then took some out and started again. I don't get it...but I digress. She also had a lot of trouble concentrating perhaps I shouldn't have given her a dose of pretnisone 30 minutes before the eval (whoops).

Expressive language- 18 months (15 months)
She still doesn't have a ton of words but it is up and seems to be increasing daily. She scored where she did because she was repeating sounds very well. The SP said that this skill was key to increasing her vocabulary and since she was doing such a great job with it she was not worried about her low vocab.

Receptive Language-16 months (15 months)
This was a surprise to me. She seems to understand everything we say (doesn't do what we say but she is 19 months). Anyway she didn't point to the pictures when the asked where is the ball ect. She also had trouble concentrating during this part of the eval. which the SP feels she would have done better at if she wasn't all hyped up on pretnisone.  This was also her area of least growth so I will be working on this with her.

Social Emotional-26 months (19 months)
All I have to say is that we are in trouble with this one. She is was a ham for the evaluators and was on their laps giving kisses the whole time.

Self care-19 months (14 months)
I always think this is funny what should she be doing be getting ready to move into her own apartment?

Gross Motor- 18 months (11 months)
The pt was impressed in her improvement since she had a huge leap since her eval in the fall. She was at 11 months last time so a 9 month jump in about 6 months. Go E!

I am very happy with her progress and glad she doesn't need therapy although I am sure it would help her catch up more quickly although I am sure she will.  When I looked back at her evaluation at 8 months she was delayed in all areas except social emotional.  Her lowest area was her receptive language where she scored only at 5 months so this area seems to where she struggles and where we should work with her.  So good news this week.   Up two pounds and developing well.  Yeah for good evaluations!

Sick Sunday

Well we made an all time record for health this winter with a nice 2 almost 3 week span of a healthy E.  Alas all good things must come to an end.  Two weeks ago I went to pick E up at daycare and a pack n play was drying out in the yard.  Not a good sign.  Well it turns out two kids had gone home because of vomiting.  Another two cam down with it the  next day.  So we were on puke watch last weekend.  I was really looking forward to puke fest for my vacation.  Thankfully we had no vomit but her gastro system didn't get out unscathed and E started having problems on the other end on Sunday...at my mil's.  She seemed fine on Monday in the am but the afternoon it was back.  I stepped up her probiotics and it was gone by Tuesday!  We had a nice week together but on Thursday afternoon her nose started to run.  So I knew we were back on the sick wagon.  Friday she was ok and Shazam and I went out to dinner for her birthday.  Yum.  Friday night E was pretty restless and woke many times which is unusual for her.  Saturday was busy with tutoring and errands in the morning.  By the time I got her home in the afternoon I could tell she was tired and didn't feel great.  I tried to put her down but she would sleep for 5 min and then wake up crying.  Finally after 45 min I gave up and go her up.  She was labored in her breathing so I kept a close eye on her.  When Shazam came home from lunch with a friend she was retracting a little and grunting when she breathed.  I was really hoping to avoid the ER on Shazam's birthday so we gave her a bath and lubed her up with some vics but by 10 with no sleep to be had by little E and very pronounced wheezing that we would be ER bound.  So into the night we went.  She was very unhappy when we got there and threw a hissy in triage.  Her O2 was satting at 90 and she had nasal flaring and definite retractions.  When you show up with a preemie who is having trouble breathing you get pretty fast service and we were in a room less than a half hour of checking in.  We started blow by oxygen while we waited for the doctor.  The nurse observed her breathing and let me know that a respiratory therapist would be over to give a breathing treatment.  The doctor came in and checked on her confirmed that she needed a breathing treatment.  She got one breathing treatment and was still wheezing and her oxygen sats were 92-94 so off to a chest x-ray we went.  I think triage and the x-ray were the worst part of the visit.  We had to pin her down for two xrays and poor little E was pretty upset by the end of it.  On top of feeling like crap, she had not napped all day and by that time it was about 12 am.  The x-ray was clear so she had another treatment and a dose of oral pretnisone which did the trick and we got to go home.  We are now the proud owners of our own nebulizer.  We have been doing treatments every 4-6 hours and other than some wheezing this morning around 10 she has been breathing really well.  Still a little short of breath but not in respiratory distress (no grunting, retractions or fast breathing).  She also is on an oral dose of pretnisone once a day.  We will check in with her doctor tomorrow to see when she wants to see us in the office and will continue the nebulizer every 6 hours for the next 4 days and the pretnisone for another 2 hopefully by then she will be all set and we can pack the nebulizer away for a long time.  Although it is a pain to do the treatments E has been a trooper and while some kids hate the treatments E actually seems to enjoy them.  At one point tonight she had the whole tube in her mouth.  I am not going to let her know that she is supposed to hate them.  Here she is huffing on her elephant trunk as I call it. 

18 month update at 19 months

Well it practically took until 19 months to get her 18 month appointment because of snow.  We had to change the appointment twice.  Argh.  Anyway I wouldn't say it was our most stellar appointment.  I knew it wasn't going to go great so at least I was prepared.  Generally E is doing ok.  She was healthy for the appointment which considering she has been pretty much sick almost the whole winter and fall is saying something.  My major concerns were her lack of growth and her slow language development. 

So Ella's weight. it went down which as you all know is not the direction a growing baby's weight should go.  She was about 22 lbs at 15 months.  She was 21 at her 18 month appointment which really was 18.5 months.  Obviously she should have gained weight.  She has been following a curve at about the 15th percentile for her actual age which is pretty amazing since she was well bellow the average for 30 weekers at birth.  That is until this visit.  She is now at bellow the 5th.  The fact that she dropped is the problem really not that she is in the 5th.  So the doctor put us on a high fat high calorie diet to pack the weight on.  So now we are putting cream in her milk (which she loves by the way) and butter in just about everything.  I think it is working and we go back in for a weight check in a few weeks.  How we will get her to drink regular milk after this I will never know.  I also have had to be very careful not to pack on the pounds along with Ella.  I think that has been limited in its success.

As for the speech E had about 6 words at the time of her visit.  Mama, Ma, Bye Bye, Uh Oh, namina (banana), didi (dog)and apple.  Our doctor wanted to see her using 15-20 words so back to early intervention we go.  We just had our intake interview yesterday and the team will come out and evaluate her on Monday.  In the couple of weeks since she saw the doctor she has pick up some more words which has been nice but still not where she needs to be.  I spoke with the speech pathologist at school and she said that she should be using 30 words by now at almost 20 months.  So we will see if she qualifies for services.  I think she is doing pretty well in her other areas.  When we last were evaluated at about 14 months she was not walking so she was at 11 months for gross motor.  Now she is walking up a storm so I am interested in what she should be doing now.  Her fine motor has come along so far and she is really into coloring and doing puzzles.  I do need to keep a good list this week for all her words.  In addition to the words like up and bun bun that she has pick up we also realized that she is also speaking spanish.  So some of the words we thought were babble are actually words.  They speak Spanish at daycare so it is not surprising that she has picked some of them up.  So now her additional vocabulary is more (with the sign) and mas, pero, manzana, kitty, meow and up.  She also howls like a wolf and whoos like an owl.  I will have the low down next week as well as if we qualify for services.  I hear great things about speech therapy so if we need it I am ready to get going.

Ten Things Tuesday

Sorry for the absence.  So much going on and not enough time to blog.  I think part of my problem is that I don't have a structure to my posts.  I keep trying to think of what to write and then never doing it.  So I am going to try some repeating posts to see if I can get back on track.  So here goes my 10 things Tuesday.

1.  We finally got to go visit the NICU yesterday it was nice to see our favorite nurses.  It is nice to see that they remember us and miss us.

2.  It is vacation week I am so happy.

3.  Little E seems to be gaining weight again which means our high fat high calorie is working. (more on that in another post).

4.  Early Intervention is coming today so that we can get Little E back in.  She is not doing well with language acquisition. (more on that in another post).

5.  E took two naps today...how nice.  She is actually still sleeping.

6.  I am going shopping tomorrow.  I am so excited.

7.  Now that we have set up the EI evaluation E seems to be talking more.  Still delayed but perhaps now that she is walking full time she has time to get some words.

8.  I am actually interested in seeing how E tests in all her areas.  I both hate and love EI evaluations.  I love seeing what she has progressed in.  I hate that it points out where she is still behind.

9.  I did out Federal taxes an Shazam got her refund today so I should get mine soon.  Now I have to do our state taxes.  It pisses me off that we have to do them twice.

10.  I hear the little lady so I guess it is a good thing that I am on ten.  See you tomorrow...hopefully.

Wordless Wednesday-Snow Day