Happy Valentine's Day

Ava and Michael got custom hand-made Valentine's Day Cards from their personal Cricut cupid. When the children spotted the card envelopes they ran to sit down for the opening. Michael recognizes his name and therefore studies the envelopes and determines which is his and which belongs to his sister. They open the cards and I can barely get them out of the children's hands long enough to read the sweet message inside to the children and take a quick picture before they are reclaimed. As always, the hand-made cards bring something special to our holidays. We send a big hug and thank you to the people who make them for us.

Happiness grows when shared, so I share them with you to bring a smile to your Valentine's Day.

How to Eat Green Beans - Cook Till Half-Past Ten

We were having green beans with lunch yesterday. Michael also had some ketchup on his plate. The ketchup was intended to be a dip for his chicken. My husband and I noticed Michael happily dipping his green beans in his ketchup as if they were finger food and munching away.

We raised our eyes a little and exchanged a subtle glance that said "ick," but didn't draw attention to the situation. After all, he was happily eating green beans and requested a second helping.

Then he sweetly offered me a green bean dipped in ketchup and asked me if I wanted a taste. I reasonably replied, "No thank you sweetheart, I already have my own." He was too smart for that though. Without skipping a beat he countered with, "But momma, this one is covered in ketchup!"

Well, that certainly put me on the spot. I wasn't the slightest bit interested in tasting that green bean. We've discussed the concept of taste buds before and how everyone has slightly different taste buds which is why different people like different foods. So, I told him that my taste buds like their green beans plain, but thank you for offering.

That seemed to be the end of that. Conversation, and the meal, moved on for a while with no more discussion of how to eat green beans. Then Michael started to explain how you make ketchup-covered green beans. First, you cook the green beans. Then you cover them in ketchup. Then you put them in the oven and cook them again until half-past ten. Then you get to eat them.

Nice to know he has it all worked out.

So yummy! Dutch Chococcino Loose Leaf Tea

I have been using my new tea maker to make at least three pots of tea a day. I've tried several new loose leaf teas in the process. I intend to do a post about my favorites once my first wave of research is complete, but I wanted to share a new discovery that I particularly like.

I love the Dutch Chococcino from Vianne's Tea House. I opened the bag and it smelled heavenly. It smelled just like a really good dark chocolate bar. It also has an amazingly rich dark chocolate taste to it. It is the closest a tea has ever come to replacing a really good cup of hot chocolate for me. I made mine with plenty of raw sugar and a little milk in it.

If you enjoy making loose leaf teas and you enjoy chocolate you should definitely try this tea.

Update: The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore - Free

A few days ago I wrote about an animated short/iPad app called The Fantastic Flying Books of Morris Lessmore. On January 24, 2012 it was nominated for an Oscar. They deserve the nomination and I hope they win.

In honor of the nomination, the animated short is free on iTunes until February 26th (the night of the Oscars). You can watch it for free here. You can also download it in regular or high definition for free to keep on iTunes. Watching this is definitely worth 15 minutes of your time.

I enjoyed reading this article on Morris Lessmore and the nomination. I also enjoyed watching this short video of the team that produced Lessmore waiting to see if they had received the nomination and their subsequent reaction.

Very Nice Basic FAQ Page on Childhood Apraxia of Speech

I really liked this basic information page on CAS. It gives a decent overview of the disorder and a description of how an SLP works with a child with CAS. I particularly like the section at the end that gives suggestions for how a parent can help / work with their child at home. There are some excellent suggestions there.

Check it out.

Excellent CAS Resource Page

I haven't had a chance to fully explore the links on this page yet due to a particularly nasty stomach flu bug I brought back with me from New Orleans.

However, at a glance, this page looks wonderful and given its depth, is likely to have something you haven't seen before.

Childhood Apraxia of Speech Resource Page by Pediastaff

Today is the day.

Later this morning Ava and I will be at her evaluation. By this evening we should know if we'll continue to receive services after her birthday or if we'll be on our own. Wish us luck.

I'm trying to keep a win-win outlook about this situation. If she doesn't qualify, that'll be because she's made more progress than I could have possibly imagined a year ago. Now that we have a good rhythm going with therapy at home, I can probably handle working with her myself for a while. We also have the advantage of working with a local apraxia expert twice a month who is guiding me on what to work on in between sessions with her. So even if we don't qualify, I have a plan. And it is a plan I can live with.

Passing the Blanket

We've been cleaning the basement a little. We moved into our house when I was in the third trimester with Michael. I wasn't doing a lot of unnecessary unpacking then. Then we had our first baby followed 15 months later by our second baby. Now that things are settling a bit we're diving into some boxes and bins that have been pretty much untouched for over four years.

I opened a bin yesterday and found my old blanket. It was the one I used as a very young girl. My mother had made it for me. It is nothing special to look at, but it is special to me and I still have it decades later. As I was holding it, Michael walked by.

Now, Michael has a special blanket he sleeps with every night. He calls it his hugging blanket. It stays in his room, but he wants it at naptime and bedtime, so he is familiar with the concept of a special blanket.

I showed my old blanket to Michael and told him that it was my hugging blanket when I was a little girl. I explained that his grandmother had made it for me and that it was special. I was about to put it back away when he asked me if he could have it for his room. He said he wanted it so that it could be friends with his hugging blanket. I thought to myself, why not?

As he proudly carried it up the stairs to his room he ran into his sister. I heard him say, "Look Ava! This is mommy's hugging blanket from when she was a little girl. She gave it to me. It is very special."

King...

Last night, Michael was having a conversation with his grandfather about the animals he's seen at the zoo. Michael rattled off a long list concluding with gorillas. His grandfather asked, "Have you ever seen a movie called King Kong?" (The answer is no.) Michael thought for a long moment and replied, "Well, I know a song about King Kong." I thought to myself, "Really?"

We all let that sink in a bit, and then just moved on to another topic of conversation. Michael seemed to be thinking. Then he started singing:

"Old King Kong was a merry old soul and a merry old soul was he..."

Everyone cracked up. Parenting is such fun sometimes.

Waiting

My husband's parents are in town to celebrate Michael's birthday with us. We went to dinner last night to kick off the festivities in style. The children were getting a bit impatient while we waited for our food to arrive. Grandma taught Ava to use her iPhone to take pictures and that was a huge hit. Michael immediately wanted to "play". I pulled out my phone and showed him how.

I kid you not. In five minutes he took 271 pictures. He took extreme pride in the fact that he had taken about 30 pictures in a row of his Grandpa's arm and I have all the shots to prove it.

At the end of the meal, the children were waiting again while the adults finished up. They took a few more pictures, but that wasn't going to do the trick a second time. Grandma picked up Ava and they went for a little restaurant tour to talk about all the pictures they could see. It was sweet to watch Ava in her Grandma's arms chattering away happily. I couldn't hear what she was saying, but she had a lot to say.

Little Imp

Yesterday morning Ava started calling, "Daaaaaaa-dee! Daaaaaaa-dee!" I wasn't quite sure where she was so I called back, "Daddy's in the shower sweetie," but she didn't seem to hear me. I went searching.

I found her in her room. She looked pretty surprised to see me open the door rather than her daddy. (She had locked herself in. I had put a childproof doorknob protector on the inside of her door the day before when she kept wandering instead of napping.)

She quickly said, "Let's do speech Mommy!" I was pretty startled at this out-of-the-blue suggestion until I saw the open baggie of froot loops on the floor. Apparently she had taken off with the bag from my tower of speech supplies and snuck up to her room with it.

She figured volunteering to do speech would get her out of being fussed at. It worked actually. I said, sure and headed downstairs to find a card deck. At that point she helpfully pointed out, "The bag is already open Mama!"

Another Scholastic Teacher Express eBook Sale

Scholastic Teacher Express is having another eBook sale through 10-21-2011. They have 250 of their teacher resource books discounted to $1-$4. You can also use the discount code Birthday50 for half off many of those titles bringing some of them down to as little as 50 cents.

Chipmunk

My parents took Ava Friday night. (Thank you Mom and Dad!) When they brought her home Saturday evening she was clutching a package of crackers in her hand like it was treasure. I'm still not sure what the story behind that was. Since we were about to eat dinner, I quickly confiscated the crackers but lessened the blow by letting her have two. She wandered around carrying them without eating them for a while but was eventually down to half a cracker.

In the meantime, Michael noticed the sudden appearance of crackers in the house and came to beg one for himself. I told him "just one" and was handing it to him when Ava rushed in from the other room apparently having overheard us. She popped her last half cracker in her mouth and held her hand out for more. I told her, "Absolutely not! You've already had your two." She thought about that for a moment, accepted that it was fair, and pulled that last half cracker right back out of her mouth and walked away holding it.

My little chipmunk.

Chocolate Chip Cookie Recipe Needed

Does someone have a great chocolate chip cookie recipe they'd be willing to send me? We lost ours. In our first year of marriage we made the best from scratch chocolate chip cookies. Then I got pregnant with Michael. Then we moved in the third trimester and three months later Michael arrived. Ava arrived 15 months after that. We went almost four years without even looking for that recipe.

A couple of weeks ago, unable to locate the recipe, my husband tried the recipe on the Toll House Chocolate Chips bag. Definitely not the recipe we wanted. Then we tried the one from the Better Homes & Garden cookbook. Also not right.

So now I'm looking for suggestions.

Please?

Seriously?

First I wrote about how I really did need to find Ava a regular playmate.

Then I wrote about the miraculous discovery only a few days later that a little girl Ava's age lives only a few houses away in our neighborhood.

We had one very nice playdate and then a few weeks later we had another very nice playdate. We seem to have some difficulty coordinating regular playdates, but I can live with irregular.

Then one day last week as I was driving by their house on the way to ours...

Counterproductive?

We're trying to rebuild our deck and therefore we have a ton of random pieces of cut-off wood lying around. I had a brilliant idea to drill some holes in a piece of wood and let the children play with the block of wood, some wood screws and a couple of screwdrivers.

1. They loved it.
2. Michael gets to play with a screwdriver and screws in a sanctioned way.
3. Hmm... do I really want to give him additional, sanctioned, practice with a screwdriver? (See this and this for reasons that this activity is possibly counterproductive.)

Six!!!

Ava loves cucumber and dip. She ate all the cucumber on her own plate (about 1/4 of a rather large cucumber). Then she eyed Michael's plate and asked if she could have his cucumber. He had already decided that he wasn't going to eat his, so he gave his cucumber to Ava. That quickly disappeared too. At this point, the girl had consumed half a cucumber.

She looked down rather pitifully at her plate and said, "No more on Ava's blue plate!" Six!! That's a six word sentence from the same little girl who had only three words in her entire vocabulary four and a half months ago. I'm practically speechless myself in awe and gratitude. (Standard disclaimer: No, that sentence was not pronounced "correctly" with every sound present, but all the words were there and I could understand them.)

Eloquence via the Written Word

Sometimes I feel something and I can hardly figure out how to explain it to myself much less figure out how to explain it to others. And then, being able to express yourself well in writing is taking it to a whole different level. Michelle at earlymama.com has written an amazing post in the form of a letter to her young son Noah about the importance of being happy. I agree with her wholeheartedly. You should read this. It's beautifully written and so true.

Free Everyday Math iPhone / iPad apps

McGraw-Hill is offering all of their Everyday Mathematics iPhone / iPad apps for free until May 6 in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. There are ten of them. They are pretty much only going to be useful for school-age children, but free is free and I can save them for a couple of years until Michael and Ava are ready for them.

Shadow Play

Ava was playing with her shadow in the basement playroom. She was standing on a step stool and the setting sun was coming in through the basement window lighting up the wall. Ava noticed her shadow and was delighted. She waved and played with it for several minutes and her Daddy was able to catch it on film. I stole the pictures from him and put them together so you could see.