Today we have speech for Hayden and I am just amazed at the progress he's made. He now sings to his favorite shows like Super Why and sings the alphabet and shouts out his letters and when he plays with his leapfrog toy he works on his letter sounds too. He loves to play with Ava so he is always saying, "Come on Ava play trains ". He likes to grab her hand and lead her around and likes to sit in the playhouse with her. He is still very curious and mischievous and sometimes I need eyes in the back of my head or in the other room. A lot of times it seems like he waits for me to change Ava before he gets into something. Before he goes to bed he says he's going to dream about Mommy, Daddy, Papa, Puppy, Ava, Kiki, Wubbzy, and Backyardigans.

Ava is talking a lot too. Her favorite thing to say is "NO". Sometimes it's just a simple quiet no and lots of times it's a very insistent and loud with finger pointing NO!!!!. She also says hi, hello, bye, night night, mama, dada, i don't know, what's this, what's that, dog, me, mine, shoes, baby, cheese, uh-oh, and oh no, yogurt, bubbles, wow, wee. She also likes to sit on the potty with her clothes on and say, "Yay!" like Hayden does after he goes potty. It's so funny. Ava LOVES to dance and in the fall we'll be enrolling her in dance classes. I don't think 2 year olds will be performing Swan Lake or anything, but I think she'll have fun.

Ava is 18 months!

I'm a little late posting this, but Ava had her Dr. appt. last Monday. She is 22 lbs. 11 oz. and 31 inches long. She is now 25% for both height and weight. She is such a joy and I catch myself smiling at her all the time. Her favorite things to say are "uh no", "no", and "shoes". She's such a girl! She loves her baby dolls and stuffed animals. As soon as she sees her babies on her rocking chair she picks them up and squeezes them. She loves to play outside and her favorite thing is the slide. She now can climb the ladder all by herself and go down the slide. It's so adorable.

A Nice Day

In the fall I was able to get all the leaves bagged up in the front yard, but it got too cold before I could finish the back.

Hayden got out the bubbles and was practicing blowing into the wand (one of our speech exercises)

Ava thought the dogs chasing each other was the funniest thing!

Today while the kids were napping I heard the neighbor kids playing outside so I thought I'd let Hayden and Ava play outside after they woke up. They had a lot of fun climbing on the playground and going down the slides. The dogs chased each other all around the yard and had fun too. I managed to get some really good pictures for once. This year is going to be so much nicer with Ava being able to run around and climb too. We still have a lot of work to do to finish the border of the playground, but that's our big project this Spring before it gets too hot around here.



This morning Hayden was being really loving to Ava. He went up and gave her a big hug and then reached out for her hand and led her all around the house and then into his room to show her his books I recently switched out. It was too adorable.

The other day I had to have Ava try on this new outfit I found for her. I loved this coat last year, but passed on it because she didn't really need a spring jacket when she was a baby. This year we'll be heading outside to play when it gets nice and she'll need a jacket. She's getting another cold so I've had to keep her hair up so it stays clear of her nose.

A few weeks ago we tried on a bunch of Ava's summer clothes, but I just love her hair in this picture. It's getting so long.

Well I attempted to get some Valentine's pictures, but that didn't work out so well as this was the best one. :(

Yesterday we had speech therapy in Springfield and afterwards I took Hayden to get his haircut and we needed to get him some new shoes since his others were too small. I stopped into Jelly Beans since it was next door and picked some out for him and I was able to get him to sit down and try them on while he was playing in the play area. He is wearing a size 10!!! This is what he got and he really likes them:

I also picked up some toe nail polish for Ava. It's from a company called Piggy Paint. The nail polish is non-toxic, odorless, and kid-friendly. During snack time this morning Ava was distracted enough to let me paint her toes in this cute bubble gum color.

Later on I tried to do her fingernails but she wasn't in a very good mood since she wouldn't nap and it was close to dinner time.

Recent News

After Christmas I knew I wanted to start potty training Hayden. He was familiar with the potty and would go before bed or baths, but we weren't doing full time training yet. I was sick for a couple weeks and we had freezing temperatures so I waited until that was over before we got started. First I just put him in underwear and I took him several times a day and he did really well and had zero to just a few accidents. He wasn't telling me he had to go so I thought I would try naked training like a friend was doing with her son and he did really well with that too. He mostly likes the big potty with the seat adapter, but I also have a small potty sitting in the living room if he feels he needs to sit down and go on his own. Bowel training was a little different because Hayden was really just waiting for nap/quiet time to go in a diaper. One night last week Josh and I both kept telling and asking him to go on the potty and if he did he'd get a treat. Finally we were just sitting on the couch and he ran over to the potty and started going. We didn't want to make a big deal of it and have him get embarrassed so we waited until he was done and went crazy praising him. He didn't go much and saved the rest for his diaper, but it was a great start. Sunday I think he sat down on the potty five times in 10 minutes going more and more. I think he was getting a big kick out of the whole process of cleaning up, flushing, washing hands, and getting a treat. The only accidents we've had lately is if we were out of the house and bedtime. We need to get a travel potty seat adapter for the public restrooms because they are so big.

The other recent news is that we have pre-enrolled Hayden in preschool for next fall. I was really on the fence about whether or not to send Hayden at 3, but after talking with his speech therapist I decided we would look for a preschool. He thinks it would be really good for Hayden to be around other kids his age-- especially the kids that are way ahead in speech. He will also be forced to communicate with other kids in play. I found a couple preschools in Branson that looked decent so when our parents as teachers coordinator came I asked for her opinion and she highly recommended one of the schools I found so as soon as she left I called to get him pre-enrolled and they said they didn't have a waiting list yet. He'll be going to First Presbyterian Church Preschool on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

And finally in July Hayden's speech therapist made 6 goals for Hayden to work on and gave Christmas as the time frame to have them met. We finally had speech again after a long Christmas break and Hayden has met 5 out of 6 of those goals. The one goal he hasn't met he does about half the time, but we need to keep working. He's not putting ending consonants on some words and not putting beginning consonants on other words. Next time we will be getting new goals to work on.

Christmas 2009 and our trip to Miami

First a picture of our playroom. It always amazes me how many things we can cram in here. I change the furniture around in here a lot, but this time I changed it so the couch was in front of the french door to help block out some cold air.

We stayed at the W on South Beach. It's a pretty new hotel just having opened last summer. We stayed in the Fabulous Studio.

The plunge tub. It was super deep with two seats inside.

Big walk in shower. The frosted window on the back wall allowed anyone on the other side to see your outline. Kinda funny.

This big bed was super comfortable

The living room

Here's the toilet room. LOL.

The kitchenette with minibar

The view from our balcony on the first night. They played fun music down by the pool that sounded like there was a cool party going on.

The third day we went down to the beach and a lot of people rented these paddle boards.

A fabulous sunrise on the 3rd day

Another view from the balcony

Here's the pool with the cabanas and cozy deck chairs. When we walked down there a man right away took care of where we wanted to sit and set up our towels and brought us menus.

At first we started out by the pool, but all the sunny chairs were taken so after awhile it got kind of chilly so I walked down to the beach and found out we could still get drinks and lunch there too so we packed up and headed out here. What a great decision as it was really nice laying there in the warm sun.

View of the back of the hotel. Our room was situated in the short part of the building.

My Grandma with Mom and Dad's new dog Lucy. Grandma is 81 this year.

The Night Before Christmas

Our nieces Olivia and Emma passing out gifts

Ava opening a gift from Grandpa Denny and Grandma Debbie

Hayden singing in his Backyardigans microphone he got from The Biermans.

Olivia showing Hayden her new DS game.

Hayden singing Christmas carols with Holly and Marie

Hayden loves playing piano

Papa Joel and Uncle Kirk with Ava at the Neally Christmas

Dinner at the kids table with all of Hayden's cousins

Me and Josh's sister Jenny

All the great grandkids put on a Christmas play. It was adorable. Hayden wasn't interested at all until it was over and everyone was clapping. All of a sudden Hayden runs in super excited like he was the star of the show.

Ava opening a Christmas gift from Papa Joel and Mimi Vian

Hayden and Ava trying out their new horse from Santa

As usual we did a lot of traveling for the holidays. But first Josh had a class down in Miami so I tagged a long for a few extra days. We dropped the kids off at Josh's dad's and then drove to St. Louis to the airport. We had a nice time. It rained the first couple days which was only a bummer the 2nd day since we were kind of done with shopping by then. The 3rd day we got to lay by the beach. We had a great dinner at Mr. Chow. It was super fun. We came back on the 20th and then spent until the 26th with my family. That morning we drove to Burlington to spend time with Josh's mom's family and then ended our trip at the Neallys before we had to go back to Muscatine to pick up our dogs. Unfortunately the kids got colds that they spread to us. Then the morning we left Hayden threw up so we waited a little bit to see if he'd do it again. By the 31st we were so ready to get home. He did throw up once a tiny bit in the car and then made it the rest of the way home just fine. When we got home we ate dinner and started putting together toys and getting rid of their boxes. I started not feeling well and I was up all night sick and I was sick the whole next day. Saturday the 2nd I was able to get out of the house to go help pick out our new fridge, but then I didn't feel up to grocery shopping so came back and Josh went out to get a few things we'd need for the week. Sunday night my nose started clicking and it was really painful-- probably because of my deviated septum. All week my cheeks have been hurting as well as my molars and nose. I've been taking ibuprofen around the clock. Thursday it occurred to me that it could be a sinus infection. I'd never had one before so I looked up the symptoms (of course). I think I will make a trip to the Dr. this week. So it hasn't been the greatest since returning home plus it's been so cold and our heat pump isn't keeping up so we've had to switch to emergency heat. The only way we can really resolve this is to get a bigger unit or for the temps to return to average. Apparently the builder of the homes in our neighborhood put in the minimum size units to save money and then we have an added addition so it's even less efficient. We currently have a 3 and we need a 4 or 4.5 for our house. But in better news I love our new fridge. We got a french door LG with ice/water that's energy efficient. It looks nice with the new dishwasher we got each other for Christmas.