I hate you therapy

Do you ever reach that point when you are just done? I mean, D-O-N-E, done? Because I am so there.
The little disclaimer here is that I am just venting for the sake of venting. Probably none of this will make sense tomorrow. But here it goes:
I am sick of therapy. I am sick of having to go through therapy. I am sick of proving that Calvin needs therapy. I am sick of it all. I am sick of it because it makes me feel like he is something that he's not...I know he's the smartest brightest boy in the world and I hate that we have to spend time doing this and practicing how to make a long o sound rather than a short o sound when we should be out somewhere hunting for frogs or something.
I hate that when he is 3 he will no longer qualify for First Step therapy and we are basically on our own. I have known this all along but I never even thought of it because I thought "by the time he's 3 he won't even need therapy anymore" and yet here we are talking about what is going to happen once he is done and needs more therapy. Every fiber in my being screams, please! NO! He can't need more therapy. Why isn't this getting better?
He is so frustrated. I am so frustrated. I have always known that there was a chance that he would miss out on things but the rational side of me said "he's only one" and then "he's only two" and yes I know he is still only two but here are things I think of: you can't sign football plays when you are the quarterback...you have to say them. No one will know what you are saying if you are signing STOP when a stranger tries to take you. And here is the one that really gets me...what would he do if he were lost? He can't even say his name, let alone his address or our names. Would I ever see him again? It just crushes my spirits to think of these things and I know I shouldn't let myself go there again.
I need to look at all that God has given me. That Cal is completely healthy in every other way. But I am starting to face the reality that this might not be something that is going to be helped. We are exploring the option of homeschooling him because God forbid if he can't talk, how are preschool teachers going to be able to work with him?
I am not opposed to homeschooling but I don't want to because I HAVE to...I want to because I want to. I am sick of HAVING to do things. I am tired of talking for him. Of telling people "he just signed thank you to you". I am tired of putting him through therapy. Therapy that seems to not being doing much of anything aside from making me irritated and irrational and emotional.
Thank you for listening. I'm done now.

Check out these weirdos

I just had to post this because it made me laugh and we can all use a laugh once in a while, right? I was flipping through our pictures and saw this and I though, "oh, I don't look too bad" but then look at my company! Nick poor guy if you will notice has a huge gash on his head. From what you ask? Well if you are missing excitement in your life try bashing yourself in the head with a crow-bar...he had such a goose egg but now it is just a teeny gash, thank GOD! But you pair that with a shaving incident he had that morning and the guy looks like a walking case of leporasy (sp?) or something. Then ther's Calvin, or should I say a drunk Simon Baker. What did we give this kid? He looks like he should be sitting at a picnic table somewhere with a cigarette in one hand and one of those old cans of beer from the 60's...you know what I am talking about...those pictures you see of your family members and think "oh nice, really nice." Poor guys, I am picking on them. You know, they usually are adorable and I look like death hung over or a pig with lipstick on...oh how the tables have turned boys..muahhhh (this is my evil laugh by the way!) Happy Tuesday!
*Disclaimer: I am madly in love with these two men and am idly teasing them through no fault of their own. Promise. Its true, I'm just picking on them. Besides Calvin (and possibly Nick) can't read so its okay. :)

Egg Decorating

This past week we decorated eggs and had a great time! Cal just basically sat there and watched as he wanted to throw the eggs or dump the dye or both at the same time. They turned out really cute. The only problem we had was that I got a kit with only 3 colors but we made due and it became a good teaching lesson of what colors mix to make what. How fun! And all the eggs were cool, sitting around in the refrigerator until Nick dumped ALL OF THE EGGS out of the refrigerator. AND ALL OF THE EGGS BROKE! Ugh! But they were fun to make and before they broke we had a fun time eating hardboiled eggs every day. Calvin kept trying to figure out why the eggs were hued a different color when he ate them...I think he thought we were trying to poison him, poor guy.

Organizing Confessions

As mentioned in a previous post I have been working my way through a home organization book, trying to get this place in ship shape. Ugh is all I have to say.

I have been freelance writing and I think I may have bitten off a bit more than I can chew this time. Deadlines are looming and I have nothing done. This week is Easter week and I am cooking...yikes! Plus this is one of those suck-ville weeks that Nick has to work basically every single day. God, please be with us and help us!

Anyway as you can see I am a busy gal this week which freaks me out that the house is going to begin to look distressed. I will have to give you the 411 on how all of that goes after this week...if I make it past this week! :)

As I was saying I have been working on this organization thing and here is the enlightened notion that has come into my head: I clean the house like I have ADHD. Its true! I was noticing today how I do things. Here is one example: I found a piece of the kids Memory game shoved underneath the buffet. It isn't something that you know I walk over and should have been put away ages ago and I chose not to. Kuddos for me about that but I should have been more thorough when helping the children put the game away in the first place...ADHD number one. So I get the piece out (or unstuck off the swiffer as the case may be) and am going to put it away. Here's the shocker though...I don't put it away. Nope. I take it over to the shelves that the games are on and leave it there. Why? Why do I do that? Do I think the box will magically open up and swallow the game piece that should be inside?

Lazy, distracted, too busy, whatever the reasoning may be, I am noticing that this is the reason that the house is all aflutter. TONS of stuff is on the stairs just waiting to go upstairs where it belongs. But the question is why don't I just take it there when I am putting it away. You know, finish the thought.

See the book touches on this. It talks about not just leaving the mail on the foyer table like I do. It talks about to bring it in, sort it, do with it what you need to and then you are done and you don't have to pick it up to do later. Ta-da! Isn't that a grand idea?

Do you struggle with this too?

Happiness in Marriage is a Choice

Okay to be fair here I told him to give me a really goofy face...promise :)

In case no one has told you Nick and I are delieriously in love! Ah, young love! Except idon't know if we have what you would call YOUNG love considering we've been together for close to 10 years. We met when I was 19 and he was 22. It just seems so young and innocent now and back then I felt so grown-up.

Anywho we married when I was 21 which now seems so young to be getting married. But it was the same age that my Grandmother was when she got married and definitely not fresh out of high school or anything.

We have known so many people who have gotten a divorce, who have split up, broken up, are just plain fed up. Whenever I hear that this has happened it absolutely scares me to death. I think "what was it that made them end? were they happy like us?"

I am in no way saying that I know everything about marriage or that I am some type of advce expert but I do believe that what Nick and I have is a pretty good thing and I have SCADS of people tell me that they wish they were as in love as we are. In all honesty we have to work to make this work. A LOT of work.

Dates, talking, laughing, making a point to not get too stressed about living, and making sure God is in our center. I was told once by a dear older lady that life is 20% circumstances and 80% attitude. I think that this completely applies to life. We all know people who have are unhappy because its just not exciting anymore or the spark is just gone. But what those people don't realize is that you are going through life with the person you love and life quite frankly just isn't very exciting sometimes. Nope...in fact its scary and traumatic and boring and stressful in a lot of areas with exciting being very far away. But you choose to be with that person because what an honor to have someone choose YOU to be with.

I feel absolutely honored and blessed that Nick is with me. He chose me to snuggle with in the middle of the night, to bear his children, to get him aspirin when he has a headache.

We have a friend who divorced because he and his wife were just best friends. Seriously? Isn't that the way it should be? You can CHOOSE to be in love, to talk, to stay up in the wee hours of the night talking, to love one another truly and deeply. I am not saying that we have not had our share of marriage counseling, slammed doors, nights on the couch, or a handful of other painful, painful memories but we have muddled through.

I know that a lot of marriages are pretty one sided and that sucks. I am so blessed with Nick that has has fought with me tooth and nail to get this to work.

His mom had the kids Monday and he got a lot done on our living room (yeah!) but you know what else we also did? We laid on the couch and talked and laughed and were just silly. For the life of me I can't remember what we talked about but we talked and connected.

My prayer for you today is that your life contains such a relationship and if not that you may figure out how to get it there. God showed us how to love and I am so thankful He did because it is so amazing.

The Best

It is amazing to me what love can create. Hopes, dreams, happiness, and two gorgeous children. How blessed God has made us. I just can't believe it.

I LOVE this picture...he holds onto the side of the bed...I think he's trying to make sure that he won't fall out

How hilarious is this? He looks like a little businessman on the phone saying "hold on a sec..."

Breaking Out of the House

With all of this warm weather God has blessed us with we've been able to venture outside and make some WONDERFUL memories. I feel like the luckiest girl with Nick beside me pulling a wagon full of lovely children and the sun shining on us while I walk Lucy.

This was a picture of the children during their first ride in their new wagon! This was a Christmas gift from Auntie Bean and Uncle Mark and boy howdy do they love this thing! It is also super easy to pull! Everyone stopped us to comment on how cute Emma was with her bow and how cute Cal was in a Batman costume. Aren't they too cute? You can see they were having a great time!

Calvin painting

Emma painting too...it was a BIT too cold for flippies :)

These pictures are of the children playing with their new chalk painting set...it was a Birthday gift for Cal and they have been itching to use it since they got it. They had a great time playing with it. It was fun to see them working together to paint. They also had a big bucket of sidewalk chalk that hadn't even been opened from last year! Woohoo!!! Hopefully that will last us all summer.

We are really looking forward to playing outside this summer. Our grass died, caput, this past year so we are going to have to plant new. But once it comes up I am sure that we will have a wonderful time. We are going to be completing our landscaping plans for our yard to allow for extra room for the children and Lucy to run around. We are probably about half way there.

Last year Nick transplanted a ton of our boxwoods and got rid of a whole row of landscaping for new grass. He also laid down our new patio out back and built a jeep garage for the children's planes, trains, and automobiles! This year we are going to do away with some more of our landscaping to maximize our yard for grass and a dog.

Once the grass has grown we are going to see what space we have to plan out where a sandbox can go and maybe even a playground! I am super excited to see what Nick has in store for us...he lets me pick out the plants and he designs the space.

A Little Bit of Everything

So here it is 11:30 at night and I am still awake. Errr. Nick has been working nights and lets just say it has been a little difficult. I absolutely cannot sleep when he is not around. He's my big strong protector, and my snuggler. I feel so lonely when he is not around. So here I am awake and probably will be through the wee hours of the night. This too shall pass, right?

Anyway a lot has been going on around here and since I am up and bored I thought I might share it with you:

Emma
Emma starts soccer next week and has about two more weeks of Gymnastics. She LOVES gymnastics (which is a hard word for me to spell for some reason!). She is thin and petite and can do things on her own that even the 4-year olds can't do yet. I think we might have found something that she is going to stick with and be really good at. Every time she gets ready to do something she belts out towards the teacher "I can do this on my own!" its pretty hilarious.

Emma's behavior is like a bi-polar teenager who is off their meds. I swear, its crazy sometimes. I have been trying to give her lots of love and extra attention. It seems to be working and she has calmed down. I don't know what it is but the smallest things can set her off. When she is not being "set off" she is so helpful with Calvin and just an all around sweetheart.

She also has such an imagination! During quiet time this afternoon her and Baby Grace built a machine that would fill baskets with fruit so they don't have to do it themselves...apparently she's been a sweat shop worker up to this point, so thank the Lord for that machine!

School wise Emma has knocked our socks off. She is basically one of the smartest kids in her class. She knows her address, can write her name, and knows all of her upper and lower case letters. She is also spelling words to us and telling us out of the blue things like "Elephant starts with E" which upon asking the teachers they have NOT been teaching, she is just picking this stuff up on her own! *proud Mommy here*

Calvin
Well I have gotten to the point where I am not crying everyday about Calvin's Apraxia. Praise the Lord He has helped me through that storm. It really was a storm of self pity and blaming myself. A lot of friends and reading have helped me to see that nothing I could have done could have prevented this and God gave us this challenge for a reason.

Calvin is so incredibly happy, when I am having a crappy day his smile really changes my mood. We've had two therapists both comment that he is going to get through this okay because he is happy. He really does seem to have the joy of the Lord!

Therapy wise I can barely keep anything straight! We've had two evaluations with Occupational Therapists (dealing with how he moves his body) and they both found problems that need addressed. So we are working on an at-home therapy program being set up. They are thinking that his disawareness of how his body moves (imagine your whole body feeling like it fell asleep) may be what is also causing some of the apraxia. So we will see if speech improves as his physical movement improves. He also has been really, really hurting me. Just me for some reason. He especially likes to bite me and try to strangle me (yes I did say he has the joy of the Lord). The occupational therapist said he has a problem with knowing how hard he is doing things so he probably isn't even trying to kill me. :) Speech wise we still aren't getting there. We only have our therapist until he's 3 and then we are left to pay out of pocket $300.00/hour. We are starting a more aggressive approach (meaning we are paying out the ear for therapy tools to use) so hopefully that will work. Please keep us in your prayers as we monetarily do whatever is necessary to get this kid to talk). We are also facing the option that if he doesn't talk it is going to be best to homeschool him. I just don't feel ready or capable to do that but I know if that is what God wants us to do I will do it.

Calvin has learned his colors! And almost has opposites down. He's got in and out, up and down. He is really improving on his signs. He is TRYING to say things but if you babysat him you would have no idea what he is saying Aaagaaa is Lightyear for example.

Calvin is starting to potty train. Lately he has been telling me all of the time he has to go potty just to shoot right back up and demand M&M's...his reward for telling me he has to go. Fail.

Calvin's eczema has been SUPER bad the last couple of weeks. A few nights ago I was up all night with him while he was trying to scrape his skin off. Hopefully with new medication we will be on the mend but it has been a rough patch...ha, get it!

Calvin is in swim lessons (remember the choking he likes to do? 10x worse when we hit water...he HATES water! However the last two weeks we have not been because the chlorine aggravates his skin.

Nick
Nick works. Eats. Sleeps. and then works some more. Poor guy. I can't tell you how grateful we are to that man that he is providing so well for us. Just the fact that I would be able to stay home with the children is something I never, NEVER would have considered as a possibility 6 months ago.

Lindsay
I am home with the kids and am not getting NEARLY as much done around the house as I had hoped. I just keep thinking of that saying about how housework can wait because babies grow up far too quickly...

I am hoping to start taking more pictures of what we have been up to in the everyday. If it doesn't get recorded anywhere else, at least it will be in this blog, right?

I am freelance writing which I thought would just be something I would do here and there but I have had three stories assigned to me and I have been out of work for a month! I feel truly blessed for what God has done.

Typing that I have been out of work for a month just brought around the reality that I have been out of work for only a month...holy cow, how did that happen? It feels like it has been six months...who says staying at home is easy? ;)

I am really trying to read my body and let God guide all of our decisions. I have such a desire for a marriage and a family that is solely dependent on God. I feel so blessed for a Christian husband who is helping me every day to teach our children about the Love of Christ.

So...what have you been up to?

Getting Organized

I've been reading the book shown above and it has really inspired to me to get organized. It put the idea in my head that just because your house is tidy doesn't mean it is organized. That is sooo true! Every single day of my life I struggle with not being able to find something or feeling frustrated that I can not get something done as timely as I would like. Don't get me wrong, I am somewhat organized for those of you who know me. I have the childrens toys organized in bins, I keep my table linens in an organized basket. But things that I deal with every day...the children's diaper bag, my closet, the kitchen, and the children's rooms those things that I have a hard time finding things and feeling on top of things. So I am going to try to become more organized. Hopefully in doing that our home will run more efficiently...hooray! I will let you know my progress as the days go on...I am so excited! :)

Makes You Stop in your tracks

There was a girl I played volleyball with that when Nick and I were dating found out that he had taken her to prom (weird right?). Anyway today I found out that she has just lost her 9 month old baby to SIDS. Reading that my eyes welled up and I couldn't breathe. Could you imagine losing your child? Your little baby who means so much to you? It made me squeeze Emma and Calvin harder and it made me want to never let them go.

Tonight I pray for her and her family. How horrid and tragic. Please pray for her and her family as well.

A Rainy Saturday

Today has been a completely rainy day. We had to skip the zoo because of it but were still able to make it to the library and to the Farmer's Market. We also have had a lot of time for cuddling and napping around here. Oh God, thank you for our little family!

Tonight my sisters are coming over to watch the children so Nick and I can go on a date. We have been married for close to 7 years now and I still get giddy when we go on a date. I take forever getting ready, I don't know what to wear. Patiently he waits, even though he's seen me all day and knows everything in my wardrobe. Still, he waits. He makes me laugh. I ask him to explain the homeowners policy to me one more time. We order. We laugh some more. I inevitably will get sauce on my face, he'll wipe it off. We laugh some more. We hold hands out to the parking lot. He will open my door for me (making up for our first date when he did NOT open my door, surely!), and we will laugh.

A lifetime of laughing, loving, and being with this man will be in my heart when I get to heaven. I rejoice in knowing we will be together for all eternity...our little family.

Happy RainyvSaturday to you!

I'll be around

There's been drama around here lately, sorry I haven't written lately. My heart just isn't in it as of yet. I will write soon, promise. Our little family is splendid. Calvin is talking more and more which is just amazing to experience! Emma is growing and is hilarious. Outsiders however have dragged a bunch of silliness into our lives. We are sorting how to deal with things appropriately. Thanks for your support! Love you all! :)