My Lucy is 1 year old!

We had a little owl - Look Whoo's one birthday for the little one - She was so adorable. She really enjoyed every minute of it - especially all the people around to visit her. I tried to lighten up the fare this time around and make sure there were plenty of healthy options. But of course there were cupcakes. :)

She is doing so much right now its amazing (and terrifying) but I am so happy to have her in our lives. Her big brother absolutely loves her (when he's not pinching her) and has to have her near at all times. His Lucy sign is probably his most frequent especially when he's tired or wanting to get into trouble.

Happy Birthday to my beautiful little girl!

Speech Therapy and the Monster at the end of this book

So Grover's Monster at the end of this book for ipad is a HUGE hit! We've read this book to him since he was little - but there is something about having Grover tell the story makes my kids go nuts! They love this app for ipad. It is adorable. :)

Per Isaac's speech therapist's recommendation (and with her help), I programmed a storyboard on icommunicate with words like cow - with two sounds for the word - like moo moo, in order to encourage Isaac to make two syllables at a time. We talked about apraxia a lot and how in order to help with sequencing its good to encourage two of the same sounds at first and that will hopefully lead to two different syllable sounds later on. Wow I'm not very articulate at explaining that. Anyways, I have storyboards now with train - choo choo, clown - ha ha, owl - hoot hoot and so on. I also am making story boards with simple sounding words of the p, b, m variety. So pot, potty, pool, pop etc. just to encourage specifically the p sound. Its just like flashcards with my voice saying "pop pop pop" etc. I'm really excited because it sounds like a great way to encourage speech that we haven't really focused on. I mean we do flashcards all the time but this seems more . . . concentrated? Anyways I'm excited.

Christmas fun abounds - My two were really getting into this present thing . . .

Christmas with Eric's Family

Christmas with my Family

Christmas with our own little Family

Christmas Morning Craziness

Too busy to be bothered by a mom with her camera

Isaac & Lucy really got into Christmas this year & it was an absolute blast!!! At the rate these 2 kid's Christmases are going they'll be asking for Pink Porsche's and Space Shuttles by age 10.

Oh the pain mom . . .

So Isaac squished his fingers in a drawer this morning, so I ran over and grabbed him and kissed his fingers - saying oh mommy will kiss it and make it all better. He thought that was pretty hysterical I guess so now he's "hurting himself" all over the place and running over with his fingers for me to kiss and make feel better. Its so stinking cute.
Ah, if only a kiss fixed everything else this quickly. :)

Isaac's Favorite Apps of the Week

So my little guy LOVES LOVES LOVES the ipad that Santa brought him for Christmas. And since I'm just as excited about it as he is (I think I've downloaded every special needs app that exists, at least 4 million I'd say) and in honor of Bridget (Babies with ipads), I'm going to put Isaac's favorite apps of the moment on here for those of you out there who are just dying to know what entertains my silly little guy. :)

1. Signing Time - its 4.99 for the full version, but completely and totally worth it.
2. Free Toy Story Book
3. Talk T-rex
4. Pocket Zoo Free - yeah to say he's a little bit into animals is an understatement
5. Elmo's Monster Maker

I'm excited that thanks to Bridget we just got icommunicate today - so hopefully I'll be working on that to make some personalized boards for him to use like his communication builder device. We use tap speak - but there seems to be so much on icommunicate!!

If anyone else has any apps they like, please let me know so I can pass it along to a boy with the attention span of a gnat, who is loving loving loving his new toy.

The new cousin

Worn out from all the excitement

Isaac checking out Lily Juliette

Lucy trying to show everyone the baby

Lily was born on December 7th and weighed 6lbs and 4oz. She has dark hair (she might have a shot at a tan, which is amazing considering my brother is as fair as I am) and was super long at 19 3/4 inches. She had to stay in the NICU for almost 2 weeks trying to get the feeding thing worked out - she has a cleft palate and lip - but now she's doing great eating and is at home with a very happy mommy and daddy. Isaac & Lucy love her and can't wait to see her again soon!!!

Waiting for Christmas :)

They played in a shipping box for almost an hour. Probably an hour longer than they'll play with their toys on Christmas. :)

Playing at the eye doctor with some dilated eyes

Sleigh riding with Uncle Maph

Lucy loving her new gloves