Eeek! Finally!

We have our first half-sib match on the DSR! A baby girl that is less than a month old. I let my membership slide so I'm not contacting them yet.....

This is SUPER exciting!


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I forgot to Mention...

....that Sadie is talking.

She's had a surge of words over the last couple of weeks and is talking way more than even the day she was last assessed. At that appointment I had mentioned that she was starting to chatter a lot of nonsense and was told that was a good sign. Within that very week she changed.

She can now say 2 word sentences. Mostly "No, Mine!" and "I do". When I ask her something she will acknowledge me by saying "Ohhh-kay" or "Kay". She surprises us daily with the things that she says and does. Last Tuesday D asked her what she had done that day. Her response (correct answer with appropriate arm and leg motions) was "I swim", and "I kick".  Awesome!

 So she's behind, there's not doubt about that, but she's made progress on her own. It's pretty amazing to witness it.

 Update: I spoke to my mom and we are going to send her to ALL of the "Parent Education" sessions. D and I are now in the process of negotiating the half-day work from home/personal time hours to accomplish this. It is going to work out that we both have one half-day per month for the next two months and then I will have one additional in April. I'm somewhat disappointed that I'm not going to be getting to participate in these sessions but to ask for 12+ hours (when adding in commuting) is a bit extreme and we have our vacation fully planned (with only a few floating vacation days). The schedule for this program is a bit crazy in my opinion. It isn't even well suited for stay at home parents because who will watch their children?

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Speech Assessment

We have the results from Sadie' speech assessment and have met to
discuss "next steps". The report basically indicated that she has
mild delays in the area of expressive language development and
significant delays in the areas of motor speech and articulation. She
was also assessed as having "limited jaw and independent tongue
movement" as well as "Significant drooling and open mouth
posture".

I'm a bit stressed out by the service recommendation we were given
because it wasn't what we had expected at all. We've been booked
into 10 hours of "parent only" workshops which are during weekday
mornings. Ideally we had wanted my mother to go to whatever sessions
were scheduled because she spends the most waking hours with Sadie.
Now that we know Sadie cannot attend we need at minimum two of us
available for each of the 2 hour appointments and this does not
include two 1 hour appointments with Sadie to practice what we have
learned. 12 hours. It looks like I'm going to need to work with my
manager on a flexible schedule to accommodate this or we're going to
have to pass on it. Wouldn't that suck since we waited 6 months to
get into the program? There is also the issue that I would still like
my mother to attend since she is more receptive when she hears it
"straight from the horse's mouth". Of course that would mean D
taking mornings off work as well which would be enormously unfair for
her to be taking care of Sadie while my mom and I went. I just don't
know what to do about this. I assumed the appointments would be during
the day but I hadn't even considered they wouldn't include Sadie.

The entire process has been stressful. Even getting to the appointment
yesterday was stressful. The initially letter we had received had
"threatened" that if we missed 2 appointments without giving 48
hours notice to cancel we'd be booted out of the program. Sadie was
sick with a cold/fever all night and I didn't know what to do.
Ultimately I was going to leave her at home and go without her but
then she had a burst of energy and her fever was under control. We
took her and she ended up sleeping all sweaty in my arms for most of
the hour. Thankyouverymuch for making me feel like I had to bring my
sick child for fear of losing our space.

I guess at this point I should be looking at private therapists
because THIS is what you get for free in Ontario.

Trip Report -Day 3

My goal is to finish this before our next trip (North Carolina in May!)...
We decided to mix it up a bit on Day 3 and went to Blizzard Beach. We accidentally slept through our early breakfast reservation at 1900 Park Fare (Marry Poppins) which we decided wasn’t a big deal. It made up for the fact that we’d used 2 table service credits the day before.
We love Disney water parks. We started the morning off in the children’s area that was a small splash area with slides. Sadie had a pretty good time but it was hard being at both the top of the slide and the bottom. There was a lot of coordination involved that wasn’t a lot of fun so we moved on to the wave pool. Overall I wasn’t very impressed by the toddler area but I’ve heard that the big kid’s area is a lot of fun and we can’t wait to try that out in the future.
At Blizzard Beach the wave pool is very calm. We played with a tube and swam in the pool for a while before Sadie started asking to get out. I’m not sure if she disliked the moving motion of the waves or if she was just being impatient. She probably wanted to go back to the slides but I can handle only so much of that before I want to have fun too.
We decided to try the Lazy River which turned out to be the biggest hit of the day. They had tubes without a hole that Sadie was able to sit in on her own and ride beside us. She LOVED it. The river was huge and we rode it twice which I’m pretty sure took close to an hour. At the end of our last trip around Sadie was done and when Sadie is done she let’s you know. Her announcement was to jump out of her tube, it was pretty scary. She dropped right to the bottom and was swept away by the current. I had to chase after her and grab her by her hat to pull her back to the surface. Luckily she held her breath but she was scared out of her mind. Lesson learned? I hope so. When Momma says to stay in your tube you don’t jump out! There were tears and hugs and we figured it was time to go!
We returned to the resort, ate lunch, and had a nice long NAP. We needed one after our adventures that morning!
In the late afternoon we made our way over to Downtown Disney but not before stopping at the playground at POP. Funny, I had never noticed it before? Sadie played for a while and then we were off again.


We had planned on going to McDonald’s for dinner but we found out that it was no longer there! Left in a situation with a hungry toddler (she’d slept through lunch) and not so hungry Moms we had to figure out a back up plan quickly. The fast food options that had replaced McDonald’s did not look appealing (not that I love Sadie eating McD’s either) so we decided to check out the menu at T Rex.
T Rex is essentially Rainforest Café except with a dinosaur theme. I had wanted to eat there because it was still under construction the last time we were in Florida and I had been curious to see it.
We ended up ordering a large appetizer plate ($17) and drinks. We opted out of a kids meal and figured we weren’t that hungry and could easily split the food. We were amazed by the portion we were given. It was HUGE and we were barely able to finish. The food was also so good that we had planned to return a second time. I was pretty surprised since I’m not a fan of Rainforest at all.


Sadie wasn’t afraid of the Dinosaurs or the meteor shower. I love have easy going our kid is!


After dinner we attempted to look through the stores but Sadie was pretty adamant against it. Our kid may love rides and scary dinosaurs but she does not love shopping.


Lego Store

We rushed our way through and ended up at the fountain where we’ve often seen kids splashing around. We settled in and Sadie played. She was having so much fun we stayed there for quite a long time!









I’d hoped that we could have done more but with a wet, tired toddler it was time to head back to the resort. Another long day (7:00pm!) and still holding up and having lots of fun!
But first.... We stopped by Walmart. I'm actually not sure why after all of these months but if you see Sadie on "People of Walmart" you'll know why!



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Thankful

Last night I was *so* upset because I realized I had lost Sadie's new bathing suit after her swimming lesson on Tuesday. I know that this is really silly (even to blog about) but when it comes to Sadie's stuff it's more than just "stuff". It was HER bathing suit, it was a favourite souvenier from WDW and I'm honestly not sure what happened to it.
Did I drop it on the way from the shower to the change area? Did I throw it out with the diaper? I don't know. It simply didn't make it home and it didn't make it to lost and found. I'm trying to blame myself (throwing it away) because it makes me sad to think that someone would pick it up (gross, right?) and keep it. It also makes me angry to think we'll run into a kid wearing it.
The good news is that I was lifted up by some great friends who understood my disapointment as silly as it was. Friends that searched for a new one online and one who is giving Sadie a Minnie Mouse bathing suit her daughter has outgrown. How great is that?
It feels good. Really good. I think it actually feels better than if we had found the bathing suit at Lost and Found.






LOST: If found, please return to disorganized mom who regrets not being more careful.


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Pregnancy and TTC

I'm surrounded by pregnant women. It seems like 1/3 of the women on my floor at work have round bellies.
Plus my cousin is pregnant with #2, and my high school BFF is pregnant with #2 (18 months apart!) and bloggy pregnancies and bloggy TTCers.
I was pretty worried about how I'd feel when my cousin announced #2. I was worried I'd feel left behind. I had enjoyed being pregnant with her and our kids are going to be so close growing up BUT there is still that ever present jealousy of her instant success.
I knew it was coming because I knew she was trying. So when she announced I wasn't surprised.
This is the part when everyone reading this thinks I'm a bitch because I was happy when she found out she was having a second boy (and thought it would be a girl).
I'm a bitter awful bitch and I can admit that... but honestly, the real deal is that I'm dragging my feet concerning #2 because I'm terrified of going through the horrible disapointment again and especially with only 6 vials of Sadie's donor left. TTC sucks. Even thinking about it sucks. For those of you who have been there and are doing it again... you are braver than I am!


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Chapter Closed

We had 21 great months co-sleeping but now it's over. Sadie has fully transitioned and is sleeping through the night in her own big girl bed. No fighting. No crying. This is the easiest I've had it in months.

This picture was taking on our first night co-sleeping. We were staying with a friend. I'll never forget waking up to her sweet face staring at me. I thought at the time we'd co-sleep forever!





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