I can't stop cringing... Ick!!!

Okay, so this icky, disgusting, make me wanna gag, squeal and run spider is living on the back side of our house. Where he goes during the day - I don't know. But we know where he likes to have dinner every night. We snapped these shots of him/her poised for hunting. While we were observing it jumped to catch a moth!!! Augh!!! How do you get rid of it with out physical contact? It must die. I don't know for sure but I think it is a brown recluse. If it is then it is poisonous. I feel nauseated and my skin is crawling. :( I'm going to spray tomorrow. What would you do?

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Charly's 1 Year Checkup

Charly went in for her 1 year checkup the other week. She is doing great! Growing and moving just like she should. She is now in the 97-98% for her height and 97% for her weight. She is measuring like Owen did. I guess she is going to be tall too. :) Looks like we might have some volleyball players on our hands. :) Here are some of her birthday pictures...

Oxy Clean took all the pink icing out. I love that stuff! :)

The Cousin Pics

Every Spring we try to get the kids together for a group picture. This year we were lucky to have Heidi and her family visit from Idaho so we could keep the tradition.

2006
(Talyor, Mya and Owen)

2007
Marilee is the new addition.
By far the most difficult of all the years. As soon as we got to the mall the kids were crying, running spontaneous fevers and not wanting to leave mommy. Picture People rescheduled us for an hour later so we could calm down the kids. Lesson learned, we need more time and outside if possible.

2008
Charly was this years new addition to the family.

2009
I love this one. It's my favorite of all the pictures.
This year we used Clarissa Cooper.

2009

2009

Lovey Cousins 2009
These guys are family too.

Coupon Book

If you were wanting more info on the coupon book..... The coupon book is a simple 3 ring binder with baseball card holder pages. It's easy to insert the coupons and so easy to view. Each page is designated to a particular category. Page dividers would be helpful so I'm going to add those next. It's amazing how many more coupons I use just because I can see them.

Our Week

This past week has been a pleasant one. We have enjoyed our time together and I feel like we actually accomplished stuff.

Grocery shopping - done! And I used my handy dandy coupon book. It so much easier to find coupons and, yes, I can see that I am able to use more of my coupons. The only down side is that people stop me a lot to talk about the book, that slows things down.

We've spent lots of time playing. Charly's new favorite is climbing in and out of baskets. She loves it when Owen pushes her in it. I can actually remember being small enough to fit in a basket. We also used to play in the cardboard diaper boxes. Anyone remember those?

Monday night we enjoyed Chuck E Cheese! We love that place. We were there for a party but stayed late to keep playing games. Garett and Owen had a blast playing games together.

Go Owey Go!

Chary had her 1 year check up. I'll detail that in another post.

And on Monday Charly got her very first black eye. She fell and hit the fire place. She didn't spend much time crying about it so I think it looks worse than it is. :)

Oddly, I've never in all my life called Poison Control, but I did twice this week. Once because Owen ate 3 Alavert. And the other time because Charly drank shampoo. Fun stuff.

I keep opening my blog page hoping that it has already been updated some how by magic. What to blog about?

Is My Child Hearing Impared?

Over the past few years Garett and I have worried about Owen's speech. He has always been about 6 months behind where the books report he should be. As he gets older he is falling further and further behind. While Owen will tell long stories with lots of sound effects, waving arms and big facial expressions, at age 3 he still only puts together 3 recognizable word sentences. But most people don't understand any of what he is saying. He tends to say "hua?" and "what" frequently. Of all this, what has concerned us most of all is that often he doesn't seem to understand us. We try to explain the same thing to him in different ways but he still seems like he doesn't understand the words coming out of our mouths. We were concerned that he was hearing impaired. Although Owen did respond to sound, Garett and I both have deaf family members so we thought maybe this was the case for him.

When he was 2 I took him to the Babies Can't Wait program in our county. They tested him and were able to note that he had some annunciation disorder. Although they could not tell me any more than that because they stoped testing him disqualifying him for early intervention since he did not flunk more than the speech category. They told me that I should take him to a private therapist. Unfortunately that wasn't covered by insurance and $75 a visit didn't work with our budget. My pediatrician assured me that she thought he would out grow the problem and to just keep an eye on it.

As I watched Owen struggle to communicate with others I worried about leaving him any where out of my care. I'm the only one who understands what he says. What if his needs weren't met? What if someone hurt him out of frustration? I'm glad to have friends with kids who have speech problems because I don't know that I would have learned about intervention programs that were out there. Now that Owen is three he qualifies for the early intervention preschool through our county's school system.

Before being evaluated for speech I had his hearing tested and vision checked. Both came back in the range of normal. I took him in March for the school's evaluation. I was expecting to leave with a plan for speech therapy at the elementary school by our house. I was surprised when they continued to do more extensive testing noting all kinds of things that I thought were just cute toddler things but were communication problems.

I'm still waiting for the official report with all the diagnostic details. There were a list of problems they made that would require treatment. They thought that they were possibly all linked to one greater problem. It's called Auditory Processing Disorder (ADP). It is a dysfunction with the central auditory system. Not the ears ability to hear but the ability for the brain to process sound is impaired. ADP can be complicated so we have a lot to learn as we go. People with ADP can, like any other person, have a variety of other problems like mental retardation, autism, AD/HA, real hearing loss, among a zillion other things to chose from. Owen, from what we can tell, is otherwise normal and quite bright.

A good example of the way a person with ADP hears has been described as listening through water. They might not be able to discern between sounds like "g" and "d" so dog, God, dod and gog all sound the same. It can make learning to speak, read and write difficult.

Owen, to sum it up, can hear but he doesn't fully understand the meaning of sound. He does understand a lot and is able to learn but has a long way to go and should be able to catch up. He also has speech problems that need therapy. They will be teaching Owen how to cope with the problem since there is no drug or operation that can help. All this information is a lot for us to take in, but is so helpful as a parent to know how better to parent Owen. I'm hoping some recently purchased books will help me until the professionals are able to help. Since he qualifies for the school's early intervention program Owen will start 3-year-old preschool in the fall. It's half days 5 days a week. He is very excited to go to school but mostly to ride the school bus. :)