New Kittens

Our stray cat that was supposed to be just an outside cat, is an inside/outside cat and has been for sometime and she is also now the new mommy to 5 little kittens. Pics to come soon. The kids are excited and want to keep them all. Can you say Craigslist?

Evan's IEP is Friday!! Yikes

I just realized that Evan's IEP is on Friday, this Friday, the one that is in 3 more days from today. I have not done any prepping but I still have the books I borrowed from WarmLine last year. So I will start doing some prepping today, tomorrow and Thursday. It should not be too bad because there is not something I really want that I probably won't get so I am not so stressed. Maybe that is why I forgot. We already have the school placement which will be Frankin Elementary in a Kindergarten classroom with a one-one aide. I know he will get speech, OT and adaptive PE and probably PT on a consult basis. I will ask for a PT evaluation but it is not my biggest battle at this point. For Evan we really need to focus on Fine Motor and Speech so I am going to ask for more speech, like 3x a week. He really needs to focus on vocalization, signing and using his Dynavox and all of that is not going to be accomplished in 1 or 2 30 min sessions a week. Anyway, we will just have to see how it goes. I do not anticipate any problems.

Kindergarten for Evan

So Evan is going to kindergarten in the fall, well actually his school starts on August 17th. So he is going to the same elementary school as his brother and is going to be in a full inclusion kindergarten with a 1-1 aide. I have met with the special ed teacher, kindergarten teacher, and speech therapist. I feel that I am at least sending him to a place where they have dealt with special needs kids before and I am not just throwing him to the sharks. The special ed teacher already had the teacher picked out for him and was already thinking about Evan before she even met us. So that was nice. I figure I have to at least give him a chance in this environment. Plus, as myself and other parents have expressed there is not a program in our school district that is available for kids who have mild-moderate physical disabilities, communication delays and are fairly higher functioning cognitively. Maybe it will be my new project to get some type of classroom like that available for our kids. Anyway, I will post more on how kindergarten goes as we get into it after august.

Franklin Elementary Jog-A-Thon

Gabriel's school had their 2nd Annual Jog-a-thon on Friday May 15, 2009. Gabriel earned $57 for his school. Because of this he will get a t-shirt and get to attend an Ice Cream and skating party with his principal.


Here is our friend Nicholas running. He ran 7 laps but got tired so cut out a little early.


Gabriel ran 9 laps which is equal to 2 1/4 miles

Evan always wants to do what the other kids are doing. He walked about 1/2 of a lap and then decided he was done and cut across the field about 1/2 way through. I was marking laps for the kids so I marked 1 lap for him. He thought he was so cool. He will be starting kindergarten at Franklin for the 09-10 school year starting in August.

My nieces and nephew were with us that day so they participated as well. It was a good way to get their energy out.

Mother's Day

We went to my Mom's for our annual Mother's Day brunch, it was a gorgeous day. The kids got to play with water guns, and I got to visit with family. Cynthia was of course with her Mom.


Me and my boys. They are getting so big.


This is my Mom, her two sisters, brother and her Mom.


My mom with her kids.

Great happenings at Baseball

Evan had botox about 1 1/2 weeks ago. Notice how he is really trying to hold the bat with two hands. He did really well with trying to keep his hand on it while actually batting.


Notice his cool new black baseball pants. These are my $3 Goodwill store find. I also got Gabe a pair of jeans and a pair of soccer cleats. My total was $10.70. I am going to be Thrift store shopping a lot now to save money. I think those Duggars have the right idea.

Awesome Two handed bat holding. If you look closely you can tell he has his eyes closed. He ended up hitting off the tee. If someone is helping he does not have to do that but he is doing it all on his own, which is so awesome.

Do you love the purple cast? Evan picked this out. He is doing serial casting again. This time he is wearing the cast for 2 weeks instead of one.

Evan and his buddy Scott.

Running home.

Working in the backyard

We got a Rotatiller from some friends of the family who aren't using it anymore. We got it on Saturday and Rudy was outside on Sunday working away, Gabriel was even getting in on the action.

OMG, our backyard is flat. This is great because it was slanted due to having the sound proof wall as our back fence instead of a regular fence.

Working hard

So Rudy and his dad were busy and got topsoil for the yard. Rudy rotatilled the whole yard twice, then his dad added about 1/2 the topsoil, Rudy did the rest and planted the grass seed. So in about 6 weeks we will have our backyard 3/4 of the way done. Most importantly we will have grass for the kids to play on. We just need a patio table and a new swing set.

Baseball for All 4-25-09

Evan partcipated in Baseball for All a few weeks ago. It was a short live day because he wanted to be the one who was batting the whole time and the kids had to take turns. We were there for about 1 hr then we went to sign up Gabriel for Soccer and looked at garage sales.

Evan got a cool Baseball for All Shirt to wear


Is he cute or what?

Daddy is helping him bat


All in all Evan had fun.

Physical Therapy for Mom

Well, I am having physical therapy for my neck right now and I have to say that I am loving it. It is an hour to myself where someone is taking care of me (so to speak) I get deep tissue massage on my neck and then have to do exercises and then I get E-stim for 15 minutes. My neck is feeling better and I get to do this 2x a week.

On a bad note Evan had a seizure today. His last visible one was in November 08, which I know is great. I know he has subclinical seizures every night but I don't see those so it is hard to know how many he has. The thing about this seizure is that he was sitting in his little chair and fell out of it but did not cry or anything. This was on Rudy's watch so I cannot attest to what actually happened. He slept for about 2 hours and is now sitting on my lap sucking on an apple. He is fine and it was not prolonged which is good.

Neurology Visit today

Evan had his neurology visit today. We had and EEG in March to see how the Depakote was affecting his seizure activity. So the visit went well. Since Evan's seizures are pretty much under control we do not have as much to talk about.

So the Dr. said that his EEG is still abnormal but better. He has some activity on the right side but not as much as before and more on the left side but still less than he had before the Depakote. He said it is still pretty bad at night. So we are going to increase his meds at night and then get a level in two weeks. So this is good news, it sounds like Evan's seizure activity is more subclinical and not showing physical symptoms which is good but also bad because we do not know how many seizures he is having and they are probably affecting his quality of sleep and/or cognitive abilities.

As far as speech I asked the Dr. about his opinion on Evan's speech abilities in the future. He pretty much agreed with me that Evan will not have a functional speech but should be able to use signing and his Dynavox to communicate. He stated that Evan has the oral motor problems from the malformation on the right side of the brain and also malformation plus epilepsy on the left which is all contributing to his speech issues. This is pretty much what I already have accepted and expected but it still sucks to hear it fromt he professional.

Dr. said that all that Evan is doing is pretty miraculous, and I totally agree. As I have said before he is pretty much defying what his brain says he should be doing. I am very much thrilled that Evan does everything that he does, I have know that things could have been very different. While I am grateful for Evan's abilities I do not want it to come across as though I would not be able to handle a child with different abilities. I was talking to my friend today and saying that I do not know how I would physically handle if Evan did not walk, especially because he is such a big boy. I thought about it later and realized that I sounded like how a typical parent sounds when they say they don't know if they could handle having a special needs child. I know that if Evan did not walk, sit etc. I would be handling it but as with many other moms it would probably be at the expense of my hip, neck and back. Sometimes I try to be careful what I say about praising Evan because I do not want to make anyone feel bad, even though I know all of my friends are happy for his milestones and I feel happy for their kids milestones as well, even the ones that Evan has not hit yet. We are all happy for each other and somewhat sad for our kids. But we all know how hard all of our kids work to do the things they do.