Military Monday Blog Hop

Well I got a news letter from Doable Diapers telling me about Military Monday Blog Hop. Is always amazing to read other military wives blogs and see how much you can relate to each other.

welcome, welcome, welcome! you have stumbled upon (or purposely found) the Military Monday Blog Hop! while your gracious hosts are military wives and blogging connoisseurs, we invite all of you, military or not, to join in this great new blog hop to get your week started and your blog following grown! feel free to link up as many blogs as you have - but please don't leave links to your facebook, twitter or other blog hops (those links will be deleted!). you can also share this blog hop on your own blog, if you please.... we totally encourage it!
the guidelines are quite simple here!

• grab the Military Monday Blog Hop button and post it as a new blog post or somewhere on your blog so we can be sure you are at the right hop!
  

follow all three hosts {just click the buttons below!} - we promise to follow back, just give us a few days to catch up with everyone!






Follow as many, or as few, of the linked blogs as you like - but remember, the more you follow, the more followers you will get in return! be sure to leave a comment that you stopped by from the Military Monday Blog Hop and leave your blog address!!our feature blogger this week is Jessica from Life With A Little Guy!



Tell us about the name of your blog.... I picked Life with a Little Guy because it seemed perfect. My blog is about my day to day life with my son, Jacob. My husband and I often call him little guy so that's where it came from. Although he's not so little anymore ;/

Where are you from? I'm originally from Baltimore, Maryland. I miss it, as odd as it sounds. It's definitely not one of the best places to live, but it's where family is.

Why do you blog? There are a couple reasons. First I love blogging because it allows me to look back at these times with my son. One day he'll be older, and I will always have what I wrote about to remember it all. The second is that it allows me to connect with other people like myself. Being a mom can be tough. There are ups and downs. It's good to know that I am not the only one who feels this way and its nice to learn from other people. What works for them, what doesn't.

Do you have any goals for the new year? I have a few. My top one would be to start getting healthier. Eatting more home cooked meals, less fast food. Working out when I can. I hope that the change can also help me lose some weight. Another goal of mine is to sell our house! My husband gets out in 2012, and so in preparation for that we plan to put our house up for sale in 2011.
thanks for joining us, and we hope you make some great new blog friends today! now, let's get hoppin'!

wanna just crawl back in bed

Well this morning I woke to Jasmine in my bed at about 4 am, So I had to get her a new sippy and then shut her in her room to go back to sleep. Its either shut her door or have her come back in my room and play whack mommy in the head till I finally just say forget going back to sleep and just crawl out of bed. So we both go back to sleep, about 6:30 am she is at her door banging on it. I give up and just open her door and then crawl back into bed. Well no surprise when not even 2 seconds after I crawl into bed I hear her pushing her brothers shopping cart down the hall to my room and she starts pretending she stirring something in one of her play kitchens pot. Thankfully she didn't think to hit me in the head with the pot. She instead decided that she would just crawl on me and kick me in the head. So finally after thirty minutes of being climbed on, hit in the head too many times to count I finally crawl out of bed at 7am. No I am not a morning person, I would rather just lie in bed and take being hit in the head than get out of bed for the day. She does just sit with me on the bed here and there which that's cute cause sometimes she pretends to snore or gives me baby kisses.

Connor finally wakes up at about 8, which I can't believe he is finally learning to sleep in only wish he learned it sooner. Made pancakes for us this morning and of course halfway through Jasmine decides Hooch our dog would like some of her pancakes. Hooch has gotten so fat since she learned to throw food on the floor for him. Everytime she throws food on the floor I just have to tell her just wait till your daddy gets home. Since when we talk on webcam, he sits there and yells at her to put stuff down and to behave. Its so funny that he thinks she will listen. But I think she has gotten so used to hearing and seeing him on webcam that she thinks if she climbs on to the computer chair and pokes the screen where daddy's picture is she can talk to him. I have our family picture that was taken before he left on the computer screen. Despite how many times I tell her to get down just just does it anyway. She is so hard headed just like her daddy. So here we are after breakfast Connor is on the couch playing with his nerf gun and Jasmine is running around kicking a little basketball and going head first into the basket of the stroller.

So I already checked on the Sunbaby diapers I ordered they are still sitting in Inwood, NY on USPS since the 22nd. I can't wait to finally get them. I am hoping they come in some time this week, since USPS doesnt always update the tracking as much as the other shipping companies. Already made room for Jasmine's cloth diapers in her drawers, also finally took down the crib this past weekend since she has been sleeping in her toddler bed despite the early morning wake ups she does. Which those are normal she has always done a early wake up but she usually goes back to sleep as soon as she gets something to drink.

Also took down the inside Christmas decorations since it just doesn't feel like Christmas without Matt here or without our family being around us. I still have to take down the outside Christmas lights but I will leave those up till after my anniversary and New Years Eve. Still can't believe this Friday it will be 7 years that me and Matt have been married. Look at pictures from 7 years ago and now wow we have changed some.

Christmas

Above is when we went to see Santa, Which Jasmine just loved him. She even called him "Da". She also wanted her picture takin with her finger up her nose. Which Santa kept moving her hand, so she couldn't put her finger back up her nose. As you can see she already has that finger ready. After the picture was takin and I was trying to pay for it Jasmine kept trying to walk beck to Santa. Which I told Matt about her calling Santa "Da" and he says I know I am fat but I didn't think I was huge. Which in noway is Matt fat.

So this was a wonderful morning of being hit in the head by Jasmine and then hearing Connor say Santa came. It was just too cute. The kids were so excited and happy that Santa came. Santa brought a kitchen for Jasmine and a Basketball and Basketball hoop for Connor. Both kids loved all the presents they got.Okay so I have reread Kim Harrison's book series again and I am salivating at the mouth to read Black Magic Sanction, and I just read the first chapter on Pale Demon and can't wait to read them both. For those of you who haven't read her series, it is about a powerful with named Rachel Morgan who basically is stumbling from one thing to another, always getting into trouble. I can't wait to find out how Rachel is doing in the two last books. Don't really want to give any spoilers away so I won't go farther into details.

Christmas cookies

We did Christmas cookies tonight and they turned out pretty good. I forgot how fustrated I can get when baking cookies when you have a toddler behind you all the time and hitting you in the butt and scratching you trying to get you to pick them up. I gave up about halfway through and since the first cookies were cool enough I let them decorate the cookie. That is like the best part I think. mixing the dough, cutting cookies out and baking them just sucks when you can't keep everyone happy. Especially when you have a toddler that just wants to be held so she feels like she is helping. Although decorating cookies was fun someone really needed a second bath. I do mean second bath, because every time she eats I have to give her a bath.

Cloth diapers/cable

Well I ordered some Sunbaby cloth diapers yesterday. I am so excited to try them. I ended up ordering 12 through Sunbaby diapers and another 12 through their ebay store since I could get two different designs I really wanted. Which I was able to get two of the Star Pink and and hopefully another two of the Black skull we will see when it gets here. Since she said they had limited stock of those two designs. Which is why they took them off their actually web store. so all together I have 24 cloth diapers and 24 liners coming in and its about 22 actual different designs on the outside only two are suppose to be double since I liked those so much. Great thing is I still only paided about $126.00 yeah I could have just got them all through her actual store for only $108 but I was just too impatient to wait for a response back. If I love these cloth diapers, then it was worth making two different orders and paying alittle more. Also they just went ahead and put it all in one box. So I don't have to keep track of two boxes, which is great. Ya it was cheaper for them to do that since they pay shipping but who cares.

I really wanted to try some of the others like BumGenius, Flip, and a few others but they cost so much for me to buy them just to start out cloth diapering. I will order one here and there so I can try them, but I really like how the inside or the Sunbaby is designed. I did win a free diaper but I haven't tried it yet since I don't want to just have to wash one diaper all by its self. I am also hoping that my dryer does fine since it has only temperatures like High, Medium and none for fluffing. The old housing here does have clothes lines though so I can always use that if need be. Which I think I will use it and then throw in dryer for a minute or two.

Okay so I go to change my daughters diaper and I notice Disney is in Spanish so I check the TV language and its on English. So I check my sons room and his is in Spanish. Okay so they came out and without doing anything they told be that it is a problem on there end since they are going to be adding five channels to basic cable. The cable guy has seen the same thing on his TV's, and he said they actually had a meeting about it that morning. Now why did they try to make it seem like it was all my fault on the phone when I had called. Now that would be the question, right?

Babylegs

Okay so I went to Walmart and got some socks to make babylegs. So we are gonna see how I do. Well I didn't do bad for my first try. I made some that should fit on my friends infant, she is only about two months old. I am making a second pair for her right now. I will add some pics later. Well I forgot to take a picture of the infant size babylegs. I did the cuff different on each set since I couldn't decide which way I liked it batter. Then I also made a set for Jasmine. I still have three more to do. I so need to get a sewing machine to make these. Here is a picture of my daughter in her babylegs.

Tooth Fairy

Connor lost a tooth on Wednesday while we were eating tacos for dinner. He was so excited he wanted to put it under his pillow right away. then he tried to play off that he was tired, then it was he wasn't feeling good. Finally I got him to finish his dinner. He put his tooth under his pillow and went to bed.

In the above picture you can barely see the tooth he lost. Its the bit of white below the purple hand on the place mat he made in school. I was so happy he didn't sallow the tooth, since I heard from a couple of other moms how their kids sallowed the tooth so I warned Connor to tried to be careful when he was eating. He said when he was chewing it felt like a piece of bone.

Next morning he tried to tell me the Tooth Fairy didn't come and that his tooth was still there. So I went to his room with him and told him to check again. He barely lifted a corner of the pillow. So I had him lift the pillow more, and low and be hold looky there a dollar. He couldn't believe it. This is the conversation we had.

Mommy: So did you really look under your pillow?

Connor: Yes mommy.

Mommy: Are you sure you really really looked under your pillow?

Connor: No I didn't mommy.

Mommy: So you think next time you really gonna look before saying you did.

Connor: Yeah

Sometimes I just don't know what to think. But I do know the Tooth Fairy wouldn't forget to pick up a tooth.

Roofers

Ok so the last two days the housing I live in has had people redoing the roofs. That has been fun to deal with. They sent out a letter last week stating that they would send someone around to let us know when they would be coming by. Well that didn't happen. Instead what I got was someone showing up at my door telling me I needed to move my car out of the carport so they can back a truck up in to my driveway. So that they can just throw the old roofing stuff into the truck. So I moved the car, Jasmine had only a hour nap earlier. Roofers showed up about 1pm. I usually get her to sleep about 2 hours in the morning but if she doesn't I have to put her down for another nap after lunch or she is ready to crash by 6pm. If she crashes by 6 there is no way she will sleep till 6 in the morning.

So they start to remove old roofing. About a hour into all the banging on the roof and me just giving up on getting Jasmine down for a second nap I hear a loud smack in the ceiling. Check all the ceilings in the bedrooms don't see anything. Check the hallway and low and be hold I see a huge crack next to the entrance into the living room. So I go tell the roofers and they look at me like I am crazy. Then again I don't even think they all speak English. They check it out say oh we can fix it when we get done. I call housing to let them know about it. They send someone out, so at this point five different guys have seen it and kinda look at it like they don't know what to do about it.

Later I went outside to talk to my neighbor after he burrowed some staples for his staple gun. All of a sudden vents start dropping off my roof. I am standing saying I hope I don't need that up there. The vents weren't even going into the truck that had parked at the end of the carport. Just wow is all I can say for yesterday.

Then today they came back to finish up. They didn't ask me to move my car. I left for Connor's appointment at about 11am. I cam back almost at 12:30pm. I had no where to park. Both sides of the road had cars lined up on it, to the point you can barely get a vehicle between them. I ended up parking in my neighbors driveway since I knew they had went on leave and wouldn't be back for a couple more days or at least hoping they didn't pull up and worry who's car was in there driveway. They finished up at about 1:30 thankfully in time for me to get Jasmine down for another nap since she fell asleep in my arms while I did her asthma medicine about thirty minutes before I had to pick up Connor from school.

Well I am a giveaway winner

Well there are lots of Diaper giveaways going on during the last couple of weeks. Doable Diapers has one going on at their page... I also won a free diaper from Little Pigeon Diaper Company. Its too stinking cute.

New bed

Well yesterday Jasmine got her knee stuck in the crib rails for at least the fourth time in the last two months. I looked online to find out what to do which I couldn't believe how many other kids have done the same thing. Her knee was stuck so bad I almost had to call 911 for them to send someone to cut up her crib. Thankfully with a little more effort I was able to get her knee unstuck. So I asked a couple of people what to do. The fire department and emts showed up at my neighbors house so I asked then what I should do since my son never did this. Surprisingly they were no help. I was told to out the bumper back in which she just ends up standing on it. To put Plexiglas in her crib which yet again I just think she would end up standing up on it.

I was able to talk to my hubby this morning and told him what had happened and that I didn't want her sleeping in her crib. That I just planned to take her mattress out and just put it on the floor till we got her a big girl bed. So he told me just to go get her a twin bed which then we would need more mattresses. Connor still needs one for his top bunk. I went ghetto and put a full size air mattress on there for no and it looks like a futon. I picked out a daybed for her and he said "No" to that one cause he doesn't like daybeds, so I had to tell fine you help pick on out when you come home for now I will just get a toddler bed for her.

So I went out right after lunch and got her a new bed. She tried to help put it together, and was so excited when I got done. I really thought I would have a harder time trying to get her to sleep in it, but she went right to bed.
Didn't try to play or anything, then again she did already pull the Christmas tree down earlier before I put her to bed when I was talking to my neighbor outside. That was fun to hear I thought something seriously broke with the way it sounded. Which two of my favorite snowflakes did. She was in her exersaucer and had ended up at the tree. She had a death grip on the tree when I went to pick her up while my neighbor stood the tree back up. Gotta love kids.

Speech

Okay let me give you a little history about my son. He was born with a Ankyloglossia, commonly known as tongue tie, is a congenital oral anomaly which may decrease mobility of the tongue tip and is caused by an unusually short, thick lingual frenulum a membrane connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of the mouth.

Connor's was pretty severe when he would stick his tongue out the tip would go in and only the sides would stick out kinda like a lizard tongue. He had it clipped in December 2006 when he was about two years old. He has been going to speech since my husband deployed the first time in 2007, so he was almost three when he started speech. At the time he could say "da" and that was about it. He could point to show me what he wanted. Before he got his tied tongue clipped it was a very stressful time for us. Connor and me would get into crying fits since I couldn't understand him and he couldn't verbally express what he wanted. He learned a few signs but we just never got to into it. I think we were both so frustrated that we were both just giving up. Connor also has a breaking point which we learned real early. After so many times of him having to repeat himself he just gives up. Now he has learned to just agree with us even if we didn't get when he was really trying to say. Which is really sad, it has to be so frustrating to him, trying to get someone especially your mom to understand what you are saying and no matter how many times you try to repeat and slow down what you are saying you just aren't being understood.

He has had at least 5 different speech therapist since he started going to speech. When he first started out he went through three since with our health insurance at the time we had to go through the school district to get speech and if the school district couldn't give him speech, we had to get a note from the school district stating they couldn't give it. After a year of being home, in South Carolina and doing speech there. I moved back up to Watertown, NY so that Connor could be enrolled into preschool since his daddy would be coming home a couple of months after school started. I enrolled him into school there and transferred his speech to that school district. In my opinion the speech therapist he had there was the best and they were also gonna try to get him more speech sessions.

But we ended up getting transferred to here in El Paso. I began the process to transfer his speech to the El Paso school district and they told me that unless a child has a serious condition like down syndrome or something along the lines of that, or showing they were regressing in their speech progress then they wouldn't receive speech during the summer months and that I couldn't transfer him into preschool here because he wasn't old enough. In New York the birthday cut off is as long as they are four years old by December, here in El paso they have to be four by like September 4th or close to that. His birthday is in October, so he ended up having to repeat preschool and they didn't even teach them half the things he was learning back in preschool in NY.

Well he started to go to speech here in El Paso at first it seemed like he was doing okay but we have noticed one month we will be one step father in speech and then he regresses and it is just a roller coaster with his speech. I just don't understand it. He is now in Kindergarten here in El Paso he didn't receive speech over the summer yet again. My father in law talks to Connor at least once a week and he told me this week that he can't understand Connor at all. When he was starting to understand Connor not to long ago, but he is noticing that Connor's speech is getting worst again. I also talked to my mother and she said she was able to understand a word here and there but she can't anymore. Which just upsets me. The first month of school I was giving a few updates about what they were doing in speech but now I don't get anything I have no clue whats going on. I have pretty much all his speech records.

When I had asked when they test children to find out were they are at in their speech the school had told me they don't do any testing till the second semester in second grade. Which I think that's a little late to be doing testing. Since in South Carolina and New York they test a child when they first start speech to see what their IQ is and to see where they are having the most trouble whether its expressive language like Connor or something else. Also to see what age they are talking at, so they know where the child is at in their development. Which Connor first tested at 34 months old (2 years and 10 months). His receptive Communication was at a age of 23- 24 months. His expressive Communication was at 12 months.Communication total was at 15 months, his Personal-social was at 22 months, and his Cognitive was at 27 months. AS you can see he was way behind for his age.

When Connor was 3 years, 11 months old we moved back up to Watertown, NY area. Once he was transferred into the new school district, he was tested again. He was 4 years old when he was tested they waited till his after his birthday since it was so close and they wanted to get a better test score for his age. They used the Wechsler Preschool- Primary scale of intelligence to test him. He scored 96 on a full Scale IQ (mean=100, SD=15), verbal Scale IQ was 86, and Performance Scale IQ was 102. I wont go into the subtest that went with this test. They also did two more test at the time and with all of them his expressive language was where he had the most trouble which brought down his average test score on all the test.

So here I am our second year of living in El Paso, Tx no clue as to where my son is in speech. I have no idea what age level he is talking at, but I do know that he doesn't talk as good as the four year old across the street. I also have learned I don't like him going through the school for speech because I don't get to talk with the speech therapist after each visit to find out how he is doing like I used to be able to do. I made a appointment with his doctor to talk about getting a referral to see about getting more speech if tricare will pay for it. Also I found out what forms I needed to fill out to sign him up as a exceptional family member, since he is considered to have a disability because of his speech. I really didn't want to label him as a child with a disability but if it is the only way to get his speech to a level where it should be at. Then I will do it. Right now I just feel like I am not as involved as I used to be since we moved here and I don't get to see the speech therapist but when they do the review meetings. Which I am also gonna have to have his speech therapist at school sign the papers so I can register him as a exceptional family member.

I just want my son to be able to talk and have everyone understand him without him having to repeat him self so many times to the point he just gives up.

doctors today

Okay so I finally got to talk to my husband yesterday. Well instant message him. It was really good to hear form him. We had turkey soup last night for dinner. The turkey was leftover from Thanksgiving that I had put in the freezer. The lights outside are doing good till I went to plug them in today. I popped another fuse in one of my icicle lights yet again. So I had to replace that while I was heating up leftover turkey soup.

Connor's doctors office called to tell me they had to reschedule his appointment. I got them talked into letting us come in today. So I had to pick him up early, and then spent over a hour there. Connor had a build up in his ear so the nurse practitioner couldn't see in in his ear. So we had to head over to the treatment area so they could flush his ear. Which I am so proud of Connor he sat there the whole time while they did it. I don't think he even move. He was so quiet. Now Jasmine was a different story. She was so fussy since I could only let her take a 45 minute nap while I showered, got the diaper bag ready, and then started the car so it could warm up. She ended up taking a nap after we got home and had a late nap.

So I am looking into cloth diapering Jasmine. Yes its a little late in the game since she is 15 months old this month, but I think we might try for another baby. So they would be used again if we do have another. Right now I am looking at SoftBums and BumGenius. Something that even if by some miracle my husband changed a diaper he could figure it out. Probably at tax time I might be able to talk my husband into getting them.

Christmas lights

Okay so far this week I have spent three hours sitting in doctors office and pharmacy. All to find out that the medicine that Urgent Care gave my 14 month old daughter didn't work. She originally was about two to three days away from having a ear infection from what the Urgent Care doctor said. Well now she has a full blown ear infection in both ears. She also has allergies and possibly might have asthma. She also has some weird eye boogies but I really won't go into what the doctor said about that except to say its not pink eye, thank goodness. So she has about five different medicines she is suppose to take a day.

Connor had also gone to Urgent Care when Jasmine did so I can't wait to find out if his ear infection is really gone. Since they both were given the same three medications for ear infections, bronchitis, and allergies. Which he still has a cough just like Jasmine so I wonder why he still has it.

Also spent the weekend putting up Christmas lights in a wind and dust storm here. Which just plain sucked, but Jasmine was asleep and I really didn't want to have to do it at night in a wind storm. Only thing is I ended up quitting, the wind just got so bad, trash was flying everywhere. Peoples trash cans kept trying to fly away.

I finally got done today with the lights but I have one strand that keeps popping a fuse. So I finally gave up after I changed the fuse for like fifth time. I even tried changing the strand out with another one but it still did it. So I think that post on my car port is just cursed. Which I have to say for my first time actually hanging lights outside by myself I didn't do to bad. Usually Matt does it but since he isn't here I did it. I really wish he was here cause the outside lights is his job. He does it so much better than me. Connor really wanted the lights up. He is so excited. My lights blink so I took apicture but not on the lights are lit up but you get the idea.

Side note thankfully I am almost done with Christmas shopping all I have left to buy is some clothes, shoes, and some slippers for the kids. Everything else is bought: stocking stuffers and toys. Now its just waiting on the orders to come in. Hopefully UPS actually rings my doorbell or knocks on the door to let me know the package is outside. Since when they dropped off the first package yesterday I had no idea it was there till I went to try to fix the Christmas lights. I mean seriously what if I never went outside. I live in a major city its not like I live in the country and don't have to worry about someone stealing it off my front porch.