Backyard Camp Out

Jon has been building up a backyard camp out with Cecilia for months now.  Seriously, months.  She has been begging to sleep in the tent outside for weeks now.  Jon borrowed a tent from my brother and on Friday night, he set it up, and Cecilia overcome with excitement.  She got to stay up late, make suburb s'more's (that's s'more's on the grill), and fall asleep with Daddy in the tent.  I don't think they slept great.  Jon said that Cecilia moves constantly in her sleep.  She was up as soon as the sun was up, before 5AM.  All of this let up to a very looooong, almost 4 hour nap on Saturday afternoon.  She wants to camp again ASAP, and was very upset when the tent was no longer in the yard.  I'm sure it will happen again this summer.

Step-Step-Step

Lillian Jeanne is (cautiously) walking!  I am counting June 4, 2012 as the day she walked for the first time.  She took 10 steps to her Daddy when he got home from work.  She has been getting more brave everyday since, and we are up to about 17 or 18 steps now.  Walking is not quite her primary mode of transportation, but we are getting there.  She is pushing herself up to a stand with no other support and starting to take off walking without any prompting.  She is too cute!  I tried really hard to get those first steps on video, but the timing was always off.  I managed to get this video this weekend at my parents house.  Close enough to first steps for me.

Speech

When Cecilia started school last fall, we thought for sure that her speech would take off and that she would be talking our ears off by Christmas.  Christmas came and went, and while her vocabulary increased, she was not speaking as clearly as we thought she would be, nor was she connecting words together like we thought she would be.  So, then we thought, well by the end of the school year surely, she would be speaking well.  This was not the case.  In addition to her not speaking well, she also started acting out and biting other kids.  We could see her frustration mounting because she could not communicate.  Jon and I, my mom, and her teachers have all raised concerns about her speech in the last few months.  

After talking with a few other people we decided to call Child Find and start the process for getting her evaluated.  Child Find is the group that handles special needs through the school district.  If Cecilia qualifies for speech therapy, she will be eligible for free preschool in the fall.  I called in late April to make the appointment.  They start with a hearing and vision screening for every child.  The first available appointment they had was for June 6.  The screening took all of 10 minutes and she passed with no issues.  When I asked when someone would call to schedule the speech evaluation, I was told that they are 3 months behind!  Jon and I agreed that this was not acceptable to us, and that we wanted Cecilia to be evaluated sooner rather than later.  

We knew that there was a problem, and if we can get her some help now, then we should do that.  SO, I found a speech pathologist group via google and I was so happy to see that they had a research page with speech milestones listed.  I was finally able to see that we were not crazy, and that Cecilia did have some speech needs.  Naturally, I called and set an appointment to have her evaluated.  They were able to get her in with in 5 days of my call and we went on Tuesday and met with Brianna.  It was a standardized test for pronunciation and vocabulary.  Cecilia was shown several pictures an was asked what they were: house, airplane, frog, bathtub, bike, slide, etc.  

This tests generates three scores.  The first score is an overall score.  The average range is 85-115, and Cecilia scored a 78.  Not terribly low, but still below average, and definitely below the low average range.  The second score is a percentile.  She scored in the 17th percentile.  This means that out of 100 kids her same age, she would be speaking better than only 17 of them.  This number startled me.  The third number is an age equivalent.  Cecilia was scored to be speaking at a two year old - zero month level, almost a full year behind.  

I left feeling more relieved than anything.  I knew that she was not speaking at the right level for her age.  I was relieved because we finally had an answer and the quantitative proof.  While we are waiting around for the school district to get off their butts, we will be starting private speech therapy in the next few weeks.  We want to get Cecilia the help she needs sooner rather than later before it becomes a bigger issue.

Random Cuteness

1.  Cecilia in her "Buzz Shirt", her "Princess" skirt, her milk and blankie.  All of her favorites.
2-4.  Cecilia found Daddy's skate board.
5-6.  Inspecting the sprinkler thingy.  Lillian's rolls kill me.
7.  Someone got her self up on the dishwasher, only to find out there was water on it.
8.  Lilly and Eva "helping" me with the laundry.

Come Play!

The first weekend in June, we were able to landscape around the new play set.  We were lucky to have my brother, Nick and his truck for day one, and our friends Emily and Shawn helped us on day two.  We removed about a 16x24 foot section of grass from the yard, leveled it out, and moved five cubic yards of mulch.  The girls were so tolerant and good about us working.  Cecilia camped out for a while under the temporarily out of order play set.  It looks so nice!  We are thrilled with how it turned out.  Cecilia loves it.  The only draw back are the splinters.  Cecilia does not like to wear shoes, but she is going to learn really fast that they are a 'must' for playing out side.  Yesterday we filled the pool and put it at the base of the slide.  Cecilia AND Lilly loved the new water park ride.  I don't have any photos of this, because I was wearing the lifeguard uniform.

 

Olde Town Fountains

We have already gotten so much use out of the little bike trailer that we bought in March for the girls.  One of our favorite family dates is to ride to Olde Town and check out the shops, get some ice cream at Scrumptious, and now that its summer, play in the fountains.  We took Cecilia at the end of last year to the fountains, but she wasn't that sure about them.  It took some warming up, but she eventually found the fun in the water.  It was too cute to watch her!  Soon enough, Lilly will be running through them with her too.

Lilly's ONE year Portraits

I decided I would try to take Lilly's one year pictures myself.  Some friends of the family recently bought a new place in Arvada with lots of land and pretty trees and nice clean white out buildings.  I asked them if they would mind if I used their place as my "studio".  Of course, they did not mind.  Yesterday was the perfect overcast day to do it.  I loaded up a few props and outfits for Lilly and headed over.  I'm feeling pretty confident with my camera skills these days, the trick would be to get Lilly to cooperate.  I kept telling myself, "I just need ONE good one, just one."  Well, I got it!  Just one good one, but its a winner for sure!  I snapped off about 80 frames, and determined that my biggest issue was making sure that I had Lilly in focus.  I had several frames that were completely blurry, but mostly images of Lilly looking like she could give a crap about what I wanted.  Overall, I'm pretty darn proud of myself.  So, here is the one good one, and a few others that I felt were worthy enough to be seen by the world.

 

 

May was REALLY Busy

I'm looking back through my May photos and I feel totally overwhelmed and behind.  So, I'm going to do a brief over view of all of the events that took place this month right now.  Ready? Set? GO!

I have cute girls.  What can I say, they melt my heart, especially when they are playing nicely together. Cecilia has a tendency to act like your typical two year old most of the time, but she is getting better about playing gently with her sister.

 Jon has busted out his bass a few times.  Cecilia loves it and calls it "Daddy's music".  So sweet!

We (by we, I mean Jon) got the gardens started.  The girls helped him plant the cucumbers.

I've had the pleasure and honor to watch my cousin's baby on Monday's.  Eva has been a joy to have.  It has been so nice during May that we've made it a regular part of the day to have snacks outside in the afternoon.

The May festivities kicked off on May 12th.  My good friend, Kirsten, got married!  I am so happy for her.  Kirsten and Greg had a beautiful wedding!  It's such a small world:  I have known Kirsten for about 11 years now.  I have also known Greg's family for about the same amount of time, just not as well.  Greg's family went to the same church that I went to growing up and his younger brother and I were in youth group together.  We ran into so many people that I knew from those days at their wedding and it was great to catch up.

May 13th was Mother's day and Lillian Jeanne's birthday!

The week after Lilly's birthday, the girls were troopers with me as we went all over town to make some returns and exchanges.  They were so good, so I let them ride the carousel at one of the malls.  They were so cute!

The girls and I headed up to my parents house for a few days to visit GK and Grandpa as they drove through from AZ to CO for the summer.  It was beautiful up there!  It's always a treat to get up the hill, especially in the middle of the week.  The highlights: Spending time with GK and Grandpa, Cecilia watched "Buzz" with Pops, we visited the new schools in Fairplay, and Lilly took a nap with me.

It rained one day.  That didn't stop Cecilia from wanting to go outside.  She knew what she needed too: her rain coat and her rain boots.  Too cute!

The sun has been HOT!  We've had the opportunity to get in the pool more than once.  Lilly is starting to get the hang of it.

We had a party weekend number 2 on the 19th & 20th.  We started the day heading way South to Elizabeth for my cousin Mickey's HS graduation.  I felt so bad for him though because it rained that morning, so only four people were able to go to the ceremony.  Congrats Mickey!  

We still had a nice time at the party though.  Cecilia and Lilly fell asleep in the car on the way there.  At the house, Cecilia found a ball and the basketball hoop and knew just what to do.  She was being too cute!

 

After that party we headed way back up North to Superior for a Confirmation party.  Then on Sunday, after church, my dad, my brother, and Jon went and picked up the new play set for the girls.  Cecilia was SO excited to see it arrive.  We temporarily set it up so Cecilia could test it out.

 

Then we headed to a 50th birthday party for a friend.  It was a party weekend for sure!  We snapped a few fun pics at the party.  Here is my mom with Lilly and Andrew, Lilly and I, and Cecilia in her new hand-me-down Buzz shirt that she is now completely obsessed with.

Lilly has gotten so big this month.  She loves this little chair.  She will climb into it and clap for herself. She will rock her self in it too.  So cute!!
 

 Cecilia's last day of school was May 23rd.  She has grown so much!!  She is such a big girl now.  Here is a comparison from the first day of school to the last day of school, and her and her teachers, Miss Stephanie and Miss Pam from the last day of school.

Since Cecilia is done with school now, that means more trips to the grocery store with both girls in tow.  They are trying to escape, and Cecilia is leading the way.  Notice how they both have a foot in the air.  Ya, I panicked a tiny bit, and I will never use this cart again.