June Happenings

Here are a few things I missed from June.

Jon's Dad celebrated his 83rd birthday, and Torie made it down for the weekend.  (Torie, is Jon's half sister).

It has been incredibly HOT!  Like record breaking, 100+ degrees for over 5 days in a row, HOT!  There is only so much "cooped-up" I can take.  We made it out for a few walks and the girls played for a while at the nearby school.   

We spent Fathers Day weekend at my parents house.  It was also my youngest brother, Pete's 21st birthday.  Petey has caught the brew bug that most of the men in my family seem to contract.  He even welded his own burner set up to get his water to boil faster.  Oh, boys!  We had a very nice time enjoying each other's company, sipping adult beverages on the deck, and watching the sunset.  Nick and Megan made it up too.  However, this was the start of the fires, and Nick was called to a small fire that started.  Fortunately this one was put out quickly.  

Happy Fathers Day Jon!  You are the best, and your girls love you so much!

The fountains have been a regular hot spot for us.  Pun intended.  It is one of the safest ways to get out of the heat.  Lilly is even getting brave, and the last time we went, she was tickled to play in the water.

I don't know what we were thinking when we did this trip.  Oh, yeah- GET ME OUT OF THE HOUSE!  We adventured to the RailRoad museum for the first time.  It was a family trip, and despite the 102* heat, it was very fun.  We will definitely go back when it is not so bloody hot.

We also attended our 10 year high school reunion picnic.  It was good to actually see people in person, and not just via facebook.  Mr. DeAngelis (our principal) and a few other teachers were there too and they opened up the school for us to reminisce.  All of the little girls were too cute!  Its crazy to think its been 10 years since graduation, but I think Jon and I can honestly say that we are happy with where we are at this point in our lives.

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.