Speech Graduation

Cecilia has graduated from speech therapy!!  We still have some work to do at home, but not $80/week worth of work.  She is doing so well, and we are so proud of her.  We had her assessed again and she is now scoring in the average range, and her confidence level is way up.  She is still scoring low, but definitely in a comfortable range.  We will continue practicing and working with her at home and school, and we will possibly go back for a check in appointment at the end of April.

We are so glad that we got her the help she needed when we did, and that we continued private therapy for her with Brianna.  Brianna, her speech therapist, has done such amazing things with Cecilia, and we are truly blessed to have had her in our lives.  Cecilia is definitely going to miss seeing and playing with  her.

Why do they call it Spring Cleaning??

Because of the MUD.  Yep.  We have mud, and lots of it.  Our back yard is not quite half grass, and more than half dirt at the moment.  We are planning to re-sod it in the next few weeks.  But until then, we will probably have many more moments of tears and mud being carried over the freshly cleaned floor and straight to the tub.  And extra laundry.  Yep.

 

Good thing we still know how to have fun inside too :)

Going to the Dentist

Cecilia got to go to the dentist for the first time on Monday.  Lucky for us, we happened to be reading an Elmo book where The Count goes to the dentist, and Cecilia thought that was pretty neat.  She was excited to go, and did a great job getting her teeth cleaned.  She choose the raspberry flavor for the paste, and got good report from Dr. Greg.  She and Lilly got to pick a toy from the "treasure box" and they both got new tooth brushes.  Lilly has since been dubbed "The Dentist" because she requests her tooth brush every chance she gets.  She loves to have her teeth brushed :)

 

Sunk the Battleship

When we bought our house the inspector told us two things about our original 1956 furnace.  He said "The good news is, these things were built like battleships.  The bad news is, these things were built like battleships."  That furnace has sailed right along, and probably would have kept sailing, but it was time for it to go, and last weekend was the weekend.  Of course, we can't plan the weather, and we happened to pick the day that we had temperatures in the twenties, and we got close to a foot of snow.  We cranked the temp on the furnace up in the morning.  We were roasting at 85* by 10AM.  It was the hottest my house has ever intentionally been.  It was a good experiment though, because we were barely down to 77* at 5pm.  Our windows were doing a great job!  Such a good job, that we had to open the windows and turn the attic fan on to cool the house off enough so the new furnace could be turned on.  I'm sure our neighbors thought we were crazy.

The major driving force behind its evacuation was our desire to finish our master bathroom.  The old furnace was venting straight through our master bathroom, causing the small shower space to be even smaller, like 32x32 small.  The new furnace vents out the side of the house, giving us a space of 32x48 for a shower.  Now thats more like it.  I'm excited to get moving with the bathroom project.  The goal is to have it done by the time the baby gets here.   It is amazing how much we notice the air actually blowing through our house now.  We can actually tell the furnace is doing its job.  And, I'm really excited to see how much money we will save monthly with the new 93% furnace.  We figure the old one was doing about 50% efficiency.
 
We've replaced the windows, plumbing, and furnace and now we have one more house "organ transplant" to do: the electrical.  Ugh.  Good thing my husband is handy :)

First Hair Cut

Lilly Jeanne's hair had finally grown out enough to warrant a trim.  Just to clean up the ends and even it out.  She has so little hair still, that we were only charged for a bang trim, and not a full hair cut.  Lilly did so good sitting in the red fire truck while she had her 3 hairs trimmed.  It really did clean it up, the pictures don't do it justice.  Of course, she requested a bow at the end.  She requests a bow or a clip just about everyday.  She's my little girlie girl.  I still can't believe she's going to be two in less than two months.

 

Chicks and Leprechauns

We made an impromptu visit to my parents house last weekend.  It had been a while since we had gone up to visit, and my Dad got chicks!  Pops the Chicken Farmer was so excited about his baby chickens that he called me three times last Friday to tell me all about them, and that he had "got them home safe", and that they were "so cute!" and the like.  Seriously, my Dad was reduced to a a big softy last friday all because of these little birds.  Cecilia was very excited to see them, and used every chance she could to go check on them.

Sunday was St. Patricks day, and Cecilia and Mammaw made a leprechaun trap.  Those leprechauns are fast!  He wasn't trapped, but he did make use of the facilities and he left behind some green rubber duckies.  Cecilia was not impressed that he forgot to flush the potty and told us "He peed green!  That's gross!"  Hehehehehe.

Things Cecilia Says

This girl cracks me up.  For example:

On an overcast day last week:
Cecilia: Mom, I can't see the sun.
Me: Where is it??
Cecilia: Um, its laying down in the clouds.

When she woke up one day and it was snowing outside:
"Mom! Mom!  The snow is full!

While I was driving and the guy behind me could not have been closer to my bumper:
Me: (under my breath, but not enough) Jeez, get off my tail dude.
Cecilia: You don't have a tail.  Lions and Tigers have tails.

After swim lessons one day, Cecilia was pulling on her ear and said, "I hear my swim lesson!"  She was referring to the water in her ear.