Potty Language…

Glory! Hallelujah! Yaya is potty trained! Can I get a, “Woot! Woot!” A game changer this is! Preschool here we come!!!!!! It is sad when  bowel control merits a blog post on my part, causes much rejoicing and well is the high point of my day and…. it isn’t even my bowels. I need life. I really, really need a life.

But HOORAY!!! I know many of you have been praying us up in the potty training department since I have had to train two girls over this summer and frankly, I was unsure Yaya was gonna cooperate. But dare I say she has been the easiest of my three to train?! For those of you that don’t know, both girls have to be potty trained to be accepted into preschool, and that is just about any preschool. The reason why preschool is so important to me is because I am homeschooling Noah this year and it would be impossible with the girls here to do that. AND Yaya really needs to go to preschool for several reasons, but I digress. Back to the potty language!

Today was the first day she took herself to the potty. The past week she has been going in the potty only when we take her or suggest that she go. But today was different. Early this morning out of the blue I hear Yaya say, “Mama, pee pee in the potty!” She had wide eyes and then ran off. I chased her yelling words of encouragement and before her little bootie even sat down on the potty, the potty was singing it’s song. (It plays encouraging triumphant music and yells Yay! Do we live in a first world country or what?) She barely made it but she did it! Wash and repeat 2 times with a poo-poo thrown in! At one point I  didn’t know she had gone to the potty until I heard her yell, “Mama ! I did it! I need toilet paper!” May I just say how proud I was of her on so many levels. Let’s just table the fact that she was using the potty. The child used WORDS!!!! She spoke out a full sentence to me that I could decipher! Glory to God, to him be ALL the glory!

We took a long car ride to pick up Noah from gymnastics…she got out of the car, climbed the stairs into the house and went straight to the potty!! Are you kidding me! You go girl! Literally!!!

AND she got out of her bath tonight in order to pee pee in the potty! I. COULD. NOT. BE. PROUDER.  It’s like she just won the Nobel Peace Prize. Y’all just don’t understand the weight that has been lifted from my shoulders. Yaya had to accomplish this before August 28th or school was a no-go. I’m pretty sure 10 years from now if she reads this post she will die of embarrassment and need therapy. But come on folks, a little levity is good. My mother still tells of my potty training woes and I’m 41. Forgetaboutit.

So thrilled I could shout it from the mountain tops!!!!!!

(No pictures to post. )

Me & My Julie…

Okay so I am starting to get with my “Me Program.” One big installment of that happened last weekend Aug 3-4. I met my friend Julie (Ella’s Mom) in Ft. Payne, AL at a Hampton Inn. It was the mid way point between us. We met for one reason…well two actually…1. Sanity 2. Digital Scrapbooking. Oh yeah baby, bring it on! We had a delightfully quiet time. We arrived at the Hampton at around 11:45 and went in to see if a room was ready early. There were exactly 3 other cars in the lot. The sweet little old lady behind the desk, kindly, in a gentile voice, informed us that no rooms were available. I asked if we could sit in the lobby and wait and hang out…she informed me in her southern belle voice that the lobby was also unavailable. I looked at her quizzically and said, “Really? The lobby is unavailable?” It was deserted. So she pressed on and told me that they were sold out the night before and nothing was clean including the lobby. Yeeahhhhh riiiiiiiighhhtttt. So I said in my best funny voice, “Sold out? The parking lot is empty, where are you hiding all the people?” This was met with silence. Okay then. She smiled sweetly and suggested that we go get some lunch and try back later.  Alrighty then. So we headed to the the Ruby Tuesdays. We walked in to blaring loud music that made the restaurant feel more like a night club. An 80’s night club mind you, which is great, but still.  I am getting old people…it’s sad. I started dancing in my seat and when the waitress arrived I asked if we were in a club. Again, nervous silence. Yeaahhhhh, so our Ft. Payne brothers and sisters working the Hampton and Ruby T’s lack a sense of humor and sarcasm seems to confuse them. So we ate a good meal (while our ears bled) and then geared up to try the old lady back at the front desk again. It occurred to me I should have asked for the manager the first time, check, keep that idea close at hand. We walked back in and our sweet, and now slightly creepy, old lady greeted us with her poised smile. She let us know that a room was indeed ready now. I was so thankful. I inquired about her name. She pointed slowly to her right, arm fully extended with her pointer finger moving slowly from up to down like a plane landing, to point at the plaque on the wall that bore her name, Janice, with the words Acting Manager under it. Hmmmm, glad I didn’t pull the “what’s your name who’s your boss” card.  And I was pretty sure Janice is going to sneak into our room that night and kill us with a butcher knife. Bates Motel anyone?

So we brought all our gear in and just had gotten settled when there was a knock at the door.  It was housekeeping, she didn’t realize we had checked into our room early and it freaked her out to hear voices on the floor she was cleaning. She was very sweet and asked us if we needed anything. I inquired about toothpaste and she said she didn’t think they had that. Oh well, I’ll just raid Julie’s. Anyhoo, after that interruption we got right down to work. Julie fired up Pandora and we rocked out to Third Day, Tenth Ave. North, Toby Mac and many other good tunes. We both were making pages for our blogs of our trips to China. We churned out pages left and right…but mostly right. Then knock…knock…knock. Really?! So I go answer the door again…it was the same sweet housekeeping girl. She had gone down to the front desk to ask about toothpaste for me and informed me that they do have it, if I need it. So nice. Love that southern hospitality.  Eventually we figured we had to eat and ordered enough Pizza, cheese sticks and pasta to feed a small village, and it was delivered straight to our door! After gorging ourselves on pizza we were back to work. We had to dip into some good ole’ Michael Jackson and then we rounded out our night with Madonna. Ahhhhh, children of the 80’s.

My favorite quote of the evening was when I asked Julie about a page I had been working on, that admittedly I had been struggling with but thought I’d landed somewhere safe with it. When I showed Julie her response was this, “Well I it isn’t horrible. (my mouth fell open) I mean I don’t hate it. (slight choking sound in my throat) But I don’t love it either…” WHAT?!! Oh my word! I then laughed so hard! Can I tell you how much I love this woman?! I love her LOTS!! Not only can we scrapbook for hours together without feeling the need to talk the whole time or any of the time, but brutal honesty comes with this friendship too! So refreshing…and somewhat painful. So after much laughter on both our parts, I reworked the page. It looked better. Here are the pages I got done!

Around 6:30 pm ish we heard a loud family across the hall. The TV started blaring, children could be heard and above it all was a screaming baby. Sigh. Seriously?! The volume of this family ebbed and flowed but about every 45 minutes the baby would scream. At 9:00 pm I got twitchy and looked at Julie and said, “I hate to be that person. But would you be willing to change rooms if they had one available? I drove an hour and half away from my home to get away from a screaming child in the night.” And I knew her answer before I asked. SOOOO, I called the front office and made the awkward request and luckily I found the one girl in Ft. Payne with a sense of humor. I begged her for a new room and apologized profusely for being that person.  She told us to come down any time that she just re-keyed us some new cards. I went down immediately for the new room cards and thanked her again. We were on the same hall at the end in the corner room, which the front desk girl said was the quietest room in the hotel and by the way it was bigger! Score! Friends we moved our junk at 9:15 pm and it was soooooo the right move! It was very quiet and wonderful! Good call! Back to work. I got as far as my photos would carry me on the blog and realized I forgot the coming home at the airport file…dadgumit! So I switched to photo organization, uploading and some blogging.

I slept well but woke up several times to turn over, the bed wasn’t great, but the sleep overall was. We woke in the morning and drug ourselves down to the complimentary breakfast which was actually pretty good. I got to introduce Julie to a cool waffle iron but unfortunately the batter was yuckie and the waffle, while cooked to perfection, did not taste that good. We got a glimpse as the giant family we moved away from and they were unique. They even had a Noah doppleganger, no truly. I even had to show the woman a photo of Noah to prove it…I think I scared her. Anyway, we ate and then went back up to the room to eek the last hours out of our playdate. We sat down and got comfy and there was a knock at the door. It was the same cleaning woman from the day before…we freaked her out. She was all like, I didn’t know anyone was in here and weren’t you down the hall?! God bless this poor gal. And so, Julie showed me how to use my camera. Bonus! And then I realized we had no pictures of our weekend. We took two cell phone shots and I took one of the room and our lovely view of the interstate. Then it was 11:00…dum dum da dum. Time to check out. Sadness. We decided to eat lunch because Eric suggested I do that via text (love that man). We went to what we thought was a Mexican restaurant, but it was a steak house instead. Great food though and we got to throw our peanut shells on the floor. We chatted and then said our goodbyes. Sigh. I miss her already. Thanks Jewels…great getaway!

Block Party!!

Okay…this was from JULY! So I’m sorta catching up on the everyday life blogging. This was a fun afternoon where all 3 kiddos played together. They do play together a lot but it is normally a chasing game of fort building game, it is rarely and sit down activity. On this day, I brought out the blocks. For the most part it went swimmingly. Eden tends to have some ownership issues, as in she owns all the blocks. Yaya has some ‘clipping’ issues, as in she clips or steals peoples blocks (mostly green ones). And Noah has a heart of gold and the patience of Job issue…I love that boy. We made several towers and then we made a few marble runs. A good time was had by all!

Both Hands Ms. Bernice Update

In April 2012, we had the blessing of finally introducing Ms. Bernice to Yaya. Bernice was the widow from our Both Hands fundraiser project for Yaya’s adoption. (If you want to see a short video of the project we did, go here…Williamson’s Project). Friends and family it was a really special thing. It was great to see Ms. Bernice, after all, it had been a year and it was great to see that she has been able to maintain her home and it looks beautiful inside and out. She had some screen damage and a few things Eric needs to go over and fix but all in all it was in super shape.

Seeing Yaya meet Bernice was very powerful. Since they both signed, Bernice and Yaya could “talk” a little.  Bernice was delighted to meet Yaya and you could tell that she instantly had an affection for Yaya. Yaya ,of course, had no idea who this woman was or why she was special to us, but one day she will know. My favorite picture we took is the one below. It is Ms. Bernice signing, I love you to Yaya and Yaya signing it back to her.

We had another blessing just his past week. The CEO and founder of Both Hands, JT Olsen, was in Birmingham and stopped by to meet us and spend some time with us. What an incredible man he is. His vision and heart for widows and orphans is so inspiring. If you need or want an organization to support, please support Both Hands. The only way they stay afloat is through outside donations to the operating expenses. 100% of the money people donate to projects goes directly to the families adopting, none of it goes to overhead and operating expenses. So they need people willing to get behind the organization itself to keep running. It is a worthy organization I assure you. If you don’t remember out total…we raised $17,000 + through our Both Hands project…that was half our adoption expenses. We cannot say enough good things about JT and his dream!

1980’s Strawberry Shortcake in June of 2013…oh Yeah!

So I was a huge Strawberry Shortcake fan in the 80’s. I have the original Strawberry Shortcake before they made the pets to go with them, much to my chagrin as a child. I always wanted her cat “Custard”, but Mom refused to by the same doll again just to get the “pet” to go with it. I have saved all my dolls and accessories over these 30+ years! I had always dreamed of one day letting my own little girl play with them…then we had Noah. Sigh. But 6 years later we had Eden and two years after her we got Yaya! So I had Eric crawl around the attic and find my treasure box of Strawberry Shortcake dolls this past June.

When Eden saw all of them her eyes lit up and danced with delight. She was just as entranced by the dolls as I had been, only I was a tween when I started collecting them. It was such a joy to share this part of my history with Eden, but I found myself very protective of these dainty dolls. So when one snapped completely in half I think a small part of my heart cracked. I was the one holding the doll at the time and my sweet husband saw the look of horror cross my face. He jumped up immediately and assured me he could fix it. I was doubtful. But in Eric fashion…he fixed the doll. As I sat there watching Eden play I could hear Eric tell Eden several times to be careful with Mommy’s special dolls. Sweet man trying to protect BOTH his girls. I finally snapped out of my trance and said, “Eden, you just play and enjoy them. If they break we will fix them if we can.” They are, after all, over 30 years old and the plastic has had to endure harsh winters and summers in the attic, the freeze and heat has taken it’s toll on the dolls. But I don’t want Eden to have to miss out on the fun by having to be “careful” when she plays with them. My forever goal was to see my own daughter one day play with them…not treat them like museum pieces. They are just plastic and cloth things, I still hold the memories regardless if the dolls are intact or not. And the new memories I am watching being made are more precious to me than the toys anyway. So neat to see a dream come true. I sometimes miss the little blessings God has for me in my everyday life…but I didn’t miss this one.

(P.S. I am working on getting Eden to put clothes on, I promise!)

State Testing…in April

Yeah so I’m having a slumber party with my friend Julie in Fort Payne, AL as part of the “me program”.  I am getting to scrapbook (digitally) and catch up on some blog posts that I wanted to write months ago that are not earth shattering, but ones that document our life and things I want to remember.

State Testing. Yaya has been getting what is called Early Intervention Services through Hand in Hand for her speech, physical therapy, occupational therapy, and feeding therapy. Currently we only need speech, praise the Lord. Yaya has “graduated” out of needing the other three therapies. Woot! Woot! She has had a big year indeed. When Yaya turned 3 years old we lost the benefit of getting these services for free anymore. So now we see our speech therapist as an “outpatient.” The good news is that the State of Alabama provides the same such services through the school system for free beginning at the age of three.  The services are only offered during the school year so Yaya won’t start with speech with the local school system until the mid-end of August. In the gap we are using Hand in Hand and thankfully our insurance covers all but the co-pay. Why am I explaining all of this…well to help me remember and to set up this blog for the cool stuff. To get State services you have to “qualify” for them. Meaning you get your child tested and if they have a sever enough delay in an area then the State will step in and provide the therapy needed. This is good and bad. For Yaya we knew that she would qualify automatically for speech, but we didn’t know about any other area.

Well we set up testing and the way it works is that a team of teachers will ask Yaya questions until she in unable to answer correctly consistently. Then they rate her at the level that she topped out at. The test continues until she has exhausted all areas they want to test. So the test can take longer the smarter your child it…you see where this is going don’t you? At the 2 hour mark…Yaya was just starting to shut down. They asked this child questions for 2 hours straight with no breaks!! Granted it was “play” for Yaya but still intensive.

Also, Yaya had to have an interpreter. This was weird for me since I AM and interpreter but I can’t be the interpreter. I was torn about insisting on them paying for a certified interpreter or letting them use their highly acclaimed speech therapist who “knows” sign language. Well, I called this speech person and instantly liked her. She offered to meet with us prior to testing day and see how Yaya and her communicated. They did beautifully and it was great because Yaya really liked her and then she was a familiar face on testing day.

The results were not surprising…Yaya is one smart cookie. All the ladies working with her were amazed at her during the test both with intellect and just who Yaya is as a person. I was very proud. She did not qualify for anything other than speech, which is awesome, because that means she has no other significant developmental delays. She is one extraordinary little girl. The first two pictures are of Yaya standing on different color squares and signing the color to me…green and blue. There also are some of the pictures of Yaya totally comfortable being the center of attention of a group of total strangers…go figure.

Above, Yaya is talking to the speech therapist who is acting as her interpreter. Love this lady. Wish she could be Yaya’s speech person with the state. However, the lady who will be doing it I like as well.

Building a Mess, I Mean, Desk in April

I have been meaning to post about this, well, since April. It was the first indication I was losing my grip on sanity. If you know me then you will understand why when you see the following pictures. But if you don’t really know me I’ll just tell you…I don’t do crazy, random, will be hard to pick up, messes…especially in my home. When Eric happened upon me and the kids in the playroom in full swing, the screaming is what brought him running…even he was shocked. I had bought a desk for Noah, for home schooling and I had just unpacked it for assembly. Things got out of hand with the packing materials and one thing led to another and well…see for yourself…

If you notice, Yaya is not in many of the shots…she was not quite as impressed with our activity and I had hoped. Styrofoam pieces were everywhere…and I mean everywhere. For our sensory girl, it wasn’t much fun. Notice how she is just standing on one piece of Styrofoam looking forlorn. It was a challenge to clean up but it was well worth the amount of enjoyment we got out of making the mess!