holiday pics

We decorated early this year since we are leaving for Denver next weekend for another two weeks. 

almost halfway there!

I finally got around to getting somewhat of a belly shot. Time is flying by, I'm 19 weeks now. It's hard to believe that this pregnancy is almost halfway over and soon there will be a newborn in the house again. I really haven't had much time to dwell on it with everything that we've had going on. I've yet to decide exactly what I'm going to do as far a midwife goes. The midwife I used for Gabrielle's birth no longer does home births, I'm not exactly thrilled with the options that are left. Two midwifes in town I will not use, just a conflict of style. One I know personally but she works with the other two midwifes, and I don't think she would be open to how I do my pregnancy and birth. There is a 3rd that is 1.5 hours away, I know her as well, she would be the most receptive but with my EDD being in April and her living over a mountain pass there is no telling if she could actually make it here. Then I think, what's the point of having a midwife. I don't know what we will decide but for now I'm comfortable continuing with how things are. 

fat does a body good

I've been really working on getting good fats in Gabrielle's diet, along with tricks to get food into her, of course we all end up eating it as well. I weighed everyone today, Gabrielle is up to 24 lbs! Madeline weighs 39.5 lbs, I couldn't believe it, she might actually hit 40 lbs by the time she turns 6. When she turned 5 in January, she only weighed 32 lbs. Ok, I didn't weigh everyone, I was not about to step on that scale, I can tell by the size of my butt that the same diet is also producing similar results for me....

home sweet home

And it feels so good! It's rough being away with small children, or maybe it's just my small children... Going off in a large metro area proved to be tricky, trying to juggle day trips between rush hours, therapy times, and a grumpy toddler's nap/bedtime so we were mainly limited to only going a few miles away. My mom refuses to drive in a city so I always had to which didn't always settle well with the Boo. Gabrielle calls herself Boo now by the way. It would of been very difficult doing anything without my mom there. I was able to leave Gabrielle at the town house with her and take Madeline to therapy alone without worrying about how to keep a toddler entertained there or having to wake her up from a nap. 

Madeline loved the Star Center and her therapist. She keeps saying that she wishes the center was in our town so she could go all the time. She did very well during all the therapy, and even had minimal anxiety! They repeated a portion of her auditory testing while we were there, with the same results. We were curious if the first results were accurate or if her anxiety had affected the testing. Unfortunately I have also learned that further testing for her learning disabilities will have to wait until she is around 7 years of age. She turns 6 in January. I have some more calling around to do but so far no one is interested in seeing her for another year. We are hopeful that she will have improvement with her cogitative abilities after all this OT is finished but it obviously won't solve her learning issues. It sounds strange, but it is nice to see that it has nothing to do with me or homeschooling. I second guess myself at times with her because of her issues and wonder if she doesn't need more then I can offer which may be the case when she gets older. The therapist this week during OT worked on B and D with Madeline, all week long. They played games, they wrote the letters on large blocks and she would knock them down on the zipline, on and on. Today Madeline wanted to write her name. I have to slowly say each letter, after each one she doesn't know, she asks me what it looks like. She got M, A, which are two letters of the alphabet that she always knows, then we got to D. I said D and she asked me what a D looked like. She had no idea after a week of one and one with a professional, learning only two letters. 

The OT is interesting. Madeline only has mild physical effects of the SPD, she actually always terrified the therapist because she wasn't used to children being able to do so much physically. As in doing a back roll off of a swing, jumping off the top of the climbing wall... Madeline only has slight left to right differences in her body, she doesn't get dizzy like normal people do hence the need to get feedback into her body which she does by more movement, more action. She is very strong, especially in her upper body, but her hand muscles are not where they should be, that is evident in her inability to hold a pencil/crayon in any other way then what a toddler does. I've been learning how to do calming activities with her to get her calmed down before she gets too wired, which ones actually work with her, how to read her cues better, and many other things. 

life on the front range

Since we are missing out on our regular activities, toys, and friends, we've had to make do with other things.  Here's Gabrielle playing dress up.

And a PJ party!

We are enjoying some things that we can't do at home, like the zoo, natural history museum,  and the aquarium. We are on the other side of Denver from most things so due to the traffic, we don't go that way very often. I'm going to be in trouble when we return home, because there is a lot of traffic and we drive longer then Gabrielle is used to, I have to bribe her into her car seat. With M&M's. Now she makes sure I have some in my purse before even leaving the house.I just keep thinking about all the calories adding up and ignoring the sugar content....

 I have found a few cute gender neutral items for the new babe though! Shrimp as it has been nicknamed, doesn't much much attention right now due to the chaos we call life, but soon enough I'm sure he/she will get it's fair share. I think my hopes for a nice, calm 3rd child are not going to happen. At only 17 weeks, Shrimp spends many an hour kicking and rolling around in my uterus instead of relaxing and enjoying this time inside. 

Gabrielle's Birthday

We had so much going on before we came to Denver that I never got around to posting Gabrielle's B-day pics. My baby turned 2 on Oct 23rd! She turned down cake and demanded a "yellow" instead. Which is a strawberry popsicle, she is addicted to them and that is all I hear all day long, "more yellow". I'm not minding right now since before we came to Denver, she weighed 22 lbs, down from 25 a month earlier. This was before a nasty stomach bug, I didn't weigh her after, I really didn't want to know. A yellow is 80 calories and she will eat at least two a day, so that is something. Gabrielle hasn't taken to me not producing breast milk while pregnant well. Emotionally she has been fine, but physically, she isn't getting enough calories. She refuses to drink milk in any form, can't eat enough calories, so has been losing weight. 

Denver

First off, living away from home bites. It's hard to find things to do in a strange city, not having all the usual toys to keep the girls entertained, etc... We'll be glad to go home when we break for therapy. OT is going well, Madeline really enjoys it and looks forward to going every day. I have some issues, mostly because the therapist that we waited months for can not work with Madeline since she leaving the center. We are working with her replacement who is not as experienced as the original therapist so that has been a source of frustration for me. Gabrielle is finally eating while we are here so I'm hoping she might be regaining some of the weight she has lost recently.