Playdate Easter Egg Hunt

We had our annual playdate Easter egg hunt on Monday with our friends at the park in Fieldstone Farms.  Suzy organized it again this year - she brought treats and planned the egg hunt.  We each brought 10 stuffed eggs and packed lunches for the kids.  I also made a take-home treat for everyone - bunny bait.

This was the first time I'd made it and it turned out pretty yummy!

I attempted to sit Grayson down with Jessie (Suzy's youngest) but she was having none of it!  She cried huge tears as soon as Grayson got near!

After playing on the playground for about an hour, it was time to find eggs.  We attempted to gather all the kids up for a quick group shot before they hunted.

There were a lot of babies in that picture and luckily none were dropped by big brothers!!!

We grabbed the babies and the kids were off!

Suzy had 5 special carrots eggs that were bonus eggs.  Luckily Rylan found one :)

Counting eggs to make sure he got just 10 ...

Gray, Maddie, and Rylan with their carrots!

Rylan got to pick a prize and he got a bunny paddle ball game.

After the egg hunt the kids ate lunch and played for another couple of hours.  Grayson even got to swing for the first time.

Fever

Grayson is still running a low grade fever.  We are now up to 33 days with it.  I took him back to the pediatrician on Tuesday (our third visit in as many weeks) to see if the new antibiotic had cleared up the ear infection.  And it had.  Grayson's bottom two middle teeth had started coming in the few days before the appointment so Dr. Huss couldn't rule that out as the reason for the continued fever.  Grayson's lungs sounded good and Dr. Huss's guess was that he was at the start of a new virus.  However, Grayson has been fine all week (other than the fever).  As of right now I guess I'll bring him back in on Tuesday and ask for additional testing???  Hopefully we'll get this figured out soon!

Grayson and I took selfies to entertain ourselves while waiting for Dr. Huss on Tuesday :)

Rylan's IEP Progress Report

Rylan has FINALLY been making some progress with s blends the last few weeks.  He suddenly just started saying things like "school" instead of "fool" in conversational speech with me.  And he will even notice when he says some things incorrectly and correct them.  Yay!  This is improving his intelligibility quite a bit.

I got Rylan's IEP progress report from Ms. Rholanda this week.  Here are her comments on his goals:

Measurable Annual Goals and Benchmarks

1. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate final consonant deletion in structured conversational speech as measured in 3 3-minute speech samples with 80% accuracy.

Comments: Averaging 70% with errors noted in final /k/ and inconsistent /s/.

2. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate cluster reduction (s-clusters) in syllables and words with 80% accuracy in 4/5 opportunities.

Comments: Rylan is able to produce /sm/ and /sn/ clusters at the word level. He has more difficulty with /st/, /sp/, and /sk/, but lately has shown progress with those clusters. He's averaging 85-100% wiht /sp/ given a model, 70% with /st/, and 50 to 88% with /sk/ (because /k/ was difficult to produce too).

3. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate cluster reduction (s-clusters) in phrases/sentences with 80% accuracy in 4/5 opportunities.

Comments: During one observation in sentences, Rylan was averaging 100% with /sm/, /sp/, /st/, and /sk/ given a model (just last week). Wow!! We'll continue with this the next nine weeks.

4. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate cluster reduction in structured conversational speech as measured in 3 3-minute speech samples with 80% accuracy.

Comments: Not yet monitored but will collect data the next nine weeks.

5. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate velar fronting (produce k, g) in syllables and words with 80% accuracy in 4/5 opportunities.

Comments: Initial, final, and medial /k/ during drill averaged 80-100% independently! Initial and final /g/ was also about 90% accurate, but more data is needed for /g/.

6. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate velar fronting in phrases/sentences in 80% accuracy in 4/5 opportunities.

Comments: Initial and final /k/ in sentences averaged 90-100% independently and initial /g/ averaged 80-85% independently. We'll continue to keep data for medial /k/ and /g/ in all positions.

7. Given rapid repetition and practice, Rylan will eliminate velar fronting in structured conversational speech as measured in 3 3-minute speech samples with 80% accuracy.

Comments: Not yet addressed.


Status Summary: Better progress this nine weeks! I look forward in seeing what the next nine weeks will bring!

Brentwood Easter Egg Hunt

My mom and I took the boys to the Brentwood Easter Egg Hunt yesterday afternoon.  We were much later getting there than previous years since we had to wait until Carter was done with school.  We still got there about 30 minutes before the hunt and decided to stand in line to see the Easter Bunny.  Unfortunately there were storms in the area and the Easter Bunny was scared of getting wet and went inside the library when we only had a couple of people left in front of us.  At that point it was less than 10 minutes until the hunt so decided to see if we could find the bunny later.

A group picture of the boys while we waited to be told we could start collecting eggs ...

Almost time ...

Go!

My mom and I helped Grayson collect a few eggs.

After a few minutes I found the big boys.  They had both filled their buckets and were looking to see if any of the golden eggs were still hidden.

We headed inside the library after the hunt to try to find the Easter Bunny.  She was nowhere to be found for about 15 minutes but luckily we stuck around since Carter had soccer practice soon.  She eventually showed back up and we were able to get a picture.

First Easter Egg Hunt

Grayson went on his first Easter egg hunt today, kind of :)  My mom is visiting right now and we stopped by the Brentwood library for storytime.  The craft after the songs and book was to make an Easter basket.  Then the kids got to stop by a few places in the library and get Easter eggs.  Grayson held tight to his pipe cleaner handle the whole time!

Ignore Grayson's missing pants - he'd pooped out the back of his diaper again (he's almost done with the antibiotic) and when I changed his clothes in the car, I decided it was warm enough to not stain another pair of pants since he'd have another blowout soon (which he did).

Report Card

Carter got his report card for the third quarter last week.  Again, he's been doing great!  I'm so impressed with how much Carter has learned this year.  I'm most impressed with how well he's reading.  We weren't getting anywhere when working on it this summer and now Carter will sit down on the couch with books I've checked out from the library for him and just read to himself.  The books are short, but he'll read 5 or more at a time.

Here is a look at his report card:

Game Ball

Look who got a game ball tonight!!!

Carter's coach bought really awesome game balls this season for the players!

Jeff (the head coach) wasn't at the game though and one of the assistants picked Carter to receive the game ball.  He got it because he hit 2 doubles!  At this age, the boys can only get doubles if the ball reaches the outfield without being touched by any of the fielders.

I actually got videos of both of Carter's doubles ...

Carter loves his very cool game ball!  Here he is with Jeff's twin boys (Christopher and Jack Henry) ...

Carter - Baseball

Carter had his first two baseball games this weekend (the Sunday game was a make-up for his Thursday game that got rained out).  Carter is with the same kids and coaches as last season with the Brentwood Baseball Club.  This year they are the Angels.

Unfortunately I missed Carter's first game because it was at the same time as Rylan's and at a different ball park.  Brian said he did great though!  Good hits and 4 or 5 outs at first base.  Coach Jeff is generally playing Carter at first for the 1st and 3rd innings (if a 3rd is played) because he feels Carter is one of his few players that can catch.  Carter loves getting to play there too.

Sunday's game was much more uneventful.  Carter got to play first base again in the 1st and 3rd innings.  Unfortunately no one was throwing the ball to him quickly or anywhere near him.  He may have gotten just one out.

The rules are generally the same for Carter this year.  Each inning both teams bat through their entire lineup no matter how many outs there are.  A coach pitches each batter 5 balls and then the tee is used if the player hasn't gotten a hit.

Carter is doing great so far and loving it, of course.  Our coach is so great that he even did a practice with just Carter for 45 minutes one day when no one else showed up because it was sprinkling.  All the hard work has really been paying off and Carter is definitely improving.

Another Tooth

Over the weekend Grayson's other center lower tooth broke through his gum.  He now officially has 2 teeth coming in!

Grayson is still running the low grade fever but it seems to be jumping around a lot more now (occasionally it's closer to 99F).  So now I'm not sure if the fever is from the pre-existing illness or from teething.  I may take him back to the pediatrician tomorrow to have his ear checked but we'll see what his temperature is in the morning.

Grayson slept in his crib in his room for the first time last night.  It was only until 11:30 pm but it's a start.  Grayson started sleeping horrible when the fever and respiratory illness started about a month ago (before that he slept through the night more often than not).  We were keeping him in the bouncer to help his breathing but it's time to start getting him to sleep in his crib even if he's still somewhat sick.  So far it's not going so well tonight :)  I need to go back up and try to settle down a screaming baby :)

St. Patrick's Day

Every St. Patrick's Day, a leprechaun visits our house.  We always try to build a trap for him and he ends up doing something mischievous.

This year Carter decided to build a trap on his own.  He spent almost a week building it and it took up a lot of our open space between the family room and kitchen.

The box is the trap.  I didn't really get to look inside but there was supposedly a frog dressed like a leprechaun to attract him, a jail, and lots of tape for the leprechaun to get stuck to.  Carter also set up carnival type games outside the trap so the leprechaun could have some fun.

Carter also set up scenes with some toys for the leprechaun to enjoy.

Carter wrote out two sets of questions for the leprechaun to answer.

The "leprechaun" was very tired this year and ended up not doing much mischief.  Instead of leaving any of his gold, he left this telescope from this toy stash :)

He did answer all of Carter's questions.

And left green footprints all along Carter's trap.

He also made the dinosaurs attack each other, turned around all the Star Wars characters, and moved trees on top of the mountains.

Maybe next year the leprechaun won't be so tired and do some fun things like he has the last couple of years (2013 and 2014).