Redheads

One of Carter's friends from school came over today to play. Carter describes Sophie as his friend with the same color of hair as him. Sophie's mom told me that their teachers told her that Carter and Sophie sit together at storytime and that Carter puts his arm around Sophie. They are quite a cute couple :)


Sophie's little brother Blake (13 months) and her mom Lauren came as well. We also invited over Kelly and her little boy Charlie (18 months). Kelly went to high school with my friend Sarah and just moved to Nashville from Atlanta a couple of months ago. Sarah introduced us over email and we met up this week at the Brentwood Library storytime.

Here are Rylan and Charlie (one is a little more of a ham for the camera) ...


The pool of balls was a big hit. I think that all but about 20 of the balls eventually ended up out of the pool though!


After our playdate and lunch, I took the boys outside to play for awhile before nap. After a few cold days, it's warmed up again. Though I think Sunday we have a chance of snow.





After nap we went to Publix to get a few groceries. The racecar cart was a treat for my boys that are used to the boring carts at Walmart!


Carter hasn't tried to get out of crib yet so we've been leaving him in it. I had planned to get him a big boy bed (probably a twin) once we moved into this house. I haven't gotten around to shopping for a bed yet so we've mentioned to Carter a few times that we were going to take the side off his crib to change it into a toddler bed. (It seems like a good transition step anyway.) We hadn't gotten around to it yet but then Carter asked for me to do it after his nap today. So here's Carter tonight in his "big boy bed", as he calls it. And those are pillows for him in case he rolls out :)


Carter seems to be asleep now. We'll see how the night goes!

Nashville Library Storytime

We ventured downtown to the main Nashville library for their storytime today. We met up with Missy and Suzy and their kids. This was the first time we'd been their for storytime and I was really impressed. There are puppets, juggling, singing, and a few books.

At the end the kids get to come up to the stage for a song. Carter went right up and Will found him to sit next to him (Rylan got up there put got shy and came back to me) ...


I got a little taste of how sweet it's going to be when Carter has a class that performs something (I know he wasn't doing anything here, but I felt like the parent videoing their kids recital) ...

We stuck around for awhile afterwards and let the kids play. The kids discovered this old mouse hole that now has a little house around it with a plaque.

No one was shy about sticking their fingers in there!

Happy Valentine's Day

Carter had PDO today so he got to have a party and exchange Valentines with his friends. In addition to all the lollipops attached to the kids' Valentines, his teachers gave him a bag of Hershey's Kisses. Carter has never had that large of a piece of chocolate before (the most he's had is a few M&Ms). He put one in his mouth, got really large eyes, started rubbing his belly, and said "I like that, Mama".


This is the pouch Carter used to collect his Valentines ...


The craziest Valentine Carter got is this huge chocolate bear! There is no way he'll be eating this!


Sophie's mom is a photographer and she put my cute Valentine of Carter to shame. Isn't this adorable!!!



Sophie and Carter are so cute together with their matching hair!

A few weeks back I came across an awesome deal for a Step 2 table and chairs set sold by JCPenney. A couple of the deal blogs I check regularly posted about it. It was priced at $15 and after a coupon code, tax, and shipping, I think it was going to cost $21. I ordered it knowing it was probably a pricing error and they may not honor the advertised price.

Well, it was an error. They apparently sold as many as they had in stock at that price and then decided to cancel the remaining orders. As consolation, I was sent a code for $50 off a $50+ purchase (at no cost). Score!

I ended up ordering 3 Melissa and Doug toys for the boys that totaled $50 and only had to pay shipping (about $6). These ended up being the boys' Valentine's Day gifts ...





My mom also sent the boys some Valentine gifts. One thing she sent are these dog banks that the boys enjoyed playing with this afternoon.

Rylan's is a little more spastic ...

I gave each boy a few coins to play with. Carter took his to Brian this evening and asked him if he made that money. (Carter doesn't like that Brian has to go to work so I'm always explaining that he works to make money to buy us stuff.) Anyway, it made us laugh.

Valentines

Here are the Valentines that Carter and I made for his classmates and friends. This is the first year he's done Valentines and I think these turned out really cute.


Because I wanted to get Carter more involved with making the Valentines, I got a little crafty with the envelopes. I had bought some celery to make etouffee and I remembered seeing this idea on another blog. You use the base of the celery to make a rose print.



Carter stamped all the envelopes to make these cute roses. I added some leaves and then Carter helped me stamp a message on all the envelopes (we aren't supposed to put names on the
Valentines to make it easier for the kids to distribute).


Hopefully these fit in whatever the kids use as mailboxes tomorrow!

Speech & Language Evaluation Report

We had our meeting with the William County Schools speech teacher today to discuss her evaluation. All her "findings" were consistent with how we feel Carter speaks.

Here are some excerpts from the Speech and Language Evaluation Report ...


Articulation/Phonology

Formal Assessment: The Goldman-Fristoe Test of Articulation 2 was administered to identify the sounds which Carter has difficultly producing. The test requires the student to name single pictures which measure sound use in the initial, medial and final positions of single words. Carter made 58 errors on this subtest placing him in the 6 percentile when compared to his chronological peers.

Sound errors noted in the standardized testing were analyzed for error patterns. Noted patterns are listed below.

Final Consonant Deletion (do for dog)
Syllable Reduction (elfent for elephant)
Cluster Reduction (nake for snake)
Stopping (pish for fish)
Velar Fronting (tup for cup)
Gliding (wook for look)

Intelligibility of Conversational Speech: Fairly intelligible (there are several instances where the student is not understood)

Based on these assessments Carter's articulation/phonology is not considered to be within normal limits.

Language

Informal Assessment: Carter was able to understand and follow directions, use a variety of vocabulary and put words together to form sentences. He was observed to be using him for he and was not observed using +ing at this time.

Based on these assessments, Carter's language is considered to be within normal limits.

Effect on Educational Performance

Based on data collected, the suspected disability does adversely affect educational performance.

Diagnostic Impressions

Carter does meet state standards for the following impairments: Articulation Impairment


So the plan is for Carter to attend a 3o minute solo session with the speech teacher once a week. Also, a special education teacher will come to his PDO class once a week for 45 minutes and interact with him and the other students. She was also at the meeting and said she'd be helping the other kids understand what he's saying and the kids usually never even realize who she's actual there to help. Random, but she was roommates with one of Carter's teachers at UT!

Carter will be doing his speech therapy on Mondays at noon. There were only a couple of times available this late in the school year but I think this time will work out well because it still allows us to hang out with our friends after gymnastics on Monday for a few hours and leaves us free on Wednesdays and Fridays for playdates.

Poop in the Potty!

I've been really lazy about potty training lately. We worked on it a lot when we were in the apartment but then we moved and had lots of visitors and then everyone has been sick for the last month. So after a lot of excuses, I decided to push Carter with it again (he says he still wants to wear diapers).

This morning I put Carter in underwear and he proceeded to pee twice in his pants (and never peed in the toilet). Then, right after lunch, he told us that he needed to poop and that he needed to go to the little potty (we have a potty chair for him but have been trying to encourage him to use the toilet lately). Brian jumped to it and took Carter upstairs and he proceeded to poop on the potty! This was the first time! When he's worn underwear in the past, he'll just poop and then tell me he's pooped in his underwear.

Carter ended up wearing a diaper the rest of the day because he then took a nap and then we were out the rest of the evening. Hopefully tomorrow we'll have some successful pees on the potty too!

First Shiner

Rylan got his first black eye yesterday (kind of - the bruising extends just at the edge of his eye). This isn't the best picture, but the best I got today.


I was making our bed yesterday so the pillows were on the floor. Rylan decided he wanted to dive onto the pillows and overshot them. He headbutted the bedside table and got the knob with the corner of his eye. Luckily he missed his eyeball!

I took the kids to Brilliant Sky Toys and Books today for storytime. We met up with Missy and Elizabeth and a couple of other moms. After the book and craft, the kids played with all the toys the store has out. The kids had a blast playing with tons of toys we don't have. One of the favorites was this cool marble run.



And here is a super cute video from this evening ...

PDO Crafts

Carter has been making some cute Valentine crafts at Parents' Day Out this week. They are having a party on Tuesday and are exchanging Valentines. Carter and I have been getting crafty and made some pretty neat ones from him. I'll post pictures once we are done!




This month the kids are learning about jobs people do that help the community. Today they learned about firemen, last Thursday was policemen, and Tuesday was doctors. The kids made this really neat doctor's kit. When I picked Carter up from school, he took it out and described how to use everything. I tried to get him to tell me what everything is for again on video, but of course, it didn't go as well. But here's what I got ...

Carter

Here are some things Carter is doing right now before I forget about them:

When Carter wakes up in the morning, he'll call out "Mama, Mama, Mama". If I don't go to him quick enough, he'll start calling out "Meghan!"

If Rylan joins in calling "Mama", Carter will yell "No, my Mama!"

Ever since Carter's speech evaluation, he likes to emphasize each syllable of some words. The main word he does is "banana". He'll say, "Mama, listen ... ba-na-na."

We went to Brixx for pizza a few weeks ago. One of the pizzas had spinach on it. Carter decided it tasted like bumble bees. I have no idea why. But now whenever we get pizza, he wants the green stuff that tastes like bumble bees.

Carter knows which way is right and which way is left. I quiz him on it all the time and he always gets it right.

One of Carter's favorite songs to sing is "The Farmer in the Dell". He likes to change the lyrics though sometimes. The farmer often takes a fireman, snowman, duck, or the ABCs.

Happy Birthday, Elmo!

After gymnastics this morning, we all went to Barnes & Noble for storytime. Unfortunately Judah was sick and missed out on the fun, but the rest of us got to celebrate Elmo's birthday! Rylan was so psyched! We have never watched Sesame Street but he knows Elmo and screams his name whenever we see him on clothing or a toy.