Sunday with the Clarkes

The Clarkes invited us over for dinner on Sunday. It was Yum-Yum! The kids had a great time running around causing havoc all evening. It is so nice to be able to go to a friends house and not have to worry about how "wild" your kids are because they know all about "wild" kids and letting them be wild together means "fun" for everyone! Right? These pics were taken at the end of the night so Sadie was sleepy and ready for bed. The rest of the gang was still pumped so they were being goofy. I think Scooter and Bethany have started their own gang throwing up their gang symbols and all. On no wait....maybe thats itsy bitsy spider....who knows?
Thank you guys for a delicious meal, including the brownies, and also thanks for the great company. We will plan on doing this again. Next time at our house in a month or so.

To The ZOO

We didn't have any plans for Labor Day weekend, so on Saturday we decided to take the kids to the zoo. It was a good time, Sadie was ALL over the place (we had her on a "leash" part of the time, but then we gave in) She gave us a fun work out. Scooter loved the day and his favorite was the monkeys. He is at my favorite age so far. I have really enjoyed the three year old stage. He is old enough to actually do things with and understand what he can and can't do, but he is still so young that seeing things through his young eyes is still so much fun!







































Of course Sadie enjoyed the playground more than the animals, so we let her explore for a while.

Sadie Visited Dr. Puri for her 4 month follow up

Sadie saw Dr. Puri last week. Again, it was so nice to hear him say how pleased he was with Sadie's improvements, even from just 4 months ago. We discussed a little bit about 2 seizures Sadie had had just recently due to an elevated fever. She had a bad sinus infection a few weeks ago which lead to a high fever which triggered two seizures that were each about a minute long and four hours apart. But once we got the Tylenol working (This time Motrin didn't do the trick) the fever came down and no more seizures. She was put on a 14 day antibiotic and the sinus infection was gone in two days. Dr. Puri had told us before and reminded us again that Sadie has a very low tolerance for fever induced seizures. He said that it was nothing to worry about and that if her fever goes up again and we don't catch it early enough to prevent it, then she could seize again. But he also reassured us that if the seizures came and went with the fever then her "typical" seizures that she experienced last fall are still being controlled, so that was a relief to hear. He was very happy to see her motor skills, interactions, and over all development. He also wants to put a plan in motion to start weaning Sadie off of another med. He noticed how involved her gums were from all of the Dilantin she is on. (thickening of the gums is a major side effect of Dilantin) so he referred us to an awesome pediatric dentist, not just a dentist that works on kids, but a pediatric dentist which specializes in working JUSTwith kids and ones who possibly have other medical issues as well. So we are planning on seeing her soon. The only real concern Dr. Puri had at this time was Sadie's language delay. We told him that we were a little concerned as well, however, we were starting to see some real gains in that area now too. For example she is pointing to some objects when we name them, she is following one step directions, she always turns to her name now, she points and vocalizes her wants, she is babbling all the time and when you ask her "what?" she will repeat the exact same babble pattern. It is so funny to hear her do that. It's like SHE knows what she is saying so why don't we? She plays games with us and interacts with us all the time now. The best part is even though she still isn't saying a lot of words, she is saying more and more words each few weeks. So far we have heard her say: yeah, no, k-kee (cookie),pay (play), bayket (blanket), jacket, top it, (stop it to Scooter of course) and now she is trying to count : uuu, oo, ee, (one, two, three) and she even points her finger up when she does it like she's counting. If you ask her what a duck does she will flap her little bent arms up and down. She is also expressing herself through more signing. She had her follow up with the audiologist a few weeks ago too and all of the hearing results came back fine as well. So for right now Dr. Puri wants us to continue to keep her in speech therapy (of course) and also do more signing. He also said that we need to schedule having her evaluated at Riley in Indianapolis within the next six months just to see what they have to say about how to better improve her language development. It might end up being more like 10 months now that I am back to work, but we'll see. For right now Dr. Puri said he wants to do an EEG (Sept.) and an MRI (Oct.) to look at things again and depending how those turn out, then hopefully we'll be able to wean another med. which means she'll be down to only ONE! Yeah! It has been 11 months since her seizures first started and we've only seen two due to fever. It has only been 8 months since her therapies started and we can't believe all of the "catching up" she has accomplished! We Couldn't Be Happier!

Happy Birthday Sadie Ray! She is now TWO!!!

Miss Sadie Ray is now two years old! She had lots of fun with her family and friends. There were cupcakes and ice cream. Lots to do , see, and play. Daddy helped with opening the presents. Scooter helped with opening everyone's treat bags. We had the jumping house out and all the outside toys. The basement was full of kids and kid stuff. It was a party alright!

What I've been up to.

Well, I am teaching again! I was offered a position with Greater Clark Schools ( I.U.S. was still conducting interviews on their opening, so I had to call I.U.S. and inform them that I would not be able to accept the position if it were offered to me because I already had a job.) I have been titled the "new" kindergarten teacher at Utica Elementary. It has been a very eventful three weeks. My life has had to adapt to a whole new change. Thank you to my family for being there for me. It is a new road (once traveled) that I will travel down again, this time with two toddlers in tow. The last time I was in a classroom teaching position I didn't have two toddlers keeping me busy too. So life will keep me on my toes or tripping over them depending on the day, but I can truly say it was nice to get a paycheck again! Utica is an awesome school with a very friendly staff. My parents are absolutely great and Mr. Chinn has been so helpful and understanding. I know this year will be a new chapter to my teaching career with lots of memorable experiences.