I'm a bad blogger......the long update

I know I haven't been blogging AGAIN. I just don't know what is going on with me and my lack of blogging. Well besides the fact our life always seems to be on fast forward, but it is going to calm down in the next few weeks, but then starts to be back up and on the go in Oct.


Pictures to come soon. I promise! Well I feel like we had 5 million birthday parties for Kayleigh. One in NC that she shared with Garret while we were visiting our families. One on her actual birthday with the FCC kids. Then her birthday party with her friends almost two weeks later. It felt like she had tons of parties, plus she says she had a party at soccer because we took a special snack to practice since it was the day of her birthday and they sang to her. In her mind she had 4 birthday parties...too many for me. Plus I had a training the night of her birthday, so we went out to eat the day before her birthday for her birthday. Then the next weekend we went out to eat for my birthday, but of course we told the waitress it was for both of our birthdays since it wasa the weekend in between them. Then the Friday after my birthday we went out to eat with the Wellmans and celebrated 4 bithdays... Kayleigh's on the 12th, Darren's on the 20, Mine(Amy's) on the 21st, and Crystal's on the 22nd.


So now that I am listing August birthday's lets just add them all...JT's (Kris brother) and Kayla (our neighbors The Swanks youngest daughter) on the 1st, Nana's (my Mom) on the 5th, Tiffany's (My cousin's) on the 9th, Kayleigh's on the 12th, Jeanne's (my friends Tracey's Mom) and Christine (the Mom at the Swanks house)on the 15th (or somewhere close to that), Darren's (the Wellman's oldest son) on the 20th, Amy's (me!) on the 21st, Crystal's (the Wellman Mom) and my Aunt Laura's on the 22nd, Jeff (my friend Dana's husband) on either the 20th or 22nd I know it is right before or right after mine, my Aunt Lu's on the 24th, Johnny's (Kris' step Dad) on the 25th, Justin's (my half brother) on the 26th. I think that is all, but I also feel like I missed some people as well. If I never meet anyone else born in August I will be doing just fine! It feels like Christmas when I look at how much we spend if we bought everybody a gift, which is why we have stopped in the past few years. I used to, but we just can't do it any more.

Kayleigh has been doing soccer since we returned from NC, (I know I still need to get those pictures on here!) and Kris is the assistant coach. The last half of the season I have stopped attending practices to help me to feel a little less stressed. Well I guess I really stopped attending originally because I had children staying later for FCC, but now it seems much easier to stay home with Garret only.

Kayleigh is taking dance on Tuesday and Wednesday this year and has Girl Scouts every other Friday, so we are looking forward to life calming down when soccer stops since that is practice two nights a week and games every Saturday.

Speaking of FCC I have pretty much filled all 6 of my spots on most days now, plus helping a few friends in the evenings as well. On Thursday nights I have two extra boys (2yrs old and 6yrs old) until 8pm. Plus I have been helping another friend Tuesday and Wednesday nights and the occasionally Thursday with her two boys (1yr old and 9 yrs old) until around 11:30pm. But, I just received a call today to say another family is going to take the boys that are here until 11:30pm most nights so I will just be the backup and then starting at the end of Nov I will have them 1 day a weekend. Her husband is deployed right now and will return in December just in time for Kris to leave. All of this late night childcare while I still have kids arriving at 6:30am M-F. Anybody who knows me well, knows I do not function well without sleep, so it is a blessing that someone else can help her out most days.

Kayleigh is doing great in school this year and we are really happy with her teacher. She seems to enjoy going to school and is making new friends. She is doing much better at reading and sounding out words to spell now that she has to do that at school and at home. Her classroom blog is http://www.1stquest.blogspot.com/ They do not put pictures of the kids or any of their names on the blog, but she tries to post everyday about what they did in school and then she puts a slide show of some of their work about once a week. Kayleigh loves to look at the blog at home and last week when they went to computers at school the whole class looked at the blog and she was even more excited. Somehow seeing it at school was much cooler than at home on our computers.

Garret is starting to talk a ton. He will answer questions and say lots of different words, but only in context. He will NOT repeat words after us like most children his age do. This means he does not tell us body parts or animal sounds yet, but the doctor was VERY impressed with his verbal skills. He said that he is around a 2 yr old age level for verbal skills.

Speaking of levels…we did take him to be evaluated by early intervention when he turned 14 months because he refuses to walk. They did two separate types of test that day. One gave results based on age and the other gave him a number score. For the age level tests most (cognitive, fine motor, and I can’t remember the other one) of them he scored 18months on, which was the highest he could score. He did score 15 months on self help skills because he does not use a spoon and fork consistently. He scored 14 months on social interactions because he was marked down for not having separation or stranger anxiety. I am excited he does not have either one of them, so oh well if it made him score his actual age at the time. For gross motor he scored at a 10 month level, so 4 months less than his actual age, while everything else was so advanced. But, to qualify for services he had to score a 77 or below on the number test. They only told me his score for motor skills for that test and he scored an 80. It sort of upset me because that was the only test that combined two different skills. He was tested on fine and gross motor skills for the number score, so he received all of the points he could for fine motor which brought his total score up to just barely not qualifying. The physical therapist was suppose to call me and schedule a time to come and evaluate him at our house since he was so close to qualifying, but it has been almost a month and still no phone call. He has improved in walking around furniture and holding our hands, so we have seen a huge improvement, so I am not as concerned any more.

We had his 15 month well baby appointment this past Friday and his doctor did every test he could to test his joints and muscle strength and said he is one of the strongest babies he has seen, so he agrees with us that Garret just does not want to walk. Which means he can, but is just too stubborn to do it. The doctor feels crawling works much better for Garret, than walking at this point, so he will walk when he wants to. He also climbs everything possible and has NO fears for diving off of things. Most of our friends have boys, so I call them and they laugh at me. I have developed a saying that I just have to repeat over and over again at times…”He is a boy and boys really do live.” We have a few friends here that we knew in Germany and they knew Kayleigh when she was this age and she was so clam and stayed in the same area for hours playing, but not Garret. Garret is continuing to prove that he will do everything opposite that Kayleigh did. It sort of makes us feel like new parents again even though he is our 2nd child. Any time someone new sees him crawl they are amazed at how fast he crawls around. If you turn your head for a second he will be gone. Last night at soccer practice he was determined he needed to be in the middle of the field with the big kids, as they were kicking the balls. Eleven 5-6yrs olds with cleat kicking near Garret’s head his not a good idea!

Kris is adjusting well to his new job and has made huge improvements to the section, but there is still plenty more work for him to get the section back to passing level. But, he has done pretty well about trying not to stay at work late every night. It does help that two days a week he either has to take or pick Kayleigh up from dance, so he has to leave work on time on those days. He is getting very close to finishing his Bachelor’s degree in World military history. If all goes as planned he will be done around the end of this year. He is very excited. A few months ago he took his last class for his CCAF (the Air Forces associates’ degree). He will have his CCAF graduation in a few weeks.

As for me…I have been recovering again. I had finally regained most of my energy from my surgeries, but then I hurt my back. After two trips to the ER over Labor Day weekend and a MRI I found out I have 3 bulging disks in my lower back and a pinched nerve on my left side. So, I was on tons of pain killers, but I have weaned myself off of them. I also start physical therapy tomorrow, so we will see how that goes. I know most of you know, but a few of you don’t…The surgeries I had done at the end of June were a hysterectomy and a bladder repair. I am feeling much better form them. The doctors feel that because of having to limit my activity so much after my surgery may have contributed to part of my back problems. So, my physical therapy will hopefully help me to regain my strength and muscle tone. A few people have asked us recently if we will be having any other child, so we will not have any more children naturally, but adoption is not out of the question for us, but definitely no time soon! With Kayleigh and Garret we have our hands completely full and overflowing.

Garret is turning 15 months old tomorrow and we are using a babysitter for the first time this Thursday, unfortunately Kris and I both have different things we have to do, but we are using this as our trial run and are looking forward to having a date night very soon! She came over last night to see how we put the kids to bed, so I’m sure everything will go fine. She will be here for less than 3 hrs and half of that time the kids will be in bed.
Saturday is Kayleigh’s last soccer game, but unfortunately I will have to miss it. I have a training to go to for most of the day. But, the best part of the day is that the females from the Wellman family (Crystal, Sharon, and Jenna) will be arriving. Jenna will be having a fun sleepover with Kayleigh, while Crystal, Sharon, and I enjoy another concert. We are going to see Toby Keith and Montgomery Gentry along with some other opening acts, so it will definitely be a fun night.

Well if you actually read all of this, you are sort of caught up with what we have been up to lately.