Celebrating and Dreaming

Well we have had two speech therapy sessions, a birthday and lots of fun the last few weeks.
This week has been crazy busy with trips to the zoo, the farm, The Great Cloth Diapers Change, doctors appointments and just normal day errands. It was a great way for us to celebrate Earth day week. We decided we were going to take the kids to the zoo for Treyton's birthday but it was going to rain all day on that day so we went early. Both Avalynn and Treyton love to see and learn all about the animals and it was Earth day weekend so we got all kinds of goodies. We also took a little trip out to a new friends farm. I can not wait for the day that we have our own farm and are living out our dream in a very sustainable way. Our kids thrive on being out in nature and playing freely. Yesterday they were able to play with chickens and baby lambs and bossing baby goats around because they were being mean to the week old lamb. I love to watch them pure joy on their faces when they get to climb a pasture fence gate and run as fast as they can in the pasture. Climbing a fence gate is apparently easier then climbing anything at the park. Avalynn and Treyton were climbing with no fear at all and were completely free to do so. That kind of freeness is so refreshing.

Treyton turned two! It's hard to believe he is already two. My sweet hard headed little man is growing up way too fast. In just two therapy sessions we have already seen so many improvements in his talking. He now prolly says between 10-15 words. That is a huge jump from the not even 5 he was saying 2 weeks ago. It is so awesome to hear him actually use words. He still doesn't really like to use them all the time but that will change I'm sure. Treyton has also decided that he is too big for diapers. He really hates having to put one on the go to bed but I don't want to have to change sheets everyday so he wears it.

Avalynn is still doing preschool type things just not as structured as wee were being. The more I read and learn about "unschooling" the more I love it. We are basically letting Avalynn decide what she wants to learn and when. If she doesn't want to learn till she is 7 that's cool she doesn't have to learn till she is 7. She has already expressed that she want a sewing machine and hot glue gun for her birthday so she can learn how to make things. So come September my then 4yr old will be learning to sew and use a hot glue gun properly and safely. Avalynn loves to learn about animals but not from books she wants to see it and play with it. Yesterday she was chasing chickens trying to pick them up. She can point out which ones are roosters and hens and which ones lay different colored eggs. It's awesome how fast she has learned these things. So for us unschooling is how we are going to be learning.

Tony and I have started learning how to make soaps. It is very fun. However not as easy as we thought it was going to be. We are not giving up though. Tony is still loving coffee and making beer. He is getting really good at making beer and really enjoys it. He will also be heading out to camp pull a shot in June for a week. He is beyond excited about 30/30 giving him this opportunity. I'm still learning everything I can about breastfeeding/lactation process and childbirth. I'm also loving learning about sustainable living/homesteading. It's truly amazing how far our world has come from these practices and we as a family are wanting to get back to this simpler way of living. Simpler doesn't always mean easier or less work and that is what we are looking forward to.

Evaluation Day

Well we finally had Treyton's speech and overall evaluation today. He is pretty much right on with all of his development except speech. He does have about a 40% delay putting him at a developmental age of 14ish months for his speech. So we are going to be doing speech therapy once a week for an hour at a time in our home. It was so fun watching him interact with the ladies doing the evaluations. It normally takes him a little bit to warm up to any one new. Today he was pretty much instantly drawn to what they were doing. He did most everything they were asking him to do. He is still very stubborn and if he doesn't think it's fun or interesting he isn't going to do it. Talking over the evaluations and what the ladies saw and thought about each thing was amazing. They really got a true read on Treyton today. He played just like he would have if it were just us. Our 6 month goals will be for Treyton to be making more letter sounds and word approximations, which would be like saying tup for cup. We are very confident that he will meet these goals and surpass them.

Treyton's Next Step

We had our meeting to get everything set up for Treyton's next evaluation. This evaluation will be more involved then the last. We will have a speech pathologist and a developmental therapist come to our house to do the evaluation. I am very glad we are able to have to assessment done in our home. I believe this will make it so much easier to get a true read on where his over all development is at. As soon as we are done with the evaluation we will have a meeting to go over what the assessments the two specialists and our service coordinator have done. This will tell us if we are going to be enrolled into the Early Intervention program further or if we just need to do a few more things with him on our own. In order for us to be accepted into the program Treyton has to have a 30% or higher delay in one of his developmental areas. As much as I would like for us to get a little help with developing Treyton's speech I really hope that we don't get accepted because that would mean Treyton doesn't have a 30%or higher delay and that would be amazing. I am very happy with our experience that we have had with everyone at the Family and Child Connection and Early Intervention office. They have all been extremely nice and helpful. They have worked very fast get everything done for us so that if Treyton needs to be fully enrolled into the EI program we can get it done sooner rather then later. I am very anxious to see what our next evaluation will say but in the mean time we will continue to do exactly what we have been doing to help Treyton to learn to talk.

New Year New Routine

I have finally figured out how our weeks are going to look with homeschooling. Avalynn and I are both very excited to actually get started. We are going to be our own alphabet study. We will have a new letter every week, which will be introduced on Mondays. Tuesdays we will go to story time at the library and pick out books that start with our letter. Wednesdays we will learn about an animal that starts with our letter as well. Thursdays will be craft day with the craft involving the letter of the week. Fridays we will go back to the library for story time. We will also review what we have learned during the week. We may add in learning numbers at the same time but I haven't decided on that yet. We will be learning American Sign Language (ASL) for each letter and animal we learn about. Our school time will be for a short time each day. We will be using everyday experiences for learning as well. Our trips to the store will now be learning opportunities. I am making letter cards that we will take with us to play letter search and find. I'm hoping this will keep Avalynn happy and busy while shopping and help reinforce what we are learning at home.

Treyton will most likely be right in the middle of all of this too. I'm thinking that these letter studies each week will help him with his speech. I've done some research and asked a few speech therapist friends what I should be doing and hearing letter sounds is at the top of the list. We have been doing pretty much every thing else that is suppose to help. I am also looking into getting him evaluated by early intervention so that we can make sure that we are doing the best possible thing for him. I will also be talking to our pediatrician about if we may need to get his tongue clip because of the slight tongue tie that he has. I'm really hoping we don't have to do that but it is looking like that is part of our problem. The tongue tie could be restricting his tongue from making certain letter sounds and blends making it harder for him to form words.

We are all looking forward to what this next year has in store for us.