Chatty Kathy

Sometimes its hard to remember to update the good. Let's talk about Rylan's speech. We realized when Rylan was 18 months or so that his speech was not up to the level of his pals of the same age. Its been a few years of trying to get the doctor to refer him for speech and then to get him evaluated. After 5 months of evaluations, he has been accepted into speech therapy and will start in August (don't get me started on the fact that they took 5 months to EVALUATE my kid, right in time to go on summer vacation). I worked with him at home during this time, we added a day of daycare to increase his socialization and we eventually moved him to an actual school where they have curriculum and teach Spanish and sign language. I don't know if it was all of the above or one of the above or if he merely just needed a little more time to develop, but my darling boy is speaking in paragraphs these days.

"I have a lot of time to make up for, wanna hear about this stick?"

He still needs speech, but the words are there. A year ago I couldn't have told you that. I was concerned there was something else going on in there that was holding his words back, but they are there. They just need a little tweaking. Its heaven to be able to talk to him. Its heaven for him to have the ability to tell me his needs. Its heaven for him to tell me his feelings and his fears. Its heaven to hear "I love you to the moon, mommy."  And, for all the physical attributes that Rob gave Rylan, I have, apparently, given him the gift of gab.

With good language, comes the not fun part. The part that corrected me when I said "damn" the other day. He said, "no mommy, DAMMIT." Whoopsie. Or the part that used my words against me. One day I was having a mommy meltdown and he told me to "get yourself put together." He has started yelling "5 more minutes" like a freakin teenager when its time to get up for school and he informed me that I shouldn't have ice cream. Wh-What??????

I'll take it. I'll take the same question 1,000 times in a row. I'll take the correcting me and using my words against me. He rocks the casbah and I can't wait till the whole world can understand him like Rob and I can. The whole world can understand a whole lot more, and for that, I am thankful.

Branson!!!!

I added it up last night and me and my little family have traveled in my poor, 180,000 miles, 2003 Escape for over 50 hours in the last month! Holy moly. This partially explains my infrequent blogging. The fact that I have adult ADD (not actually diagnosed by a medical professional, just by me) also can explain the blog break. After my grandpa's funeral, but before the salmonella outbreak, after the trip for Aunt Staci's graduation, but before the second trip to Kansas for a wedding, we ventured up to Branson, MO for a family vacation. Love my family. They are worth the car trip.

The amazing house that we rented

Happy Rob, tired Max enjoying the porch

Sister Tammy

Max has reached the "mom, quit taking pictures of me" phase of his childhood.

He will smile with his Aunt Tam

Cars swimmies? Check. Cars swim trunks? Check. 

Our niece, Zoe. Rylan's bff.

How awesome is this pool? How awesome does that guy floating in the pool look? 

Goggles are meant to be carried not worn, fyi.

Nephew Anthony. 

This was supposed to be a pic of all of Zoe, because she hilariously jumped in the water prior to applying massive amounts of sunblock that was pooling in white clumps all over her body, but I accidently zoomed it. She's just so darn cute that I still managed a good pic.

After an awesome first night, chillaxing in our rent house, and an excellent morn chillaxin in our pool, we ventured to Silver Dollar City. See that baby that my mom is holding? His name is Max and he had a fever at this point. Unaware that he had stomach death and thinking it was teething, we dragged the poor bear to Silver Dollar City with us.

Trolley shot. 

Our family. We did good for a spur of the moment pic taken by a complete stranger.

Rylan thought riding rides with his mom was super LAME, but Aunt Tammy makes it awesome

Luckily Zoe thinks I'm cool or I'd have issues. Well, more issues.

Angie, Clay, Zoe, and Rylan.....riding rides with them is cool too.

The next day the family wanted to chillax more at the house/pool, but Rob and I and all our low mature level glory wanted to go back to Silver Dollar City. Zoe came with us. She's so good with our kids and they act better with her there. She's like our 5 year old nanny, really.

Once again, we drug our poor feverish (though low fever at this point) kid.

Eventually the rest of the fam went back to Silver Dollar City and, of course, Rob and I went back for a third time in two days. Why are we always tired? oh, yeah, we can't relax.

Someone started feeling better

Happy camper. Shortly after this pic, or maybe while I was taking it, the awful poo-tuation started. 

We are home for a full two weeks before our next trip commences. Hopefully lots of blogging will be done and all my pent up "I should blog about that" ideas can finally happen. Your welcome in advance.

What. The. Frick.

Anybody that has read this blog knows about my family's ability to catch some nasty crap. Let me list a few of the major ones:

Swine Flu (Rylan)

Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever (me)

Herpangina (Rylan once and Max twice)

Fifth's Disease (Rylan)

That nasty stomach death Max had last week? SALMONELLA POISONING!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I've already gotten a phone call from the health department.

We've pretty much narrowed the source down to the kiddee pool on vacay. Max drank massive amounts of that pool water. Ewwwww

Totally expecting the locust infestation and plague shortly. 

 The good new is, this little boy is feeling lots better. I never thought I'd be so happy to see normal poo.

In other good news, Rylan is still nutso.