Ry's Bday!

Around the time of Rylan's birthday, life became........very full. I felt very blessed because we were running our tails off, but it was a good kind of stressed. Lots of birthday plans, lots of playdates with friends, and lots of therapy appointments. Blogging had to go bye bye for a bit. I feel terrible, because I didn't blog on Rylan's birthday. I've never skipped a birthday. I am sure he's noticed.

I have a giganticly annoying minor case of OCD that isn't the kind that results in a clean house, but results in me not being able to skip 1.3 months of blogging and just say "okay, we had a good November/December-here's January." So, we're backing up. Have Fun!!!!

We had huge plans for the weekend after Rylan's birthday, so for the day of his birthday, we went to a playdate with our playgroup and took cupcakes. Then, we made whatever Rylan wanted for dinner, which was ham and pineapple pizza and applesauce and cupcakes. Kids got good taste.

Then we opened presents. I pushed this ABC puzzle on him because he needs ABC help with his Developmental therapy. Then he got a TON of legos. He loves legos*** Loves them. Really loves them.

Putting the ITTY BITTY TINY PIECES TOGETHER

For both kids birthdays, we kept it semi small (read: bought way too many presents but didn't have a party) because we had a trip to Branson planned to go to Silver Dollar City and stay at a nice house and celebrate their birthdays with their cousin, Zoe, that has a birthday in between Max and Rylan's.

Here are some pics of Max (2), Rylan (4), and Zoe (6) opening presents. No chaos. None at all.

Grammy made a dairy free cake and it was delish. All of the presents were so nice and we loved our cozy house that we rented. Loved it. Stay tuned for Day 2!

***I am not emotionally ready for legos. They are so freakin small and all really wants is the little lego men.

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.