The Granty Boy Turns 5

My baby boy is FIVE! As I sit down to ponder my thoughts on this big milestone in his life, my heart is full and I find my self quite emotional. I hope that I can put into words all of what is in my mind right now.
I don't usually get very emotional when his birthday comes around. We usually will just reminisce on how far he has come and the advancements he's made. Can you believe this is where he started? And these are some of the better pictures with less tubing attached.This year, I have found out that a friend is going through a similar situation. However different or similar it may be, it has brought a lot of emotion to the surface and it just makes my heart ache for her and her family. I hope the best for them and their little boy!
I wonder sometimes how we made it through such a difficult time in our lives. It has not been an easy road to travel on, but it has definitely been worth every worry, every sickness, every hospitalization, every weird look, every stress. He is such a beautiful little boy. His laugh and smile bring so much joy to anyone he is around. I am so blessed to be the mother of such a special little boy.
I read a quote yesterday that has made the emotion come even closer to the surface as well.

"God doesn't give children with special needs to strong people; He gives children with special needs to ordinary, weak people and then gives them strength. Raising a child with special needs doesn't TAKE a special family, it MAKES a special family."

I don't feel like I am any stronger of a person that anybody else. I have people tell me that they admire me for being a mother of a child with special needs and all that I am still able to accomplish. While this is positive and uplifting, I don't always feel adequate to be put up to this challenge and all that comes with it. Even though I try to put on a pretty good face, don't like to admit my weaknesses. I am stubborn, I am independent, and I don't like to ask for help. But this journey has made me realize that as much as I would like, sometimes I can't do it all by myself. And I am truly grateful for everyone that has helped me out in any way over the past 5 years. I really couldn't have done it without the help of some amazing family members and friends! Our Granty boy really has helped to make our family extra special!

WHEW!
Ok....enough boobing....and onto all the festivities.

It's hard to know what theme to do for Grant's parties. We always try to make it fun, and kind of try to think of what a normal boy of that age would like. While we toyed around with different themes like Ninja Turtles, or Sports, or Trucks, etc. we decided to stick with what we know he likes. ICE CREAM! That boy could eat ice cream all day long, well he would eat period all day long if we let him. He was really funny in the weeks preceding his party. If you asked him what kind of party he was going to have, he would respond with "mmmm". He was having a "mmmm" party. "mmmm" to him means food, or more specifically ice cream. It was really cute! So we just decided to set up an ice cream bar at the house and let everyone make whatever kind of ice cream cone, sundae, banana split, etc. they wanted. It was a simple party, but he had a great time.

The invitationOnce you pulled the scoops of ice cream apart, it revealed the details of the party. It read: "I scream! You scream! Grant screams for ice cream! Come help us celebrate Grant's 5th birthday! When: Sundae, January 31st Time: 7:00pm Where: Grant's house

Grandma Dorene offered her lap as a seat for present time. He didn't want to sit in his chair to open presents. He was a wiggly little boy and kept squealing with excitement. It was cute to watch him and know that he knew it was HIS special day.

This picture shows a little bit of his excitement.

Great Grandma Gallier made him a quilt that was actually started by Great Great Grandma Ada Gallier about 55 years ago for Glenn, but never finished. A lot of the material is very old, but mixed with some new material as well. It's really warm and snuggly.

The ice cream bar-we had just about anything that you can think of that you would want on top of your ice cream. Sugar galore.

Grant's ready to dig in.

On his actual birthday, I took in some individual ice cream cups into his class to share with his friends. The kids were sure excited for their treat. Grant looks a little nervous in this picture. When I come into the classroom he thinks it's ok to fuss and cry. He is usually very calm and cooperative at school, as long as I'm not there. He wanted me to feed him the ice cream, not Miss Britt. She was a little sad that mom comes first before her. He normally wants his Miss Britt before anyone else. He loves her to pieces. Anyway...I only got this one picture before he started to freak out cause he wanted me to come feed him his ice cream. Demanding little boy! Good thing he's cute!

Overall he had a fun filled few days celebrating his birthday. He got a lot of handsome clothes, treats, yummy snacks and of course...ICE CREAM! Thanks to everyone that helped to make his birthday extra special.

8 months old

Our Hallie May is 8 months old! As the days and months continue to move on, our love for the this precious little girl grows and grows. She is such a sweet little baby. Just to look at her brings a smile to our faces. She's so much fun to have in our house! It's fun to watch her grow and develop. It's amazing how quickly they pick up new tricks. Speaking of new tricks, here are some of the new things that she is doing this month:

*She is able to support her chubby weight (21.11 lbs.-she has plateaued this month finally) on her hands and knees with a little help from us to get her to that position. She really tries to get up on her hands and knees all by herself, but ends up pushing herself backwards instead. It's kinda funny to watch. She hasn't really had the desire to be mobile until just recently. Rolling was a short lived trick. She only rolled for about 2 weeks and then decided that she didn't like it when she rolled onto her belly. So that was the end of that. She is rolling a lot more lately and I think this will help get her stronger and help encourage her desire to get moving a little more.

*She has figured out how to drink through a straw. She still hasn't figured out how to swallow all of it at the same time, so it ends up being kinda messy, but she really likes it. In this picture below, it looks like she's drinking Pepsi out of the straw, but it's apple prune juice. No we don't let our baby drink pop.

*I seem to be a little on the cautious side when letting her try new foods because I don't want to end up with a food allergy and not know what food it came from. But I've been branching out a little more this month letting her try new foods. She LOVES the biter biscuits and graham crackers. They sure do make a mess, but she loves them and it keeps her happy for quite a while. I usually give them to her while I'm making dinner. Definitely keeps her occupied.

*I think my most favorite new trick that she has learned this month is how to clap. It is so cute. She started doing it one day at the doctor's office. She started clapping when the nurse came in. Ever since she claps all the time.


*She has started to make these funny faces when she gets excited. You can kinda see it in the video as well. But she starts shaking and sticks her lower jaw out a little. It's a face that Mikkele used to make when she was little also, so we think it's pretty cute to see Hallie doing it and pulling some of the same faces as Mikkele.

*She has tubed put in her ears the day before she turned 8 months. We have been battling one ear infection after the next with her since November. So we finally got them in on Wednesday. She did great! All the nurses kept commenting on how well she was doing for being sleep deprived and hungry. And she came out of the anesthesia so well.

We wonder what she will be doing next month. Maybe she'll be crawling by then...maybe she'll have teeth by then...maybe she'll be feeling back to her 100% self and sleeping through the night again (I really hope so). But one thing I do know, is that she will continue to melt our hearts and make us fall more and more in love with her. We love you Hallie May!

New Year's Eve

We spent New Year's Eve at our friend's the Grover's. We had a fun night of dinner, crafts for the kids, party poppers, games, treats, and a lot of laughs.

The little girls sat and played with toys while the big kids got ready for the crafts.

Our first craft were these 2010 glasses that I found off this new blog I've been following. Love the ideas there. They were super easy and cute. The kids had fun wearing them to help bring in the new year.

The next craft was something that Tina came up with. They were disco balls that we made using a styrofoam ball, sequins, and straight pins. They were to resemble the ball that drops in Times Square. We didn't get any pics of the finished product, but they were cute.

The boys didn't get to stay up until midnight, so before they went to bed we did some party poppers to let them celebrate.

Thanks for the fun night guys!

All Caught Up...At Least For Now

I have finally finished 8, count them E-I-G-H-T, new posts. Try not to be too shocked. I have been SO far behind on my blogging. December is always busy, and blogging took a back burner. I have also been without my memory cards for the last little while. My external hard drive crashed at the beginning of December, so our friend Lance has been working trying to retrieve my lost files. I had almost 5 years worth of pictures on it. Quite depressing. He has been able to recover quite a few, but not all unfortunately. I have learned my lesson, and will back up my pictures better from now on. I am grateful that I have my blog to go back to look at for the last 2 years. Maybe this is what happened to my hard drive. Hum...

Batteries for Christmas

Grant has an enormous toy box that is FULL of toys that he had acquired over the last almost 5 years of his life. I really didn't want Hallie to get new toys for Christmas since so many of Grant's toys are still practically brand new, but just need new batteries. So we all decided that Hallie was going to ask Santa for new batteries to replenish the old toys. What an awesome idea that was. We finally got around to pulling some of those old toys out the other morning and replacing the batteries. She had so much fun! Grant was even excited to listen to some of the familiar toys that he hasn't heard in a while. As for me, I got a little noise overload listening to all the toys go at once. Good thing there's off buttons! Thanks Santa for helping us replenish our old toys. Her smile is worth way more than the cheap batteries.

Grant Gets a Ramp for Christmas

My brother Aaron had our name for Christmas this year. When he called to see what we wanted/needed, I told him that we were thinking about just asking everyone for money this year to help us put a ramp on the front of the house so we can get Grant in and out of the house easier. He took that comment and in turn orchestrated a massive project at our house the day after Christmas. The work crew-consisting of Dad, Aaron, Adam, Brandon, Grandpa Jones, and Jeremy-showed up at our house about 9:30 that morning and by 3:30 that afternoon it was finished. Well all except the paint. They did such an amazing job. It turned out great! I was amazed at how quickly it all came together. It was fun to watch the boys work. My mom and I helped by keeping the boys full and hydrated. And of course, Grant was there watching and supervising and was used as a consultant when needed.

We are so appreciative to all of those that came to help out! We really couldn't have pulled it off without you. You will never know how much this means to us!!!

Aaron channeling his inner rock star with a tape measure.

Grant doing his first inspection now that the deck part is done.

Getting the ramp ready to attach to the deck. I think Brandon is the only one really working in this picture. Everyone else grabbed a tool to look busy when they saw I was gonna take a picture.

Grant supervising in the warmth of the house.

ALL FINISHED! Grant's trying it out. He thinks it's pretty funny to go up and down.

The work crew sharing a round of root beers to celebrate the completion of the ramp.

Monday morning Adam, Brandon, and Taylor showed up and got the ramp ready for the painter to come. They put up a big tarp tent on the front of the house and put some propane heaters inside to get it warm to help the paint dry. (I forgot to get a picture of this which I am so bummed out about. I felt like we were E.T. with the big tent on the front of the house.) And then the painter went to work. The tent came down the next day and we had our finished product. It has been so nice to be able to just walk outside and down the ramp to get Grant on the bus or just out to the car. Now if all the snow would just melt away and spring would come so I can start working on adding new flower beds to replace the ones that had to go so we could build the ramp.

Christmas 2009

Christmas....What do I say....It was crazy, fun-filled, stressful, family centered, lots of travels, and I'm kinda glad it's all over. I think I stressed myself out a little too much by making a lot of homemade gifts this year trying to be a little more frugal than we usually are. This is the first Christmas ever that I haven't been working, so I felt like I could take on a lot of projects since money is tighter and I had extra time. Extra time...HA! I am really pleased however with all that I accomplished, but there are a few things that ended up being left undone (and still are). It reached a point that I just had to pull the plug on some of the last minute things and call it good enough.
My family was all in town for Christmas this year. It was the first time that we have spent Christmas with my parents in 3 years, and 5 years (I thin???) since we have spent it with my brother Aaron and his family. So it was fun to have the family all together again.
For Christmas Eve, we spent the first half of the night at my Aunt Jackie's house with the Jones family. We had dinner and then had a White Elephant gift exchange. Good times there, lots of laughs. Then we went to Jeremy's parents house for the rest of the night for more food and more presents. We ended the night at our house, where the kids opened their Christmas jammies. The theme of the year for the jammies were skulls. Mikkele is really into that right now and so I decided to make her some bottoms, which ended up sparking me making all 3 kids a set. (It's been a while since I've followed a pattern while sewing, so it was quite the experience. I think my mom is probably glad to have my sewing projects done for a while too. Lot's of time spent on the phone asking questions.) I think they turned out pretty stinking cute!

We stayed up so late Christmas Eve, that I actually had to wake Mikkele up at 8:30 to tell her Santa had come and she needed to get up.

The unveiling of Santa

The loot
left to right: Grant's stuff, Mikkele's stuff, and Hallie's stuff.

Mikkele's all ready to go outside and try out her new motorized scooter.

Grant is so hard to shop for. So we asked ourselves, "What does Grant like?" The answer to that was FOOD! So he asked Santa to bring him some yummy food. He got his wish. If you ask him what he got for Christmas, he'll tell you "Ummm" which means food, and most specifically ice cream.

Grant had to go on a scavenger hunt to find his present from Mom and "Dam". A once per month ice cream delivery certificate was taped to a carton of ice cream in the freezer.

Since our Hallie May is such a chunky monkey, and is growing out of her infant car seat so fast, she asked Santa for a new big girl car seat. While she looks happy and pleased with her car seat, she was much more interested in all the paper and ribbons that were everywhere.

We hope everyone had a wonderful Christmas!

San Diego Trip

I know you're thinking, "When did April go to San Diego? I don't remember you saying you were going there. And right before Christmas?" Well then you're right. Because I didn't go. Jeremy went with his Dad, brother, and brother-in-law along with my car and the laptop. Leaving me bored without the computer and stranded with a duct tape mobile 5 days before Christmas with half of my shopping still needing to be done. Lucky for him, Alisha ended up coming into town that weekend to finish up some Christmas shopping of her own. So I was able to use her truck and her awesome babysitting skills and got everything just about finished up. But enough whining from me, and onto the game.

It was the San Diego Chargers vs. the Cincinnati Bengals. Jeremy's brother Ryan is a HUGE Bengals fan. Has been since he was a kid. Even through a decade or more of losing seasons. So when the Bengals were coming kinda close to home, they decided to make a boys trip out of it. Glenn and Dave routed for the Bengals with Ryan, and Jeremy routed for the Chargers. He's started to follow them a little more this year because of fantasy football and really likes the team. Much to Ryan's dismay, the Chargers ended up winning with a field goal with like 30 seconds remaining in the game. Better luck next time Ryan. Jeremy, Glenn, and Dave getting ready to go into the stadium.

A picture from where their seats were in the stadium.

Ryan, Glenn, and Jeremy after the game. Notice how Jeremy is really the only one smiling. Ryan's trying to fake it, but lets face it...his team just lost. So in this picture he's actually looking at how far away the top of the stadium is and thinking about running up and jumping off. Why do these boys have to get to involved with a dumb game that they have no control of the outcome? I just don't get it.

Little Entertainers Christmas Program

Mikkele had another round of performances with her Little Entertainers group. This is the last time she will be performing since her teacher is having a baby soon and then moving to Las Vegas at the beginning of the summer. She has been thinking for a while that she wanted to take a break from the singing and focus more on piano anyways, so it worked out good. She didn't have as many performances this year, which was nice since Christmas is always a hectic time anyway. Mikkele had the longest solo this year. She did a pretty good job. I helped out quite a bit with the props this year as well. Good job kids.