Not as in moving houses....
But as in We're moving blogs!
I'm not able to maintain this site from my phone anymore so we've created a blog where that's possible instead.
I hope you'll join us here at The PERKS of Love
Lilypie Waiting to Adopt tickers
Sunday, September 20, 2015
Sunday, August 23, 2015
Back to school
We are now 2 weeks into school.
Easton started at a different elementary school this year because our district decided to change up the special education department. I truly believe though, its going to be a great fit.
There is a bathroom in the classroom which has helped with our potty training efforts. In fact the last few days Easton has come home accident free after wearing underwear all day! We are well on our way my friends.
Educationally he seems to be retaining things well. Going slow and a lot of repetition has made the difference. One letter and one number per week and hes really catching on.
We've had a few glitches with Easton testing his limits in the classroom. What I love is that the staff is so open and calls me frequently for ideas on redirection.
I'm so hopeful for this new setting!
We are making progress in speech as well. Easton attempts to verbalize so much more than he used to. Just this week hes started working on 2 word phrases like 'ball please' 'my turn' 'go car' 'more bubbles ' etc.
In fact this morning I was fixing my hair and knocked over a bottle, without any prompting Easton said 'uh oh'. I could have just squealed! He is getting it! These aren't just words anymore, there is meaning attached and he understands. Sure its taking longer than most children, but I honestly couldn't be more proud!
Here's my crazy school and bus loving kiddo on his first day of 1st grade!
And 1 more for good measure because I love his sweet smile
Easton started at a different elementary school this year because our district decided to change up the special education department. I truly believe though, its going to be a great fit.
There is a bathroom in the classroom which has helped with our potty training efforts. In fact the last few days Easton has come home accident free after wearing underwear all day! We are well on our way my friends.
Educationally he seems to be retaining things well. Going slow and a lot of repetition has made the difference. One letter and one number per week and hes really catching on.
We've had a few glitches with Easton testing his limits in the classroom. What I love is that the staff is so open and calls me frequently for ideas on redirection.
I'm so hopeful for this new setting!
We are making progress in speech as well. Easton attempts to verbalize so much more than he used to. Just this week hes started working on 2 word phrases like 'ball please' 'my turn' 'go car' 'more bubbles ' etc.
In fact this morning I was fixing my hair and knocked over a bottle, without any prompting Easton said 'uh oh'. I could have just squealed! He is getting it! These aren't just words anymore, there is meaning attached and he understands. Sure its taking longer than most children, but I honestly couldn't be more proud!
Here's my crazy school and bus loving kiddo on his first day of 1st grade!
Friday, August 7, 2015
Someone call the tooth fairy!!
We've had lots of set backs and giant obstacles placed in our path the past few weeks so I haven't felt much like bloging. Our adoption, eastons behavior, and even school has caused some major grief in our household, but today we had something worth celebrating!
Easton lost a tooth. Now this is the 4th one, but the first I was able to pull and keep. All the others fell out and went mia.
The permanent tooth is starting to grow in already but hes so cute with a snaggle tooth!
Easton lost a tooth. Now this is the 4th one, but the first I was able to pull and keep. All the others fell out and went mia.
The permanent tooth is starting to grow in already but hes so cute with a snaggle tooth!
Wednesday, July 15, 2015
What it means to be included
Earlier in the summer on a short vacation, we discovered eastons fascination with going under water and his lack of fear for pools, creeks, lakes, you name it!
As a parent that is so scary when your child hasn't the slightest clue how to swim!
Immediately after getting home we set Easton up with swimming lessons. We called the local swim coach who felt confident her daughter could teach Easton. He's not always the easiest kid to teach ha ha but as long as she was willing we were thankful!
Over the past few weeks, we've been going twice a week. After the first lesson he started learning to kick his feet. Now he asks to go swimming by signing water and saying kick kick kick!
Each week he progressed and we saw him learn how to maneuver his body in water whichwas quite tthe task in the beginning.
We still leave a small life jacket on him because he has difficulty keeping his head above water, but as long as he's wearing it, he doggy paddles his little heart out!
Its the sweetest thing to see others invest their time in your child and to see such a positive outcome. Today was his last lesson and I never expected the end of it to have such an impact on me.
You see as we were saying our goodbyes the swim coach said to me, you should let him be on the swim team next year, we'd love to have him! I was so taken back because Easton has never participated in an organized sport due to his amazing ability to lose all focus and become quite the distraction!
She didn't care though, she saw a child, my child, who loved water and they wanted to see him involved. I asked what it entailed and for his age they allow the instructors to be in the water with him, he can use a flotation device, and they set up little meets where he would get ribbons.
Ribbons or not my child was being included! I never realized how desperate I am for that at times. I called my husband and tears just came out of nowhere because I want so badly for Easton to not see his differences or especially be treated differently because of his needs. Most of the time we keep him separate from children and activities because he hasn't learned appropriate interaction with other children. Its hard to hold your kid back like that. We are constantly on gaurd When other kids are around because Easton only knows how to stare, push, or chase! Its hard seeing children try to talk to him when he can't respond so he resorts back to his hands and squealing. Kids don't understand that and I dont always feel like explaining things to be honest.
I am so appreciative of someone who can look past all of his differences and see a child with all of the potential we know he has.
I'm so thankful that he's being included, not because they feel sorry for him, but because water really is his thing, and they see it!
Monday, July 13, 2015
Social Media Strike!!
Our family has decided to go on a social media strike!!! We've deactivated our facebook accounts and truly are looking forward to having more quality time with eachother and those closest to us. With that being said, we love so much being able to share about Easton's growth and development and also keeping everyone informed of our current adoption status.
We definitely plan to be much more present on this blog, hopefully atleast weekly!
A quick adoption update...
Our homestudy was uploaded to Ind*a on June 17th and it's typically been taking families 8 weeks for approval from the adoption authority there. So we are expecting to hear by middle of August.
In the mean time we are waiting on our agency to send us a file to review that our family can potentially (fingers crossed) match with.
Short but sweet!
Here's to reconnecting with reality and building quality relationships!!!
We definitely plan to be much more present on this blog, hopefully atleast weekly!
A quick adoption update...
Our homestudy was uploaded to Ind*a on June 17th and it's typically been taking families 8 weeks for approval from the adoption authority there. So we are expecting to hear by middle of August.
In the mean time we are waiting on our agency to send us a file to review that our family can potentially (fingers crossed) match with.
Short but sweet!
Here's to reconnecting with reality and building quality relationships!!!
Friday, June 19, 2015
Hurry Up & Wait!!
I probably could have done a million blogs with this title at this point in our life!! But in everything we do it seems to ring true. I'm actually getting a little bit better at this waiting thing (not really I've just got more distractions in life!)
I wanted to give everyone an update on our family, life, and our adoption process.
First our adoption process....We've taken a major step forward and now we wait (hence the title)!
Our homestudy has been uploaded to Ind*a and we will wait the next 8 weeks or so for the adoption authority to approve us for adoption from there. In the mean time we will hopefully begin reviewing files if there are any children waiting that our family can match with! This is the part we are obviously most excited and anxious about! Keep us in your prayers, that we would have wisdom, patience, and make smart decisions!
Our family is doing well. Easton has graduated kindergarten and will be in 1st grade next year. Developmentally he is not on target to be a kindgarten graduate but due to his age, we didn't have much choice. We had a wonderful IEP meeting with his teachers and staff at school and have set some great goals for him next year. We have an awesome neighbor/cousin who is working with him over the summer to start gaining an understanding of the skills we hope he gains by the end of the school year. Skills like recognizing the first half of the alphabet and being able to verbalize it, recognizing and verbalizing numbers 1-10, writing his name independently, and understanding number sets with numbers 1-5. This may not seem like much for an 8 year old to some people, but I constantly have to remind myself we are essentially trying to teach a 2 year old all of these things. It's just where he is at developmentally and he lacks some serious motivation, which is the toughest part of all.
Easton has also started swimming lessons and he loves the water more than ever. He gets to go to the pool at least twice a week now so he's all for it. He's learned to kick his legs pretty well! The hardest part is keeping him from going under water. He does it intentionally because he loves it underwater so much. This is the scary part and the very reason we got swim lessons, he doesn't understand the dangers of water. We don't want him to fear water but we want him to be able to save himself if he gets in a scary situation.
We plan to go on vacation to the beach again this year with my parents and we can't wait. When you've got a child whose favorite things are riding in the car and the water, a trip to the beach is a must!!!
Developmentally Easton is growing. He's running, kicking a ball, jumping like a crazy kid, learning to swim. His speech is picking up, he's learned the K and G sound and is saying words like cracker, and go very clearly! We are working on words with 2 syllables that have different sounds, for example MonKey. This is proving to be very hard for him, right now it sounds like muhkuh haha. His apraxia is our biggest obstacle at this point. He has such a desire to talk, I truly believe it, but he just can't make the sounds he wants to, and it frustrates him. It didn't use to, but now that he understands communication and the benefits of it, he wants to talk more and more but it is such a struggle.
Fine motor skills are improving as he's learning to isolate his fingers. We are beginning to work on writing skills, grip, and his ability to trace.It's a slow go...but we'll get there!
His receptive speech continues to grow on a daily basis and there are still days I forget he doesn't communicate verbally because he's so good at letting us know what he wants!
We see more personality come out as he develops a streak of meanness (like all boys do) and stubborness. He expresses his dislike with things more and more and trust me when he doesn't want to do something, it's veeeery obvious.
We truly can't wait for Easton to have a sibling. I think it will be the best thing for him developmentally!
As we are getting farther into our process I will definitely be updating more so be on the look out (for real this time)!!
Until then!
I wanted to give everyone an update on our family, life, and our adoption process.
First our adoption process....We've taken a major step forward and now we wait (hence the title)!
Our homestudy has been uploaded to Ind*a and we will wait the next 8 weeks or so for the adoption authority to approve us for adoption from there. In the mean time we will hopefully begin reviewing files if there are any children waiting that our family can match with! This is the part we are obviously most excited and anxious about! Keep us in your prayers, that we would have wisdom, patience, and make smart decisions!
Our family is doing well. Easton has graduated kindergarten and will be in 1st grade next year. Developmentally he is not on target to be a kindgarten graduate but due to his age, we didn't have much choice. We had a wonderful IEP meeting with his teachers and staff at school and have set some great goals for him next year. We have an awesome neighbor/cousin who is working with him over the summer to start gaining an understanding of the skills we hope he gains by the end of the school year. Skills like recognizing the first half of the alphabet and being able to verbalize it, recognizing and verbalizing numbers 1-10, writing his name independently, and understanding number sets with numbers 1-5. This may not seem like much for an 8 year old to some people, but I constantly have to remind myself we are essentially trying to teach a 2 year old all of these things. It's just where he is at developmentally and he lacks some serious motivation, which is the toughest part of all.
Easton has also started swimming lessons and he loves the water more than ever. He gets to go to the pool at least twice a week now so he's all for it. He's learned to kick his legs pretty well! The hardest part is keeping him from going under water. He does it intentionally because he loves it underwater so much. This is the scary part and the very reason we got swim lessons, he doesn't understand the dangers of water. We don't want him to fear water but we want him to be able to save himself if he gets in a scary situation.
We plan to go on vacation to the beach again this year with my parents and we can't wait. When you've got a child whose favorite things are riding in the car and the water, a trip to the beach is a must!!!
Developmentally Easton is growing. He's running, kicking a ball, jumping like a crazy kid, learning to swim. His speech is picking up, he's learned the K and G sound and is saying words like cracker, and go very clearly! We are working on words with 2 syllables that have different sounds, for example MonKey. This is proving to be very hard for him, right now it sounds like muhkuh haha. His apraxia is our biggest obstacle at this point. He has such a desire to talk, I truly believe it, but he just can't make the sounds he wants to, and it frustrates him. It didn't use to, but now that he understands communication and the benefits of it, he wants to talk more and more but it is such a struggle.
Fine motor skills are improving as he's learning to isolate his fingers. We are beginning to work on writing skills, grip, and his ability to trace.It's a slow go...but we'll get there!
His receptive speech continues to grow on a daily basis and there are still days I forget he doesn't communicate verbally because he's so good at letting us know what he wants!
We see more personality come out as he develops a streak of meanness (like all boys do) and stubborness. He expresses his dislike with things more and more and trust me when he doesn't want to do something, it's veeeery obvious.
We truly can't wait for Easton to have a sibling. I think it will be the best thing for him developmentally!
As we are getting farther into our process I will definitely be updating more so be on the look out (for real this time)!!
Until then!
Friday, March 20, 2015
Easton Turns 8
Our sweet boy is growing up. On March 12th Easton turned 8! It was a pretty low key day as Easton went to school and had some cupcakes and a birthday crown that he quite frankly didn't want to take off.
On Saturday we took Easton to what I can only imagine he thinks is the greatest place on Earth!! We went to a trampoline park with family. Have I told you how much he loves to jump?
We didn't do a party and gifts, because Easton really doesn't comprehend the concept yet. What he does comprehend is family and fun so that's exactly what we did! Instead of gifts we decided to let anyone who wanted to, pitch in on a huge swing set complete with slides, sand box, picnic table, fort, and monkey bars to put outside for Easton to enjoy for years to come! We can't wait for all of this aweful weather to stop so we can get it set up!
Every time I look at him, it amazes me how much he's grown in not even a year and a half. Easton is communicating more and more and learning what it means to love and be loved. He loves life more than I could have ever imagined. His favorite things are riding in a car, the tractor, the cows, jumping, swiming, and riding the bus. He loves to be on the go, and keeps life busy. We love this kid more and more every day. He's so perfect in our family and I can't wait to celebrate many many more birthdays. After all I've never met anyone so worth celebrating!!
On Saturday we took Easton to what I can only imagine he thinks is the greatest place on Earth!! We went to a trampoline park with family. Have I told you how much he loves to jump?
We didn't do a party and gifts, because Easton really doesn't comprehend the concept yet. What he does comprehend is family and fun so that's exactly what we did! Instead of gifts we decided to let anyone who wanted to, pitch in on a huge swing set complete with slides, sand box, picnic table, fort, and monkey bars to put outside for Easton to enjoy for years to come! We can't wait for all of this aweful weather to stop so we can get it set up!
Every time I look at him, it amazes me how much he's grown in not even a year and a half. Easton is communicating more and more and learning what it means to love and be loved. He loves life more than I could have ever imagined. His favorite things are riding in a car, the tractor, the cows, jumping, swiming, and riding the bus. He loves to be on the go, and keeps life busy. We love this kid more and more every day. He's so perfect in our family and I can't wait to celebrate many many more birthdays. After all I've never met anyone so worth celebrating!!
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