Pictures from lately...

Not much happened this week out of the ordinary, but here are some pictures I snapped to share :) 

"Ok Mommy, first I do your hair then you go make dinner."
Apparently I cant make dinner without my hair looking good. 

Preston and Jaxton are CONSTANTLY fighting over who gets to sit in the swing that we have in our room. They are both in for a big surprise when Lucas gets here & gets dibs on the swing always. But one day during quiet time while I was attempting to put Jaxton to sleep Preston climbed in and fell asleep.
(just ignore the messy bedroom. truthfully it always looks like that.) 

They both decided I needed supervision while I was making them lunch the other day. 

Jaxton is OBSESSED with shoes. If you've been over to our house you've probably had him try to take your shoes off or put them on himself. He is always bringing me new shoes to change into. 

Go Cardinals! 

I spiked Jaxton's hair one morning. He looked so much older. 

Even though he had just eaten his own cereal (and drank the milk from Prestons cereal) he decided he needed to help his Daddy with his cereal. 

We had his blood work done for his food allergy testing. He didn't shed a tear! He wasn't happy afterwords, mostly b/c I wouldnt give him more gummy bears and he got his sticker stuck in his hair. But he's tough! 

His doctor gave us some Lidocaine cream to numb his arms before his blood work, and his skin had a bad reaction to it- no big surprise as he has VERY reactive skin. 

Sigh. Such a good helper. 

Every time we read "The Very Busy Spider", Jaxtons current favorite book, he always makes this face when we come to the page with the picture of the cow. I'm not sure why, he just does! 

a Jaxton update

Let me start out by saying this. This post is for my own record type keeping, so I can keep track of things. It's not a poor me/isn't our life so hard/give me attention/victim post. Because i HATE those & we are NOT those type of people. 

Plus it's no big deal! 

So Jaxton is now 21 months! He'll be 2 on Nov 1. To me he's still such a baby. But I think that's because he doesn't talk. Like at all. He babbles, but doesn't use words. Actually that's not true. He uses 2 words in his normal everyday routine. "Poo Poo" and "ball". If I sit with him and prompt him to talk "jaxton. say mama. say dada. say bye bye" he will try and say them, but he doesn't incorporate them into his life. I brought this up to his pediatrician at his 18 mo checkup & he said that by 2 a normal child can put 2 word sentences together. He asked if I was concerned enough about it to have him evaluated by a speech therapist & I said no, to give it a few months, that I would keep working with him but that I'd come back in 3 months if it wasn't any better b/c I don't want him getting extremely behind.
Well today we went back in because it's not any better. Don't get me wrong, Jaxton is BRILLIANT. He follows directions better then Preston does. His comprehension is amazing. He just doesn't talk. And he's starting to get to the point where he is getting frustrated by it. And I'm at that point too. 

So we're getting a referral for a speech pathologist to evaluate him. Hopefully we'll get on the right path and have this kid talking in no time! 

Preston was helping him make funny faces in this one...

We also are going to have some blood work done on him for food allergies. He has a geographic tongue but sometimes when he eats certain things its like he has open blisters on his tongue. And then sometimes he will get raised red welts around his mouth when eating other things- like Mac & cheese, applesauce, cinnamon, ranch dressing. So they are going to run a whole panel to see what he could possibly be allergic too. We'll get that done next week sometime. Apparently it's going to be a not so fun thing for him to get the blood work done b/c the doctor gave me a prescription for a numbing cream to apply to his arms before we go. But he said at this age blood testing is a better way to go then a poke test. But thats ok. Jaxton's tough! 

And lastly we discussed Jaxton's new habit of SCREAMING and CRYING when I put him to bed for naps or at night. It's very un-jaxton like behavior. He usually just takes his milk & goes right to sleep. But this past week he doesn't want to drink his milk & screams when I leave his room. He wants me to be standing right next to him rubbing his face or arm or patting his back. At night I can just let him cry it out- which takes him anywhere from 10 min- 1hr 30 min but because Patrick is on the graveyard shift now I can't let him cry at nap time b/c it wakes Patrick up. Which means I'm standing in there rubbing his head for up to an hour while he falls asleep.
The doctor thinks that he has had some sort of disruption in his schedule that has thrown him for a loop. And he has. We had a Utah trip that messed up his sleep schedule, then company for a few days, and now with Patricks new schedule we are all adjusting. And we are just routine type people! We do better with routines & ours has taken some hits lately. The good news is that he said in about a week he should be back adjusted. We'll see. 

And thats whats going on with Jaxton lately!
Hopefully in a few weeks we'll have some answers as to how to make life better for him.
Poor middle child.
Good thing he's so stinking cute!! 

Back to School!!!

Today Preston started back to school!! He only got to go to his preschool for about a month before school was over last year, so he was super excited to go. I was pretty excited too. His schedule is still the same as last year which is Mon, Tues, Thurs with the bus picking him up at 9:10 & dropping him off at 12:30. He has the same teacher, Ms. Claire too which is nice, he really likes her.
We went to "meet the teacher" on Tuesday & I got to see his classroom & what a normal day for him is like there. He has a smaller class this year for now with only 8 kids. Ms. Claire is hoping with a smaller class Preston will talk more- apparently he didn't talk much last year with the class of 13 they had. So we'll see! He has a new speech therapist this year, and will meet with her every Monday for 1/2 hour. I feel like his speech improved a lot over the summer, so I'm not sure if he will make it the whole year at school- once he hits his goals set for him in his ILP (individual learning plan) he will no longer qualify to go. But we will enjoy the time we have there while it lasts. 

We started off the day by Preston waking up at 6:20 (he normally wakes up between 7:30-8) telling me it was time for school & then he asked about every 2 minutes from that point on if the school bus was there yet. So yes, he was EXCITED.
He requested ice cream for breakfast, but settled for pancakes & OJ with a fancy straw. 

And then to pass some time we took the obligatory 1st day of school pictures. 

Naturally Jaxton wanted in on them. 

Yes, he is holding a toothbrush. For the past few weeks he's been obsessed with carrying a spoon around with him- just in case he comes across food I guess- but if he finds a toothbrush he will trade his spoon for that. 

He's such a handsome boy!!!

I finally let him open the door to wait for the bus to come. 

And then he was off! No tears, no fear, no anxiety from either of us. He just took off running and hopped on!
Jaxton and I enjoyed our morning together. We did some cleaning and then went to Goodwill where he got to eat all the snacks in my purse himself instead of having to share with Preston. This is a big deal for him.

And then we waited for Preston! 

He came home and told me it was a great day, that he didn't throw any fits, that he missed me but that he was HUNGRY!
School works up an appetite. I get it.