Hey There!

Has it really been almost 18 months since I blogged in our little family journal?!

This blog will always be near and dear to my heart. I started this online journal for our family exactly 10 years ago last month to help document our mostly mundane, day-to-day happenings. Milestones like Carson laughing for the first time, to Harper's first steps; documenting Grant's complicated medical issues, and announcing pregnancies...I love to look back from time to time and read through poignant-and even the not so poignant-moments of our lives.

That's why I hate so much that I "abandoned" our family journal. Thankfully, I did document the big stuff on Instagram...but its just not quite the same.

I've thought about picking up the laptop and sitting down to write over the last year, but the words just didn't come.  Life has been hard. Our world was shattered, however, God is slowly rebuilding us, piece by piece. It has been the darkest, most unrelenting season of my life, but God is good, and God has been faithful to our family.

There is no way to document every important event over the last 18 months in one post, so I'll just share a few updates instead:



The kids are amazing. Carson just turned 10 (my heart cannot even handle it!), Harper is coming up on his 9th birthday, Grant will be 5 (!!!) in a few weeks, and Clara-our tiny baby-just turned 2.

Our day to day lives are c.r.a.z.y. busy. Grant started preschool last fall, so all three boys are in school now! Grant is in an exceptionally challenged classroom, and is doing SO awesome! He absolutely loves school, and it has been such a huge blessing for him! Along with the services he receives at school, he still has private therapy 2x a week, which means a lot of running around town to appointments.



Carson and Harper are both playing basketball again this season, and they are having a blast! Carson's in an older league this year, so he has practice one evening a week, along with games on Saturdays. Harper has a practice/game every Saturday morning, so balancing their schedules has been...interesting! Carson is also on the Science Olympiad team at school, so he stays after school one day a week for several hours and does his science-club thing. 😁

Kane's work schedule is different now-he works on Saturdays (huge bummer!) and has a weekday off instead. 

My mornings consist of chasing after a certain little girl with a VERY big personality...

Our Clara girl is just a little bundle of spunk. She LOVES to sing, follow her brothers around, get into anything and everything, and go "swimin' in the baff-tub" 😉

2017 is such a big year for us! Kane and I are celebrating our 10 year anniversary this year! We like to joke that it seems like we've been married more like 20 years, ha! We are planning a fun little getaway for our anniversary-hoping to have those plans finalized this week! 

I'm hoping to get back into the swing of blogging...even if its just to make a birthday post-I'd love to keep up with our journal.

All for now!

Maria.

Summer recap and Fall happenings!

*Be prepared for lots of rambling and lots of pictures!

I cannot believe its been so long since I've posted! Looks like I took the summer (& then some!) off, so I really wanted to update my little blog and do a quick recap!

Life with four kiddos is BUSY. We are constantly going, going, going.

We had a really great summer...Grant has therapy 3 mornings a week (2 speech sessions and 1 hour of OT), so as you can imagine, the driving back and forth as well as the therapy time itself takes up a lot of time. Almost every Monday of summer break I took the kids to the library and they picked out a few books to read while we were in the waiting room. And of course we have our weekly Target trip and a grocery store/errands morning too.We usually spent most of our afternoons swimming at my parents pool and trying to beat the heat!

4th of July!

In July we had our family vacation at Great Wolf Lodge in Charlotte. We wanted to stay somewhere closeish to home (aka little travel with a baby!) & we wanted something that would work for our WHOLE family, and Great Wolf Lodge was PERFECT. Its an indoor water park resort that has areas for the whole family. I spent most of my time in the kiddie area with Grant and Clara while Kane and the boys hit up all the water slides. It was surprisingly relaxing for me-Grant had a blast playing in the baby/toddler area and since it only goes to 1.5 foot deep, he could navigate the whole area without me having to follow him around. Clara and I sat in the zero depth area and she splashed away! Kane and the boys would always swing by & come check on us every 45min-hour and I would go on a few rides with the boys then too. The best part was that our hotel room was just down the hallway from the entrance to the water park so I could go back to the room with the babies whenever I needed! That was great for when Clara would get cranky and needed a nap & Grant needed a snack or something. We would leave and go out to dinner every night, & then return for late night fun at the resort arcade and bowling area. The last day there, we left that afternoon and stayed at a different hotel in Charlotte so that we could take the boys to visit a few landmarks. We went to the Carolina Panthers Stadium & we toured the Billy Graham library (which was so cool!! so much history there!). We had SUCH a good week & made so many wonderful memories with the kids...we are already planning to go back again when we can!!

After being home for ONE day from our vacation, me and Kane turned around and went back to Charlotte for Kane's annual meeting with corporate. He spent the morning and early afternoon in a meeting, and I had a glorious day shopping and eating lunch BY MYSELF, which never ever EVER happens. I missed the kids like crazy (esp Clara since it was the first time I had ever left her), but it was so needed. I really needed that little break. Once Kane got out of his meeting, we went back to the hotel for a few hours and then headed to a cookout at the president of the company's home on Lake Norman.

The first week of August brought the start of football for Carson! Harp decided not to play this year (he would rather play on the playground with the other kids), & that has taken up a huge chunk of time. He has improved SO much since the start of the season, so its nice to see the hard work pay off!

The end of August means back to school time! Our summer felt like it went by SO fast, but even so, the boys were ready to go back and to see their friends. They both love school SO much, and we all enjoy the routine school brings! Carson started 3rd grade this year and Harp's in 2nd! They both have amazing teachers this year and I am SO excited about that!

Our Clara girl is growing so fast! She is just two months away from her first birthday and my heart can hardly stand it. Her (big) personality is really starting to show! She is such a friendly baby with a streak of sassy with a little drama thrown in. ;) I'm told it a girl thing, ha! She started crawling right after our trip to Great Wolf (I could tell she wanted to while we were vacationing...she almost took off a few times in the hotel room), and shortly after that she started pulling to a stand & now shes cruising around the furniture! She loves to clap and her favorite song is "If you're happy and you know it." She can wave (at herself, ha!) and can say "hi" and "dada." She loves to dance and follow her brothers around (mainly Grant), and her newest favorite thing to do as of late is pull all the books off the bookshelf in her room. I can't even express how much joy she has brought to our family!

8 months: 

9 months:

I wanted to jot this down for future purposes, but Grant is doing SO wonderful lately. He is really developing and his hard work in both speech and OT is finally starting to pay off. He still has a way to go, of course, but I just wanted to mention how excited I am for him. We spent the summer working on preschool stuff & he mastered identifying all of the alphabet, & identifying shapes (he already knew colors & numbers for a long time now ;). In OT he is working on pre-writing skills & using scissors, which has been trickier for him-he has fine motor delays (VERY likely due to his poor eyesight). It has been a long, long road with lots of tears and prayers. My personal goal for him and my main hope and prayer is that we can get him caught up to where he needs to be by the start of kindergarten. We have so much ground to cover, but I really think it can be done!

Well thats all for now! Hope to start blogging again more regularly! :) Check back in a few days for pictures of my girl at 10 months!

SEVEN Months!

Just a slew of pics of my precious girl at 7 months old old!

*****

Clara is SIX MONTHS Old!

Our precious baby is already halfway through her first year! How in the world can it be? Clara is the sweetest baby with the best disposition...Always so happy, with a big smile on her face. She loves her toys, her feet, and is in LOVE with her big brothers. She just lights up when the boys are around! She has the BEST girly, high-pitched giggle that gets every one cracking up. She is so tiny compared to the boys, with a head full of curly hair, and big dark eyes (they haven't settled yet, but I'm thinking they'll be hazel or brown). Sweet girl has been sleeping through the night since she was about 2 months old or so, and wears mainly 3-6 month clothing, and some 6-9 month stuff, too. :) She has her check up next week so I'll know her stats then.  

I took her to the beach yesterday to take her 6 month pictures and she loved watching the ocean, but was not a fan of the sand! :) 

Here are some pictures from the day! 

Happy 6 months Clara! 

The Fog is Clearing

I have 4 kids now. 

Some days I can't even wrap my brain around that. FOUR. We've been a family of six for almost 6 months now (how are we already halfway through Clara's first year?!), and the fog is finally clearing. We are in our groove, our new normal. I'm feeling more and more like myself. 

I hate that I haven't kept up with our little family journal so I'm going to post a bunch of pictures with random captions to catch up on whats been going on over the last several months!

Here goes:

I took this of the kiddos back in March. I wanted a picture of them all together. Holy Cow. I felt like I had wrestled a bear trying to get a picture of all them looking at me, but I managed to snag one. (secret: Carson's eyes were actually closed in this one, so I had to photoshop his eyes.) 

Heres another group pic: I think this was before my mom's birthday dinner at the end of March!

A few pictures from Easter Weekend!

A flood of Clara pictures: aka guilt because I haven't blogged her little life like I did with the boys! ;)

Sweet girl at 5 months!

Dimples

Harp showing off his artwork that was on display at our local Spring Festival! He was super proud (and we were, too!) 

So...I just realized I submitted this post before finishing this post sometime last week...maybe the fog hasn't cleared as much as I had thought, ha!

Continuing...

I can't forget to mention how much progress Grant has made! I decided to get him evaluated for Occupation Therapy right after his 3rd birthday. He definitely qualified for services, so he goes for 1 hour every week. I really think it has been wonderful for him! Apart of OT is feeding therapy and ever since he started, he has been eating SOO much better. I also requested around his 3rd birthday for an extra speech therapy session which was obviously approved. So he goes to speech 2x a week now (once at the office and once at home). After the summer I am going to push for both sessions being at the office...I really think it benefits him SO much more than the sessions at home. Anyways, enough rambling with that!

 Grant always uses 2-4 word phrases now...that doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is HUGE for him. He was evaluated for speech during our annual craniofacial appointment back in March, and the speech pathologist there thinks he has a touch of Apraxia of Speech (which, thanks to my "Medical License" in google, I had already gathered he had, ha!). Anyways, for Grant that means his brain is not being able to put a sentence together, despite being able to say each individual word correctly. For example, if you ask him to say "I love going outside!" he can say each of those words individually "i" "love" "going" "outside" however, when you tell him to say it as a sentence, "I love going" ends up becoming jumbled gibberish and he'll end with "outside". Its confusing and complicated,  but it suits Grant because NOTHING with him is ever easy! :)

Potty training....is not going. We're on a break until schools out for the boys. He understands the concept, he knows what he is suppose to do, he can say the words, recognize when he urinates, stay dry for long periods of time. It is not a battle of the wills, it is 100 percent a sensory issue. I have a game plan in place but honestly its more of a Clara issue at this point-I need her to be a little older so I can devote the time and effort to potty train Grant.

Last but not least...we went back for a repeat hearing test on Friday...they weren't able to get the results (which is very frustrating because I told them on the phone they wouldn't be able to...not getting into that right now, though...), so we are going back for a sedated hearing test next. We will know definitely if there is or is not hearing loss.

 

Carson and Harper are doing so good, as always :) Excelling in school, enjoying their childhood to the fullest extent. Carson is playing tackle football this fall which I'm nervous about, and Harp decided not to and wants to take hip hop dance classes...we are signing him up for summer classes which will be so much fun to watch! :)

They sat on our front steps and waited all week for the ice cream truck to come by...he finally came by while they were outside and were just SO excited!



Well that is definitely all for now...longest post for me in a while and it only took a week to type up, ha!