A "Mammoth" Day!!

Editors note: Any resemblance of these pictures to Christy's blog seen here. . .are purely coincidental.


Before summer ended I wanted to take the girls to the Natural History Museum here at the University. . .or what I always knew as Morrill Hall. I can remember going there as a kid with my family, or for field trips. The girls loved the huge Mammoth out front! Look out Molly, you're about to get stepped on!!Now, my main memory of this place as a kid, was the huge recreated stuffed mammoth in the main entrance hall. It's not there anymore, perhaps there were too many kids pulling the little fake hairs out of it, or perhaps too many kids were traumatized by the sight of this huge anatomically correct Mammoth male. So, I guess I was ok that they changed to just the skeletal recreations and amazing fossils. Can you say Holy Mammoth Femur?? HUGE!
Here is Whitney doing her posing in front of the animals. She loved to say "BBBBBBiiiigggggggggg!" to the Mammoth or "whiwwwle" to the baby ones. Here she is I think half way through her Lion "roar".
She would only get within a few feet of this guy until I was touching him and "knocking" on his head to show her he wasn't real. Hmm. Maybe not such a good technique to show her to see if the thing was real. Glad we don't live in Florida.One of the best parts of the museum is the "kids" room. I remember this from being a kid. They had redone the tiny digging pit we had, and now the kids can get their pails and brushes and dig out these fossils. Look at my budding archaeologists. They also had lots of stuffed types of animals, snakes and displays of lots of insects and butterflies.
Here's my little sea turtles!!

The crazy sleeper strikes again. . .

Remember this and this?? Well, she's at it again. This time it was at my Mom's house in Utah. We went to check on the kids before bed and here's how we found Molly.
She seriously had slipped enough out of bed to land her head on the nightstand (ouch.) and was just leaning over totally asleep!! So of course, we turned the lights on to get a fantastic picture before we moved her. It's all for you bloggers, all for you.

Happy Valentines on the 4th of July!!

We had a fabulous 4th of July out in Utah! We went to the parade in Tooele with my Mom, Joel and their gang. Really, who doesn't love free candy (not Whitney!), and some big tanks and marching bands??






















Here's my girls with my sister Heidi and her Hannah waiting for the parade. . . .Grandma made sure they were prepared with their grocery sacks to hold all their goods! Whitney mostly stuffed hers in her pockets.

After the parade and a fun lunch and BINGO game at my Mom's house, we headed down to be with the Valentines. We had every Thanksgiving together from "since I can remember" back in Nebraska with several other families (and we're even thinking of planning a "Thanksgiving families" reunion!!), so it was fun to get together with our kids and play.We're SOOOOOOOOOOOOO funny. . .I have no clue exactly what was funny, but boy, was it!!
Oh, I remember now. . .Lisa and I went shopping the day before and decided we'd be great wives and buy our husbands a gift. . . . matching t-shirts. Of course, we'd just say, "oh, look honey, why don't you wear this tomorrow for the 4th of July??"

They loved it. . SEE

Ok that's enough, you two.



Holy cow, these kids are really outnumbering us. . .good thing we like them. (Thanks for the thumbs up Miles!)

Here's some other pictures from the rest of the night. . .

Hugh could not get enough of the fireworks. . too bad I was laughing too much to get pictures of all the kids running away when someone gave him a sparkler.
Hugh getting his groove on.

Counting down the days until next year. . .maybe the 4th at the Valentines again? I hope so!!

Camera cousins

Left to Right: Katrina, Sarah, Madison, Megan, Molly, Annie and the ever elusive BOY in my sisters family--Justin!!

When we headed out to Utah this summer, we left a little early so we could overlap at my Mom's house with my sister Lisa and her family. The kids LOVE to be together and have a great time. Here's our classic. . ."everyone hurry, onto the couch for a picture" (Whitney was sleeping)

So fun, and not nearly often enough.

Hurry. . .it's catch up time

I was looking through my "pictures" folder and discovered that I have SO much to blog about. . .so, I'm going to do my very best and be a once a day blogger for a week or so until I catch up, or until I pass out. . .so hang on!!

I was only gone for a minute!!

A summer memory (school started today!!!). . .
I really was only downstairs for about a minute. Molly was fully dressed when I went downstairs and when I came up, I saw this. . .

really. . .shoes off, sunglasses on, umbrella up and even my People mag in hand. SO ready for the beach!

A picture is worth a thousand words. . .

Love that static.
Her early morning "Spring Bunny" bubbles.
Want some?
Brrr, that's cold.
Double fisting the suckers. . .

Sometimes it's nice to have the words too. . .

My Whitney is definitely turning out like my Molly . . ."Miss Independent".

She's potty training herself, she doesn't need much help with anything--she won't ask for help even if she really does need it, and she wants everything her way.

She also seems to want to have her language come "her way."

She's always babbled just a few words and I never thought much of it. . .then I really started to pay attention when she was almost 2 (this past March) and realized that she really didn't say much of anything. Not even Mom and Dad. I brought it up with my Dr and he didn't seem too concerned but recommended that I wait 6 months, then I can see where she's at and get her tested with LPS (Lincoln Public Schools) to see if there's any language development issues, OR I could just go ahead and get her tested.

I opted to go ahead and get her tested. I know several people who have had the services of LPS, in which therapists of all kinds come to their home and work with their little ones, and all have had great outcomes.

SO, in early April I got her tested. Whitney is a smarty pants, she can understand anything you say to her, and did lots (and still does a little bit) of sign language to help her communicate. From very early on she could follow any command you gave her, no matter how many steps.

We had her hearing tested first. I always wondered since she had the milk/soy allergy if it was affecting her hearing (some studies show that "allergy" babies develop fluid in their ears that affects how they hear and how they hear themselves speak, and usually end up getting tubes). Her hearing ended up fine, although she screamed through most of it. On to the speech pathologist. She just played with Whitney and tried to get her to mimic and babble along with her. Whitney didn't do much, but did say a few words. So, at the end of all the testing we/they determined that her comprehension was well beyond her age, but her speech was delayed.

Her speech therapist Deenie had her first appointment while I was out in Utah for my girls weekend. The therapist is good for Whitney but also good for us. . .she has tons of tips for working with Whitney and tools for her language development. In essence, we were letting her get away with way to much and we needed to make her work harder.

Matt called me after the first appointment and put Whitney on the phone. I heard her say

"Bubbbbbble!!"

I almost cried. She went on and on. . ."Bubble, bubble, bubble, bubble." Needless to say Deenie had brought her big container of bubbles to the appointment and they didn't get much further than bubble, but that was fine by me. To this day, when I say Deenie is coming, she starts saying "Bubble, bubble!"

A week after I got home from Utah, I was at the dance studio with the older girls getting their pictures done with their classes. Whitney was across the room and I heard her actually call after me "MA!", with her little cupped hands around her sweet mouth. That was the first time she had ever used a word to get attention from Matt or I, besides just fussing.

4 months later, I think language is finally clicking with Whitney. She's still delayed but she's come a long way. I think the hardest part is to not compare her to where my other girls were at her age, or how the boy down the street talks in complete, complicated sentances and he's younger than she is. But here's some other milestones:

***While out in Utah this summer, my sister Heidi got Whitney to say her first 2 word combo. Actually it was 3 words!
"Ice, ice, baby."
Whitney could say the SSSSS, and kept wanting ice, so Heidi worked on that one with her, and as soon as she got it, one of the kids started saying "ice, ice, baby" and she was off. It's really cute.

***A few weeks ago I heard her in the other room babbling, and I finally caught on that she was singing the ABC's!!! (or at least I could understand about every 5th letter). I will say that her "Bubbleboo" (W) was definitely the cutest.

***With the help of her speech pathologist we got Whitney into a free program with another speech pathologist. She usually works with severe cases, but likes to have some lighter cases in her workload too. SO, she'll be able to meet with her 3x/week starting this fall and it's FREE!!!

***When I say to Whitney "They tried to make me go to rehab". . .she chimes right in with "No, no, NO!" Click here if you're not sure what that means.

Ok, so I'm not so sure how her speech therapist is going to feel about that one. . .

What. . .ever. . .

Date: August 7, 2007
Time: 5:36pm
Place: my inbox
What: the following email

"We've received your application for The Singing Bee. Currently we're only holding auditions in Los Angeles but we may be moving around the country at a later date. We'll keep your application on file and contact you when we get near your area."
Thanks! Nathan
Contestant Coordinator The Singing Bee

PLLLLLLLLUUUUUUUUUUUUBBBBBBBBBBBBBB!!! (That's me with my tongue out making that noise. . .)