I love you, dad

Lately when I read Michael his bedtime story I've been reading him the Signing Time books we've checked out from the library.  Or rather he's been reading them to me.  I'll ask him what the signs are, and he loves to do them for me.  He has a ball reading these books to me, and it helps me see how he does the signs in his little 2-year old language.  For example, the sign for cracker is to stick out your elbow and knock on it with your fist.  Michael sticks out his elbow and knocks on his chest.  The sign for drink is to pretend you're drinking out of a cup.  Michael makes it look like he's pouring the drink onto his head.  Actually, that's pretty accurate way of showing how two year olds drink. :-)

A few nights ago, we read a Signing Time book with the signs for "love" and "I love you".  After reading the book and snuggling with him for a few minutes, I laid him in his crib.  He looked up at me with his big blue eyes and did the signs for "love" and "I love you".  That little boy sure knows how to melt a dad's heart!  We're so grateful for sign language, which has opened a window for us into Michael's heart and mind that he can't communicate to us through words or facial expressions.

Speaking of sign language, we were thrilled to get the news this week that Michael will be going to McGraw preschool in the fall.  That's the school where the teacher both signs and speaks to the class.  He absolutely loved it there when Liz took him a few weeks ago, and it will be a huge blessing for him to have a teacher who can communicate with him.  The only downside is that the school is across town.  We hope he will qualify to have a bus take him to and from school, which would relieve a huge transportation burden.

We also found out this week that Michael's insurance won't pay for in-home therapy when he turns 3 years old in July.  It will pay for in-office therapy, which ironically costs the same as in-home therapy.  But it would mean losing our wonderful therapists who have been with Michael ever since he was diagnosed at six months of age.  We're also concerned about Michael having the stamina to go to lots of therapy appointments outside our home after a full morning of preschool, as he wears out easily.  Not to mention the added burden it would put on Liz to drag Brooklyn and Spencer to Michael's many therapy appointments.  So we're working, hoping, and praying our insurance will make an exception and allow the in-home therapies to continue.

Michael playing playdough with his occupational therapist

Wheelin' Wheelers

Lately we've been testing out a wheelchair for Michael.  It's the cutest little thing.  It comes up to about my knee, but it has a long handle in the back that lets us push him around in it without having to bend over.  He's practicing pushing the wheels to help him go places.  We're still working on helping him learn to walk and hope that he'll be able to walk someday, but this may be a way to help him be more mobile without crawling or having us carry him everywhere.  After all, he's almost 3 years old and starting to get heavy!

His older siblings love the wheelchair even more than Michael does.  Spencer in particular will suddenly declare he has a broken leg, sprint over to the wheelchair, then go wheeling around in it.

Whitney has had several opportunities lately to share her talents with her school.  At the school talent show she and a friend sang "Let it Go" from Disney's Frozen.  What they might have lacked in being on key they made up for in their volume!  They sang their little hearts out and Whitney jumped up and down in delight when the song was over.

Whitney also had a role as a dinosaur in a show the first graders put on.  Liz helped make some of the costumes for the show.  And in classic first grade style, Whitney's dinosaur mask was too big for her and covered her eyes for much of the show.  At one point after reciting her lines, she couldn't see the microphone stand to put the microphone back.  She kept feeling around for it to the chuckles of the audience until the student next to her came to her rescue.  She was undaunted, however, and had a great time.

Brooklyn has been into climbing a lot lately and we'll find her in some interesting positions.  We found her upside down when she climbed head-first into a toy box, she can climb up a few stairs but can't climb back down them, or she'll turn other would-be obstacles into stairs.

Hazel's 3rd birthday

Liz and I were very fortunate to travel with Michael and Brooklyn down to Denver today to help Michael's little friend, Hazel, celebrate her third birthday.  A year ago in January her family received the grim news that her Ependymoma, the same cancer Michael has, had come back and was terminal.  The last time we saw Hazel was a year ago when we helped her celebrate her second birthday.  We wondered if that would be the last time we would see her.  We're thrilled that miraculously she is still with us and has made it to her third birthday.  What a sweet little girl she is.  Her body has been weakened by her illness and continued treatments, yet she smiled brightly at us when we wished her a happy birthday, and she seemed to thoroughly enjoy the card we made for her, signed by each of our children and with an outline of Michael's hand on the inside.

Happy Birthday Hazel!

We celebrated our ten-year anniversary a few weeks ago!  As part of our Family Home Evening that week we discussed how God has made it possible for families to be together forever.  That knowledge has been a particular source of comfort for our family over the last few years as we have been dealing with Michael's illness.

At the end of the lesson the girls got to try on Liz's wedding dress. They will make such lovely brides someday!

Liz's parents visited us for a few days last weekend.  Liz's dad helped me install some additional recessed lighting in the kitchen, and Liz's mom helped Brooklyn with her first haircut.  The lights turned out great, but the haircut came out a bit shorter than we expected.  Nothing that time or hair bows won't fix. :-)

We also had some fun playing with different hairstyles on Mikey during his haircut.

Michael's sign language skill continue to rapidly improve.  Liz and I are trying to catch up so we can communicate better with him.  I think a lot of his improvement has to do with his signing therapist, who is helping him bridge the gap between the sign language he has learned on the Signing Time DVDs and actually using those signs to communicate.  He loves it when people sign with him.  We've checked out some Signing Time books from the library, and as we point out each picture in the book and ask him what it is, he giggles and proudly shows the sign for it as if to say, "I know that one!"

Michael reading his Signing Time book

We were rather disappointed in the results of his recent evaluation for getting into preschool next year.  We really think he would do best in the sign language preschool where the teacher communicates both orally and in sign.  However, his evaluators didn't see him communicating much in sign language during their session with him.  We think it's probably because he was too busy exploring the room and playing with the activities there that he didn't realize it was time to "perform".

For his speech and signing therapies he sits in a specific chair and his therapists interact with him in a specific way so he knows that it's time to focus and work on his therapy.  He didn't get that during his evaluation, so he didn't stay focused.  The therapists and we are trying to get the evaluators to reconsider their results (or perhaps let Michael be re-evaluated) so that he can go to the sign language preschool next year if at all possible.

Spring Break

Last week the kids were on Spring break.   They spent much of the time just wanting to relax, watch movies, play video games, and the like.  And for the most part, we let them.  We're not in much of a position to travel right now, especially with how fussy Brooklyn and Michael have been (and how much they wake up at night even under the best of circumstances).  And with how busy things have been at work and at home, it was good to have a week with relatively low expectations.

We wanted to give the three older kids a chance to get away for a few days, though, so on Friday I drove them down to Garden of the Gods in Colorado Springs.  It was tough not to have all of us go together, but we knew that bringing Michael and Brooklyn would make it a miserable trip for everybody.  And since Brooklyn is still nursing, it seemed to make the most sense to have me take the three older kids on the trip and have Liz stay home with Michael and Brooklyn.  Besides, Liz has had a few ski dates with the older kids this winter so I wanted a turn having fun with them. :-)

The kids had a great time hiking and climbing the beautiful rock formations.

After we had been hiking around a while, I got a phone call from Liz asking where we were.  I replied, "Garden of the Gods".  She said, "Yes, but where exactly in Garden of the Gods?  I'm here with Michael and Brooklyn and we want to meet up with you!"  Apparently we had been gone for all of about five seconds before she decided to pack the babies in the car and come join us!  At least just for the day.  We kept it a surprise from the older kids and found a place to meet up.  Boy were they surprised and excited to see mom, Michael and Brooklyn!

 Michael particularly loved jumping off the rocks with mom and hiking with dad.  He would sign "1,2,3,jump!" and Liz would help him jump off the rock.

My sister Becky happened to be in the area that day and joined us for a picnic lunch.  It was so great seeing her as well.

We checked in to the Academy Hotel Friday afternoon, which is the same hotel we stayed at last year.  It has a great pool, so of course the kids wanted to go back this year!  Liz, Michael, and Brooklyn only hung out at the hotel with us briefly before we grabbed an early dinner so they could drive back to Fort Collins.

That evening I took the kids swimming at the pool, had ice cream sundaes at the hotel restaurant, and finished the night off in our room with a pillow fight and games.  Needless to say, the kids slept very soundly that night.

The next morning the kids wanted to go swimming again after breakfast, and I was so impressed with the progress they made in just a few hours.  Spencer especially went from being absolutely terrified of the water and unwilling to let go of me even with his life vest on, to "swimming" laps back and forth across the pool (in his life vest) without anyone holding on to him.  Whitney jumped off the side of the pool over and over again into my arms.  And Sarah did somersaults and handstands in the water like a pro.

After checking out of the hotel we drove down to Pueblo so our kids could play with their cousins.  Unfortunately their spring break is beginning just as ours is ending, but they loved spending all day Saturday together.  Sunday morning we drove back to Fort Collins in time to get ready for church.

This week is an important week for us, as we will be figuring out where Michael will go to preschool next year.  It's hard to believe he's made it this far.  When he was first going through his cancer treatments and therapies, we were told the state-funded therapies would end when he turned three years old, and he would start attending preschool.  That seemed so far away at the time, and to be honest we wondered if he'd even be with us that long.  Today he's only a few months shy of three years old and is doing amazingly well.  So we're looking into some of the special ed preschools in the area that can work with him.  We're particularly interested in ones with teachers that know sign language, since that's how he communicates.  Liz went to an open house at one preschool a few weeks ago, and is going to another classroom tomorrow to observe.  Then on Wednesday we meet with the school district to put in our preferences and decide what school he'll go to.  We've been so fortunate to work with excellent therapists so far, and we really hope he'll have a preschool teacher who he'll connect with and work well with.

February snapshot

Whoosh!  February flew in and flew out so fast!  Here's a snapshot of what happened:

Sarah learned how to make muffins from a box mix in one week, wrote a paper about it and did a 5 minute presentation for her class.  She worked hard and we are so proud of her.  She also became really enthralled with a game on the Nabi (like a kid ipad) and we've had to limit time on it after she began neglecting more important things to sneak time to play it.

Whitney keeps growing and growing.  Really, she's just 6 1/2 years old in 10 year old clothing.  She has been particularly struck with "Frozen-itis" and struts around singing "Let it Go" with total abandonment.

Spencer is still crazy about running as fast as he can and anything to do with superheros.  He also has a growing addiction for angry birds.

Michael is signing more and more everyday, particularly in the context of "Signing Time."  He can sign pretty much an entire episode without even looking at the screen.  He can spell his name in sign.  He also is making a renewed effort to make vocal sounds though they are so so difficult for him.  He's also borrowing a lighter-weight walker to get him more interested in walking.

Brooke survived falling down the stairs - twice - when Michael went down to the basement and left the door open.  She's an efficient and quick crawler now so she would go after him and tumble.  She's also had several scary choking episodes from kids leaving toys/knicknacks/paper/erasers/etc lying on the floor.  We've borrowed some baby gates to keep her fenced in until we can keep her safer around here.  She has the most adorable smile.

Both Michael and Brooke have been sick this week with really bad colds.

I took the 3 oldest kids to ski class and took one myself while Tim stayed home with the babies.  It made for quite the adventurous day, especially at the end when Spencer and Whitney were too tired to carry their skis and get off the ground to get on the bus to take us back to the lodge (so we missed it and I had to make the half-hour trek myself back to the lodge to fetch the car only to return and find Sarah had decided to abandon Whitney and Spencer and go looking for me), Whitney freaking out on the bunny slope and me having to take her skis off and have her walk down, and Sarah riding the lift with me and flying down the hill perfectly. Family bonding.

Valentine's Day Tim made the kids a special valentine breakfast and made special valentine's for each of them.  I did the same at dinner, setting a romantic table with special heart-shaped pizzas, martinelli's, and valentine's.  The kids weren't sure what the candles on the table were for and asked if we were supposed to blow the lit candles out after singing a song similar to "Happy Birthday."

The annual "Valentine Making" Day.  We got an awesome box from the Bellamy side of the family with lots of Valentine love inside.

Yep, Tim is pretty much the favorite one around here.  I came down stairs one morning to find everyone sitting around him like this laughing and having a good time.

Tim got these beautiful flowers for me after a string of pretty difficult days.  He is so thoughtful and kind.

Signing Time and Sacred Ground

One of Michael's favorite things to do right now is signing his ABC's.  Sometimes I'll hear him squawking, "Aaah! Graaah! Craaah! Yaaah!" and look over at him, and he'll be signing his ABC's to himself.  It becomes a game to him if you say or sign them with him.  He just loves it and it's the cutest thing to see this little two year old signing his alphabet.

This little boy has so much he wants to say.  He's constantly doing signs he's learned from watching Signing Time DVDs.  We wish we knew better what he's saying.  Today he was doing a bunch of signs during church and Liz was trying to figure out what he was saying.  Then it dawned on her, he's singing one of the Signing Time songs to himself!  Music is another thing he absolutely loves, so no wonder he picks up signs so easily when they're put with music.

Even though we're still working with several speech therapists to hopefully help him someday learn to talk, we recently added a signing therapist as well.  It's mostly for our sake, to help us learn how to communicate with him through signs, since that's how he prefers to communicate right now.  I really need to take the time to watch Signing Time with him.  I hear it playing in the background all the time and the songs are always playing in my head.  But with sign language, you kinda have to see it if you want to learn it.

A few weeks ago we took the kids to the empty lot where the Fort Collins temple will be built and snapped a few pictures.  It's only about a mile away from our house and is across the street from where we go to church.  The building permit was finally obtained last week, almost three years after the temple was announced.  It will be fun watching the progress on the temple as we attend church each week, and we can't wait for it to be completed!

Little things

One day when I don't feel so entirely washed over by fatigue, maybe I will be much better at writing all the things going on around here. So here's a snapshot of a few things:

The kids thoroughly enjoying snuggle screen-time together

Aunt Julie came for a visit while Brooke enjoyed a splash in the tub

Michael thinks playing with the silverware is super fun

Tim put a light in our family room and let the kids climb the ladder.  No one scared of heights yet!

Michael is trying out a new device that speaks for him.  Here his speech therapist is teaching him how to touch the screen to make it say words.  He is mostly interested in going right to the keyboard app and pressing a letter of the alphabet and then doing the sign for it.  He knows most of his letters by site now too, meaning if I show him a letter, he will do the sign for it.  He laughs and giggles every time this new device "talks" when he presses a button.

These two are fast becoming play-mates.

Me snuggling with Brooklyn and Michael, probably watching Signing Time for the one billionth time.