Continued

I stink at the technical part of this, could only upload a few pics with that post. So here are a few more.

Disneyland

We spent last weekend in Disneyland with my sister Brittany (fondly known as Beebs) and her husband Scott, and boys Weston, Aidan, and Brennan. We had a great time! We spent the first day at the main park and the second at "California Adventure." Both have fun rides. Noah was so happy - - Disney is his favorite place on earth. We waited in line for almost an hour to go on the Toy Story 2 ride, which was pretty cool (although the wait with 4 little boys was pretty brutal!) Disney has some nice restaurants too, and I ate the best fries of my life - - seasoned with parsely, garlic, and parmesan cheese, with a thousand island dip. Amazing. My pants seemed a little snugger when I got home, I can't imagine why . . .

We also went to church and visited the LA Temple. We ate in a cute little diner nearby, and the hostess was born in Pocatello! Small world. I had so much fun visiting with Beebs, who I rarely get to see. She is darling, so patient and so fun (she didn't even lose it when Weston threw up chocolate donut all over the back seat of the car). I wish we could have spent more time together. We had to leave Sunday night, didn't get on the 6:00 flight so ended up taking a red-eye to Baltimore and then a morning flight to Chicago. Noah got a fever and didn't feel well part of the time, but he's fine now.

I'm also posting some gorgeous pictures of Lake Louise (when Scott took the boys to Canada). I told him that next fall we're going, just the 2 of us!

You Never Know . . .

Yesterday I was sitting in the TV room watching Ethan play his Wii game (Mario Party 8?). He was really doing well, as far as I could tell, and I told him what an awesome player he was. Later he came upstairs (after I'd hollered at him several times to quit playing and do his homework) and said, "Mom, when you complimented me on my video game skills that really got to me." I tell him I love him about 50 times a day, and constantly try to build him up, saying what a good brother he is, how nice he looks, making specific mention of nice things he's done or good schoolwork. But what made a difference to him was knowing I thought he was a good video game player. Isn't that funny?!

Canada

Scott took the kids to Canada this morning. I really wanted to go, but I've been recovering from a 2 week cold and was so buried in paperwork that I didn't feel I could do it. Plus next weekend we're going to Disneyland with Beebs and Scott and their kids. Now of course I'm missing the Scott and Ethan and Noah like crazy. They were all so sweet this morning. But I'm attacking the mess in my office and hopefully over the weekend I'll be able to get everything so organized that I won't be a stressed mess next week. Amazing how paper just piles up, coupons, schoolwork, mail, junk mail, adoption stuff, church stuff, FINDS (Down syndrome group) stuff, etc. So I'm making about a hundred little piles and trying to throw out as much as possible. The weather is great, cool and crisp, and tomorrow I'm going to attempt to clean the rest of the garage and do some yardwork. Scott's parents are going to be in Canada too, so he and the kids will have a great time. They're staying in a beautiful hotel on the shores of Lake Louise. I wish I could be with them! But I was really suffocating in backed up to-dos. So I'll unbury myself and be a better wife and mother when they get back.

Updates

Life is going on, busy and chaotic as usual. We're working on new adoption paperwork, which is a huge pain in the neck. Trying to coordinate between our new agency, our old agency, and our homestudy agency is not easy. Our profile is being showed around though, so at some point we may actually have a baby.

Ethan is doing very well in school, and recently ran for class president. He didn't win, but that's mostly due to the fact that there were 4 boys and only 2 girls in the running. What 6th grade girl would vote for a boy? But Ethan did a great job with his speech, misquoting Patrick Henry ("give me lunch or give me death") and JFK ("ask not what your school can do for you . . .). He started out, "In this time of political turmoil, vote for a candidate who cares more about having fun than about the issues." He got a lot of laughs and his teacher loved it. I'm really proud of him, he did it all on his own and it was a good experience for him.

Noah is doing well in school. Every day he gets a paper with smiley faces or thumbs down stamps for each of his classes. Thumbs down is for disruptive behavior, not listening, etc. Monday he got all smiles! Now the goal is a whole week of smiles. He does love school, and he's working hard.

I'm putting together our Down syndrome Halloween party. The kids love it, we do a pinata and it's always a big hit. I love seeing the costumes. I'm really looking forward to it. We also have the National Association for Down Syndrome conference in Chicago in November. They always have great workshops. Needless to say, I'll be attending the potty-training one. Still working on that.

Scott is busy with work and planning lots of trips for us. That's his stress reliever. I just curl up with a good book. I've been getting through an awful lot of pages lately . . .

Potty Training Update

NOTE: Contains material that may be unsuitable for adults with weak stomachs! So we took Noah to the dr. a couple of weeks ago and talked about his seeming inability to feel the need to poop and to control when he pees. He suggested a specialist, a pediatric gastroenterologist. So off we went, and when he did the exam on Noah he said Noah was chronically constipated. I never would have guessed, because believe me, he poops every day. But it turns out that he's not pushing out the poo (low muscle tone) and it's just kind of leaking out (sorry this is so gross). Anyway, he's got a (please excuse the pun) backlog in there. So this past weekend was the colon cleanse, he took large doses of Miralax and Senecot. And for the next month he takes a low dose at night. And guess what. Yesterday on his own he twice stood up and peed in the potty! He has almost never done that before. And he doesn't seem to need warm water to make him go anymore! All that fullness in his belly was interfering with his ability to make himself go. He peed again the "big boy way" this morning! Hallelujah, maybe after 5 years of potty training we are finally getting somewhere!

Happy Anniversary to me (and to Scott)

Believe it or not, it's been fifteen years since we tied the knot. My gift to Scott was very unromantic, but much needed, I started cleaning the garage out (I would have liked to have finished but it's about a 3 day job, at least!) I found that more and more stinky shoes were collecting on our small shelf in the back hall, so I bought a large shelf and put it in the garage and now most of the shoes are there. I also de-cobwebbed about 1/4 of the walls and ceilings and completely swept/cleaned the area closest to the door. And I put away a bunch of stuff from the FINDS group. Now I just have to clean the tool shelves, gardening supplies, sports equipment, and the rest of the walls and floor. Thankfully it's cooled off quite a bit here so at least it's not as sweaty a job as it could be.

Scott's much more romantic gift to me was a beautiful bouquet of flowers and a gift card for Borders (I can't wait to go buy some books!) We're planning on going out to dinner as soon as we get a free night! With scouts and young women and piano and guitar and work for both of us, we're pretty packed.

One more thing, you may have heard of a lot of flooding in Chicagoland, but we escaped any problems, thanks to our new sump pump and back-up sump pump. (It only takes one good basement flood to make you buy a back-up!) This has been the wettest September in about 200 years, but this week things are supposed to dry out a bit.