Christmas time together

One fun thing about Christmas - coordinating outfits!!

and trying to get a picture with everyone smiling and facing in the right direction...

Katheryn and Nickolas do more of a combined effort in opening presents than individual. Katheryn quickly opens her own - oohs and aahs, then helps Nick open his.

And their new favorite Christmas book - twas the night before Christmas.
But Katheryn gets upset that Nick is in the book - and she isn't! (St Nick)

Christmas eve and the kids are opening more things.

Katheryn is helping Nick to appreciate the toys he got.

And then it was Santa time.

 And Katheryn did get her hippopotamus for Christmas - like she has been asking for, for weeks!

Our Christmas day involved having as much family over as possible!

And getting some rest when we could

Until it was actually time for bedtime
(And yes I got all coordinating cousin outfits)

I was actually sick for much of Christmas day - I didn't know it, but I caught a virus and was completely exhausted! (I didn't find out I had the virus until a couple of days later)
So not very many pictures.
But we opened presents and ate food and chatted and played all day.
All together.

Merry Christmas

Christmas Cookies with C(K)atheryn

Another back-dated post
Some mom-daughter time with Katheryn.

She is so interested in baking – she loves making those little Pillsbury dough boy cookies, the ones where you just stick them on the pan. I had such a craving for those when I was pregnant with Nickolas – and couldn’t find them anywhere.

I thought it would be fun to make some shape cookies together. I used to do a lot of Christmas baking when I was in school (nothing like putting off studying for finals by making dozens and dozens of cookies).
I will admit that I did cheat a bit. The dough isn’t from scratch – but more of that Pillsbury frozen dough stuff. But it got the job done!

Katheryn really liked that she could make whatever shapes she wanted!

Ooooooh!

And we can make any Christmas shape we want!

 

And Katheryn's favorite Christmas shape!

A hippopotamus!!

All in the oven for baking

While those were baking - we decided to build a train!

(please ignore the well-lived-in background)

 One thing about the train.

It kept melting on me!

A little time spent outside soon fixed that

Who knew we could do our Christmas baking with the backdoor open because it was too hot?!

We got the appropriate appreciation for our design

Then more decorating!
OK by this time Katheryn was no longer interested in our mother-daughter time.
She really just wanted to get dirty and/or eat some cookies

The kids had their very own cookies to eat!

Yummy, yummy, yummy!

You don't say!

Nick has decided to show off his vocabulary.
Everywhere but in speech therapy.
I call his therapist gushing about how many words he has (he exploded from 5 words to 40 in about 3 weeks). And how I want to refocus our sessions. So we go for a session.
Nothing.
Until about 10 minutes left in our session I left for the bathroom. He starts talking.
In sentences.
With complex sounds. (his favorite word is cheese - with the ch and the eese)

Sabrina (our therapist) had to quickly scribble everything down!
I come back in - nothing.

That kid! I swear he's such a stubborn little thing he wants to talk when he wants to talk. And if he doesn't want to, then he won't.

And we leave, he's chatting and waving bye, and saying "bye-bye 'bina" and pointing at pictures - there is Santa, home, car, no and on and on and on!

I've been trying to write down all of his words and how he says them, but he keeps having more and more every day! And yes that is what I was encouraged about, when I was so worried about his language. That it would just explore one day. Well it has exploded!
It was right around the time that Nick got his wheelchair trial (which we still have borrowed). I was told that this is common, once they find their independence the language will follow.

But Katheryn has a speech delay too (now 'labelled' moderate) and we are starting some session for her in the new year. But she has difficulty is different sounds and not actual words. Sometimes I forget that some kids don't have to work so hard at language (but I did - so I shouldn't be surprised). And in the long run they can all talk.
But understanding has never been an issue, maybe it's the Ridding stubbornness in both of them. Wanting to keep their thoughts a secret and keep their cards close.

(sorry no pictures - I'll try to add some later)

Catch Up and Can't Catch Me

So much to catch up on.
So much I’ve missed blogging about. I’m catching up now (I've spent 2 days catch up with all my posts).

Because I hate having things out of order, I’m going to write a couple of different separate posts –

backdated of course.

- We worked on walking in the walker
- We had an EEG
- I talked to a couple of classes
- We had Nick's walker tuned up
- Nick got his new AFOs
- We had a Christmas party at March of Dimes (CE)
- Had a Santa visit and other holiday parties

We’ve had a really busy couple of months, and every time I think it’s going to get better, I just seem to add more things to my calendar. But I’m hoping for a bit of breathing room. The last 3 weeks of December I’m leaving appointment-free. It’s like a vacation!

Of course while I'm trying to catch up on all of the exciting stuff in the Ridding household - Nick continues to show off!
Literally, while I'm on the computer he decided that it is time to conquer those stairs!

I guess I can check that off our - to-do in physio list!
Nick has LOVED exploring the stairs.
Every time I turn my back - there he is. And he laughs! Because he knows I don`t want him on the stairs when I`m not there. He hasn`t fallen, but I don`t want him to.

I tried putting a gate up (I know - mommy trying to quash Nick`s newfound independence). But that doesn`t work with a 3 year old in the house.

While we are talking about catching, Katheryn has some catching of her own.
We had a little bit of snow - and Katheryn had so much fun running around catching snowflakes on her tongue!