Isaiah 7.17 : Updates, etc.

..is no fun of course which is why yesterday we bought Isaiah a playground/swing set for the backyard. We pooled up all of his birthday money, saved and scrimped ourselves this whole summer and got a great deal this weekend on a nice wood playset for Isaiah. It won't be delivered until Friday but we're excited. It's got a little tower with operable windows, a slide, rock climbing wall, telescope, steering wheel, a trapeze like swing and a couple of standard swings. The best thing of all is that its got a wooden roof. We learned very quickly with our canvas roofed gazebo/cabana that very few fabrics can handle the pine cone grenades that fall 40-50 feet from our pine trees, not to mention any branches that might fall. In development news Isaiah is starting to talk more and more. Still its just word approximations, but its getting better. 'Cheese' & 'Shoes' are still the clearest, but he's getting there with other words. He can approximate m

Well first day of school today - PreK that is, but he's at the big boy elementary school across the street from our house from 7:15-11:50 5 days a week! We all went through a bit of separation anxiety this morning and I think Rachel has been taking it the hardest. After spending nearly every waking hour of every single day with Isaiah for the last 3 years it's hard for her to let go and let someone else take the reigns, even if it is just for a few hours. I'm taking it on the chin a bit as well. His little pouty face when we said goodbye this morning would probably even make Chuck Norris cry. We hope it'll be great for his development all around. Socially and speechwise should keep progressing at a good clip. We both worry a bit about bullying since he looks so different and is sooooo small compared to the rest of the school age kids. Hopefully he's just too young for that right now, plus they are sort of insulated in the Special Needs Pre-K area.

Well we finally made it to the hotel and settled into bed at about 2 am this morning after being stuck in traffic for three hours about an hr south of the city. The interstate was shut down due to a hazmat truck crash and we all got shoved on a little side road which took forever! So far we're enjoying the symposium. We've had only one session so far and we're looking forward to meeting a ton of new people the next few days.

... in Atlanta for the next couple days at least. Sorry for the lack of pretty much everything for the last couple months. We've had a bunch going on and I just never seem to remember to post when I actually have the time. Later this week we'll be heading up to Louisville, KY for the Annual CCA retreat. (CCA = Childrens Craniofacial Association) They've helped us out by giving us a scholarship for the room and event cost as well as some gas money so we can go for the first time. It'll be great to meet more Apert families as well as many other people coping with other craniofacial issues all while gaining a some practical education at the symposium. It's getting a bit crazy to think that in a little more than 3 weeks Isaiah will be 3 years old!! OUr big push right now is still speech as he's pretty severely delayed. He's on a big book reading kick which is good, but now I'm feeling the pain of reading the same 5 books over and over again. We

For those of you wondering we made it through the storms last night unscathed. A little less sleep than normal, but everything intact. Thanks for all your thoughts and prayers. We're hoping all of our friends in the SE, especially those in and around Tuscaloosa and Birmingham are doing alright.

Wohoo the roof has been fixed, and for the whopping sum of $25! The guys that came out first for an estimate said it was a nail that had backed its way out and punctured the two layers of shingles and patched it up lickety split. That's great! Now all I have to do it fix the water damaged ceiling and insulation. Of course since something went well, something 'bad' had to happen too. We were outside playing, enjoying the nice spring weather that Georgia offers and I notice a bunch of flying termites coming out of the ground by the carport. I guess we should've had termite protection all these years after all. Yet again one of those things that drops by the wayside worrying about insurance and surgeries. It should easily be fixed / controlled, just a pain, and more money out of our pockets, but that's the joy of being a homeowner! Oh and did I mention the dishwasher is on the fritz again? Anyways on to the real reason most people read this, Isaiah! He's

Here's a little video I took a few weeks ago with Isaiah on Grandma and Grandpa Hanthorn's Pool table. He loves to play around on it!

Yeah yeah yeah, not as catchy as when it rains it pours, but still true none the less, at least at our house. Looks like we've got a roof leak staining our ceiling in the entry portion of our living roof. It started small with a little brown spot on the ceiling when my Mom was here earlier this month. Since its right near the wall and perfectly in line with the outside eave vent I figured it was from some blowing rain getting up in there. After yesterday and last night's rain I'm not so sure since the winds weren't that bad, we just got hit with a good amount of rain. The stain just about tripled in size overnight which means its getting worse. I crawled up into our attic to see if I could see anything but basically I just shined the flashlight around because I'm a bit too big to get all the way out to the eave with our low roof pitch and I don't especially want to pull down the drywall right now. Our roof is in decent shape, or so we thought, but I do kn

Well so much for my New Years resolution. 2 months later and I still don't have photos up and they're mounting. Its takes the little free time I have on my birthday to sit down and write something. We always seem to be busy lately, mainly just trying to keep up with the two year old. This kid is into everything and has been in a screeching phase for the last month plus which has been putting Rachel and my eardrums through some enduring times. Partly its due to his communication frustrations, but mainly its because he knows we hate it and he gets our attention. He is making some progress in speech though as yesterday he had his first two word 'sentence' by saying "lights on" in his bedroom. Speech doesn't count things like "Thank You" because to kids in their minds its just one long word since the two words are always together. Lights On is a big step in him piecing things together to help tell us what he wants. My Mom came to Atlanta last

More snow fun! Well we're on lockdown because of the snow. It may not look like much to our friends in the North, but just think about this. There are 8 salt trucks in the state of Georgia. Eight! None of them have a plow. Therefore we're not driving! Now I know the state has brought in some outside help, but still, we've been having a bit of freezing rain this morning and there's a good 1/8" to 1/4" crust of ice on top of the snow as you'll see in the video. He handled the snow a little better than in Wisconsin, but because of the ice we're not sledding or doing a snowman. Instead I brushed off the top of the sandbox, took off the lid, and let Isaiah help give our driveway some traction!

Just had to share. All of this had fallen in the course of an hour here at the time of filming. Isaiah's been running around the house screaming. It may not look like much right now, but this is already a ton for Atlanta and we may be in for as much as 8"! oh an because I can, I hadn't taken the Christmas lights down yet and had to light them up since the bushes look so nice covered up in the snow. I hope all my southern friends are staying safe and warm at home... Enjoy!

A week in and the new year seems to be going about the same as last year. Not the best year ever of our lives, but nothing much to complain about either. Isaiah is still trying to get over his wheezing asthma that flared up about a week before Christmas, but we definitely hear less junk in his lungs now. The other day he actually helped us percussor his own chest. The percussor, if you don't know, is a little flexible plastic cup that we lightly beat on his chest and back to help loosen up the junk in his lungs and make coughs more productive. It was just cute to see himself trying to do that to himself. He's really been getting better about taking his meds lately and putting up less of a fight. His breathing treatments were a struggle when we had to start increasing them, but Grandpa Kolis' gift of Bearry White, Jr (a white stuffed bear) helped us since we had Isaiah help give Bearry White his breathing meds too. New years day we had breakfast with Rachel's G