http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120206-181306
This weekend we mostly did errands and sorts. I took the kids shoe shopping and Kai was so excited to try on all of the different shoes and run in them in the store. He picked some star wars shoes that light up on the toe and heal. Lorelai chose some running shoes that look a lot like my running shoes. They were both very excited to wear their new shoes wherever they go now. New shoes is exciting for them now I guess.

Lorelai has been closing the door to her room and listening to her music for hours at a time. She just wants to listen to her songs over and over by herself. Kai has been a little sweetie always wanting to come sit in my lap. She also has been writing things on post-it notes and leaving them on our door. This morning Kai had a message that said I love you Kai. Yesterday Lorelai left us hearts on post-it notes in our bathroom.
]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120129-122908
After his birthday we had a little snow. Lorelai's school was canceled for 3 days and Kai's school was canceled 2 days and very late and limited the 3rd day. The kids enjoyed sledding, making snow angels, and just playing in the snow each day. They seemed liked they missed school but they also seemed like they enjoyed being home with us too.

This weekend we had some friends over for dinner finally. We had been so busy trying to remodel last year that we didn't really get much of a chance to have people over. It was nice to be able to see everyone.]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry120103-195322
Back to work. We enjoyed having the winter break. The first three days we spent entertaining. We had friends over the first day for the regular visiting. Then James' parents came up and stayed with us a couple days for Christmas eve and Christmas. The kids enjoyed another Christmas and were full of excitement. The the rest of the break was a lot of doing things around the house and recovering from colds. We did get out to take the kids ice skating for the first time. Lorelai did a great job, Kai did pretty good himself but he was holding our hands and on the wall most of the time. Lorelai did some skating on her own but after a couple of falls (one that was pretty hard I guess) she decided she had enough. It was really fun though and I think the kids had fun. Another day we took the kids to see the Muppets. They seemed to enjoy watching the movie. Lorelai said afterwards that it was weird that the movie was a new movie but it was like it was old too. I asked her why she thought it was old and she said it was because of the telephones. They had some old style phones. It think I remember one or two of them being rotary phones. She said she enjoyed the movie. Kai was a little bit antsy at parts but once he was sitting on James' lap he seemed like he was going to fall asleep. We went shopping and finally purchased some mounts - one for the tv and one for the projector and a new faucet. The faucet that came with this house looked pretty but it had some issues. James was able to install the tv mount and the faucet. One of these days we will feel like we are moved in... I still don't quite feel all the way like it is home with all of the remodeling. Yesterday I took Lorelai to go try on flower girl dresses because Sarah was trying on wedding dresses. We picked a dress that looks really cute on Lorelai. She is excited to be the flower girl.

For New Year's Eve we celebrated Easter time again with the kids. Lorelai actually understood what that meant this year. Erin, Darren, Kevin, and Veronica came over to help us bring in the new year (early style).

I have been thinking of new years resolutions. I am having a hard time coming up with ones. I am going to try to let a couple of things go - tidying up after as much of our paperwork. I am working hard at not caring so much about things at work. I like caring, but I don't like caring so much that it keeps me up thinking about things at night that I don't like to think about. I hope to try to get out for even more bike rides with the family this year and I want to try to spend more time working out at night so that it is the same time that James works out so that he hopefully is more motivated to get more exercise (he told me that would help).

]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111121-143534 ]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111121-142848
This weekend James worked on the siding on the front of the house where he earlier found dry rot when he was replacing Kai's flooring. I worked on getting Christmas gifts ready trying to beat the Christmas rush. Lorelai and Kai played most of the weekend. One of the mornings Kai was going to change into his clothes. He took off his pajamas and then he noticed the legos just sitting there. I walked past the room and he was playing legos without any clothes on. He was pretty distracted. It is pretty cool in our house too because of the cool weather but Kai didn't notice.

Lorelai has been dressing Kai up as a princess and fairy. I think she is pretty convincing that he would want to be a fairy and they dress up together. Then Kai tells me that he is a girl and he is a fairy or a princes. He will then try to wave his hands like he is dancing a little. Once he puts on his spider man costume he just wants to punch, hit, and scratch everyone. He also gets a mean face with a growl. I tried to tell him that isn't what spider man would do.

]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry111007-142941
Then they got separated and she didn't want to walk anymore. When Vivian came RUNNING by Lorelai decided to go with her. Also they had little paper slips on a string around their neck to count their laps. And for every three laps they could get a prize. So she kept going until she could get the popcorn or cotton candy (a choice). She decided to try the cotton candy (it was blue). She didn't want to walk anymore once she got the prizes so we left to get Kai at about 330.

We spent some extra time at Kai's school so she could look around and also we just weren't in a hurry. We had leftovers at about 445 when we got home and then I said we could go back to the school or go pick asian pears. Lorelai decided we should go to the school because the picnic was only tonight and the asian pears will "always" be there. :D

Anyway, they rode bikes to the school and played around. Lots of people had left already and they seemed to be doing the eating in the gym. But the kids played on all three playgrounds and in the woods. We finally went home and got ready for bed and read books."

When I came home on Sunday Lorelai was still coming home from her friend Sophia's ferry party. The power was also out for a while from the wind storm.

This weekend was pretty fun. Lorelai and James watched Star Wars IV. She thought the movie was pretty interesting. Lorelai seemed to think Princess Leia wasn't in the movie often enough, and she also said "Are Princess Leia and Luke's aunt the only girls in this movie?" Since then she has been acting like a robot on occasion.

Sunday morning we went to a pumpkin patch and corn maze at Carpinito Bros in Kent. The kids picked out two pumpkins and we put them (kids and pumpkins) in a wheel barrow out of the patch. They also had fresh local acorn squash, butternut squash, cabbage, eggplant, green beans, and green peppers that we bought. After loading up the car we went through the corn maze. Luckily we had a map!! They had waypoints throughout the maze where you could punch your map with a special shape punch to show you went through the whole thing. The kids walked all the way through the UW side and then James took them through the WSU one on a four wheeled cart (wagon with no sides).

The maze took us at least an hour to get through. We were at the farm for almost two hours. We ate a very late lunch around 2pm and then went to my parents condo for my sister's birthday dinner.

This week Kai started his speech therapy. James had to bring him because there weren't many options on when we could take him in. This is what James had to say about that "The facility seems pretty new. They have a nice waiting room with a few toys in it. But the real fun is inside. They do speech and physical therapy so they have all kinds of different toys.

Ms. Rachel wanted to get to know Kai since she'd not met him before so they started out with two puzzles. They are those puzzles with wooden animal shapes that make noise when you put them in the right place. They had farm & zoo animals. They put all the pieces in a box that you couldn't see in and then Kai & Rachel took turns pulling out pieces. She would ask him to name them and say if they were zoo or farm animals. Then she'd ask what sound they made. Kai did a great job saying all these words and it almost seemed like he didn't need therapy. But as he got more comfortable he started saying more sentences and you could hear the words get chopped up more and dropping and substituting letters.

Next she took him out of the small room to the big area and they picked a Mr Potato head box to bring back. It had 3 potato heads and lots of pieces. She had Kai name the body parts as he was putting them on.

I thought they did another activity in the room but I can't think of what it was. While Kai was doing the fun stuff, she was also asking me questions about what we've done so far with him. I mentioned that he's gotten much better with /f/ & /k/ because we were doing the exercises the school gave us. It also seems like /s/ clicked for him when we were on vacation in Oregon.

But he's still having troubles with all the letters in the context of a sentence. We talked about how the therapy usually progresses from just trying to make the sounds, to making single words, to using them in sentences. She also thought we might want to look at his grammar at some point since he was substituting difficult words for a while. "Her hit me."

After doing the games, we went on a quick tour of the place. They have a room with kitchen stuff, and a few other special activity rooms. The smaller rooms open onto a big open area with some mats on the ground and some fun big games. They have a trapeze slider thing (zip line?) where you can jump off at the end into a ball pit! The ball pit also has stairs going up to it and a slide going out.

Then we went into the back of the building and since it's in an office park there is a warehouse with very high ceilings. In there they have a HUGE mural of a monkey on a tree. They have a 20-30ft rope bridge for kids to walk across. Typical parallel bars for walking therapy. They have basketball hoops (high & low). They also have a full playground setup with slide, fireman pole, ladder, stairs, wobbly steps, funhouse mirror. Everything you'd see on an outside school playground. Kai was excited to get pulled around in their two plastic red wagons. They also have a climbing wall similar to the one at Lorelai's school.

They have a parents waiting room in the front where I can hang out during future sessions.

All in all it went really well. Kai seemed to enjoy it and he participated with Rachel well. I told him we'd be back next Monday. I think the weekdays are still a bit hard for him to conceptualize but maybe this week we can do some calendar practice and he'll be able to anticipate it more."

Kai has been exited for his new class. Because it is something new that he is starting (Lorelai always seems to be starting something new, ballet, soccor, summer camp, etc). Also, sometimes we get invited to baby showers and we tell Kai he can't come because it is for girls only. So the other day after he found out that daddy was taking him he said that his school was only for boys.

Kai has been doing excellent with not having accidents during his nap times. He has been having about 1 per week. We are still working on his night time accidents though.

Lorelai is pretty obsessed about her white high heals. I bought her a pair a little while ago because they were pretty cute and a really good deal. I don't let her wear them all the time, because the nice looking dress shoes would look bad pretty quickly and I don't want her to hurt herself because of the heals. She gets so excited when she gets to wear them. She keeps on asking me when she gets to wear them again.

She got a homework project this week to complete an "all about me" poster. One of the squares she had to fill in what she wanted to do when she grew up. She seemed a little in dispair when she got to that section because she didn't really want to be anything. Then all of a sudden a while later she was excited because she wanted to be a farmer. She said she would wake up every morning and plant seeds and water them. She said then she would have food for me and dad and we would never run out of food. It was pretty cute. She then asked me how she would know what to do to be a farmer... and I told her they have schools for that.

Thursday morning I got a chance to volunteer in Lorelai's class a little bit. It wasn't as fun as what I was doing in Ms. Marion's class actually reading with the kids. I just did homework packets. Lorelai was excited that I came to class with her though.

Lorelai has been doing a great job participating in soccer this year. She only has a couple more practices left.

Cute snippet from James:----
"We sat down for breakfast and were waiting for it to cool off. Lorelai says "agh, I have to go to the bathroom" and runs off. So I get up and say "agh I have to get my coffee".

Kai waits a little bit and is smiling. Suddenly he says "agh, I have to go get dressed."

It was pretty cute. I guess he was done with pajamas. "---]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110912-152413 off by working on the house while I watched the kids. He tried to get
the siding back on while the weather was still nice. Monday we went
down to Portland to visit his parents. Then Thursday we went to my
parents house in Poulsbo. The kids went to pick up crab pots with my
dad and James. One of the days we went to the local pool and the kids
enjoyed the water slide and kiddie pools. One of the mornings we went
to the beach and the kids played in the sand but it was pretty windy
and cool that morning. We came back on Sunday evening which gave us
one day at home.

Lorelai started her first day of school on Tuesday. She is was a
little tired the first week. Here is what James wrote about Lorelai's
first day "Lorelai was excited to go to school today. Despite the cold
house this morning, she woke up around 6am and got dressed. Then she
wisely went back under the covers.

She had her bag packed, hair done, breakfast finished by 7am. She was
pretty anxious to leave. But I made her wait until 730 since the doors
don't open until 740.

We rode bikes to school and after we locked up our bikes Lorelai
spotted Sherry getting off her bus. We flagged her down and went to
walk with her. Sherry asked "What class are you in?" and Lorelai
replied "What class are YOU in?"... Sherry said "I don't know" and she
told me her parents just said something along the lines of just go to
school and ask.

So we found Principal McDonald and she looked up Sherry on her list.
Sherry is in Ms. Slough's class which is right next to Ms. Butler
(Lorelai's teacher). So we went into the school and found the rooms.
NHE Bldg Map

Lorelai was a little shy at first but once Ms. Butler stopped talking
to her she went and found her cubby to put her bag in and found her
name tag to color. I tried to take a photo of her at her desk but she
didn't look too happy about it.

There are a lot of kids from her old class - Sophia, Katarina,
Benjamin, Andrew (plus others?). Lorelai also said hi to a girl from
summer camp. So that is neat. I also saw a girl in her class who was
in soccer with Lorelai last fall.

One thing of interest was they had two names at each chair on the
tables. Apparently after lunch each day Ms. Butler and Ms. Slough will
trade students. I'm not sure what they do in the afternoons (except go
home on Wednesday) but it will be interesting to see how the teachers
can work together with the two classes. In her old class they often
had art, gym, music, or library in the afternoons. But I imagine that
is different for each grade/teacher.

After dropping her off I went to the parent welcome coffee social. "

Also from James after pick up:

"So after school she was in a good mood so she must have had a nice day.

The girl she saw from camp was actually going to Kindergarten and was
just dropping her brother off in Lorelai's class.

She had music class that morning and seemed to enjoy it. She said they
didn't have enough time to each lunch at lunch time. And she liked
having two teachers but she'd prefer the teachers to change rooms
rather than the kids - she wants to stay in the same room all day. :D

Oh and Ms. Slough, the afternoon teacher, is pronounced "Slow", not
"Slew" or "Sluff". I kept saying it wrong when talking with Lorelai.

Lorelai said they would get homework today. So that will be good. She
seems to enjoy having something to work on after school."


This last weekend Lorelai started soccer. She did a great job
participating, I hope it stays this year. Sunday we went to golden
gardens for a potluck to celebrate Theresa's birthday and to see some
of our other friends. It was fun just hanging out, the kids did a lot
of playing in the sand. They came back saying they had a lot of fun
playing at the beach. We were tired after that.

Recently I purchased some boxer brief underwear to be more like
daddy's. He loves wearing them, he wears them every day now and he
loves to tell us about how he is wearing them.]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110830-162717
Sunday the kids played at home most of the day and Sunday evening I went out and met Misty to hang out. It is nice that downtown Bellevue is so close to both of us. That night we decided that James was close enough and so Monday we started to pack up and get ready to come down to Portland to visit James' parents. We came down Monday afternoon. Today (Tuesday) the kids have been having fun playing outside and I haven't been doing much of anything.
]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110830-161316
Saturday was a busy day for us. James worked on the house mist of the weekend again. I took the kids to a glass store. Then we came home and got the kids money and we went garage sale shopping. The kids were so cute. They each purchased a couple of toys. Lorelai purchased a big sized my little pony that walks and talks. She was so excited about her pony. ]]> http://brit.harrisnotes.com/blog/index.php?entry=entry110818-141400