Goodbye old year...

Hello, new one!

2010 was a bit of a rough year for our family - between job difficulties for Daddy Mac, financial difficulties as a result of those job difficulties, surgery and following therapies for Miss Sunshine, the list goes on. We weathered the trials and have faith that with the new year will come better news for all of us.

It's a time of new beginnings. Many people talk about making resolutions. The thing about these New Year Resolutions, however, is that many do not stick. Oh sure, people do great for the first month or three, but somewhere around Easter, our resolve weakens and slowly but surely those resolutions slip out the window.

You may have noticed that I have not done such a good job of keeping up the blog with my weight loss journey, as I vowed to do back at the beginning of November. Well, the honest truth is that I simply haven't done anything to blog about. All my grandiose plans for change? Well, life pretty much got in the way. However, I am not longer going to let that pass for an excuse.

The time has come, my friends. The time to change. To make myself, my life, what I have wanted it to be. To that end, I present, not my resolutions, but my life-changes:

Lose the weight. That pretty much says it all. I've researched available classes that will fit in with my work and life schedule at the gym, and I am determined to make this work. I am stocking up on good munchies, like veggies, to try and curb my desire for more food so I can reduce my portion sizes at meals and not still feel hungry. I will go to the gym daily - sometimes just for some time on the elliptical, sometimes to take a class of one type or another, sometimes to lift some weights. But the time has come.

Lose the stress. This may be my hardest goal. I have always been a high-stress person. Even things that really don't deserve to be stressed about have a way of driving me nuts. I'm hoping to find that center of balance, that will allow me to take some deep breaths and let go. It's going to take a lot of work, and I know it.

Get organized. We are in the process of finishing off the soon-to-be-toyroom bedroom in our basement. ALL of the kids toys (well, the ones we are keeping at any rate) will be going in this room. I will be getting rid of a large portion of toys - I have no intention of moving toys into this room that do not get played with. It's time for them to get out of my house. I have already gone through the kids clothing and pulled all clothes that no longer fit from their closets and dresssers. Some items will be kept in storage (each child has a large tub for their old clothes that I'm not quite ready to part with) and others will find their way to the DAV. I will also be going through my own clothing, as well as Daddy Mac's. Once this is completed, it will be on to our storage room. We both have a bad habit of holding on to things we really don't need. That time is over. I did a purge in June when we held our garage sale, but it seems like already things are getting out of control again. So it's time now to get serious and get this stuff out of my house and out of my life.

Be Happy. This is my final goal. Be happy. Who cares what I am happy with? Who cares if the carpet needs vacuumed? I can be happy that the kitchen is clean. Who cares if I need to lose weight? I can be happy that there is food on the table to eat. Who cares if Miss Sunshine needs another surgery? I can be happy that I have a happy, healthy child. And so on and so forth. Does this mean I will just dismiss those concerns? Certainly not. But I can strive to be happy in spite of them. I'm halfway there. Time to get rid of my negativity and work on the positivity.

The beauty of song.

So, Monster Boy had his very first ever school concert a few weeks ago. Granted, he and his classmates only sang two songs, but it was so adorable.

I couldn't find the charger for our camcorder, so I had to settle for the video option on my camera (which is not so hot itself). So I apologize for the quality of the video, but for your viewing enjoyment, here he is!

And, another one. Just because!

(I know you can't see him at all in the first one, and the second one is not much better, but in case you were looking for him - Monster Boy is the little one in the blue shirt front and center on the second video)

Where does the time go?

So I had planned all these great Christmas posts and such. They haven't happened. The last two weeks have been pure insanity around our house and getting things done, well, it just hasn't happened.

I promise I'll get back to Christmas, probably after the New Year!

But for now, I want to concentrate on something more important, at least to me. Monster Boy turned SIX yesterday. I can't believe my baby boy is SIX! When did that happen? How did he go from this:

To this?

My beautiful boy. I'm so very honored to be his mom (Well, okay, MOST days I'm honored). I'm just not ready for him to grow up.

And to top THAT off - I discovered today that he has his very first loose tooth. Which I'm ALSO not ready for. How can he be that big? Really? I wiggled it myself to confirm, and yes, indeed, a loose tooth is present. *SOB*. I want to rewind him back to that itty bitty baby, please.

Talking.

Miss Sunshine had her monthly visit with the speech therapist today. And, oh boy, was it a WONDERFUL visit.

The speech therapist was SO impressed with how she is doing. She said that she is completely on track with her speech and is in fact a bit accelerated, especially considering that she was behind not even four months ago!

And in even more wonderful, exciting speech news - we will not be seeing our therapist again until February! (Not that we don't like our ST, because we do. We like her very much actually. But not seeing her means Miss Sunshine is progressing so well that the need is reduced!) She will come back when Miss Sunshine is two and reevaluate again, and we will go from there.

We are noting some nasality in Miss Sunshine's speech - mainly when she had to transition to a non-nasal vowel from a nasal consonant. In particular, we hear it when she says "Snacks". "N" is a VERY nasal letter (Go ahead and say it. You'll notice that you can feel a lot of the sound coming out your nose if you concentrate on it). And she just has a hard time transitioning to a proper sounding "A" after that "N". Her ST (speech therapist, in case you didn't already catch that) says this is totally normal, and likely something she will outgrow, as she CAN say the non-nasal vowels properly when they are not behind a nasal consonant. It's along the same lines as the ear tubes - it's just going to take TIME for the muscles of her palate to learn how to do their job now that they are in the correct place - and one of those jobs involves speech. So, we give it time. If she is still having issue with this at around age 4 or so, she may be checked to see if she is a candidate for another procedure, a pharyngeal flap (or P-flap as it is more commonly called) which somehow involves lengthening the back of her palate to create a better seal to reduce nasality, or at least, that is my understanding of it. I really haven't done a lot of research into the procedure as yet, because I am still hoping that it will wind up being unnecessary in Miss Sunshine's case. Only time will tell.

So for now, we are just going to be THRILLED with Miss Sunshine's progress, as her speech has always been at the top of our concerns, and now we can shove it to the back of the list. Well, honestly, now that we don't need to be so worried about it, that pretty much eradicates the list!