Forgot to update with Maddie's 9-month results

It was a rough weekend.....




We took Maddie for her 9-month appt. around mid-October and as usual she's measuring "large" again: 26 lbs. 10 1/2 oz. and 30 1/2 inches long. Doc just kept saying how tall she was for her age which of course we all know, but I don't think people really realize her height until they actually see her! He did knock her down to 2% milk instead of Whole Milk b/c he said that she obviously didn't need the extra fat that Whole Milk has. Ha ha! She's really not a big eater - I mean she'll eat a lot of different stuff, she just doesn't eat A LOT. It's hard to believe that in one more month she'll be having her first birthday!! This year flew by......she doesn't go back for her 1-year appt. until after the first of the year.

I sent a message out to my daycare parents letting them know that I was increasing my rates for 2010. I'm going on my 3rd year and have never increased my rates so I think I'm due. We'll see how well that goes over! I've also added a lot of rules for late fees to try to curb late payments so if that doesn't help end that then I guess I'll be making some extra $$ when I add on the new charges. LOL

Our Thanksgiving was good! Too bad we were so busy all four of our days off - we never really had time to just relax. We went to Travis' aunt's house on Thanksgiving Day and ate and ate some more! When we left there, we went to my parent's house for a little bit and of course we left there with just Maddie b/c Kiegan wanted to stay the night with Mamaw. Friday I had a birthday party in Towanda for my cousin's two little boys and that night we had a rehearsal and rehearsal dinner for a wedding that Travis was going to be in. I did my Walmart shopping Saturday morning, started putting out my Christmas decorations and then headed off to the wedding. Yesterday was spent finishing up with the Christmas decorations and cleaning the house!

We go next Monday for Kiegan's APD diagnostic in Bloomington so I'll update on that when I know something!

Day by day....

It's been awhile since I've posted on here. We're still trying to adjust to life without John by taking things day by day. Still doesn't seem real.....the holidays are going to be bittersweet this year - Maddie's first holidays and our first holidays without John. Travis & Trevor are still trying to finish up harvest. The weather isn't helping much!! Thankfully the Liv. County Hwy Dept. is being very cooperative and understanding about them taking days off to farm. The outpouring of love and support to all of us from friends and family has been overwhelming and so appreciated. It is really amazing how a community can come together in a time of need.



The kids are all staying busy and healthy (except for colds here and there). Patrick just got back from Florida with his mom. He said he had a good time, but doesn't ever want to go back b/c they never did the stuff HE wanted to do. :o) He's also in the middle of basketball right now. Lexi is staying busy with Jr. High "stuff" like dances, Art Club and Builder's Club. Kiegan has joined a Science Club and a Reading Club at his school. Last month they read the book "Who Stole Halloween?" and this month they're reading "Who Stole The 12 Days Of Christmas?". Travis read a chapter of it to him at bedtime last night and I guess there are some crazy names in the book b/c he said he couldn't pronounce most of them!! LOL Maddie is doing great - she is SO CLOSE to walking!! She cruises around the furniture and stands without holding onto anything so now we just need her to start taking steps on her own. She's learned how to get off/on her riding toys and sometimes she'll just stand next to it and pick the whole thing up like Muscle Woman and holler! She's also getting to be a very brave girl - she can make her way all the say to the top of the stairs and as of yesterday has learned to pull the bottom drawer out on the stove, reach up to the handle of the oven and climb onto the drawer and hang on for dear life until I come and save her! So needless to say I bought an oven door lock. :o)

We are starting to make some progress with Kiegan's Auditory Processing Disorder (APD). I took him for an APD screening in Bloomington a few week's ago and this is what we've learned so far from that:

• He possibly has hearing loss in his left ear. If not, then his right ear is much stronger than his left.
• He cannot differentiate between high-pitched vs. low-pitched sounds.
• He cannot have any other kind of background noise going on while learning something new or working on homework.
• He does not have the ability to read/hear a story where the reader is suppose to ASSUME the answer to a problem, understand an implied joke, or anything along those lines.
• He does not have the ability to remember multiple steps needed to solve a problem (i.e. - math problems that require multiple steps to solve) or remember directions that have been given to him that contain multiple steps unless they are written somewhere for him to refer to.
• When speaking to Kiegan, people need to be directly in front of him - they cannot be in another room talking to him or standing behind him.
• He does not have the ability to memorize facts, numbers, etc. b/c his brain is not able to then find that "stored" info and pull it out for him to use.

So our next step is a complete diagnostic in Peoria which we go on December 7th. The place in Bloomington - Speech & Learning Connections - does have a program called Fast For Word that we will probably be starting Kiegan on. It is a very intense program where we will have to take him down to Blm. 2-3 nights per week, but I guess the results are just mindblowing. I hope Kiegan experiences those same results! I was really worried when we first starting all of this testing b/c as much as he needed it, I had no idea how we were going to afford it! The screening in Blm. was $250, the diagnostic in Peoria will be $350 and the Fast For Word program could cost us up to $600 PER WEEK! But I was talking to our school district's special needs coordinator who has been a part of Kiegan's case since he started speech when he was 3 and she said that whatever insurance doesn't pay for, the district was willing to pay the balance!! WHAT A RELIEF!!! Just one more reason why I'm thankful we switched the kids to the public schools, especially b/c I was also told that if Kiegan would have still been going to the private school that the district would NOT have been willing to help pay b/c the private school is not a part of the district. Not to mention that Kiegan probably would still not be receiving the help he needs b/c the private school was so unwilling to work with me to get him this help. So hopefully we are seeing a light at the end of the tunnel for Kiegan!!

Pictures, Pictures and MORE Pictures!

Enjoy all the pictures!!

This is the aftermath of Travis taking the boys muddin' on their 4-wheelers. They had the BEST time!


We were learning about the letter "H" this day so we all had on hats. Maddie was not at all interested in sitting still for the pictures...


Happy Halloween!

This is the costume I bought off of Ebay for a whopping $1.99!

Cutest Piglet I've ever seen!

After a wild day of playing....

Lunch apparently wasn't very exciting this day...

Teaching her big sis how to play the drums

Jammin', jammin'!

Hmmmm....what can I bang on next??

YEAH! YEAH!!

Haley sleeps in the oddest positions

Trying on a hat at Walmart (like the toilet seats in the background?)

"I wear pink for my Grandma" shirt that my Godmother sent me!

Spooky spiders we made for Halloween!

Modeling my new hat!

Soooo warm!

RIP John H. Sancken

We have lost someone dear to all of us - Travis' father, John. I don't want to go into details at this moment - just please keep us all in your thoughts and prayers. We miss you & love you John....

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want;

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

He leads me beside still waters; He restores my soul.

He leads me in paths of righteousness for His name's sake.

Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,

I fear no evil; for You are with me; Your rod and Your staff, they comfort me.

Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life;

and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

Sin-free....fun times....frustrating day

Let's start with the frustrating day and then we'll end on a positive note! Last Wednesday was our court date to finalize Kiegan's adoption. I closed my daycare early, pulled Kiegan out of school early and picked up Travis from work early so that we could be at the lawyer's office who was appointed as Kiegan's guardian ad litem by 1:30. We walked into the office and told the secretary who we were and she said "Oh - that's been rescheduled." WHAT?!?! I guess they had been trying to call me all day on Tuesday to let me know that the judge we were suppose to go in front of had a conflict of interest with the case b/c she had represented Shannon during our divorce when she was a lawyer. I asked what number they were trying to call and when she showed it to me, my jaw dropped! It was the phone number that Shannon & I had when we were married 8+ years ago!!! Needless to say, we were very disappointed. We walked next door to our family lawyer's office to talk to him about this and he apologized left & right, but I just couldn't believe that as often as him & I talk that he never bothered to update my file all these years with my current phone number! So now we go on the 29th......

We finally had Maddie baptized on August 30th, so now she is sin-free for at least the next couple of years! :o) My cousin, Jill, was her Godmother and Travis' brother, Trevor, was her Godfather. Jill & her husband are also Lexi & Kiegan's Godparents (they're pretty good at this job). Everything went pretty well even when Maddie was becoming a bit impatient with the whole process. I wasn't going to bother with a fancy dress for Maddie until I came across one on Ebay for $32 brand new - it was beautiful! I didn't think it was going to arrive in time, but it showed up Saturday afternoon!!

Maddie, Travis & I went to Rossburg, Ohio the week of Labor Day for our yearly trip to Eldora Speedway. Travis had a great time and was not ready to go home when Sunday morning rolled around! We left the Sunday before and stayed for a whole week. There were 5 campers altogether in our spot. I'm not 100% sure that Maddie & I will be going out next year. It's nowhere near as fun for me when I'm stuck at the camper 24x7 and can't go with everybody to visit friends and such. But I must say that Maddie was so GOOD - she rarely fussed and everybody just couldn't believe how good she was! She really hit it off with Uncle Randy and he rocked her to sleep quite a few times. The noise of everybody talking at night didn't seem to bother her much other than the first night. The Earl Baltes Classic race was the Sunday that we got there so Maddie & I of course hung out at the camper while everybody went and we were sleeping by the time they got back. All the talking was sort of waking Maddie up, but every time Travis would talk she'd sit straight up in bed and look around for him! After that, she must have been use to the chit-chat b/c she slept right through it all the rest of the nights. Eldora's a great place for people like me that like staring at people b/c you see all sorts of different folks there and different campers too! On one side of us we'd have these run down campers or little pop-up campers and then on the other side of us we'd have these monstrous RV's. It was nice to get away, but I was happy to get home too. :o)

The kids are all still enjoying school! Patrick seems to be back to his usual ways of getting in trouble quite a bit - he seems to get a warning slip darn near every day! We're not sure what to do about that on our end since he doesn't live in our home. Lexi has joined the Art Club & Builder's Club at the Jr. High! She was going to join IMSA which is a Math/Science Club, but it meets on the same day as CCD. I was really torn on how to handle this b/c I know that CCD is important, but I also feel that Lexi's academic future is very important too and I hate to discourage her. So this year she's sticking with CCD, but next year may be different. Lexi also went to her first Jr. High dance and it sound like she had a good time! It's so funny b/c her friends are Alexis, Alexis, Alexis and Lexi (or something like that). What I've also noticed is that Lexi seems to go by Alexis at school and for the longest time she HATED being called Alexis. Maybe this is a sign of her becoming more mature?!

Our weekends are still fairly busy - tomorrow night I'm going to see Pink in concert with my friend, Nikki. I am SO looking forward to it!! Sunday morning we are having Maddie's pictures taken. Hopefully the weather cooperates so we can get the outdoor pictures taken! Next weekend I have a girl's night and then a baby shower on Saturday and the busy weekends just go on and on..... Hard to believe that it's almost October already! I've already put my Halloween decorations out - I LOVE decorating for Halloween! Maddie's going to be Piglet, but I'm not sure what Lexi & Kiegan are going to be yet. I found Maddie's costume on Ebay for $1.99!! It'd sure be nice to find Lexi & Kiegan's for that cheap, but I doubt I'll get that lucky.

Daycare is going well - DCFS is suppose to be coming through today so hopefully I can get her in/out of here fairly quickly. This lady drives me nuts....thankfully she's retiring at the end of the year!

Lexi's 6th grade picture....


Kiegan's 4th grade picture...



Awwww....Maddie was snacking on something....

Maddie & Uncle Randy - they were quite the buddies at Eldora!

Yep - I pull myself up now on EVERYTHING!

The new sky boxes that Tony Stewart had built at the race track

Race track...

More race track....

One of the fancy RV's that was parked next to us

Another fancy one...this family's son, Austin Hubbard, was actually racing in the big race and he did really well! They gave us some stickers to put on the truck - nice people!

And on the other side we'd have this!

The boys playing cards (they did that a lot)

I love this picture!

So happy!

Our campsite

Another view (it's pretty obvious which one is ours)

In the truck!

Great-grandparents

Grandparents

Our family

Godparents

Godparents and Deacon George

Maddie in her pretty dress

Adoption, Brookfield Zoo, School, The Puneys

I forgot to update everyone on Kiegan's adoption process in my last blog! Things are moving along fairly smoothly. Shannon has signed everything he needs to sign which was probably the biggest hurdle so now we (Travis, Kiegan & I) go to court on September 16th and hopefully that will be the final step!

I also forgot to mention our trip to Brookfield Zoo a couple of weekends ago! We all had such a good time!! It's not always easy taking all 4 of the kids to places, but we had such a great time and were with such good friends. I think the favorite thing to watch was the underwater exhibits - very cool! It was a great way to end the summer....

Last night was open house at Kiegan's school - his classroom is very nice and his teacher seems great! What's even more cool is that we can log on to this particular website to get the kid's grades any time we want to. I love that!! No more trying to keep track on my own how their grades are or waiting until report card time. The Jr. High's open house is tomorrow night....

This week has been a rough one for Lexi! She woke up Monday morning with a fever and it just went downhill from there. I closed the daycare Monday and took her to the doctor - she had a high fever, back pain, ear ache and sore throat. Doc prescribed an antibiotic for her, but as the day went on she got worse and her temp was as high as 104. I called Doc at home and he suggested taking her to the ER. When I got her there, they tested her urine and took some blood. They never really found anything and the cultures they got back on the blood and urine just showed that she was in the early stages of a urinary tract infection. As of today her fever is gone and her only complaint is a sore throat so back to school she goes! Kind of a bummer to miss 3 days on the first full week of school........

Tonight I go sign the kids up for CCD....this is one of those weeks where we have something going on every single night. But the countdown is on for me, Travis & Maddie to leave for Ohio!!

Daddy's Not-So-Little Girl!

Ha ha - how can you NOT smile at this picture?! The cheeks crack me up...

School Time!

It's hard to believe that the summer is over and school is back in session! Lexi & Kiegan started at the public schools yesterday for 1/2 day. They both came home with big smiles on their faces and Lexi even said that her day was "awesome". I can't tell you how happy I was to hear that come out of her mouth! Today was their first full day and they had school pictures (yep - school pictures on the first full day of school). They both came home and immediately started on homework. The public schools so far are proving to be so much more on top of things - especially when it comes to the kids using their assignment notebooks. I had sent Kiegan's teacher an email earlier this week just giving her a heads up on Kiegan's situation with the adoption (more on that later) and also his learning issues. She ended up calling me after school today to tell me how much she appreciated me sending her that email and to let me know what a joy Kiegan has been so far and how he's been volunteering to help out with all sorts of things in the classroom. The best so far has been Lexi's attitude towards the Jr. High - she has really stepped things up and is taking her responsibility for her classes very seriously which I just love! (If only she'd improve her attitude here at home......)

Maddie is doing GREAT! She has 4 teeth now - two on top and two on bottom. The only problem is that the two on the top are not the two front ones! She has one top front tooth and then there's a space where her other top tooth will eventually be and then there's another tooth. Of course she's still cute as can be!! She did finally crawl today! She's not a full-blown crawler, but she's definitely started. She can eventually make her way from the living room to the dining room. The daycare kids don't quite know what to think of her playing with their toys!

Speaking of daycare - that's busy as usual! I did have a new infant start this week - he's not quite 4 months yet. He's cute as can be, but for some reason mom decided to not bother getting him use to bottles so when he started coming here was when he started drinking out of bottles. The first couple of days were rough, but they are getting much better! I'm currently looking into getting accredited. This will help me to qualify for different grants that I can use towards improvements on the house or new playground equipment outside. It's quite the process and quite expensive, but there's a group that will help home daycares pay for accreditation.

Overall, we're busy as usual with very few weekends of nothing going on. I've been TRYING to go to Mass every weekend - sometimes sleeping in overrules it though. :o) The kids start CCD next month since they no longer go to St. Mary's. They're not really looking forward to that! I register them for it next week on Wednesday plus we have Open Houses for each of their schools - one on Tuesday and the other Thursday - both of which I have to get to early to help with the PTO booths. Next Friday I'm having an Uppercase Living home party at the house, Saturday is a bridal shower and Sunday is Maddie's Baptism! A week from then we leave for Ohio - it'll be nice to get away for a week!

I don't have any pics at the moment to share.....I hope everyone has a GREAT weekend!

August already?!

It's hard to believe that the kids will be starting school in just two short weeks! I think they're both excited to start at their new schools (even though neither of them will admit it). I've been filling Lexi in on some of the clubs that the Jr. High has and she is so pumped about the Art Club! Considering how not-so-well the softball tryouts went, I'm a-thinkin' that clubs may be the way for her to go which is fine by me. I just hope she sees the switch to the Jr. High as a whole new start for her..... Kiegan has decided for sure that he doesn't want to do JFL which is fine with us. We had him try the JFL Camp a few weeks ago just to get an idea of what it would be like and I think he enjoyed, but it's just not for him. I'm glad he tried it though - it was worth the $$ for him to just check things out without signing him up for JFL and then have him decide he didn't like it! Some kids just aren't into sports and I think mine might fit in that group....

I'm enjoying my last couple of easy weeks with the daycare. Once school starts up, I won't have a single slow day till the weekends hit! I'm not complaining though - I just wish I could help every single person that contacted me needing daycare. I got 2 more emails last week and then another one over the weekend. Maybe this is a sign that I need to open my own daycare building in town?? :o)

I have a training this Saturday to go towards my yearly DCFS hours I have to get. Hopefully it'll be interesting - it's only from 9-Noon so at least it won't take up my whole day. Sunday is a Sancken family reunion in town Pontiac. So we have a busy weekend, but not too busy which is nice! Next month Travis, Maddie and I leave for Eldora Speedway in Ohio - it'll be nice to get away for a week or so!

Enjoy some pics of Maddie! Maybe someday I'll take pics of the older 3 - they're just not as exciting! :o)

Playing Nintendo DS already.....

So close to crawling!!

Look at me mom!

Monday, Monday

It's a light Monday today compared to last Monday - I only have one daycare kid and he will be picked up by 3:00! Nice way to start the week...I should probably enjoy these days because once school starts, I'll be back to having a full house every day!

Lexi has softball tryouts tonight & tomorrow night so wish her luck!! She seems a bit nervous about it. I knew they were "tryouts", but I assumed it was to see what position would be best for each kid. Apparently, it's to see if you even make the team or not! If she doesn't make it, I hope it doesn't make her not want to try out for future activities....

Travis buzzed Kiegan's head last night - he's got a nicely shaped head for it. Kiegan said he felt like he was in the army! Speaking of Kiegan - I guess he told my mom the other day that when it stormed Friday night he got his pillow and blanket and "slept on mom & dad's floor". I thought that was pretty neat....him calling Travis 'dad'. :o)

A couple more Maddie pics:

Sleeping in the middle of lunch....again......

My baby....so sweet....