Talking, reading, and cuteness

Lately Davy has begun to talk more and more and in complete sentences. The other day he walked up to Kevin and said, "Daddy, I want to watch Dinosaur Train." (his new favorite show) And just Monday we were in the car and Evangeline started to fuss and Davy reached over, took her hand and said, "Evangeline, what's wrong?" So cute!

Davy is also reading a lot now. Lately he will read me the books he chooses for our bedtime story, and I know he is reading and not reciting memorized words because he will come to a word he has a problem with and look to me for help with it. He now knows how to read over 100 words, knows his colors, shapes, can write his uppercase letters and lowercase letters and is now writing some of the words he knows. For example he will draw a sun and then write the word SUN. He can draw most of his shapes, he still has problems with stars and octagons and such, but he can draw squares, rectangles, ovals, hearts, and diamonds. We have been working with him on drawing "The Star of David" as an alternate to the 5 pointed star. Kind of ironic since it has been the first star he has been able draw.

The kids have been playing really well together lately. Evangeline has been getting around by butt scooting everywhere. And Davy seems to like the fact that she is much more mobile and can now play with him. He likes to share, and sometimes not share, his toys with her. She has her four front teeth all coming in right now. Only two have really broken through, one on the top and one on the bottom, but they are all pushing their way out. She has been saying Mama, Mom, Dada a lot lately. It is super cute. These past two weeks everyone has had a cold, but we are now almost all over it.

Eva Update

Evangeline has now had about 3 to 4 weeks of physical therapy and one week of developmental therapy. The physical therapist has been working with her on crawling, crossing mid-line, and her head tilt. We have been working with her on all of her exercises, mostly the kneeling exercise she is to be doing to help her crawl. But we have also been working with crossing mid-line. We need to do more work with some of her relaxing exercises. What we have found is that Eva tends to hold herself rather stiff, she likes to tense up whenever she is upset or frustrated. So we have been working with her on relaxing. Kevin has been a huge help with everything and gets a good amount of her therapy done while he is taking care of the kids in the morning. Eva is getting closer and closer to crawling and has finally gotten past sleeping with a swaddler. We are seeing progress!!

Torticollis and MRI

Evangeline has Torticollis, which is basically a head tilt. We can't really tell how long she has had it because it is rather slight and because of this we didn't notice it right away. My mom was the one who noticed it first. After she suggested that we bring it up to the doctor we scheduled an appointment with him and he told us to take her to a physical therapist. The physical therapist got us set up with a group that will send physical therapists, developmental therapists, and occupational therapists to our house to do therapy with her. They came by yesterday and did an evaluation of Evangeline. They are going to work with her on her torticollis, as well as on crawling, standing, cruising, and walking. They are also going to work with her on helping her sleep through the night. Yay!!

Last Thursday I took Evangeline in for her 9 month check up, the doctor decided that there was a small chance like 1% chance that the torticollis might be caused from some neurological issue, so he ordered a MRI for her. We took her in for that today. She was put under for the MRI so we were a good bit concerned for her. But as we don't like to chance things (seeing that it was a 10% chance that Kevin would get cancer again when he got it the second time) we decided it was better to check than to leave things to chance. We got the results back already and everything came back completely normal. I feel much better about that. Now we know that we just have to do her neck exercises with her and everything will be ok. Stressful week, but everything has turned out good so far.

Love

Davy loves baby Evangeline, and baby Evangeline loves Davy. How do I know? The little giggles when they see each other, the way she reaches out to him and smiles at him. The way he smiles at her and tries to feed her. The fact that he shares his toys with her. The fact that a toddler and a 7 month old baby seem to have inside jokes! What is up with that!? Seriously I am going to have to be careful with them, they are both very bright little kids and they have already started ganging up against me on things. One of them will do something sort of naughty and when I get after them they will look at each other and laugh. They are fun. And it is fun to see our children love each other as siblings. It is awesome to watch a child who is just barely talking and a baby who doesn't talk at all "get" each other so well. Children are awesome!

Potty!

On July 27th, last Saturday, Davy used the potty for the first time. He pooped in it! I know putting bodily functions on an online blog seems strange but we were thrilled! We cheered for him and clapped and made a big deal about it. And this morning after waking up with a dry diaper Davy peed in the potty as well! We are so proud of him and though I don't look forward to the stress of potty training, I do look forward to this next step in toddler-hood. Hurray for Davy!!

Sight words

Davy has started to learn his sight words we have been going over them with him for a while now. When I say that he's been learning his sight words I mean he's been learning to read them. He already has quite a few words down that he can read now such as cat, yellow, dog, milk. Sight words are words that you can't use phonics to sound out. Davy uses phonics for quite a few of the words that he reads but he has been learning to read his sight words as well. It has been a lot of fun lately to watch him learn, he has also started to try to write some of the words that he knows how to read. He really is an amazing little boy!

Tree

Yesterday at church we pulled out one of the books we bring to keep Davy busy, it is an 100 words book, and some of the things it covers is fruits and veggies. So Davy was looking through the book and trying to read some of the words. He got to the fruits and vegetables page and saw the broccoli and said, "Tree" Kevin, who was watching him, pointed at the broccoli and said, "broccoli" then he sounded out the word for Davy while running his finger beneath the word. Davy looked at the word, looked at the picture then ran his finger under the word and said, "Tree." Yep I am pretty sure I know what broccoli will be referred to for some time now. Davy is doing better and better at reading. He sounds out words and has been learning a lot. He really seems to like the fact that he can learn a word by sounding it out. He is such a fun little boy!