Wednesday, December 4, 2013

Dusting off the blog....

I can't believe I haven't posted since January.

Sarah is continuing to do well.  She is repeating second grade as is standard for her program.  We were going to try her in a different program, but ended up keeping her where she is as it was a bit too challenging for her.  She is adequately challenged where she is now, I think.  Also, her current school was more than happy to allow Sean to transfer.  I liked our zoned school just fine, but having both kids in the same school is pretty awesome.  They love riding the bus together, and Sarah likes to walk Sean to class.  This has resulted in Sean having basically no idea how to get to his classroom by himself, but I'm not super concerned about it.  I asked his teacher to please make sure if Sarah is absent that he gets to class okay.

As far as eating goes, she's doing pretty well.  She still has a somewhat limited diet, but has taken some recent interest in different foods.  She eats pizza like crazy now.  In fact, this school year, she started buying lunch on "pizza days."  Her teacher has told me she has been trying new food in the cafeteria.  I'm happy about that.  She has also taken a recent interest in pancakes.  She still has a long way to go before she can eat them well, but she likes to order the "Create a Face" pancakes at IHOP when we go.  I think a lot of it has to do with the yogurt tube, but she at least tries a bite or two.  We still have to bring her food when we go, but I'm happy if she takes a bite or two and gets them down.

She played adaptive soccer this fall and loved it.  I really liked that she had a nice program and could learn at her pace.  It was at the same field as her brother.  This worked out for some long Saturdays this past fall, but the kids really enjoyed it.  She is still playing ice hockey and taking dance class.  I pulled her from jazz this year for scheduling reasons and the lack of structure.  She did okay last year, but it was definitely the class where she struggled quite a bit.  She is happy with ballet and tap, so that works well for us.

We did adaptive swim over the summer.  She did okay with it.  I am hoping we can start up again next month.  She has gotten a bit braver in the water lately.  The kids had off this past Monday for a professional development day (and to torture parents who'd just had them four days in a row for Thanksgiving! Hahaha!), so I took them to the Y to swim.  Instead of hanging on the wall the whole time, she actually did some dog paddling while using a noodle to float.

My kids have already seen Santa twice this year.  I'm hoping that is good enough for them.  They saw him Friday at Festival of Trees.  It was a benefit for Kennedy Krieger, and my older niece was performing with her dance company.  My kids had a great time and loved seeing their cousin.  I took them to a local mall on Monday after swimming to see Santa.  I dressed them in their nice Christmas outfits for that Santa visit and couldn't get over how grown up Sarah looked! She was wearing clip-on earrings, and I feel like those made her look so much older.

As far as growth goes, Sarah has gotten tall lately! She was measured in October, I think, at 4 ft 3 1/2 inches.  She weighed about 65 pounds.  I couldn't believe it.  She is wearing a size 10 in girls' clothes.  She is still a skinny thing, though.  She wants to wear jeans all the time, yet lacks the fine motor skills to button and zip them.  She mostly wears jeggings at this point, which solves the fine motor problem and she doesn't usually argue about them.

Here are some recent pictures:

professional fall picture, my favorite of her recently

Santa at Festival of Trees

dressed up for Santa visit

Santa at the mall