Update, with GREAT news!

Great/funny/aggravating things have been happening around here. First, I want to mention that my Husband is so AWESOME!!! He's been an enormous help to me; with chores, watching kids, or giving me foot rubs - he's just the best man ever! I really appreciate all his help and kindness. My wonderful hubby also turned 33 a week ago. He had a small LAN party to celebrate and he enjoyed showing off his new toy - a new computer.

Macho has had a difficult last two weeks. The antibiotic he was taking for his infection caused severe diarrhea, which meant I was changing him once every 1/2 hour. His skin is very sensitive and gets irritated easily. Needless to say, changing his diaper always made him very upset. Thankfully, he's finished with the medicine and the last couple of days has been better. However, last night Macho kept me up all night 'cause he was congested and couldn't sleep. WHEN WILL THIS END?!!

Beauty also finished her antibiotic and seems to be doing really well. There's no sign of a cough or stuffy nose anymore, but she is having difficulty sleeping again. Two nights ago, after over two months of no incidents, she woke up screaming in the middle of the night. I'm hoping that was just a fluke and not a sign of things to come.

Something that Macho does a lot that I CAN'T STAND - he's always finding dirt! lol I know for some people this can't possibly seem like a bad thing, but you don't know what it's like! Anyone that knows me already knows that I keep my house extremely clean and tidy. However, it seems like it's not enough for my OCD son. Macho will look behind - and under - the garbage can to see if I've missed anything during my sweeping. He looks for crumbs under the table, lint on the carpet, and he looks for dirt on his favorite blanket. I can't count how many times I hear him say, "Dirt!" Luckily for me, I've trained him to throw away the dirt he finds on his own, instead of giving it to me.

Something SO CUTE that the kids do is they hug each other all the time! Macho will say, "'Beauty' big hug," and she runs over to him and they put their arms around each other. It's so adorable! It makes me smile every time I see my kids being so loving. And it's really cute how well they're playing together. Beauty actually likes hanging out with her brother now. Imagine that!

Macho has this need to fix things - He's such a man! lol Every time I pull out the screwdriver to replace batteries, he wants to help. I finally caved in and bought him a toddler tool set. It came with a tool belt, walkie talkie, flash light, a hard hat, a pair of goggles, a hammer and of course, a screwdriver. Needless to say, his favorite thing is the screwdriver. Macho goes around the house, flips his electronic toys upside down, and pretends to replace the batteries. He looks so cute being a little Mr. Fix It guy!

Beauty also likes his tool set, but one thing in particular really grabbed her. She loves the goggles. They have an orange tinge on them, so when she puts them on, everything looks orange. The first time she wore them, she went around the house pointing out that everything was orange: "Dada orange. Mama orange. Couch orange. Dog orange." It was really cute and funny.

Lately, Beauty has picked up this really annoying habit of constantly tucking in the top parts of her diaper. She basically ends up lowering her diaper and she does this in her sleep too. Somtimes, she ends up altering the diaper enough that when it's time for her to use it, she ends up spilling over onto her pants, socks and the floor. This has been going on for about a month now. I'm praying she stops this new habit of hers VERY soon.

I'm so happy to say that Beauty is making really great progress on learning to read. It's turned into a nightly ritual where Beauty asks Hubby or I to play with the aquadoodle, so every night, she practices reading. She can now identify her name, her brother's name, mama, dada, bird, ball, bed, bug, cow, dog, egg, hat, owl, pig, sheep, sun, tree, apple, frog, fish, and cat. I'm sure there are other words I can't remember at the moment.

The BIGGEST and BESTEST thing to happen recently: Beauty reversed a pronoun! Back on the 19th, Hubby was pointing out her pajama pants. He said, "'Beauty' you have dogs on your pants." Without any hesitation, she said very clearly, "Dogs on my pants." And just to confirm, Hubby said the same sentence again and she repeated herself again: "Dogs on my pants." How AWESOME is that?! This was a huge step for her and we're hoping this is just the start of the pronoun phenomenon!

Four Great Things Autism Related...

Toys R Us is doing a fundraiser for Autism Speaks starting Feb. 28th through April 30th.
http://www.toysrus.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2623255

New Autism Treatment!!!
http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/curemark-cm-at-autism-treatment-granted-fda-fast-track-status-84951682.html

The Lindt chocolate company is also doing a fundraiser for Autism Speaks! Now through Easter, for every Gold Bunny purchased, 10 cents will be donated to the organization. Also, if you send a free e-card through their website, they'll donate $1 for the first 5,000 e-cards sent!
http://www.lindtgoldbunny.com/index.php

Walks to raise money for Autism - Look for an event near you!
http://www.walknowforautismspeaks.org/site/c.igIRL6PIJrH/b.4356939/k.BF85/Home.htm

(BTW, check out my autism blog: http://speakingonthespectrum.blogspot.com/ )

USA Olympic teams show support for Autism

This is so cool of them! Let's show our support too!

http://www.autismspeaks.org/inthenews/bobsled_skeleton_pin_vancouver_olympics.php

And Congratulations to the USA Bobsled Team on their Gold Medal!!!

(BTW, check out my autism blog: http://speakingonthespectrum.blogspot.com/ )

Good Riddance!!!

The doctor responsible for the whole "vaccines cause Autism" scare quit working at the U.S. Clinic he opened. YAY!!!!!!!!

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/life_and_style/health/article7032762.ece

(BTW, check out my autism blog: http://speakingonthespectrum.blogspot.com/ )

Happy Stuff...

(This blog was posted 2-15-10)

A few days ago I posted my "crappy blog" with the intention of posting my happy blog right after. However, I've had very little time on the computer lately (sick kids). So, without further ado, here's my happy blog =)

Macho has been doing really well lately. He had his 2-year check-up late last month and came in at 30 lbs and 3 ft 1/2 in tall. It's just amazing to me how tall he is and how much he's grown. He's just starting to outgrow his 2T clothes. You'd think a 30 lb toddler would look "chubby," but no, he is ALL muscle! He's constantly pushing, pulling, and lifting anything he can get his hands on. He's also been talking up a storm! There are many words he can say very clearly and he tries repeating everything he hears. He also spends most of the day pointing to things, wanting to know exactly what they're called. I've got one very curious little man on my hands!

Macho's big thing lately is reading books. He LOVES books! Obviously he can't read yet, but he loves pulling out a book, sitting down, opening the book and saying, "Oh, Wow!" He goes through all his books and identifies everything. A funny thing he does now is insisting on reading a book while I'm changing his diaper. LOL! And if he wants a "big kid" book (the ones with actual stories), he'll bring it to me so I can read it to him. He does a pretty good job of paying attention, too. One of the CUTEST things though, is one of Macho's new habits. He's just such a happy little boy and he loves everything so much that he kisses everything - even his toys! It's so adorable to see him bend over, put his lips together and kiss his fire truck with a big "mwah" sound!

Beauty has been coming along very well also. At her 4-year check-up last month, she was 38 lbs and 3 ft 4 in tall. She seems to be holding steady in her 5T clothes (thankfully). Something I'm SO HAPPY to announce: Beauty is putting together more sentences by herself. She even said a 5 word sentence a couple of weeks ago. I was preparing to put Macho down for his nap and I told her it was time to put him to bed. She said, "Mama put 'Macho' go feepy." I blinked. I actually stopped walking and said to myself, "Did she really just say that?!" She's said many different kinds of sentences since then. She's talking enough now that sometimes I even wish she'd be quiet for a little bit!

Something else that's big for Beauty: she's learning to read! Now, I do have to acknowledge that she's probably just memorizing the words instead of actually reading them, but it's a start. Here's a list of the words she can identify: her name, Macho's name, mama, dada, bird, ball, bed, bug, cow, dog, egg, hat, owl, pig, sheep, sun, and tree. We're working on new words all the time and she just loves it!

A victory for me is I've gotten rid of 95% of all our old baby stuff! I've gotten rid of everything; old clothes, bibs, blankets, bouncer, cradle, high chair, coats - everything! Yay! This means I don't have a bunch of things not currently in use taking up space in my house. The only things left now are a small potty, a potty seat, a hanging diaper organizer, and a diaper genie (which I'll get rid of once Macho is potty trained). I also have a stroller I'm trying to get out of my house, but I can't seem to find anyone that needs it. I may end up just selling it to Kid to Kid or on Ebay.

A big personal victory for me: I got CARDED! lol... I was at Walmart stocking up on medicines for the whole family when all of a sudden the cashier started staring at me. I didn't notice him staring until he said, "Yes?" I said, "What?" Then he said, "I need to see your I.D. to make sure you're over 18 years of age." I responded, "HAHA, I'm 30!", to which he said, "OH! Well, you look very good for your age." That made me so happy!

Autism Related Info

This link is an interesting little "Autism Test." Apparently, if you score a 32 or higher, it means there is a possibility you may have autistic tendencies. The average score for "regular" people is around 16. I took the test and I scored a 26, which means I have some eccentricities, but not enough of them to classify myself as autistic. Anyway, like I said, it's just an interesting quiz.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aqtest.html

The following link shows EVEN MORE EVIDENCE that vaccines and autism are not linked. I actually found out from Hubby that the guy who did the original study in Europe back in 1998 falsified his findings intentionally. Why? Because he was getting paid to do it. On top of that, since he scared so many people into thinking the original MMR vaccine is bad, he's patented his own version of the vaccine! What a scumbag!

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/02/08/did-the-media-inflame-the-vaccine-autism-link/

(BTW, check out my autism blog: http://speakingonthespectrum.blogspot.com/ )

Crappy Stuff...

I have a lot of different things that I've been meaning to blog about; half of them good, half of them not so good. So, I decided to divide them up. This post will talk about the "crappy stuff," or the not so fun stuff that's happened in the last few weeks.

In a previous post, I mentioned how we were having electrical problems in the house. The "electrician" we called did the initial job for about $300. Four days later, half of our house lost electricity. When we called him (long story short), he basically said we needed to "pigtail" every single outlet and light-switch. The price? $1,100!! We had him do that two days later, and during that visit, he said we needed all new light fixtures (another $1000). That didn't sound right to me or Hubby, so we called one of our good friends who knows his way around wires. He looked at our fixtures, fixed the problems for us, and all it cost was a trip to Home Depot for $100. Thank You Wil! I think in the future, we'll just call him instead of a sleazy electrician!

The next "bad" thing is that the kids have been sick almost a solid 2 months now! Beauty has been on various medicines and two antibiotics for infections. Naturally, Macho catches everything from his sister, so he's been on his fair share of medicines, too. Currently, Beauty has managed to catch another cold (probably from her parents, who have been sick the last two weeks) and she's been having trouble sleeping from all the congestion and coughing. We're trying some different over the counter medicines with her for the next few days. We'll see how it goes!

I finally got around to cutting Macho's hair. Why is this under the "bad" category? Because it took me 45 minutes! It shouldn't have taken more than 5 minutes, but Macho really doesn't like having his hair messed with and he really doesn't like scissors! I had to follow him around and try to be sneaky and get quick cuts in. Apparently, I'm not sneaky enough 'cause he bellowed and cried and shook his head everytime I touched him. In the end though, I got the job done. Now I can relax, knowing my boy's hair is an appropriate length (at least for the next 2 months anyway!).

One final "bad" - I haven't lost any weight in the last month! (I haven't gained any either, thankfully.) I think it's from all the stress with the kids being sick and not sleeping. I've been sick too, so that probably hasn't helped. Hopefully I can make up some ground in the next few weeks.