April and May 2011

     Wow it's been a very busy couple of months for us! We just moved from our small country town to Columbus, Oh. Chad will graduate in June so we are living half and half right now. We are really loving our new apartment/home here. We have a nice yard, flower bed and we were able to get a dog! God has blessed us so very much!

     Jude has been very helpful in caring for Roxi (our new dog). He enjoys taking her outside to do her business. He also has been very eager to pick out and plant flowers in our flower bed. We also planted some herbs, tomatoes and cucumbers.

    Lainey adjusted amazingly well to our new home. Once we got her bed up and all the boxes out of her room she was very happy. She has been transitioning from the carpet to tile floors very well. She is also getting used to Roxi. She likes to watch Roxi chase her ball! Roxi has been licking Lainey a bit too much for her liking :) so we are trying to curb that behavior. In Roxi's defense, Lainey does smell like pediasure all the time ;-)

   Just prior to us moving Jude had been trying out a website called Time4Learning.com. He liked it at first but quickly got tired of the repetitiveness of it. We may try it again after we get situated here.



   

 

We surprised the kids with a trip to the zoo and a hotel stay. Lainey loved the room!

It was our first time since the Polar exhibit opened...so very cool!

Loved going in spring. Eggs everywhere! Such a wondrous site.

Lainey was overwhelmed at the zoo. We went on a weekend and there were lots of kids there which meant lots of screaming and that was too much for her! But we did get her to walk a tiny bit!!!

This was the shot the staff took when we first got there. Not too bad!

On a trip to Children's Hospital for a checkup for Lainey, we stopped at Bob Evan's and Lainey ate a few bites of applesauce!

Jude's awesome lego ambulance!

Weaving on a hoop with old t-shirts.

Easter Morning, after hunting their gifts!

Jude looking for eggs high and low.

We saw this albino squirrel around our new place.

And introducing our newest family member, this is Roxi. She was waiting for us at the animal shelter and is a perfect fit for our family.

March 2011

       This month was Pappy's (my Dad) birthday.  Jude made him a wonderful card, the best penmanship yet! Jude also has done more money budgeting and price comparisons. He still isn't interested in doing any workbooks though. He has taken a shine to the building games and Blockland in particular. We did feel it necessary to set a limit on time of play each day. After about an hour he tends to get aggressive/angry with the other players in the game. He seems happy with the hour limit. He has Legos as well as other building toys but he wanted an Erector set. We got him one as an early Easter gift. He loves it. What a great opportunity to strengthen his fine motor skills!  Our Bible study every Sunday has been going very well! I chose the first book- Ephesians and we just finished it this past Sunday. Jude chose our next book- Acts, and we will begin it next Sunday. It's so heartwarming to listen to him read aloud from God's Word. 

 This is the card Jude made for Pappy. He's never made letters like this and did a great job!

Our area, like many on the Midwest/eastern part of our country, was hit by flooding this month. Though the kids and I did not venture out, Chad did. He took many pictures to share with us, we chose just a few to share here.

This is a lamp post.

Four hours later- same lamp post, base fully submerged.

Canoe route now!

After a trip to the ER with heart arrhythmia and near fainting, we believe I had a reaction to MSG. We are now trying to eliminate as much chemicals from our diets as we can. This means a lot more homemade everything. I've always loved cooking from scratch but after moving to this apartment, it has faded. It's mostly due to the tiny kitchen but also because of bouts with Fibromyalgia. We are getting back into the swing of it though! Jude is LOVING reading all the ingredient labels and finding out how much "not food" was in our food! It will be a challenge for us but we will be encouraging each other.

Our first attempt at homemade soft pretzels. We made another batch today and I still forgot to get a pic of Jude making them :-/ lol.

Jude received a "gross and messy" book for his birthday that contains all kinds of things to make.  This is him making what they call slime or goop.

It has more a texture of really soft silly putty than what we consider slime! He's played with it a lot. So much fun. He wants to see how long it lasts before he makes another color.

      Lainey had a check-up at the Orthopedic Surgeon for her spine this month. Since her growth rod surgery in Oct 2010 her curvature has increased 6% (it was 36%post op and now is 42%). We knew it would increase but were surprised it had so much so quickly. At 10% increase is when they will adjust the growing rods to pull the spine straighter. We will go back in June for another checkup. Dr said ideally an annually surgery is best because it decreases the possibility for hardware malfunctions from being adjusted so much.

     Lainey has officially gotten to big for most shopping carts :( So we will be using her wheelchair everywhere we go. She's happy in it but we miss the face to face interaction during our shopping. But someday she'll be walking in town and we will be chasing her everywhere! She had a blast the other day at Wal-Mart. I parked her in the aisle as I looked and Jude took the buggy and zoomed past her over and over! She would yell out and clap and jerk her body. I'm sure to others it might have seemed she was upset but we knew she was tickled beyond belief. Another reason we love homeschooling, Wal-mart in the late morning isn't super busy :) and the kids can enjoy themselves ( and us too!)

Feb. 2011

    Jude turned 10 years old this month! Wow what a blessing he has been! He enjoyed all the gifts and money he received. He choose what to buy and we helped (very little) him keep track in the store of how much he was spending so he had enough for taxes at check-out. He bought a scooter, a new helmet, and a Star Wars tank. He's been delighted with his selections! He got new books as well. He has really enjoyed reading before bed. Grandma and Grandpa got him a "useless facts" book and my how he has enjoyed it!
    Jude has been playing a lot of building games online. Some of these games have free chat and as we keep an eye on what he types, we see marked improvement in his spelling! :) So it does come when the child desires it!!!
    We have had some lovely days and made it to the park a couple of times. Lainey is still VERY unsteady and leery of walking in places other than inside our home, but I was able to get her to walk a bit outside!! We also bought some foam mats and she has been intentionally, carefully, stepping onto them. She is progressing so beautifully.

Photos of robins outside our window. We watched them eating berries for a long time.

Jude unwrapping bday gifts. He loved the new video game chair we got for him!

This is the foam mat we bought. Lainey loves the texture and Jude loves building forts with it when Lainey is in bed!

This is a marshmallow monster. Jude made one and I made one...then they battled in the microwave! Jude's head fell off! We took a video of it and one of the aftermath! He was surprised how hard the marshmallows were. Some of them even shattered. It was fantastic!

Jude loves to help cook. He's a great pancake maker! For Valentine's Day we made pink pancakes.

Jude climbing up the spiral slide.

Such a handsome young man!

A tree to climb.

Jude took this one! It was windy and that didn't help Lainey very much! :)

She was, however, very happy to sit in the front passenger seat while I stood outside beside her and snapped photos of both the kids. Thankfully this playground unit is right by the parking area.

Jude took this photo of the geese grazing.

Jude built different boat designs and check to see which ones floated better.

We melted crayons in the microwave to create a multi-colored disc.

This is the bottom side, the top is lumpy. Jude said the top looked like a cool chunk of rock and that overall it looks like a reese's cup!

We had a ton of rain and way across the parking area and little road on the hillside was this waterfall. We all thought it was awesome.

Lainey's new tricks!

   Lainey has learned to open our interior doors with lever type handles! We've been working on it for a while just here and there and she's got it now! She doesn't like doors to be closed so she opens them by herself :).   She has also been handing me her sippy cup when she's done drinking. Not all the time mind you but with increasing frequency! She just smiles and we clap and praise her! This morning, she walked to the kitchen with arm extended, holding her cup, looking for me and when I said "yay thank you" she clapped! God is so good!

Jan - Early Feb 2011

 We had a wonderful Holiday season. Jude's been doing ok with his "scheduled" school time, however I'm not sure it's working the best. This journey into helping the kids be and discover themselves in the healthiest, most loving, and Christian way is ever changing. We long for the peaceful freedom that comes from unschooling especially radical unschooling, but it at times eludes us.  I think we are still deschooling ourselves which is hard to do while hubby is in college! The kids' disabilities (or w/e label) create a set of challenges not faced by other unschoolers. I'm assuming that unschooling since birth would be slightly easier than transitioning from a traditional homeschool and family life w/rules. We, as parents, worry that we are not giving the kids a proper foundation but we believe whole-heartedly that the Lord will guide them as long as we set a good example. We turn our fears of radical unschooling "not working" into structure and control instead of letting go and having faith, which is going to be our goal again, have faith, have fun and shine!

    Jude has always had trouble sleeping so we recently hung a light and a bag of books on his bed and he reads for about an hour before bedtime now. He's back loving books again! His birthday is this month. He is turning 10! It's been such a joy to share the last ten years with him!

Lainey has been helping open the fridge! When we fill her sippy cup to put in the fridge we ask her to open and she pulls the door (with help) open. Then we ask her to close it and she does! It's amazing to see her making connections.

Folk art made with scraps of fabric, a broken CD and hot glue (Jude's new fav. thing lol)

Close-up view

Homemade salt art

"this is how I feel" art from Jude

 She pushed it all the way open and wanted to explore!