LA

It has been awhile since we've had to visit LA.  Sometimes I think back to those first few years when we were driving to LA all the time, I don't know how I did it.  I guess you just do it because that is what you have to do.  We now only go to LA a couple of times a year for doctor visits.  It is so nice.  Nana stayed home with the boys and so it was an outing with just my girl.  We were visiting her urologist and having a few tests run.  This may sound so cliche, but there are really only two ways to look at a glass, half empty or half full.  I am going to always choose to look at this with Mia half full.  I need only skim back a few years on this blog and re read what God has done in her life to know how amazing He is and what He has done for her.  He has clearly taken her so far, I have no doubt that He will continue to provide for her in amazing ways.  There has been concern about her bladder size and function, to put it simply, she has an overactive bladder.  All of her parts are working like they should, they just work in overtime with her.  If you think about that, it is so minor in the whole scheme of things...I can think of half a dozen things off the top of my head that are major.  This is not one of them.  Her urologist didn't know if she would always have an overactive bladder or if that would change as she got older, he didn't rule out the possibility that it might change for the better.  He did say that we could try a new treatment to work with that, if we wanted, but at this point it isn't necessary.  The treatment would use botox to relax her bladder so it wasn't so active.  It's not crucial right now, so we are going to kind of wait and see.  But what I think was the best news of the day was that there was concern about higher pressure in her bladder...and she had NONE, yay!  And she's always had some low grade reflux, which he couldn't see at all this time, which is a huge praise!  Overall, it was a great visit.  Thank you Lord for watching over our baby with all the details of her life! 

Fall...oh where art thou?

It's always like this in September for us...there will be hints of cooling down with the weather and then back to the high heat we go.  Usually it doesn't officially turn fall until October, but I was hoping that if I willed it, it would happen earlier.  It's not happening. 

Mia started riding again at MARE last week.  She has transitioned out of the hippotherapy riding class and into a basic riding class with another girl her age.  They both like pink, they are destined for friendship.  She had a great time riding last week and we are looking forward to our ride today.  Because of the change in classes, we now ride on Wednesdays instead of Tuesdays and that is still throwing my schedule for a loop...when you've done something for so many years on one particular day, it's strange to change it up.  The boys did well hanging out on the bleachers and playing games on my phone last week...we were just trying to keep cool in the shade.  Today it will be hot again also. 

Now that we've been homeschooling for awhile and Mia's been working with her new OT who has some background in vision therapy also, we've noticed a little bit more what exactly her vision struggles are.  It's hard to explain it, but her vision is shifted a bit, probably because both eyes aren't truly focusing on the task at hand.  If you ask her to cut on a straight line, she cuts a relatively straight line about a cm to the left of the line.  When she's doing her math work in particular, they have a lot of lines to write the answers on and I notice how her answers are never completely on the line, always in the middle, even though I think that she thinks she is writing it on the line.  So, we have some activities to work on that at home and she has a new eye appt coming up and I hope to address some of those concerns then. 

We love homeschooling, it's working really great for us and it gives me more flexibility to schedule in some of her physical needs throughout the day.  Asher has made great progress in not eating crayons anymore, so he will now happily scribble on paper if the others are busy writing or doing another activity.  It's great. 

Plugging Along

The kids and I are getting into a really nice routine with homeschooling.  It's going so well and I think everyone is loving it.  Mia tells me that her favorite subject is science.  We are doing a first grade pre-packaged curriculum with everything included.  That's nice because I don't have to hunt up activities or stuff to work on.  So far, we've covered stages of life, our habitat, and now we are moving into plants.  I'm a learner too, so I really enjoy re-learning all of this stuff.  Calvin loves to participate with quite a bit of it and he is very sharp.  Aside from the writing, he is doing pretty good with first grade tasks.  And of course there is lots of free time to play, I love just listening to them play together.  They are getting much better at interacting with each other, it's fun to watch.  Asher wants to do everything to, which can be sometimes frustrating for him, but we try to include him as much as possible.  His vocabulary is getting much better, he now says, "Halvin and Mia" for Calvin and Mia.  He will now string two words together, like Ba-oon Pop and then motion to the balloon that in our living room that is still inflated from Calvin's birthday!  I guess 2 weeks isn't that long, but it just seems like a lifetime ago to me.

We are looking forward to the weather cooling down a bit and figuring out some creative outings, since we can do that with our kiddos.