Birthdays and Unicorns!

Mia finally settled on her birthday party theme a week or so ago--unicorns!  So, we had some friends over and got to celebrate her turning 7 (a day early...but who is counting?).  The party goers arrived and everyone donned their own unicorn horn.

There was even a spotting of a double horn unicorn, a very rare occurrence!

Some adults even joined in the festivities...

There was some fun unicorn crafting that happened...

And some just plain silliness...

After some unicorn food...think carrots, apples, crackers, cheese and meat...there was a unicorn cake!

After all that excitement, the unicorns went in search of bugs, they needed more protein?  Maybe to balance out the sweet?  Thankfully there was an expert bug catcher in the group and he was practicing "catch and release" to the bugs delight.

It was a great party.  We had so much fun with our friends, thank you for sharing Mia's 7th birthday with her!

Pumpkins - 1000th Post!

This is the 1000th post on this blog, crazy!  Things have slowed down quite a bit since when we first started blogging with Mia and everything that was happening.  But we still try to keep it up and I love that all the kids can look back on a record of their life...it is like a big, baby book to me. 

Today we went to visit our favorite pumpkin patch.  We were meeting up with some other MOPS mommies.  The kids had a great time and just loved all the pumpkins.  It is such a fun place!

Teeth, Eyes and Bears...oh my!

We've had a pretty hectic week that won't end until after Mia's birthday party this coming Saturday.  Last week the kids visited the dentist and did great.  This is the first time EVER that Mia has done a check up with no tears, she's becoming such a big girl.  I was so proud of her.  AND she let them take one x-ray of her front teeth.  She has such a tiny mouth that taking a full set of x-rays would be difficult, but we are starting small and working our way towards that.  As she is losing her baby teeth, there is some concern with her adult teeth coming into her tiny mouth as there is not a lot of extra space.  Something will have to give and I'm not sure what that will look like, but at the moment, it is a wait and see. 

Calvin has a much bigger mouth and he got his first full set of x-rays done.  All 3 kids did great and no cavities, so that makes me a happy mama. 

Yesterday all 3 kids had a visit to the eye doctor, in addition to our bear friend Cubbie.  Calvin does Cubbies, the earliest Awana program and throughout the year, the kids get to take Cubbie home with them for a week.  Cubbie is supposed to do everything with them and then you take pictures and write a little note to share with the class when you return him.  Calvin has been enjoying Cubbie, but not super attached...rather Asher is very attached to Cubbie.  Of course, his favorite stuffed animals are bears, so it makes sense...those are his babies.  So, I hope there won't be too much trauma in returning Cubbie at the end of the week. 

Calvin and Asher both had super eye exams and their vision is great.  Which is great news.  We had stopped officially doing vision therapy for Mia's lazy left eye, and unfortunately, her eye isn't doing much work right now.  So, her vision in her left eye dropped a bit and we are now in the process of starting up vision therapy again to work on regaining that vision...it really is just a matter of her actively using her left eye.  And she's been choosing to not use it because it is weaker.  Her eye doctor thought that we could get back to where we are fairly quickly, but it was telling to me that we might be doing vision therapy indefinitely.  Which is ok. 

Homeschooling is going great.  I love it, the kids love it and we have flexibility to do these therapies that we need to get done, for us it's a win win. 

We are so excited that the weather is cooling down and the kids are looking forward to fun fall time activities.  We are grateful for each day we get with our little troop.

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.