First Day of School - Oscar and Diana August 30, 2010

We lost our phone (land line) service, and thus internet service, sometime either last Sunday night or Monday morning.  We got it back on Saturday afternoon (way to be on top of things AT&T).  Evidently, there was some utility service work done up the street from us that was the culprit.  Still don't know why it takes a week to fix it...

Anyway, I'm finally getting to post our second "first day of school" - Oscar and Diana's.

Officially a teenager...

We decided to go with numbers instead of 13 candles.

A hermit crab habitat from Grandma Schoemig, now we just need to get him some crabs to go in it...

blue mp3 player from Mom and Dad

Skateboard from Grandma and Grandpa Verhulst

...ER bills will be going to their house...

I'll post about what went on in August soon.  Right now I'm about to crash in the middle of typing this because I was up until 3a.m. loading pictures and music onto his mp3 ;-).

Mayerly & Claudia's First Day of School August 26, 2010

Happy 10th B-day Diana

10 candles

We got her a purple MP3 player

Me giving a short lesson on how to work her new gadget

I think she's getting the hang of it

So Far, in July...

On Independence Day we went to Tim's aunt's house in Raymore for a huge cookout with his dad's side of the family.  Tim's dad is the oldest of ten kids, so when I say huge I'm not exaggerating.  We left a little early so we could be closer to home for fireworks.  We went to the one in Sugar Creek which is just about 5 minutes from our house.  It was small, but pretty nice - until it started to rain on us... really, rain on the 4th of July???

Summer school ended on July 9th.  The girls are now home all day with a babysitter (the same one who watched them after school since I had to go back to work full time in January).  I hope they don't scare her off before the end of the summer...

On the 10th we left home at 7:00 am and drove to St. Louis for the CHI Reunion.  I left my camera in the car so I don't have any pictures from the actual reunion.  We had a good time meeting some of the other families (Duewels, Bakers, Armstrongs, Willetts - and I know I'm going to forget to mention others we met).  We also saw some of the families that we have known for awhile like the Sinclairs, Bonds, Stottsberrys  and Rimas.  We were especially glad to Meet Julie E. in person!

After the reunion picnic was over, we went to America's Incredible Pizza Co. with our friends from Illinois who are thinking about adopting again (they are now considering Ethiopia instead of Colombia for their adoption due to the long wait time for Colombia) and came as our guests to the reunion.  Our kids had a great time with their daughter.  I actually got a couple of pictures before my camera battery conked out.

It's kinda dark, but you can see Claudia to the right, Diana to the left and Mayerly's leg to the far right.

This one is of Oscar on the indoor go-cart track - again kinda dark.

The day after the reunion we went swimming at the hotel pool after breakfast and before we left to go back home.

Tim throwing Mayerly

Tim throwing Claudia

Diana in mid-jump by the poolhouse

more pool fun...

Oscar's back since he wouldn't let me take his picture when he was looking at me... hehe!

At 8:00 Monday morning after we came home, I took Oscar, Diana and Mayerly in for their lingual frenectomies (tongue tie oral surgery).  It wasn't as bad as I expected.  We opted for laughing gas before the shot (don't think any of them even know they got a shot in their tongue...).  The oral surgeon then cut the frenum with a laser.  It wasn't as gross as I figured it would be, I even watched (and I can't usually deal with that kind of stuff very well).  Not much blood because the laser cauterizes as it cuts.  We were out of there by 10:00 after all three surgeries.  Now we have to do tongue exercises after every meal.  Oscar still can't get his tongue out much past his lips because it was stuck to the bottom of his mouth for so long, but he should get there with time and exercise.  Speech therapy is now a weekly thing for these 3 ***update, Oscar and Diana are now doing speech therapy twice a week - so if you are still keeping score, we're up to 9 therapy sessions per week***.

This past Saturday Tim took the kids to an air show in Olathe/Gardner, KS so I could be left in peace to fill out paperwork for the upcoming school year (we're sending them all to private schools this year).  Below are pictures...

Picnic at the Rima's Farm

Yesterday we went to the second annual picnic at Gerry & Teresa Rima's dairy farm in El Dorado Springs, MO.  They are super nice folks and have adopted nine children from Colombia and one from the U.S.  Above is a picture we took right as the sky opened up and started to pour down rain on us (broke up the party really quickly).  The Rima kids are all wearing green shirts (Teresa and Gerry aren't in the picture though).  Our kids really liked going to the picnic again this year and we all had a good time in spite of the unfortunate weather towards the end.

Funny and Sobering

Ever since our kids started to use English, they have had some pretty bizzare ways of saying things and trying to express themselves.  Some of this stems from having learned Spanish first and trying to apply the rules and sentence structure to English - which sometimes doesn't work so well.  Other times, it is just due to the severe deprivation of the early years of their lives coming through in their speech limitations.

Lately, Diana - when asking a question - will put a "yaah?" on the end of it.  It's hillarious to me because she sounds like a Swede (imagine Wally Walrus).  For example, she will say, "Mama, I do la rondie(laundry) good today, yaah?".  To which I will usually answer "yaah!"...

Oscar on the other hand will say, "Yes y yes" - when he means to say "Yes it is".  He says this so much (especially to his sisters) that Tim and I say "yes y yes" to each other instead of saying "yes it is".  Yaah, we have warped senses of humor...

Mayerly thinks the word "look" starts with a "g" (glook).  I think she had heard me tell her "go look" so much ***sidebar - Mayerly used to never look for anything she would lose, she just expected everyone to drop everything and help her find whatever she lost without looking for it herself first (if at all).  So, I told her (at least once every day for awhile) to "go look" for her fill-in-the-blank-here because I didn't lose it.*** that she just runs the two words together now.  "Glook at this mama!"

When Claudia tries to say "popsicle" it sounds like "bicycle".  Now she just says "fruit bar" instead (but that actually sounds more like "fubar").  Can't win for losing...

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We have completed vision testing on Oscar now.  He has a convergence insufficiency and will need vision therapy.  He got reading glasses back in April and we will start his therapy in September when school starts.  Diana has been doing VT since January and is progressing well.  Her eyes are straight sometimes now - which means she is using them together when they are :-).  Unfortunately, my insurance is refusing to cover it so it is about to get twice as expensive for us to pay for this therapy.

We had Oscar and Diana tested for auditory processing disorder.  They both have this - which explains their slow aquisition of English and the repeated mispronounciations of words even with retro-feeding.  We started APD therapy for that today (also not covered by insurance).

I asked our audiologist about getting speech therapy evaluations.  He said that it would be a good idea since APD therapy only deals with the processing aspect, not with learning to articulate correctly.  Soooo this month we took all four kids in for speech therapy evaluations.  Oscar, Diana and Mayerly have ankyloglossia - more commonly known as "tongue tie".  I'll be scheduling surgery for them this summer to "loose their tongues".  Interestingly, I found this scripture referencing tongue tie, "...and the string of his tongue was loosed , and he spake plain." KJV Mark 7:35.  At least 3 kids will be starting speech therapy after their surgeries (this should be covered by insurance).  Claudia has the speech of about a 5 year old, but not sure if this warrants therapy right now.

So if you are keeping score, that will be three kids, doing three different therapies - or seven therapy sessions per week coming our way soon.  I haven't figured out how we are going to do this all yet - financially or logistically.  Keep us in your prayers...