Dirty toes

My birthday was awesome yesterday! My boys treated me to an incredible day. I woke up to a homemade breakfast sandwich (sooo yummy...Dan makes the BEST) while Sammy and Elijah made me food in their play kitchen. Elijah made me a Salt & Pepper Cake and Sammy made me Vegetable-Fruit Soup. Both were delicious! :) After I ate their food, Elijah "cleaned" up their kitchen and was pretty proud of himself for doing so.

Before I opened my gifts, Sammy said, "Here Mom! Open your new purple water bottle!" He couldn't understand why he shouldn't have said that. It was cute. And I loved the water bottle. I will forever have the image etched in my mind of both boys standing excitedly in front of me, literally jumping and bouncing around with enormous smiles and flapping arms because they were so excited to give me the gifts that they had picked out. I have the best boys! They gave me 39 spanks and then Sammy said to me, "Mom....I love your dirty toes." Oh my goodness, that boy. He is so funny. Dan and I got away for a quick dinner last night and that was delicious. It was a great 39th birthday!

We had such a fun morning today! We spent the morning with our friends Jen (E's awesome kindergarten teacher turned friend) and Allison (her adorable baby girl). We went to the music class that they attend every week and it was so much fun! Aside from a 15-second bit of "trouble" Elijah gave me, the boys did awesome and had such a fun time. Both boys loved the musical triangles and I noticed that Elijah was clanging his mini cymbals together with impeccable rhythm. I remembered from one of my NLD books that NLD kids typically are musically inclined especially in the realm of drums or instruments that require rhythm. Hmmm, something to keep in the back of my head. We played at Jen and Allison's house for a bit afterward and the boys had so much fun!

I feel so grateful for the ideas that have been sent our way regarding Elijah and some of things he has been struggling with. Thank you so much! My soon-to-be sis-in-law (right, Joel?) is going to school to become a child behavioral analyst, so she sent me tons of valuable thoughts and ideas. One of the things she mentioned that I thought was brilliant was to make our white board schedule portable so we can bring it to the dropzone. Why didn't I think of this? Above is our end-of-week and weekend schedule with the dz part being portable. Sometimes it seems like Elijah doesn't pay much attention to these schedules, but if I ask him a specific question about our day he knows the answer without having to look. He obviously relies on them for structure and predictability.

Last week I contacted Fraser (special needs organization) and Autism Society of MN and got E's name on their lists so we can get him evaluated for services. I'd love for him to be able to receive social skills help and emotional/behavioral help. I'm excited to see what comes from that. Depending on how they pan out, Courage Kenny is next on my list. I've been reading parts of E's neuropsych report every day to try to absorb the info from that. I'm feeling a bit desperate to get a few of our recent struggles under control before second grade starts.

Today was a mostly GREAT day, so I'd like to copy and paste paste paste.

This weekend: work, dropzone, church and family time. I'm so grateful for my amazing boys and for YOU for reading and caring about us. Have a wonderful weekend!