Keeping Up With A Bean

Keeping up with a Bean, as well as this blog, is proving to be rather difficult.  So much going on, and not enough hours in the day! 

First of all, the roof is done!!!  They only found $1100. of dry-rot to be replaced, so...  well, at least it's done, and they're giving us 90 days to finish paying for it!  YEA! 

It seems like we've had a lot of appointments lately!  I'm not sure if that's really true, but it seems like we have.  This week we had the team from Portland Public Schools come evaluate Andi to transition her from the 0-3 year Early Intervention program to the 3-5 year program.  As she's about to start pre-school, we need to line-up services she'll need and update her IFSP.  We have the BIG transition meeting on May 8th, which will have a lot of people come together to make sure that "all T's are crossed and all i's dotted" and Andi will have everything she needs to access, succeed and thrive in pre-school.  It has been said that after the paperwork is wrapped up from that meeting, Andi can start school even before her 3rd birthday!  So, it is looking like she will start pre-school in mid-MAY!  I'm so excited because everyone agrees with me, she will THRIVE in school.  It will help her to see what other kids are doing, and might even encourage her to figure out walking quicker.  I have a good feeling about it!  The weird thing about all this, is after this transition meeting, we will basically be "released" by our 0-3 year old team - which means the people we've worked with since 10/10, will no longer be ours.  So, our OT, Kajsa (kay-sah) whom Andi absolutely adores and can actually pronounce her name really well, will no longer be our weekly visitor.  We seriously started working with Kajsa a month after Andi was released from the hospital from heart surgery, she was maybe five months old.  Kajsa is seven months pregnant, so hopefully we'll get to spend some time with them this summer as "friends" instead of 'therapist'.  But still... that part of this moving onward will likely be hard on us.  These people come into our homes for an hour and see the good, the bad, the struggles, frustration, whining, worry, hardship, stress, fear, happiness, milestones, joy, humor, and share all of it as a part of the family.  The expression of the 90's, "it takes a village to raise a kid"... well, these people are our village, more so than even our own extended family.  These people have helped us shape, mold, stretch, grow, aid, teach and strengthen our Bean.  It's going to be hard to let them go from our lives.  I actually believe we'll keep up with them, but, it won't be as often as we've been seeing them. 

Anyhow, tangent....  whoa!  I guess I have some feelings about moving onward and upward!  HA! 

Tomorrow, we have our twice-monthly hearing impaired playgroup.  This is held at the school where Andi will be going for pre-school!  It's an opportunity for not only the kids to get together and realize 'they're not so different afterall' (anyone else singing a part of the song from 'Signing Time'?!?) but a place where parents can interact with other hearing impaired parents, and the teachers!  There's one Mom there with three boys.  The youngest is hearing impaired.  All her boys are adorable and Andi likes to flirt with the oldest!  She's someone I would hope to arrange play dates with down the road.  I find that my social skills are extremely rusty in these instances though and I'm rather embarrassed by my shyness at times.  I'm horrible about asking about others' kids and how other people are doing... I mainly speak when spoken to - which is rather shy of me.  Maybe just by writing that here, maybe - just maybe, I'll do better tomorrow!   

Anyhow, tomorrow afternoon we go up the hill to the hospital for Andi's 1st very-own hearing aid!!!  Yes, we will finally give-up the lender hearing aid from Columbia Regional.  We probably have to return our Signing Time videos we borrowed from the too.  Oops.  Luckily, we're getting them from the library now too.

And on that note, our exciting news is that Andi has taken the first steps toward potty-training!!!  We've been watching the Potty Time (Signing Time) video for weeks, introduced the potty chair, and even read a Potty book we borrowed from the library.  The stage has been set.  So yesterday, I got her to sit on the potty for two hours.  Two hours she sat there while we had Potty Time playing, toys to entertain, and a very full bladder.  It took two hours but she finally went.  The potty started talking to her (because it electronically registers that we've got a pay-day) and so we sang "celebrate" and made a big deal about it.  She said "bye-bye potty" and we moved on with our day.  Later that day she said "more potty" so we tried again, nothing.  Then when Kajsa was here for our weekly session, Andi decided again to strip off her pants and diaper and "more potty".  She likes to do the yoga pose 'downward dog' a lot from the potty.  That basically shoots her bare butt in the air with her poop chute exposed for all to see.  It's pretty funny if you're not disgusted with butt- chat like Daddy Bean is.  (HAHAHAHAHA!)  In any case, she did that several times yesterday, only to pop off the potty and "PP" on the rug.  She doesn't yet have the body-awareness, but, she'll get there!!!! 

On that note, I think I'll leave you all with the visual of naked baby downward dog pose.  Cuz if you're going to keep up with a Bean, well, that's our latest!