Proud Wife

I always brag on my children and how well they are doing, but I rarely brag on my sweet husband. He has been gone now for 2 months now and will be gone until September for U.S. Army training. He is now in FT. Jackson, SC for BOLC III (Basic Officer Leadership Course.) He was at Ft. Benning, Ga for BOLC II. Nancy (Jeremy's mom) and the girls and I went down for his graduation at the end of May. We have family down in Columbus and were able to stay with them and visit. It was really great to see the Family. The girls had a great time! The graduation was really nice. We were pleasantly surprised when the only names recognized were 6 men chosen as Honor Graduates from each platoon and Jeremy was one of them! Jeremy was named the Honor Graduate for his Platoon of 47 men and women for completing all his training on "the first go" (first time around) and being top of his platoon in Land Navigation and at the range. He also did a great job as platoon leader in Urban Combat training. Jeremy, we are so proud of you and are proud that you are serving this great country. The Army is lucky to have you. We miss you, but we know that you are doing your best to become a great officer and leader in the U.S. Army.

Here are some picture of our favorite Lieutenant...

Amelia's first steps...

This video was taken a few weeks ago and now Amelia has taken up to 4 steps. She is really starting to get motivated to get on her feet and move. She can stand forever and can even dance and drink while standing. It's getting her to remove the cement from the bottom of her shoes and actually pick them up to take a step that is difficult. Just this week I figured out the trick... she LOVES to be chased! If I pretend to "get" her she will run to whatever is nearest to her. She is still not the gross-motor driven child that Mary is and I am pretty sure she never will be (thank goodness), but she is at least finally finding her desire to move. She is very pleased with herself as am I. She just turned 22 months (the average age for a child with DS to walk is 2), so she is right on track. Way to go my big girl... I LOVE YOU!!

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Summing up...

Okay... So I did promise to keep the blog updated better, but it's really hard when you are basically a single parent and have a 4 year old that hates for you to be at the computer. Enough excuses. To sum up what we have been up to the past 3 months... Easter parties, Easter Sunday, Family Fun day at ELC (Grandad and Ginny came for the fun), End of the year parties, Last days of school, Emily's Dance Recital, Swimming and playdates. Here are some pics from Easter.


Easter at the ELC (special needs school)

Dying Easter Eggs... Amelia just watched, but Mary loved it!



Easter morning (all dressed up for church and egg hunt at Grandmom and Grandad's house)

Miss Amelia... Growing up so fast!

So Amelia is now 19 months old... I can't believe it! A lot has happened since I posted back in November. Amelia is such a joy! She is silly and loves her sister so much. She copies everything she does... I haven't decided if that is going to be a good thing or a bad thing, yet. She is not yet walking, but loves to stand and walk with support. She is crawling around everywhere, but still has her easy going personality so we haven't had any traumatic experiences with her new found mobility. Gross motor is definitely her weakness, which is very hard to get used to after Mary who was and is so physical. Amelia has great fine motor...I am keeping my fingers crossed that she will be my artist. She can feed herself with a spoon and drink from a cup, but has major feeding issues and won't eat anything hard (with the exception of puffs.) Ironically she has a great pincer grasp and has been able to pick up little tiny pieces of food since she was very little, but spits it out in disgust if it ever makes it to her mouth. Okay now on to her real strength... Communication. She is such a talker! She signs a lot, but is very verbal. I won't list all of her signs and words, because she adds more to the list every day. At her last speech evaluation, which is based on a score of 100 being the average score for a typical child, Amelia scored 120 on her receptive language (meaning what she can understand) and 110 on her expressive (meaning what she can express.) So my Down syndrom little girl scored an average score of 115, which is above average for the typical child! She constantly amazes us! Amelia loves playing with "Little People" and baby dolls ("baba") and loves going to her Kindermusik class.
She loves Elmo ("Elbo") and bathtime ("bash") She is sooo tiny! She weighs only 20 lbs and can fit into most 12 month outfits. She is a little peanut! She may be short, but she makes up for it... she has some "junk in the trunk" to put it nicely. Recently before bathtime Jeremy decided to sit her on the potty. Two things suprised us... One, her bottom was so big that he didn't have to hold her on the potty! Two, she actually peed! She looked down as she started to go, then looked up in suprise, and then she clapped and squeeled for herself! It was so cute! Now every night before bathtime we sit her on the potty and she goes. It saves us from bathing her and Mary in pee-water. I could write so much more about how much I love Amelia and how much joy she brings to our family, but I will spare you the novel. Thanks for all of you who have made it through this long post. Thanks for letting me share with you a little bit about my sweet little girl!

This is for all of you who have been buggin' me...

Okay... so I know I have been a total slacker with our blog, but I promise I have a good reason. That reason is... uh... well... all I can come up with is that I have a husband who works all the time and two little girls with Down syndrome. That is all I have to say about that! I promise to try and post more regularly. Jeremy is going away for training and will be gone over the next 4 months so I am going to try and post every week so that he can see what his girls are up to. Okay enough excuses. Get ready for an overload of pictures and catch up stories from the past 4 months - wow has it really been that long?!

Let it snow!

I can't remember the last time that it snowed in Ga and actually accumulated. Well finally... in March of course, it did! And I mean it REALLY snowed! We had 6 inches and two full days of fun in the snow! The girls liked it, atleast for little bits at a time. On the third day, even though the snow hadn't fully melted, Mary was pretty much done and ready for school.

Our house covered in snow:






Went went down to Liz and Matt's house for some hot chocolate and a warm fire and then back outside for some more fun.

Mary and Will at Liz's house:


We did all of the typical snow activities... we built a snow man...


We attempted sledding...


and of course we built huge snow forts and had a huge snowball fight! (well actually Liz's boys built the forts and everyone except the girls and I had the snowball fight. We watched and carefully tried to stay out of the way.)


Overall it was a blast! I am glad the girls had a chance to experience the snow, now bring on the warm weather... It's March for goodness sake!!

My big 4 year old!!

Mary turned 4 (I can't believe it) on February 16th. We had some family and friends over on Sunday and Jeremy's parents came down to celebrate. Mary had a great time and loved all of her presents. On the following Saturday Mary had a Dora the Explorer Party with some of her favorite friends.

We started off the party by noticing that Mary's present were gone! Who did we find... Swiper the fox! We all yelled, "Swiper no swiping!" But we were too late! Swiper told us (via a hidden baby moniter) that he had taken Mary's presents and her whole party to his hideout and that we would never find him!


So what did we need?... Backpack and of course Map! Each little girl got a Map to tell us which way to go and a backpack filled with everything we would need to get to swipers hideout!


First stop was the Yellow Bridge, but we couldn't cross because there were holes in the bridge. Each girl found a shape in their backpack and filled in the holes so we could cross and get to Boot's house.


We can't go on an adventure without Boots the monkey, but Boots was missing something and couldn't leave without it. We found his missing boot in our backpacks and then played pin the boot on Boots.


Now on to the Starry Forest, but of course we ran into another problem. There was a huge sleeping alligator in the way (a nice one of course.) We used moracas from our backpacks to wake him up so that we could get by.


We made it into the forest and collected lots of stars!




And guess who we found there...


"We did it! We did it! We did it, Hooray!" We found Swiper's hideout and the party!




Mary, Talia, Lorali, Hannah, Kelsey and Natalie (not pictured) ate lots of food, opened presents and played. It was a blast!


A special thanks to my sister, Liz (aka Swiper), Lori (who helped me color for hours) and my helper,cousin Emily, who I couldn't have gotten through the day without!

Emily, Mary and Natalie winding down after the party:

Happy 30th Birthday Jeremy!

On December 30th Jeremy turned 30 years old. We didn't do much for his Birthday because he was crazy busy with work. We had a quiet evening at home. Of couse there were decorations, cake and presents which helped make it a little more special.

Jeremy came home from work to find this big poster on the door:



Make a wish...



Time for presents...

A frame with a charcoal drawing of the UGA arches on the left side and place for his ROTC picture on the right side:



His favorite gift of all (if you can't tell), his custom framed Diploma:



Happy Birthday sweetheart!! I love you!!

Christmas 2008

This was the funnest Christmas we have had as a family so far. For one thing, everyone was well; it was a miracle! Also, Mary really understood Christmas this year for the first time and so in to it. She passed out presents and screamed with excitement when whe opened up each gift. It was really cute. Amelia also was old enough to open her gifts with minimal assistants. We went to my mom's house Christmas day and to Jeremy's parents house the next day. We were able to see Justin and Becky (Jeremy's brother and sister-in-law) who were visiting from Boston. It was a lot of fun! Here are just a few high-lights...

Chaos at the Hemsley Home (Jamie's parents):



Showing off some favorite presents:





Jason and Rebecca and Baby Joseph:



Off to the Tryon's (Jeremy's parents)in Chattanooga for Christmas Round 3:



Aunt Becky and Amelia:



Grammie, Mary, Daddy and Amelia:



"Look what we got!"