Last Day of Preschool for the 2015-2016 school year!

Cameron has loved school. I am so so glad I decided to put him in an early start class, and get him used to it before baby brother comes. He had an amazing teacher- He LOVED her. She made school so nice for him, left a lasting good impression of school. He is excited to be there and loves activities. He has taken up more interest in reading, pretending, and drawing pictures. I pray that he will always love learning and love school!!! 

Thank you so much to Ms. Kath- Kathrene Livingston- his teacher. She is someone who loves teaching, and loves those little kiddos!!! 

Preschool!

Cameron is a kid of routine- he NEEDS it. He NEEDS to know what's coming. He likes to know what time things are, and in what order. For example- every Sunday, he wants to know how the day is going to go. This is what I tell him:

• Go to church
• Sacrament meeting first- Quiet time until the bread and water are passed, then he can read books or do his lace cards or magnets quietly. We do talks, song, prayer, then go to nursery! Mom and Dad always come back. 
• Come home, eat a light lunch
• Go visit Grandma and Grandpa and eat dinner with them
• Bedtime

He asks all the time- What time is it? and wants to know the actual time- and what we should be doing- It's 12:00, lunch time! Then nap time. 

I knew right away that having a baby in our family would be great ad exciting, and I know he will be a big helper and love the baby, but he will also be jealous, and it is going to rock his world. Being that I am due in August- Dan and I decided it would be too stressful to bombard him with lots of big changes all around the same time in August. 

I found that he can go to our public elementary's preschool early- so he started class on Feb 2! He will have a summer break, but school won't be a brand new thing for him come fall. 

He loves school- He has told me a couple times when I pick him up that he isn't ready to go yet! We are so proud of this boy- and we will try to always foster a love for school and learning!

First trimester down!

This pregnancy has been SO different than my pregnancy with Cam.  I have been extremely exhausted. I had severe leg cramps, and the tell tale nausea and vomiting. My legs were swelling!! And I have just been sick! At my first appointment, my doctor ordered the normal pregnancy blood tests, along with a ton of others- my vitamins and minerals, iron, calcium, etc. Anyway, it ended up being like 13 tubes of blood.
Results come back- well! My iron was critically low, my calcium and vitamin D were very low, my sodium and potassium low but normal still- then another test that showed I was having muscle damage- because of the low iron!
This baby is stealing every thing I have and more!! The solution has been to double my prenatal vitamin, take vitamin c with liquid iron, take vitamin D and calcium, on top of my blood thinner injections, blood pressure, and thyroid medicine! I am running on quite the pharmacy!  The good news is that I feel SO much better- my leg cramps went away after I was on the iron for only a few days.
Thankfully, my doctor is great, and the baby is good!! I am now just about 15 weeks, and my nausea is also gone! I hope for good! I was sick the whole time with Cameron, so the fact that I am feeling so much better this time is a welcome change!!
Cameron has been so silly- every time I got sick, he did too. He would say, "Oh mom! So sick!!" and proceed to spit into the toilet!!! I finally caught him doing it one day when I wasn't sick so I had to get a pic and document it!
         Don't worry- our toilet had just been cleaned. I can't believe he sticks his head so far in.

 I think I could even suggest that I would feel like a million dollars if Cameron slept! 3 years- longer for me- of no sleep. I don't remember the last time I got 6 or more hours in at one time. I average 3-5 hours of sleep a night- and usually not all at the same time. That being said, sleep is my biggest fear about having a toddler and a newborn!
We are working on a sticker chart with Cameron- I took him to Toys R Us and let him pick 2 big ticket items. He chose a talking Daniel Tiger, and a large Baymax. He has to fill his sticker chart of good nights- no waking up and waking mom or dad- and staying in his room until his alarm clock turns green. It will be progressive- he has two charts, this first one is 9 days, the second is 16. Well, we started February 16- he still has 4 more stickers to earn. It is going slow- but the fact that he has slept 5 nights since February 16 is awesome.

Here is to more sleep, warmer days, and feeling good for the rest of my pregnancy! We find out what we are having in just 18 days! Any guesses????

Discovery Gateway with Sonia

Sonia took Cameron, Dan, and I to Discovery Gateway earlier this month. She thought it would be a great place to work on his fine motor and speech development. He had a ton of fun!!! It was so great to watch the gears in his brain turn as he had lots of fun!!
He did say "Ap-Ap" this week when I gave him the choice between an apple and banana!!!

Of course the water features and balls were his favorite... That's where we spent the most time!

Like Father, Like Son. Same face......

 He LOVED driving Sonia around!

And wanted to buy all the bread at the grocery....

Early Intervention Goals- Let's get talking!

I jumped the paranoid gun getting Cam in early intervention- but I am glad because Sonia is his assigned child development specialist and she has given us great ideas and homework to get Cameron talking.
There are certain skills/acheivements that occur prior to talking! We have learned a lot about the process in these few short weeks since Cam started.
When Sonia comes, we work on 3 specific areas- cognition, fine motor skills, and expressive language. These are the 3 areas where he has goals and needs some catching up. Even though these are the focus, it is still important to work on receptive language, social skills, and gross motor too!

Part of his goals are reading- I have always read to him, but there is more to reading than just words. We are working to get him to point at 10 pictures on command. He does 7! He is on track and follows one step commands, and a couple of two step commands too. We know he is understanding us!

We also work on cognition- so for this, we do a lot of repetition, and giving him choices. They can't be vague, it has to be very specific with examples. We started giving him food choices- for example, I hold an apple in one hand, and a banana in another, and ask him to choose- and I show him the apple and repeat apple, then I take it away and show him the banana and say banana. Even though he points and babbles and I know which one he wants, Sonia has told us it is important to learn emotion and get frustrated. It encourages communication. Seeing the object and hearing the name in connection with the object is vital to speech. She said that children need to hear a word 100 times to know it, then another 100 times before they will try to say it. We make him wait for his choice to encourage him to say the words back to us. We also give him clothing and pajama choices. These types of daily activities also work on patience and attention span.

Sonia has stressed a major importance in repetition. I have such a hard time with this part- for example- "You want an ap-ple with lunch? I am cutting your ap-ple. Here is your ap-ple. Yummy ap-ple. Do you like your ap-ple?" and breaking down the words by syllables. We are so used to just doing these day to day tasks, it is hard to verbally announce it all and think about it!
We work on labeling EVERY action and object.

We play with toys and activities that engage his attention, and force him to focus and use fine motor skills. We pick up small coins, we squeeeze water bottles, we pop bubble wrap, we roll and squeeze play doh, sort silverware or toys by type or color, and play with toys that have buttons, knobs, latches, etc- and again just label and label every action, and give a sound effect for most actions- it is easier for them to learn words and objects when they can associate a sound or action with the object. So for example- when we pop the bubble wrap, we say, "pop! pop!" When he pets our cat- "Meow Cat! Meow Cat!" Ball- bounce bounce bounce... etc.

We also are going to get some stickers, and put them on his body parts- then label the body part as he pulls/plays with the corresponding sticker! "Foot! Toes! Belly! Nose!" etc.

It seems like a lot of playing- I feel like it has made a huge difference to just become more aware of actions and objects we take for granted every day and help label them all for Cameron. Dan and I are noticing his mental growth is just abounding every day, and we have also been reading the book of mormon to him daily.

I don't think Cameron necessarily needs early intervention now that we have started, but really, Dan and I needed it more! It has just been a process of learning about how we learn and how children develop and what they need to grow and thrive. It has made us more aware, and it is amazing how much progress we are seeing!

We also decided about 3 months ago to start working on sign language with him. That has also helped tremendously as he has a form of communication that can be understood. It is amazing how fast he picks it up too! 

Sonia told us to keep working on sign too because it is a precursor to spoken language.