Cohen needs your help!!

Magnolia will be hosting a "5K Sprint," on June 4, 2011.  It will be around the Ridewood Rd/JA area and should be lots of fun!!  It is February now, so this is plenty of notice to be ready to run or walk 3.2 miles by June :)  Seriously, it is for a good cause and this is a way for those who don't have tons of money that they can donate to really help out.  Plus, you get something in return, a goodie bag, a shirt, and a good workout.  We already have had several friends and family wanting to do this with us and we can't express enough our gratitude.  So we have decided to have a little team, "Cohen's Crew," out there to encourage others to help out in the cause.  We are still planning all the details so that we can distinguish y'all from the crowd, but if you do sign-up, PLEASE, PLEASE let me know so we can add you to our "crew!" 

http://www.magnoliaspeechschool.org/fundraisers.asp

THANK YOU!!!

What have I been doing?

This little girl has been BUSY!!  She has acquired a few new words:

• nit nown (sit down)
• bootball (football)
• off/on
• ot (hot)
• and (hand)
• ock (sock)

We started using the association method right after the Christmas Holidays.  It is going very well!  She has 3 sounds now (o,m,b).  She still loves her homework and all of her therapy. 

She has finally entered into the "Terrible Twos."  We can't complain, Kinson hit them at 12 months and it was 18months of terror after that.  So we are blessed that she has been so good for almost 2 and 1/2 years!  And even her little fits are easily redirectable.  Most involve leaving school (she loves that place!!), food, or a typical fight with Kinson.  Speaking of that, I am pretty certain that my kids will never like each other :(  When we returned from Disney and went and picked Cohen up from my mom's, we were expecting to see her running up to us all excited.  Well she took one look at Kinson and ran away from us!!  I think she enjoyed 5 days of non-stop, undivided attention.

She loves anything and everything involved with being outside. She is still very shy and will bury her head if she doesn't want to see you.  She interacts very well with other children now and gives hugs to the kids in afterschool with her.  She loves her Papa more than anybody in the world (something about girls and their daddys.)  She is till very Independent and can play with her toys for a long time unless Kinson disturbs her.  She really doesn't care for t.v. at all, not sure if it has to do with what she can hear or not.  She LOVES to "shake her booty."  Her B.B. couldn't be more proud :)

Maybe they do like each other sometimes!

Now for the boring stuff.  We did get into to see a new Ped Endo at UMC.  She was recruited about 6 months ago and has come very highly recommended.  She doesn't meet her until March 24, but she has reviewed her case and has assisted our ped with medicine adjustments until then.  We are seeing our favorite ENT on Wednesday to establish the need for sinus surgery.  We have put it off for awhile now and we are not sure we can wait much longer.  She had a terrible crud for about 4 weeks and now her nose is bleeding on a pretty regular basis.  This past week she has been getting pretty irritated with her hearing aids and the Audiologist says there might be pressure building behind her tubes.  She has always loved wearing her ears so we hate that she doesn't want them in.  She has become very Independent with her "ears."  She takes them off before bedtime/naptime and places them on her table and looks for them when it is time to get up.  She will let us know if the batteries are dead by thumping on her ears!!  We have no idea if she has grown by a measurement but some of her 12month pants are getting short on her!! Something is happening!!

 I have a few questions for moms of girls out there:

When do you get their haircut?  Cohen's hair goes to her rear end when wet and it is easier for us when it is longer as far as ponytails and such.  I don't want her to have bangs and her hair is naturally wavy so it really doesn't have a shape.  Can she go years without getting it cut?

Anybody else out there have a little (I mean size, not age) girl that they were potty training.  Cohen is showing every sign and has been for awhile now.  I have been scowering stores for panties small enough for her.  The smallest I have seen is 2T in panties and pullups, so we are not sure what to do.  I have some bloomers from outfits that are the appropriate size but they seem kind of thick to go under pants.  Any suggestions?

Along with that, anybody ever potty trained a limited verbal child?  I don't want her to point to a picture to indicate it (she will get lazy and NEVER say the word!!) but I need to figure out a way for her to communicate she needs to go.  Right now she grabs her crotch and walks kind of weird and well, it's just not very lady like.  And when she attempts to say "potty" it comes out ba-ba.  Well 50% of what she says is "ba-ba" and the other 50% is "ma-ma."  I can't really rely on that.............

Disney World Recap

We really had a great time in Disney World.  I came in when all kinds of expectations, some weren't met and some were exceeded by leaps and bounds.  Like I said before, we know what we do next time in some areas and we learned what things we would skip over or wouldn't be disappointed if we missed in a time crunch.  However, we are not sure when we will get to go back considering some of the bigger rides you have to be 40" tall, and well lets face it, Cohen might be 6 years old by then :)  We have talked about making a big family trip there again with my brother and his family and grandparents to have more helping hands!!
I was always very apprehensive about going because I would hear and see my friends planning this trip for monthd.  I will always be grateful that we had a wonderful travel agent who did EVERYTHING for us!!  She made reservations, gave us tips, and answered every text we sent her while we were down there.  If anybody wants her info let me know, she only does Disney and really made it so easy for us!!

If you are wondering why there is no pictures of Day 4 Afternoon............that leads me to tip #4
*** Be prepared for RAIN!!!***
It rained for about 30 minutes that afternoon and we were very prepared due to being given great advice by friends.  Don't forget the stroller too!!  The strollers sit in a big "parking lot" ouside each ride, so you might be dry undeer or in a ride but when you get out your children might have a wet bootie :)  Luckily, I had remembered our rain cover, ours was the only one in the parking lot dry!!

Disney World Day 4 (Morning)

Day 4:  Kinson's Birthday!!

We went to 1900 Park Restaraunt at the Floridian Resort for breakfast.  This was a last minute reservation for us because we had a dinner reservation that night but the more we thought about it, we knew he would like this better.  Our travel agent suggested this one and this was by far our favorite place for food and characters.  There were a few characters he didn't know but he LOVED Tigger and Pooh and they were so funny with him! 

Can you tell how affectionate this child is?!  He loved hugging them and would knock them over with his excitement!!

Tigger always playing tricks!!

Happy Birthday, sweet boy!

Kinson knows nothing about Mary Poppins, so he told me that she was getting married!  Ha!

He also doesn't know Alice and Wonderland or the Mad Hatter, but because they weren't in the big costumes they could actually talk to him, and well if you know Kinson, he can talk with the best of them!!

Pooh came sniffing the "honey" (a.k.a. syrup) that was all over Kinson's hands.  He was loving this and was laughing hysterically.

Yes Kinson is still laid out laughing!!

After that we went and spent the morning at Animal Kingdom.

The Safari ride was lots of fun for us.  It was kind of educational, and well I am a nerd that loves that kind of stuff.

Then off to the Dino Land playground.  My kid loves a playground :)

Papa does too :)

On the dinsaur flyers!

Waiting for the Nemo show to let us in!

I am glad that we did Animal Kingdom, but if we go again and get in a time crunch, this would be the park that I would forgo.  Like I said it was fun, but the other stuff was a lot more things we couldn't do anywhere else.

Day 3 (Afternoon/Night)

After our "Coming to Jesus" moment at lunch, things started to look up!!  Kinson began interacting and having lots of fun.  He gave a shot at hula-hooping.....

I reallllly likt the movie "The Beauty and the Beast."  And when we have a slumber party, I always choose this party.  Mamas don't tell me you haven't made your little boy watcha girl movie or two ;)

Kinson befriended the usher and he let him be VIP.  We got to sit in the very front center of the theater.  I loved it but Kinson said it was a little too loud!!

The bad guy, Gastoine

Don't the characters look incredible!!

The beast was huge up close!

Kinson really enjoyed sitting through the show.  After that he was ready to go have some fun!!

Waiting on the Pixar parade.  If you don't make it to any other parade, I highly recommend this one.  It had all the characters from the current movies and the music was fantastic, plus they come right up to you. 

Incredibles

A Bug's Life

Ratatootie as Kinson calls it :)

Monster's Inc.

Up

Jessie and Bullseye

Buzz and Woody

After the parade, Kinson kept saying he wanted to ride Buzz, not the one at Hollywood Studios, the one at Magic Kingdom.  So off we went!  We rode Buzz 4 times in a row, gotta love no lines!!

He got brave and started to ride everything when we got over to Magic Kingdom!!

even the roller coasters!!

His favorite ride were those rockets flying high over everything!!  Not a lot of pictures taken that night because we were enjoying every moment of happiness we could get out of him.  One tip, after you have already seen the parade once, come back another night to ride because everyone will be waiting on the parade and the few rides that had longer rides, we were able to get right on!!

Disney World Day 3 (morning)

Day3 Lesson Learned:  Make sure your child eats more than grapes and fruit at each meal.  He was up all night Wednesday night with a tummy ache which led to a looong day and night.

Hollywood Studios

Toy Story Mania:  This was the one ride we knew we might have to wait for.  Bear got an app on his phone that told you wait times for each ride and checked it for 2 weeks before our trip.  This was the ride that ALWAYS had a 30+minute wait.  So this morning we had no breakfast reserved so we were there at 9:00 when the gates opened and rushed to the ride. Bear ran to get a fast pass and we ran to get in line.  Luckily it was a 15 min wait plus when we were through we could use our fast pass and ride again. 

Not really into pictures this morning.

Loved the 3D glasses.  By the way, did you know these rims are the new style?!  Every Asian there had these kind of glasses on and some CRAZY outfit to go along with it..........

Throwing gangster signs ;)

He chose to ride this ride with me!  I was sooo excited!!

He liked the ride okay, but he was having a rough morning.  When we got off, Buzz and Woody were right across the streeet and he was more interested in them.

Mickey went to every park with us each day :)

"THE CLAW!!!"

He hurt Woody's feelings during this picture .  He was only interested in Buzz and saying "Not today, Zurg!!"

We really knew he wasn't feeling very well when we got to see his favorite characters ever and he needed me to come along with him :(

Still recouperating from his rough night :(

He loved all the different playgrounds at each park.  I think he liked the idea that he could run and be free after 3 days of holding hands and not letting him get more than 3 feet away from us.  This is at Honey, I Shrunk the Kids.

Can you see the button he is wearing?  The resort gave him 2 buttons to wear while he was there.  One said "First Visit" and the other said "It's my Birthday."  The cast members were trained to look for these at all the parks and recognized you accordingly.  Kinson thought they were so much fun to wear them and he would not wear his birthday one early, he only wanted to wear it Saturday on his real birthday.

Next we traveled to Monster, Inc.  We love some Sully and Mike!!  Kinson looks so little next to these guys.

We had reservations for lunch at Hollywood and Vine with the Disney Playhouse crew.  It was such a cute place to eat and there was no one there when we were there so we had one section all to ourselves.  Good thing because Kinson decided at that would be a good time to act goofy.  Well his goofiness ended up with him rolling off the booth and banging his head on the table stand under the table.  Needless to say, screaming erupted and lasted 30 min.  All the characters would come by and felt terrible for us.  Well it got to where he was just plain ridiculous and again how much discipline can you do with 100 eyes watching.  So I figured the best punishment was embarrassment.  I paraded him by every table on our way to the restroom where there was a line of a few women and again pointed him out to all of them.  We then had a coming to Jesus moment in the bathroom where he was told not to come out until he was ready to have fun.  It took all of 30 seconds for the tears to dry up and he decided that chicken nuggets really weren't that bad!

Luckily, all the characters came back by our table because they could tell he was better.  Who would have guessed this was the same child?!  It really was a turning point in our vacation.  Something clicked and he decided that he really might like this place!!