It's summer!

So much for being better about posting. For Alicia's birthday, I'm posting some pictures of her niece and nephew :) Here is a summary of our last 6 months. The kids are doing great. They are loving the summer weather.

Catalina is doing well. She has been having really good days. We are seeing more improvements in her gross motor skills and occasionally a good fine motor day. She has been happy, playful, and healthy. We are looking for preschools for the fall - should be a fun change for her. She has been using her eyegaze device at therapy for several months now and is navigating quite well. I have 2 stories from 2 weeks ago. She fell in school and cut her chin. The next day she had speech therapy and while we were getting her in her chair, we were telling her speech therapist about the fall. Little did we know, Cata was looking at her eyegaze device, navigating the pages, she found "feelings" then "hurt" then "face" then "school"! How amazing is that! She was dying to tell the story herself. Then the next day in therapy she was tired and not excited to be there. The first thing she picked on her device was "home" and she kept repeating it. She struggled through therapy and then when leaving, the therapist selected "goodbye" and Cata selected "yes" "please" "home". She knows what she wants - I can't wait for her to be able to talk more with us - more to come on this later...

Tomas is constantly changing. I can't believe how quickly he changes. His vocab has been at a standstill for a few months with mama, dada, ball, book, and more. Last night at dinner he surprised us with "thank you"! It was precious. He is running everywhere, has learned how to climb up on high things, insists on walking up the stairs holding the railing all by himself, walks up the slide and has attempted running down the slide a few times (interrupted by the nearest adult of course), kicks a ball around the yard, has discovered the fun there is to have in kitchen drawers and cabinets, loves stopping his activity for a hug and a kiss. He is definitely a cuddle bug. He has learned how to give Cata hugs without knocking her down and now holds her hands to dance with her. I hope all this cuteness doesn't disappear with the introduction of the new baby in a few months....

Ok, and now for the picture overload:

T before his 1st birthday

Patiently waiting for birthday cake

I got it!

Like the static?

Winter days....finally gone!!

Bedtime stories...

1st carousel ride.

Riding a real horse!

Dancing!

Silly monkey doing a headstand on the tile

Christmas

Merry Christmas to all. Well it's been awhile and I'll do a end of 2009 post soon, but had a moment to get some Christmas pictures up. We did not travel home to see family because I had to work Saturday and Sunday, but we had a nice time. It was a bittersweet feeling - nice to not have to travel with the 2 kids, delayed flights, airport security, carseats....but it was a little quiet to be just the 4 of us without our families and their traditions.

Tomas and Cata enjoyed their gifts:

The closest I could get to the 2 of them together:

Santa Jr. (in Dad's childhood Santa cap)

Her smiles make my day:

Tomas loves to be near Cata and to snuggle - they are precious together (at least for now!)

9 Months

Big T is 9 months old! Times really flies. Both kids are doing great now that we have all recovered from the flu. Cata is still loving being the best big sister. She is just so sweet with Tomas. Every day when we feed him breakfast (which is after she has eaten breakfast), she just stands next to him and watches and smiles. Tonight I was giving Tomas milk and she kept walking over to him and planting big kisses on his head. It's adorable to watch.

Well, what is Tomas up to these days:

- He is a chatter box. He has M's, B's, P's, A's, O's. He is constantly jabbering away

- He loves to wave (see video on previous post). He will always do it on command, but he likes to also just break out a wave at random. Usually the wave is pointed towards himself and he watches his fingers. Tonight at dinner he waved between each bite - adorable.

- He has mastered getting finger foods in his mouth with consistency and is darn proud of himself for figuring this out

- He still rocks but no crawls. He gets around either with a modified army crawl, a roll, or his newest thing is to rock, flatten out onto the floor, then sit back up. He repeats this over and over and over again until he gets somewhere.

- He loves to stand. When you go to put him on the floor he puts up a pretty good fight by locking his knees and just tries to keep standing

- He is still a good sleeper, sleeping 12-12.5 hours at night and takes 2 naps, although I have noticed the morning nap has shortened to an hour. He still usually gets a 2 hour nap in the afternoon

- He is also a great eater. He usually protests when meals are done - and these are not small meals. In fact, if I chose to eat pureed foods, the amount he eats would probably fill me up.

Well, I'm sure there are lots of other cute things he is up to, but having just worked an incredibly busy 30 hours shift, my brain is only 1/2 working. Gotta love Saturday call at the hospital...

Cata is also doing great. I'll have to save it for another post, but I went to a conference on Assistive Technology and heard lots of great talks by Linda Burkhart. We then had the chance to have her work with Cata and it was awesome! Cata is using her PODD (I'll explain in the next post), and just LOVES "talking" with it. It's low-tech and doesn't allow for independent access, but as she learns it will at least allow for autonomous communication - meaning her thoughts rather than just the choices I present.

Ok, here are some pics of the kiddos:

Doesn't he look like a turtle in the picture? L&T, the Mountain Sprouts onepiece is ADORABOLE!

He doesn't trust her... :) Oh, and she has to wear a patch 3 hrs a day x 8 weeks to fix some weakening of the muscles on 1 of her eyes - trying to avoid surgery.

What silly birds.....These are 2 cute kids.

Always with a smile.

In action...

Wish this wasn't blurry because it's a great smile she has!

We had a visit from Ingrid, who is working hard to raise money for research so we can find a cure for Rett! Check out her site Girl Power 2 Cure. The idea is she inspires girls to help raise money towards finding a cure for our girls with Rett Syndrome.

He has this toy box with all sorts of little things to play with. It's cute because it's his, so Cata doesn't play with those toys, as opposed to the other toys they share. He loves looking into the box and deciding what to get out.

Posing for the camera...

A week of firsts

Tomas had a big week last week.

He waved for the first time:

He finger fed himself (although didn't get it on video - this is just an attempt):

He is rocking:

He and Catalina were playing together:

And Tomas and Cata had a visit from Ashlyn:

I guess one last first for Tomas was that it's his first October to be able to be involved in Rett Syndrome Awareness Month with us. So Tomas is asking you to look at RSRT to learn more about Rett so you can continue on this journey with us.