Busy, busy month!!!

It is crazy how fast April has flown by and we are already into May!  This has been a really busy month for us which is probably why it has gone by so fast!

We celebrated Grandma Diane and Grandma Barb's 60th birthday's this month. Happy Birthday to them both!! For Grandma Diane's we went to Jungle Bungle and let the kids play.  This is starting to become a tradition in our family with young children that would rather be playing that sitting at a restaurant behaving. :)  We went to Chuck E. Cheese for Daddy's earlier this month.  For Grandma Barb's we had a nice brunch at Thunder Bay.  Both our kids were on their best behavior which was great!  Aunt Kimberly and Uncle Craig came in town and we also had a surprise 30th birthday party for Kim.  It was a fun and busy weekend!  Unfortunately Grandma Candy came down with a bad case of the flu, which spread on to Brody and Briana and Grandma Barb and Uncle David.  Lucky for us this is our first real bout with the flu but I will say it was terrible!!  Finally after four days the kids seem to be a little better but still not really eating much.  Nothing worse than a sick child, let alone two sick at the same time!  We made it 4 years without anyone getting sick in the car, that ran out this week, and Briana threw up on the dog.  That one made me laugh a little!

This has been a huge month for Brody as he started school!!  After his speech evaluation came back fine I decided the best thing to do was to get him in somewhere asap.  He is going two mornings a week for two hours to St. Alphonsus Early Learning Center, a very small catholic school here in Davenport.  Things are going good so far, he is happy and learning and really likes his teachers and friends.  It is a big adjustment for him so I know he will continue to need reminders for awhile when it comes to sitting at carpet time, etc but I do feel this is a good fit.  We have already been invited to two birthday parties and he really likes one of the little girls in the class and talks about and plays with her often.  I have a good feeling that the speech will catch up the more he is around other kids.  His teacher is very laid back yet stern at the same time which I think is a good combination.  He had an excellent report when I picked him up on Friday which made me beam from ear to ear.  I took him to a special lunch to celebrate a great day!

We had Brody's 4 year appointment earlier this month as well.  He is 40 and 1/2 inches tall (54%) and weighs 36.6 pounds (55%).  The doctor said he is doing great and she is not concerned about the speech at all.  She says just get him around other kids.  He has almost 2 and 1/2 years before kindergarten so that is plenty of time to catch up!  He as always amazed her with how smart he is.  He had to draw a picture of a person and he did a great job, she was very impressed!  We continue to work on letter writing and he is very into drawing, tracing, mazes and activity books right now.  He is doing great with recognizing sight words and can read around 40 words on his own.  He is always asking me what signs say and can remember and recognize them after one or two times of seeing them.  He is a very bright little boy and we are so proud of all he can do.  He is in a very silly stage right now where everything is funny and little is taken seriously.  I know it is just a phase but I do have to remind him to calm down and talk like a big boy from time to time.  His language continues to grow and right now he asks questions, questions, questions!!!  Who is that?  Why are they doing that?   Where does this go?  What is that man's name?  What is he doing?  And on and on, it is so funny because he is so very curious.  I love it as I know this is how he is learning.  It is great.

Briana is doing great!  She is talking, talking and more talking!!  More words are being but together to form sentences and yesterday she said "Move Brody".  She waves and says "hi" to everyone, including maniquins at stores.  She has around 50 some words she uses all the time.  She can count to 5 and is starting to name some colors.  She is such a sponge and always wanting to learn.  She is doing great with the potty and goes "pee pee" 3 or 4 times a day.  She wants to be completely naked to go which is funny but I hope I can break her of that soon.  She is becoming more and more independent all the time and surprises me with all she can do on her own.  She does not want help with much anymore.  She loves her brother and completely follows and mimics all that he does, so cute.  They really are two best friends!!  Brody had 3 weeks left of art class when we started him in school so Briana got to go and finish out his last few classes.  I had planned on doing it with her in the fall so I wanted to see how she would do.  She loved it and had a blast!

On an unfortunate note, our basement was completely ruined with the bad storms we had a few weeks ago.  For the past five years we have been able to keep the water confined to our tile area but these storms were just too much and we had standing water through out our entire basement. :(  We had planned on having our waterproofing redone for the 4th time this spring but my surgery ended up being very expensive so we decided to wait until next year

After this storm we knew we had no choice but to fix it so we had a few companies come out and look at it and we will be having it done in a little over a week.  We will also be getting new carpet and having part of our driveway that is cracked repaved.  It will be so nice to have it done and the warranty is a lifetime guarantee so we can breathe a little easier.

We have had great weather the past few weeks so we have been spending a lot of time outside.  Brody would live outside and spends hours pretending out there.  We have also been going to the zoo, swimming at the Y and going to the museum.  The playground was open last week at the museum so the kids loved that.  I can't wait for the weather to be nice all the time so we can be out everyday!