A Beautiful Thing

For those of you who are unfamiliar with this "beautiful thing", this is our local grocery delivery truck in my driveway at 8:15AM today. For a mere $4.95, my hand picked groceries came to my door. We are currently without car after our "flat tire without a spare" episode yesterday. It's so exciting not to have to take children to the grocery store - multi-tasking at it's best! I might have been one of the delivery mans more excited customers of the day as the three of us were waiting by the window with glee but hopefully he didn't see me taking the picture of his delivery truck - HA!

The Tysons Adventure

We had plans to meet my dear friend from high school and her adorable 14 month old daughter at Tysons Shopping Mall yesterday mid-morning. Well little man apparently had a different plan in mind when he woke up at 3:45AM and decided to play until the sun came up. As I explained in Adventures of a Saturday Night, his nighttime sleeping can sometimes be disturbed by that pesky hyperarousal! Usually within an hour or two, he settles himself down and catches a few more snoozes. Not this time. So I'm sitting on the edge of the bed in the morning discussing with hubby - Should I go or Should I stay home. A common discussion we have. It's one of those inner battles I fight. We can pull thru this, we can do it, we don't have to change our lifestyle - just strap on your boots and get out there! Afterwards I see this image of God looking down on me, "Oh mama, when will you learn", as he grins and shakes his head.

So off we go to meet our friend at Tysons. Everyone was smiling and happy in the car ride. We got to the mall, and little man was asleep in the stroller within 5 minutes. SWEET!!! He was technically 3 hours behind so a nap was great! We shopped and played in the Disney store for awhile. (And a little tip for moms - this is our new playground rather then those germ infested playground pits in the mall. We could spend hours in there finding characters in the big stuffed animal wall and staring at Cinderella) We shopped a little more and then headed up to the food court.

Little man decided to wake up as we entered and wasn't a very happy little man. After about 15 minutes of trying to calm him we packed up our pizza and traveled home. Poor guy was so overtired and cried the whole way home. I rocked him a bit and he finally came around to eating his pizza and then napped again. But back to the food court.....I expected a slight protest from the daughter since I said "Let's Go" in mid-bite of pizza and the germ infested playground is painfully parallel to the food court. But instead she obediently put on her coat and carried her pizza to the car without a complaint. I'm truly amazed by her each day. She's learning inconceivable virtues by being the big sister of a special needs child. So as we were driving home, and little man is crying while princess and I were discussing why we still have 4 more months until we can go to the pool, I was trying to think of something fun for her - a special treat. A HA! So after little man was settled for his afternoon nap, we made strawberry sundaes with chocolate fudge, whip cream and sprinkles and then we settled on the couch for a lovely afternoon of Cinderella together. Ahhh the joys of little girls. She was dripping with delight.

So all in all - it was a fine afternoon. I had a little over an hour of shopping time with my friend, little man got back on schedule and a wonderful afternoon with the princess. What more could a mama ask for in a day?

And I don't think I've shown you all how cute her new haircut is...here's a side view.

Stylin for a four year old!

And thank you all for your inquires and prayers for my Pap-Pap. All is good and he's back at home with Grammy. It will be a slow recovery but he's very happy to be back in his recliner!

Visiting Pap Pap

Late last week my Pap Pap had fallen ill and went into the hospital. The poor guy had 3 clogged arteries, one at 100%, one at 85% and one at 65%. Because of his weak kidneys, his age and black lung (my Pap was a very proud coal miner) they decided to go forward with stints rather then open heart surgery. On Sunday we decided to piggy back on Dad's already planned but convenient business trip and share a hotel with him so we could visit Pap Pap in the hospital. Hubby switched his hotel from a swanky downtown Hilton to a family friendly Residence Inn outside of town. After talking with my friend Kamber, who was 5 days overdue with her 2nd child and I was on call to watch her first child, we made some back up plans and off we went....like a herd of turtles as our Daddy says!

Last time we stayed at a hotel, it was due to being snowbound on I-81N in the lovely town of Scranton, PA. It was February and we were on our way to see hubby's parents, Nicki and Jim, and of course to watch a Syracuse Game at the Dome. We made a big deal out of staying in the hotel, so it would be a fun memory for princess. We hoped it would erase from her memory the previous 12 long hours we spent in the car. Dinner at Friendly's, ice cream on the bed, staying up late - loads of excitement. So since then, princess always mentions how much she LOVES staying in hotels. In fact this past year, she asked Santa if she could stay at a hotel with him. Interesting....not sure where to go with that, but luckily we knew (wink wink) the Santa so he understood. So on Sunday when we mentioned we were going to a hotel, you would have thought we were going to Disneyworld. I heard more WOOO HOOO's out of that little lady then a pack of of hyenas in the wild. Hubby and I laughed, can you imagine the day when we actually do take her to Disneyworld? We think she might just fall on her knees weeping with excitement on Main street when she sees Cinderella's castle!

The kids and I went to visit Pap Pap the next day while Dad proceeded with his work trip. We got to spend time with Pappy, Grammy, Aunt Suzie and Cousin Jennifer. Lots of time in the waiting room but we had fun entertaining the kids.

All said and done, Pap Pap had 12 stints and an angioplasty balloon done over the course of 2 days. Now have I told you my Pap is 87 years old? What a trooper! He's also quite a jokester, so as my Gram enters the recovery area, his first words are "Look Jean - I made it"! We knew he was feeling well at that point! Recovery is doing well and we hope he's able to return home by the weekend.

After our hospital visit, we went back to the hotel to have dinner. Did I mention how much I like Residence Inns? 2 bedrooms a living room and a kitchen - and very affordable! So I made some dinner for the kids, I was tired of eating out at this point without hubby - too much work. I realized in our quick packing frenzy, I had forgotten a booster seat for little man. He mostly needs something to just hold him still, so I devised my own with an extra fitted bedsheet - is this legal?

To keep with tradition - the first night we had popcorn on the bed and the second night the princess was introduced to Ben and Jerry's. The two of us shared some chocolate chip cookie dough on the bed. We have now renamed this ice cream to "Treasure Hunt". Wonderful memories! And I stayed up watching too much TLC until Daddy came home. Good family times!

Pap Pap, you're in our prayers for a quick, painless and healthy recovery!!

Jimmo's Six Month Review

Today was little man's six month review with the Early Intervention Program. A little background on what this is......the Early Intervention Program is a service required by every county which provides therapies for infants and toddlers with disabilities. This Early Intervention Program discontinues when the child turns three and the next step is a program called Child Find. Each year there is an annual review and then a 6 month review in between with all the childs therapists together in one room. We review the past goals and make new ones when applicable. Thru this program, Jimmo has a physical therapist, an occupational therapist and an educational specialist. He gets speech therapy thru a private organization.

Today Jimmo is exactly 2 years and 4 months old. We're very proud of his progress. Obviously he progresses on his time, but each milestone brings such joy to us! Here are a few of the milestones we were able to check off today. As proud parents - we just wanted to share.

• Ability to place objects in a container and dump them


• Understands 5 interactive songs and the actions that accompany them (ex. Itsy Bitsy Spider)


• Can choose needs from pictures


• Uses both hands at midline to play with toys and objects


• Plays with toys correctly and purposely - this was huge for us!


• Pushes cars/trucks around a room with purpose


• Responding to several verbal gestures


• Big improvement in imitation skills - YEA!


• Walking solid with a 1 finger assist with not such a wide base of support


• Crawls up the stairs well and now cognitively understands how to come down

For gross motor skills he's at a 12 month level. For fine motor, cognitive, receptive, social and adaptive level he ranges from 11 months to 16 month level. Because of these accomplishments, he now qualifies for a 9 week Sensory Motor Therapy Playgroup that is held at the county office. This will be a great experience for him as he gets to have additional therapy in a group setting with other little guys and gals at his level. Mom and Georgia are excited to participate in the fun as well! We hear there's lots of shaving cream and pudding involved!

We're having a full 2 day evaluation done the first week in March by the Fragile X experts at Kennedy Krieger Institute in Maryland. They have one of the 12 official Fragile X clinics in the US. Jimmo will be reviewed by a neuropsychologist, speech therapist, autism specialist, neurologist, and a psychiatrist. Last May, Jimi and I visited initially with the head Doctor at this clinic and have been anxious since to have this clinic completed. You can imagine the list of questions we've accumulated since then. It's so nice to be in an office of experts and you don't hear the words - Fragile what?

So that's our little Jimmo 6 month therapy update....many more to come!

Adventures of a Saturday Night

We look back at this past Saturday night as one of our funniest nights....post children, so we thought we would share these laughs with our faithful blog viewers!

We cancelled our babysitter for the evening, which in retrospect was a tremendous blessing for us and our sweet babysitter. We decided instead to do an "in house" date night. We do these about once a month. We'll go to Wegmans and buy something we normally wouldn't buy in our weekly shopping and a bottle of wine. After we put the kids down we cook together and then enjoy our meal and either a movie a game of Yahtzee or scrabble. So for this Saturday night we bought some flank steak and marinated it all day and we planned to make a yummy balsamic steak salad with a bottle of Merlot - YUM.

So about 6PM we fed the children. I boiled up some Trader Joe's pesto gnocchi. Little man inhaled them as usual, but our princess was struggling with them. She kept telling us they were spicy. She tends to sometimes be a little dramatic, by the way we have no idea where this comes from, so we dismissed it. We made her finish the gnocchi and she soon started complaining her stomach hurt. I ran to the gnocchi packaging and almost fell over - I can't believe what I've done. Our daughter reminds us that she is allergic to nuts about 10 times a day. In fact, after we made her finish the gnocchi, I gave her a cookie left over from bible study the night before and she said "Are there nuts in here"? I said "No sweetie, you never have to worry about Mama giving you something with nuts". HA. So apparently Trader Joe's makes their pesto gnocchi with cashews - which is the EXACT nut that she is allergic to. She has had pesto in the past, but pesto made with pine nuts which she is not allergic to. So here we go - this is going to be an interesting night and the guilt was piled on high!

We proceed to take both children up into the bathroom. Little man is in the tub and princess is whaling that her stomach hurts but she doesn't want to "puke" as she says it. About 10 minutes into this, the power goes out. Splendid! So I get little man out of the tub, put jammies on him, while hubby runs around getting candles and flashlights. I lit a few candles upstairs and found another flashlight. About 5 minutes later, the fire alarm goes off. We just figured it was because we lit a few candles upstairs and we also knew our alarms are a bit sensitive. Fire alarms are made for a reason, and unfortunately they were sending us an accurate message that we just decided to ignore. A few minutes later I started to go down the stairs and I clearly smell what the fire alarm was trying to tell us. I start running and yelling hubbies name. A beautiful candle with herbs and flowers molded in the wax around the sides, was in full blown flames in the hallway. The beautiful herbs and flowers had caught on fire. Luckily we tended to this just in time and damage was prevented. WOW - ok what's next?

We put little man in his room to bed and tend to our poor whaling daughter as the stomach pains come in flows. About 45 minutes go by, and after talking to a neighbor pediatric nurse and NOT getting thru to the pediatrician that is on my "not so good list", she says she's tired and wants to go to bed. So perhaps there were just traces of cashews in the pesto and she's not really going to vomit. Last time, when we found out she was allergic to them, it was an immediate response. A few hives formed this time, but nothing like last time. So she climbs into bed about 8:30PM and we go downstairs to make the best of the remainder of our date night in the dark. We started playing Scrabble as we ate our peanut butter sandwiches - not so yum. I sort of had an uneasy feeling about the evening, and was not really into the game. At least this is what I told hubby since I was not having a good Scrabble night - 5-6 vowels at all times. We decided perhaps it was best to call it a night and go to bed early. It was only suppose to be a low of 30, so hopefully we could stay put in the house without heat all night, but you never know, a hotel might be in our future.

We just settled down for a long winters nap when we heard the princess cry. And yes indeed she did vomit. I'm amazed how it was able to touch every comforter, blanket, sheet, pillow, stuffed animal and the chair next to her bed. After an hour of cleaning we get her nestled in bed and she's feeling much better. And the power come back on! We breathe a sigh of relief that we now have heat....almost asleep....and then little man wakes up. Now when little man wakes up, it's a whole different story. One of the characteristics of Fragile X is called Hyperarousal. Some children, him being one of them, have trouble if they wake up in the middle of the night, settling back down. On a scale of 1 to 10, we wake up and at an arousal level of about 1 or 2 and usually settle back down quickly. Jimmo wakes up at level mock 10 and wants to play and yell and play and yell some more. So we go thru our routine when this happens, and a few hours later the entire family is fast asleep for at least a few hours before morning.

Now we look back at this evening and laugh - really - could all that seriously happen in one evening? I think in a few years we'll laugh even more!

And don't look too close at the board.....it was a tough night for Scrabble :0)

Best Friends

The term "Best Friends" is heard often around our house, as our daughter likes to often tell us we'll be her best friend forever and ever. I actually have this on video, and can't wait to show it to her when she's 17 and resigns from the "mama is the best person in the world" fan club. OK maybe at 16.

But this entry is truly about best friends. Hubby and I collectively over the years have friends from different stages of life.....Grade School - High School - College - Various Jobs - Church. It's truly such a blessing to have these friends in our lives. Although my parents didn't feel it was such a blessing when it came time for our wedding guest list, but that's another blog post! But this is about a certain type of friend. The kind of friend that you might not have seen in many months but when you do, you pick up like it was yesterday. Years later the same stories are just as funny and new memories are perseved each time you're together. During this busy season of life, we cherish the small little nuggets of time we have with them.

Well hubbies best friend flew in today from Watertown, NY. He left behind his sweet wife and triplets to come spend the evening with hubby. We only get to see them about once a year, but love them dearly! So hubby and friend just departed for a Syracuse/Georgetown game. Yes, he's from the Syracuse area, season ticket holder at that, but flew to DC to watch this game together. Can you say - HUGE FANS! They know every statistic about their teammates /opponents from hometown to three point field goal percentage. I sit and listen to the two of them talk in awe. But I LOVE that they do this each year. It's so important for both of them to have this time together.

Thanks for visiting....we love and miss you all! Go CUSE!

Trading germs

Apologies for our lack of posts this week. An ugly cold hit the Grande family one member at a time and we're still on the road to recovery

Be back real soon!

P.S. not sure how we all got sick, its not like we ever go to the Park in January!