Summer is Over!

Eric would argue that he hasn't had a summer at all, and would be correct.  However, my summer has involved spending my every moment with my buddy Jack.  For the past three summers I have started work with him during the first week of June, and ended in the first week of August.  And in past summers I had days off for vacations, our wedding, etc.  This summer had no days off, and yet has passed faster than any prior year.  Sad times, it means the school year is right around the corner!

I took him to his dentist appointment today, and they let him be the dentist!  Too cute!

I've been teaching him how to use his iPod as a communication device, and he used it to choose a pig for his face painting!

He was really interested in the music instruments at Wonderscope.  

The chimes were fun, fun, fun! 

This is a super cool contraption at Wonderscope, is sucks up handkerchiefs and then they fly out of various openings depending on which switches are pressed.

Etc. Stuff

This is mostly a picture:story post - surprisingly enough, the cat focused part of the post lacks pictures!  

In the beginning of July, I had our carpets professionally cleaned because Mystic has a bad habit of not making it to the litter box.  I must not have thought this all the way through, because she was back at peeing on the carpet a few days later.  She is sneaky about it though, and never does it when we're around.  So our new routine is to keep her locked in the bathroom (with food, water, and a separate litter box) when we're not home or asleep.  I'm thrilled to report that we haven't had a carpet accident since!  Hooray for having a house that doesn't smell like cat pee!

Last week we came home and Eric noticed Addy was limping.  I felt so relieved that we have a section of our savings account earmarked for pet expenses.  So the worry of the cost of taking her to the vet didn't overshadow our worry of what was wrong.  We spent the evening trying to make her sit still, and I held an ice pack on her for ten minutes.  Luckily, the following morning the limp was gone.  Who knows what happened, but we're glad she's feeling better!

My summer has been full of working with my nanny kiddo - and he's been working on bowling this summer.  His form has something to be desired, but he's bowling in the 50's or above!

I've also been working on programming his AAC app on his iPod - he doesn't speak well, and he's picked up really quickly how to use it to say his words!

 My nanny kiddo also has this awesome body sock.  It is a nylon bag that provides sensory stimulation, and I caught this really cool picture of him!

Eric's summer has been spent wondering whether or not to buy some new games.  Addy broke him down, and now the are playing Age of Empires I, II, and III, Bioshock 1 and 2, and Unreal Tournament 3.

Eric and I housesat for Papa while he was in Michigan visiting Molly & family.  I used this as an opportunity to further unpack and organize his house.  This is his dining room, starting to look like a dining room!

This is his office, now empty of boxes and fully set up!  There is even a pillow for Frisco to sleep on while Papa works.

The guest room is also empty of extra boxes!  It has a bed, bedside table, lamp, and rug.  Perfect for someone to roll in for a night or weekend to visit.

I've also upgraded my clothesline!  The old one was nylon and flaking off strands on our clothes.  This is pvc, and affixed with L brackets - I used the two screws to secure the brackets to the porch, and then the pvc wire goes through the other two screw holes.  Now I just need to do some laundry!

This massive heat wave (temps over 100 for the past two weeks) has killed off most of the leaves on Grammy's tree :(

Some of the branches appear to be dying...

However there are still some that are holding on for some hope.  We got some rain today and have more in store for the next week.  Hopefully the leaves pop back up...we'll see.

We really let our budget get away from us this summer.  So we're attempting to go all of August without eating out.  Fast food was definitely a weakness for us over the past two months.  This is our last hoorah before that kicks in (this was on July 30th!).

This is Ashley's new room in her apartment.  She has officially moved out to Hays, KS for her first semester of state college, woo!

Day 356: A Day at the Zoo

I have got family passes to the zoo, so Jack and I went for the first time of the summer today.  The pass allows up to 4 people, so I called to see if Alison and Zach wanted to join us.  Zach was going to spend the day with his dad, but Alison was happy to come along!  We had great timing today - showing up for the zookeeper chats, and seeing all of the animals very active!

Nikita is a 4 year old male who weighs in at over 900lbs!  He spends a lot of time in his pool!

This year the zoo has 2 baby girl sea lions, joining their adult male.

This boa reminds me of Harry Potter!

Llama, llama!

Alison was hogging the birds!

I had to hold Jack's right hand so he wouldn't pull away, and his left hand because he tried to grab the bird (pretty successfully, haha!)

This rhino had a well worn figure 8 path.

Jack and an alligator. 


We went on a walk tonight, and I brought Mystic in the baby sling, haha!  She actually liked it.

Day 354: A Playdate!

I had Chase and Zayne, my cousins, to tag along after this morning and afternoon, as well as Jack.  We had a good time playing video games and eating lunch at McDonald's.  I don't get to see these guys a lot, so it was a fun afternoon!  When Jack came to Zayne's house in the afternoon, they played Wii games together and then we all made Shrinky-Dinks, yea!  We also wrote a stack of letters to Connor, Emma, Matt, and Ashley at Camp wood - Kiss! The Fish!  Kiss, Kiss the fish, uh!

They wouldn't let me get a picture of them both drinking out of their straws, it was pretty funny though!

Before and after sized Shrinky-Dinks.

On my way home, I stopped at Mom & Alan's house and caught this picture of Chaos and Cora.

Day 352: Summer Nanny Job

This is my third summer working as a nanny for a great little boy named Jack.  He is seven now, and has just finished first grade.  I originally found this family by posting an ad on craigslist, saying that I could work as a summer care provider for kids of all ages, that I had just received my degree in Early Childhood Special Education, and that I had experience working with children with special needs.  Jack's family and I were a great match - he has autism, and they were interested in someone who could provide therapies and educational opportunities at home.

Throughout the week Jack and I go to speech therapy, behavior therapy, and social groups, but we also have swim lessons, trips to the library and zoo, and are working on learning to ride a bike.  Jack talks, gestures, and signs, and I often act as a gateway between him and the world - because most people wouldn't understand his meaning (and he wouldn't initiate conversation without a prompt).

Over the years I have grown to love this special guy and his family!  We have had a great start to this summer, and still have lots to look forward to!

Today we were playing with a balloon kit, and I made him a star!

After work, Eric and I helped Mom and Alan with some cleaning and moving in their house, and we all went out to Dairy  Queen afterward!

Day 349: Trains & Fire

The highlight of this work day was taking my nanny kids and Andrew to see Thomas the Train with Mom and Papa.  Unfortunately Eric was at work for this, and had to miss chasing kids in 95 degree weather, haha!  Bryson didn't have much fun, until we got to a table where he could color.  Jack and Andrew seemed to love it all.  And the grown ups, well, we enjoyed seeing the kids have fun.

Then after Eric got off work, we picked the motorcycle up from Mom & Alan's house and rushed home to pack for camping.  I added Eric to the insurance today, and he raised it from $148 to $300/year (almost $100 of that because of his speeding ticket in August).  We packed my car with the camping gear, and then we drove out to Clinton Lake separately so he could ride the bike.

It was an interesting night - cooking and conversations around the fire, partially clothed swim in the lake (others were in various stages of dress, Eric and I remained clothed!), and the annual burning of confidential school documents!  This was a really fun event with Steven and Leslie last year, and this year our crowd was kind of a buzz kill about it.  The burn didn't exactly go smoothly, and instead of having fun with it, they just called us various names and moved to the other fire pit.  Lame x a really big number.  We headed to bed, and spent some time looking at the starts and using a sky map app to help us find constellations - very cool.

Andrew with my stuffed hippo - Mippo.

Andrew, Me, Bryson, Sit Toppemhat, and Andrew.

Bryson, Me, and Andrew on the train!

Jack, Mom, and Andrew on the train!

Bryson, Me, and Papa on the Thomas train!

Finally, something Bryson enjoyed!

Andrew's first (?) time in a bounce house, he loved it!

Mom and Andrew going down the slide.

A year of work up in flames!

Oops...it fell over...

Burn, baby, burn!

The papers were so scrunched together, it took forever to burn through.

Very cool to watch it burn!

Day 348: Well This Bites...

Today I had to quickly find someone to watch Andrew because he had bitten Jack once and Bryson twice!  Watching three boys at once is a little trickier than I'd hoped, and Andrew got his teeth on one kid while I was tending to the other.  I had a few panic attacks about it throughout the day, you know - how did I let this happen, what will their mom think, ARGH I suck, etc...  But everything ended up working out fine.

Alison watched Andrew for the rest of the afternoon (and he only bit Zach twice, oops!).  The rest of my nannying afternoon went well - a nap for Bryson and a movie for Jack.  After we all got home, we went on another walk to the park, and went about our evening routine.  Eric and I had TV dinners, and Andrew had hot dogs and cheese, mmm.  Then, this was the first time of his 2x/day breathing treatments that he was grumpy.  It was a long day, so I imagine he was tired.  Eric and I did bedtime stories together, and had a really good time watching him giggle.  It's too bad tonight is his last night with us, he has been such a good boy!

I took the boys on a walk after Andrew nibbled on all of the kids - a good way to keep everyone separate while figuring out who could watch Andrew.

A demonstration of how to squish two babies and a 7 year old into a hatchback!  (And my genius "Andrew, you may not grab Jack and bite him while I'm driving" wrap.)

Bryson's leg...

 Bryson's wrist...

Jack's stomach.

 Andrew on the big slide!

Mmm, toddler dinner!

 What a sad little boy!  Even while crying, he still sat criss cross and didn't pull it off his face.

Bedtime stories!

Our final round of baby laundry for this visit, it was too cute out on the lines!