Waving!

I tweeted a week ago that Parker may have waved goodbye to our waiter.  Throughout this week I have seen this happen a few more times appropriately.  We had dinner with some friends tonight and he waved a few times as we were saying goodbye! I am so proud of all the new skills he is learning. I still have not gotten a wave when I drop him off at daycare, but all in good time. 

I wish I had more to update, but it was a mellow week. We were recovering from the busy weekend and it has been WAY too cold to do much else.  We did have a minor (almost) panic moment last night. Our power went out at 1 am. I learned that Jimmy always wakes up when this happens. He waited a few minutes to wake me up.  Luckily, it was only out for 5-6 minutes. Our lights out saga this summer was terrible enough without it being below zero.  

I did have a chance to do some holiday decorating. I have vowed to wait until after Parker's birthday to break out the holiday fun. I am one of those people who put the tree up a week (or more) before Thanksgiving so it has been an adjustment. Not perfect yet, but we are getting there.

Christmas parties start next weekend and go into January. Should be a fun filled season celebrating with friends and family!

Growing Smaller Update

I was kind of nervous for my weigh-in today.  I usually weigh myself each day, but I didn't do that for the last week or so.  I was doing well, but you have seen all the food temptations I have had over the last few days.  Fortunately, I have good news.  I made my goal to lose 8 lbs.  I was hoping for more, but slowed down aver the last few weeks.  208 is my current weight.  I was also able to dig out some more old clothes that I haven't been able to wear in YEARS!

I also had a check-up this week with my doctor and it was mixed news.  My A1C (measure of blood sugar) has improved and is being maintained well on my current dose of Metformin, but I still need to work on getting to a point where it can be steady without medication.  My cholesterol was a bit high for the diabetes ranking so I will need to work on improving that as well.  I will probably be looking into some recipes to help with this.  

My goal for the next 2 months is 9 lbs.  This will put me in the magical place of ONEderland!  If it happens sooner you will certainly hear about it.  I have 3 weeks to work hard before the deliciousness of Christmas gatherings!  

Parker's Second Birthday

Whew, what a day!  Parker birthday was so much fun, but this mama is tired from all the prep work.  Jimmy and I "woke" Parker up together this morning.  We gave him a very enthusiastic "good morning!"

After a quick family photo and snuggle...

...we had breakfast as I was baking his cake and getting dinner ready.  I also had a bunch of decorations to get ready.  I chose a robot theme many, many months ago!  If you remember his first birthday, I have a tendency to go overboard.  I had a great idea for invitations and they turned out perfect!  I never would have been able to make them without my Silhouette.

I made his birthday banner a few weeks ago, so we just had to hang it.  I realized now that I never took a picture... It is basically the same as last year, except the letter were wrapped in aluminum foil and I hot glued nuts, bolts and washers to them.

I made a gear chandelier out of our kitchen light.  Kind of whimsical, I may leave it up for a while.

 Next was fuel cell labels for the beverages.

 And a small sign for the snacks.

 Parker's favorite meal is breakfast so it seemed to be a great idea to have breakfast for dinner!  I also decided that waffles find of look like circuit boards, which robots have!  I used this waffle recipe and everyone loved them.  I was expecting a bunch of leftovers, but there are hardly any.  We had all the toppings you could ever want: strawberries and cream, powdered sugar, syrup, peanut butter, nutella, chocolate chips and sprinkles. We also has cheesy hash brown cups inspired from this recipe and sausage.

 Clean plate club!

 Next was presents.  Parker got so many neat things.  His cousin Paul loved the Busy Car Book.  It has a wind up car that drives on the pages.

 Here he is enjoying 3 of his gifts: Nebraska hooded sweatshirt, Sesame Street shoes and VTech laptop.  He really loves the power button on the laptop.

Finally time for cake!  I made a gear cake with Rodney Copperbottom figures.  He is from Robots, an awesome movie if you haven't seen it!

 Make a wish!

Happy Birthday Parker!  I am so proud to be your mom.  I can't wait to see what the next year brings!

Parker is 2!

This sleeping little munchkin is TWO right now. Can't wait to have fun with him today!

Thanksgiving 2013

First of all, I'd like to share some of the people I am thankful for this year.  2013 is a year we will never forget and will always look back on.

I am most thankful for my wonderful husband, Jimmy, and our son, Parker.  Jimmy puts up with all my crap and rarely complains.  I REALLY married up.  I am a demanding person and often have a short fuse.  I am working on becoming calmer, but it's tough work.  Parker is such a blessing to us.  I always knew I wanted to be a mom and he made that a reality.  We have put him through so much over the last 3 1/2 months and he has been such a trooper.  I can see his yearning to learn.  I am so proud to call him my baby.

I am also thankful for our amazing extended families.  We have had so much love and support from everyone.  They have listened to our woes and comforted us through everything.

We also have an amazing circle of friends that have surrounded us in prayer and love.  They have often been an outlet when I needed to vent or offered encouragement and hope.

I am so thankful for the amazing team of doctors and therapists we have met over the last several months. They are opening our eyes to things we never could have seen.  They are helping Parker communicate and cope and learn.  Many of them feel like a part of our family.

There are so many things to be thankful for this year, but I will leave it at that.  We had a fun day with both sides of our family yesterday.  And we ate WAY too much food.  We are on pie duty each year, but didn't have to do any of the real cooking.  We started with lunch at Jimmy's parents place.  I love getting together with his whole family and watching Parker play with his cousins.

So many fun toys to play with!  The helicopter is his favorite!

Turkey, ham and all the fixings!

It's always hard to get a good picture of more than one kid, but they are all cute.

Parker with 3 of his cousins

Parker was really intrigued by Izzy (on the right) this time.  I think it might have been her glasses, but I am not sure.  He just kept staring at her!

After stuffing our faces with stuffing....there was dessert, FOUR desserts.  Pecan, banana cream and chocolate pies plus pumpkin bread pudding.

I think we were all ready for a nap after that, especially Parker!  We headed over to my parents to put Parker down for his nap.  We had a delicious meal that I forgot to photograph, all the standard fare!  We have a pool tournament every year that I always look forward to, unfortunately the Herrmann's are not very good.  This was the 6th year and Jimmy had the first break.

 It was an all ladies final, my brother's girlfriend Lindsay versus my mom.

 Lindsay came from behind and won it all!

Parker also got some good snuggle time in with Uncle Sean and Grandpa.

Parker is not a snuggler so it melted my heart to see his sit with my dad for a while.

I hope you all had a great holiday and had the opportunity to spend it with those you are thankful for.

Piano Master

Parker is getting very good at playing the keyboard app on our iPad.  He is using individual fingers instead of whole hand movements.  This is really exciting because pointing is an important skill that we are working on.  Here is a quick video from tonight.

We have a big week coming up!  I am so excited for a holiday/birthday weekend!  We are also getting 6 whole days off of therapy!  I love seeing Parker learn and progress, but it will be nice not going to the clinic so much.  Stay tuned!

Birthday Party at Edinborough Park

We found time for fun this weekend amidst some of the craziness.  Parker was invited to his friend Simon's birthday party.  We showed up a bit late because of Parker's EEG, but made it in time for cake and presents.  The party was at Edinborough Park, an indoor playground.  I have heard about it so many times so I was very excited to go.  Simon and Parker are only a few days apart in age, it is always fun to see those two together.  We also got to see several of our other friends from our ECFE class last year.

Happy Birthday Simon!

Simon's awesome parents, Derek and Shannon, are geeky like Jimmy and myself (totally a compliment and they know it!)  I knew I wanted to make some fun gifts for Simon that highlighted the geek factor. 

I saw both of these on Pinterest and had to recreate them with my Silhouette and heat transfer vinyl.

That's the formula for force if you didn't figure it out.

Simon is also expecting a little brother or sister.  I got them in on the fun too.

It was such a fun party.  We stayed a little while after to play since we had missed that earlier in the afternoon.  After a bit of coaxing Parker finally went down the slide all by himself!  Such a cutie!

Hopefully we will have a chance to come to this park again soon!  Thanks again for inviting us Simon!