Happy Birthday Greg! And a Bunch of Other Randomness

It's Greg's 31st Birthday today! Happy Birthday, hon!

Last year, I wrote a long birthday post that perfectly sums up the sheer amazingness of Greg -- he's the best husband, the greatest father and the most exceptional man I know. I had a lot of fun pictures of him as a baby, plus more recent photos with the kids and I. This year though, I'm in my last few weeks of pregnancy and his two (already-birthed) children have been just this side of crazy lately, so I'm tired and lazier. Here's a recent photo of him with Annie though!

Happy Birthday Greg -- I love you even more than I did last year (who knew that was possible!?) -- but since I'm having another of your kids anytime this month, and I spent a solid hour cleaning gobs of silver fabric paint that your four year old smeared all over our couch cushions, this is all the birthday post you get this year! Love you! :-)


Unrelated to Greg's birthday -
Here's a bunch of random photos taken of Annie for her dance class. Greg's Mom and I ordered some 8x10s of a few of our favorites, but until they arrive, I just have a couple low-res screen shots to hold me over . . .

Um, more unrelatedness -- I had my 36 week check up this week. The baby was again determined to be healthy and extremely active, and my blood pressure was an impressively increased 96/60 (which means no more ordered modified bedrest! Woo hoo! I am supposed to start laying down again if I have more dizzy spells though. Hopefully I can keep it above 85/44 for the rest of the pregnancy! Man, was I tired when it was that low all the time!). I feel so much better, and have more energy -- not something I was expecting as I entered my final month of pregnancy! (I am getting more and more sore and achy though, so it's a trade off.) Ellie was so excited to find out I had a doctor's appointment today that she walked around the house saying "Beep, beep," all morning until we finally left. (Which is her way of saying we'll get to hear the baby's heartbeat.) As soon as my midwife walked into the room, Ellie pointed at my stomach and said, "Beep, beep!" and showed a great deal of impatience for the 'talking' portion of the exam. She squealed with delight when the midwife got out the doppler and found the baby . . .
36 weeks though. Wow. That means I should (in theory, quite possibly) have my baby this month (give or take a week or so, let's keep our fingers crossed for June though, shall we?) I should probably pack a diaper bag or something? Or tour the new hospital? Ooooh, should I be filling out pre-registration forms? When do you do that again? We should get a carseat in the van sooner or later . . .
This is all happening very fast :-) And really slow. All at the same time. :-)

One last random thing -- Ellie's speech is coming along remarkably. It really was like one week something 'clicked' and she suddenly 'got' the need for verbal speech, and it's just exploded since. Her Speech Therapist (or 'Tee-sure" (for teacher) as Ellie calls her) is in awe when she comes every two weeks of the progress Ellie makes . . . in fact, she's starting to wonder if there's much more she can do for her at this point. Ellie's speech is less lazy now (rather than just Dada, Nana, Mama, Lala, she will say our names as Daddy, Annie, Mommy and Ellie (or La-lee, which is cute too) -- not always, we're still Mama and Dada a lot, but more and more we're hearing two different sounding syllables throughout Ellie's speech.) She's putting words together now -- which is helpful, 'cause now she can yell stuff like, "No! Mean Mommy! Mommy mean!" Makes me wonder why we wanted her to talk so much? :-) She used more words and less gestures to get what she wants, even asking my to get down one of her favorite books the other day by asking, "Hola pato?" She went from barely using a dozen words a few months back to asking for the book "Hello duck" in a second language. :-) She suddenly loves talking on the phone, and will chatter away with whomever we can find available during the day. She sings constantly. She blows her teacher away by pointing out letters and saying appropriate words like, "A, Annie! D, Dada!" She jabbers way more often (an essential language-learning skill that Ellie completely lacked just a few months ago).
This brings up the question of did we worry over nothing? I've had people recently say to me, "I guess she never needed the Speech Therapy afterall, huh?" I wouldn't go that far. I always hoped for the best, that it would just suddenly 'click' for Ellie (the desire to talk, the ability to do so) and we'd see monumental progress made practically overnight. And it's happening, we're watching it every day and it's amazing. Had we 'left her alone' would've it happened anyway? Yeah, probably. BUT, I really feel that the Speech Therapist has been pivotal in Ellie's progress. Those things that 'clicked', they all came from her teacher. It was Julie who somehow got Ellie to see the need to speak. Julie trained her to just try -- to mimic sounds, to attempt words, to just give it a try -- something Ellie would never do for us.
Yeah, these things probably would've all 'clicked' sooner or later anyway, but I really feel it was Julie's intervention that has Ellie speaking as much as she is now. Plus, each time she's here, she teaches me dozens of new techniques and games and little ways to encourage Ellie's speech that I wouldn't have come up with on my own. Ellie would've spoke either way, but I think it's happening much faster (and before this next baby is born!) because of the Early Intervention program and professionals. I haven't regretted a minute of our time working through this program!