Grandma's Visit!

My mom got to come visit for a few days to spend some quality time with us and her favorite (only) grandson. Brennan was a little shy at first, but he quickly overcame that and Grandma became his favorite buddy! We'd go out places, and he'd reach for her hand to hold. They read lots of books together, played with toys, and enjoyed each other's company. It was definitely a nice treat to have my mom here to visit--made even better by the fact that I got to celebrate my birthday with her for the first time in eight years! Yes, today is finally my golden birthday--on the last possible day that anyone could ever have their golden birthday!

We spent one morning at Maymont Park. This tree had perfect limbs for a photo op!

Daddy helped Brennan navigate the stones

Feeding the goats was a fun activity!

We visited Short Pump Town Center and got to explore a bit before dinner. Brennan was desperate to get a chance to play in the water instead of sitting on Grandma's lap.

This child is fascinated with water. We went to play in the pop-jet fountains at another mall a couple days ago, which he absolutely loved. Then we took my mom to visit Pony Pasture, an area along the James River with huge rocks that you can walk on to get out in the river a ways. Brennan wanted his shoes and socks off so he could stick his feet in, and then had a fit when we needed to leave the water!

He needed to pat every light pole we passed (and there were a lot of them!).

What a fun visit with Grandma!

The other benefit to having my mom here to visit was she got to help us pack. Yes, pack. We got the good news that the applications to sublease our current place have been approved. The two guys who will be renting it are signing the lease on Tuesday, and we will be moving in just under two weeks! While the whole idea of packing and ultimately moving (again) is not all that appealing, we are super excited to finally get to move to a single-family home and have a huge yard for Brennan to play in. He definitely needs more outdoor time than we can adequately give him in our current place! Stay tuned for pictures of the new Downer home!

A Pirate's Life for Me

A park near our house sponsored a "Pirate's Paradise" event today, complete with dunk tank, bounce house, airbrush tattoos, arts and crafts, games, singing pirates, and a pirate who walked around and greeted the kids. Brennan was a little overwhelmed, but he participated in a bean bag toss, which earned him one gold pirate coin. Then they uncovered a sandbox full of fun treasures, which he really enjoyed getting to dig around in. The treasure hunt didn't last as long as he would have liked, but he sure had fun getting sandy!

Goodbye Shared Walls?

After many years of living in places with shared walls (15 years for John, 8 years for me), we've decided it's time to broaden our horizons and explore the possibility of renting a single family home. And that possibility may become a reality in the very near future.

John is still part of an email list for a men's Bible study that he attended for a few weeks last summer. One email came through very recently asking if anyone needed a house to rent. John replied that we might be interested, and we weren't expecting much. From our limited experience looking at rental homes, we've discovered that most of them are pretty run down and way overpriced. We began communicating with the guy to get more information, went to see the place this past Sunday, and absolutely fell in love with the place.

We are going to begin the process of trying to sublease our current place today in the hopes of being able to move at the beginning of October. All prayers would be greatly appreciated in this process!

We feel really good about proceeding with pursuing this option. Even the financial aspect has worked out in such a way that we definitely feel blessed with this.

Things we are really looking forward to about moving to a new house:
1. Color on the walls! The walls are painted nice colors throughout, which is greatly appealing.
2. Newer appliances, so we don't need to wonder if today is the day that our appliances konk out due their ancient age.
3. Huge yard and back deck! We are really excited about having a big yard for Brennan to play in. This will make going to the park a luxury instead of a necessity for outdoor time.
4. Good amounts of space between us and our neighbors. Now, our current neighbors are very nice and we haven't the kinds of problems that we've previously had with loud, obnoxious neighbors, but there's just something about having nothing but the great outdoors on the other side of the wall.

Things we are not looking foward to about moving:
1. Packing.
2. Moving.

Fountain Fun

With a heat wave gripping Richmond right now, I ventured out with Brennan for some fun playing in the fountains at the Stony Point shopping center. He didn't seem to enjoy them as much as he did the first time he played in them, but he still had a good time before the desire to wander overtook him.



It was a bright spot in an otherwise difficult day in the world of parenting (again). Brennan was having a day where he needed constant attention, having even greater difficulty than normal when John was fixing his lunch and I was getting changed out of my work clothes. My biggest struggle with him today was that I just could not get him to stop throwing things--toys, coasters, books. Yuck. Nothing seemed to work. He just didn't seem to get that throwing things brings consequences he won't really like (i.e. taking away the thrown object, mini-spankings, time outs). Nothing. And the throwing continued. This whole new phase of toddlerhood has caught us a little off guard and I don't really feel prepared for it!

Speech Therapy, Here We Come!

At Brennan's 18-month check-up, his pediatrician expressed some concern in regard to Brennan's speech, so we were referred to Early Intervention. Thanks to the government, the intake and speech evaluation are free, so we were totally on board. John and Brennan did the assessment this morning with a speech therapist and physical therapist (they always evaluate in pairs).

Overall, the assessment went well. His motor skills are right where they need to be, with a little work to be done in the fine motor skills area. The big area of concern is, of course, his speech. At nearly 19 1/2 months, he really only says "Dada," "uh-oh," and "down." He has said other things, but only once or twice and then has never really repeated them. And the therapists agreed that this is definitely an area of concern. His expressive communication is really only at about the 12-14 month range, which is enough to qualify him for speech therapy.

At the initial intake, we received the good news that we qualify for a government program that will pay for his speech therapy. We were incredibly thankful to hear that news and are now relieved that Brennan will get the services he needs without us having to stress about how we would be able to afford it.

Speech therapy will start in the next few weeks with a therapist coming to our house twice a month to work with Brennan. We also came away from the assessment results today with some more things that we can do to help Brennan on his road to talking.

I did have a moment earlier today where I wondered if we did or didn't do something that would result in Brennan needing speech therapy (i.e. do we not talk to him enough? read to him enough? is not around other kids enough?). When I mentioned this to John, he reassured me with what he was told by the therapists after he expressed a similar concern during the assessment. He was told that there is no correlation between his lack of speaking and his environment. The therapists assured John that they see kids who are in full-time daycare come in with speech delays on a regular basis, so we didn't need to worry that we had done something to cause a speech delay.

We are grateful to have the assessment done and glad that Brennan will start receiving the services that he needs to help him start talking. And we are so grateful that God provided a way to make it financially possible for us to have this happen. We'll keep you all posted on the road to vocalization!

Parenting Challenges

Even though Brennan still isn't really talking at this point (19 months and counting), he really does understand what we say quite well. We try to use every opportunity he presents us with to reinforce the idea that we expect him to listen and obey. Some days he does better with this than others. Some days, he's like the perfect child and other days, it's like he's completely forgotten every instruction we've ever given him. This week has been a prime example of this roller coaster. On Monday, he did fantastic, but he tanked yesterday. Weeks like these are definite challenges. But it made me remember and draw comfort from a blog post my friend Anne did quite a while ago, which has stuck with me all this time. She had been experiencing similar challenges with her oldest son, and a friend's advice helped her to keep things in perspective and view the growing up phase as a roller coaster--there will be ups and downs, and it's all a part of learning and growing.

It's a good reminder to me that I need to just simply expect ups and downs with Brennan, instead of expecting a constant up pattern of growth and development. And I need to remind myself of what an overall great kid Brennan is instead of focusing on what I wish he would do or learn or how I would like him to behave.

This whole parenting thing is quite the adventure! (And it's only just begun...)

Baking with Mama

I decided to bake an Applesauce Spice Cake (from scratch!) today, with a little help from my boy. He helped stir the flour and hold the mixer. He was pretty pleased with himself and was very interested in helping out. (And, yes, he did want to wear the monkey backpack around the house.)