Art by Elizabeth

Pretty much daily Elizabeth brings home pictures she has drawn while at school. I can attest that at least 99% of her drawings are of dinosaurs of some sort. I do beg and plead with her to draw me a picture of a butterfly, flower or a person and she justs laughs at me. I do have to say her dinosaurs are getting pretty good now.

The Game

We have been busy preparing for the fall and all the changes that will occur. Elizabeth will be starting Senior Kindergarten (the school Superintendent has agreed with our decision to hold her back YIPPEE) and we would like to give my Mom a break from caring for Elizabeth so are trying to find a daycare for her to attend while I am at work. Elizabeth's big meeting with the school that she will be attending in the fall will be next month. This is one of the most important meetings; it will ensure Elizabeth gets the support she needs for entry into kindergarten and for her future schooling. To ensure she gets the most support that is available we must paint a picture of a child who relies on people and equipment to be independent and who is very unsafe (which is pretty true), we must make her appear very disabled. Elizabeth is in fact quite independent when changes are made to her environment to accommodate her. We will ask for the most services and support in hopes to get even picked up by PT and OT in the school (services here have taken a very big reduction).
In trying to find her daycare I am doing quite the opposite; centers that provide integration here are very limited which is very unfortunate. When explaining Elizabeth to the daycare I am calling I am not using all the labels she has been given which we will highlight at her school meeting. I tell the center she is a bit wobbly and may need a bit of support with some activities because if I do mention her labels I know I will get the 'I am sorry we cannot accommodate her' spiel. Once they meet her I hope they will she how determined she is and how she finds a way to keep up. I want them to meet her before they place judgment on her abilities by her labels. By omission and exaggeration I feel like I am being dishonest but I know this is how the game is played.
The Dr. Seuss game in the picture above is one of our favorites, it challenges Elizabeth with many gross motor tasks and before she completes the task she has to say 'I can do that' which of course she can but just with a bit of help.

SSSSteggie

Elizabeth now can say the 's' sound. She has been working very hard at speech therapy for at least the past year and now can say 's' unprompted. I love how she asks for her dinosaur steggie, she pronounces the 's' sound so well, it warms me each time I hear her. We are now working on her 'sh' sound which is coming along and she can now say it with prompting. Above is a picture which she took of one of her 'crew' as she calls them she also has a t-rex, triceratops and a pterodactyl. She totes these dino's everywhere she feeds them, talks to them and dresses them. She also loves to bring them to us each morning when she wakes, a roaring dinosaur in your ear at 6:00 is not my most favorite way to wake up but they are the closest thing we have to dolls here.

Confessions

I really try on our blog to emphasize all the amazing things that Elizabeth is doing because she wows us everyday but some days parenting Elizabeth is hard. It could be that Elizabeth is starting a growth spurt and I am sleep deprived because of her waking but I am finding myself short tempered with her. The things that she cannot control get under my skin and make me snap at her. She is very twitchy lately including in her sleep and her twitches include flailing limbs; her flailing knocks over drinks, sends cutlery flying, breaks things and leaves us in bruises. Her distractedness and impulsivity are pretty fierce right now and she needs constant reminders to pay attention to what she should be doing. I am constantly telling her to stop talking which kills me as we worked so hard to get her to talk but she often is too busy chatting to pay attention to where she is going and puts herself in danger. I hate to admit this but there are times when I want to walk without her because walking with her is still painfully slow. Because of her dystonic movements and her distraction walking with her feels like
I am in a funeral procession as we walk slowly to our destination.
I hate that I get upset with her because these are things that she cannot control. On a good day I try to teach her to be aware of others, slow down with her movements and think about what she is doing and we replay what she she should have done but on days like these I yell at her and put her on a time out which I hate. I constantly question myself am I being too critical, too short tempered and am I asking too much of her? I know I should be grateful of how far she has come along but sometimes I hate what her prematurity has done to her and how it has impacted our family.

Familymoon

We had a great familymoon in Holguin Cuba. It was our first tropical destination with Elizabeth and we all had a great time. Elizabeth loved swimming in the pool and the ocean. She was doing great at holding her breath while swimming so she could see all the tropical fish in the reef. Elizabeth LOVES the sand, she spent the first 10 minutes rubbing her hands in the sand thanking us for taking her to Cuba. Elizabeth also loves all living creatures and took great pleasure in chasing the lizards and toads, collecting starfish, sea urchins, shrimp and crabs and watching the bats fly at night. The food was great and Elizabeth ate like a champ; she devoured calamari, fish, soups, ice cream and slushy drinks. She made us so proud in the restaurants sitting so still, trying new foods and using her manners. We went on a excursion to swim with the dolphins and it was fabulous, Elizabeth loved petting the dolphins, getting kisses and watching the dolphin show. Each night Elizabeth took part in the children's mini-disco, the staff were great with her and she loved dancing and playing the games. We are happy to be home now and I love the fact I am not running her to bathroom every 5 minutes because she has drank half the pool and that we no longer have to use public toilets (that often do not have toilet seats) but we will miss the endless fresh seafood and the lovely warm sun. What better way to spend our honeymoon than with Elizabeth.

Officially Official

This event was well overdue but the wait was worth it. Elizabeth came early in more ways than one and Ivan and I getting married was put on the back burner. Ivan and I are fairly introverted people (except for the blog) and we wanted an event that was intimate and classy. I think we managed to do both we invited a small group of family and friends; had a ceremony at our local church and dinner at fantastic restaurant that we had rented out.
Elizabeth was great on such a busy day she walked down the aisle so proudly, by the time she got down there there was not a dry eye in the church including Elizabeth and her Daddy. She stayed with us for the vows and would say Amen at the appropriate times we were so proud of her. The only mischievous thing she did was trying to undo my dress, my maid of honour who knows her well was quick to intercept.
We had such an amazing day it was so great spend the day with our family and friends. We are so thankful for all the support they have provided us and that they were able to celebrate the day with us.

New Bike

We are super excited Elizabeth's new bike has arrived and it is super cool. Thanks to my amazing cousin who is currently living in the USA she was able to bring the bike here for us. We ordered the bike through my favorite store Target which we sadly do not have here in Canada. I heard some really good reviews about the bike at work and on-line so we thought this would be the best option for Elizabeth. Elizabeth still needs her feet tied to the peddles so a 2 wheeler with training wheels was a cruel and unsafe option. This bike is so cool it will grow with her and can carry up to 220lbs, even Daddy has been having fun riding her pink bike. We do have to make some adaptations as she is still small for it and she needs footplate's to secure her feet but we should have it ready soon.

Not Invited

I was unusually early to pick Elizabeth up from school the other day and while waiting for her a boy in her class was handing invitations to his birthday party. I saw all the kids eagerly waiting for their invitation as the boy handed one to each classmate except for Elizabeth and her fiancée (she is betrothed to a little boy in her class). I would have thought it was fine had it not been that the only 2 children who were not invited were the children who have a disability (Elizabeth's fiancée also has a physical disability) it was pretty obvious why they were not invited. My heart broke for them as their eager faces turned to a look of why not me. They are young right now and will not remember this incident but this will happen so many times in thier lives and it breaks my heart that they are going to feel rejected and left out. It is a shame that parents are so busy to not even notice how each morning Elizabeth greets her classmates and how hard she tries to keep up with the others. I guess as parents we need to teach our children to be resilient at times like this because some people are too involved in their own lives of ignorance to see how hard our kids try to succeed. They are the ones missing out because our kids are amazing little souls who have so much to give and to teach.

The Culprit

We think we have solved the recent no eating / gagging / vomiting spell. I thought just before I pulled out her Prevacid and started her on Miralax I should put her back on Soy milk. Elizabeth has been on cow milk for the past year and from what I have seen has not had a problem with it; she does not have the typical signs of intolerance she does not have exema, loose stool and never has complained of stomach aches. I should really know better by now that Elizabeth being an ex-preemie her tolerance of pain is huge and even if she was in pain she would never have complained about it. That is probably why for the past couple of weeks her eating had taken a nose dive, each time she came to the table her face would change and she would begin to gag and really struggle with eating and those were signs she was uncomfortable which I was thinking was behavior. She has a tendency to get a bit constipated which with a careful diet we were avoiding the use of laxatives but lately she was getting really constipated. Within 2 days of switching her to Soy she is eating, occasionally will ask for food (this is a huge thing) and is eating in her terms faster and I think the major thing which allows her to eat better is she is now regular. I think back to the years of her constant vomiting and wonder how much of it was related to milk and how uncomfortable she must have been. We are so happy to have Elizabeth comfortable now and enjoying eating again.

Happy Easter

We hope everyone had a good Easter. Elizabeth woke us up at 6:30 am, happily eating chocolate she had found from the Easter bunny. Her egg hunt had her following clues to find some treats and it was pretty neat that she could read most of them on her own.
We took Elizabeth to church on Good Friday and she stayed on her own with the kids in the sunday school. I told the Teacher that Elizabeth may need some extra help with walking and he concluded that riding on their donkey was the best way for her to get around so she quite happily rode around on a life sized donkey on wheels. She told me when I picked her up she even had her feet washed, I do see a green hue so I am assuming there was some walking in paint as well, I quickly learned that sending her in white and lilac clothing was not the best choice for Sunday school.
We completed our yearly ritual of taking her picture with the same Easter basket. The photo shoot was a bit difficult as Elizabeth was having a sugar high from all the treats she found at Grams. Sugar and food coloring for Elizabeth really don't mix, it is like kiddy speed, she goes wild.