Nana's Snowmen

I have these little snow men that were my Nana's, and since I have all of her things I found them when I went through the garage. I've had them on my entertainment center but decided to stick them in their Home...yep their home, the lovely North Idaho snow of course! :D



One thing that prompted me to take this picture is that my friend Trish is having a photo contest on her blog. I know this photo isn't too fun or exciting, but having my Nana's snowmen and having a picture of them makes me feel a little better as we get ready to celebrate Christmas. This is the 2nd Christmas without Nana and its getting harder as it gets closer, I'm glad I have these snowmen.
The contest on Tutus & Sneakers is for a $20 GC to My Four Hens Photography. I love taking pictures but sometimes get frustrated getting good and neat edits. I love the look of the My Four Hens actions, they would be awesome to have when we do my brothers Senior pictures this spring/summer.

Brushing Technique

Today at OT we talked about listening therapy again, something that we've planned to start for the last 2 months but one thing or another prevented it. Seamus has tried the headphones and cd player a few times at OT but he doesn't like them and always takes them off complaining they hurt his head, or its too loud, or he doesn't like the music (part of his sensory issues.). We think the listening therapy will help Seamus progress and relax, but his OT brought up a different therapy/technique to try first.

Our OT brought up the Brushing Technique, and asked if I had herd of it, which I hadn't. She explained it to me, basically it should help calm him down and give him the sensory input that he needs. She wants us to try this before we go on to the listening therapy, right now she doesn't think he would do the LT because of how he acts with the music and headphones.

She gave me a run down of what to do. I thought Seamus would freak out when she was first explaining it to me. You use a surgical brush to brush down their extremities, and back, and I thought it would be a poky and hard brush. The brush is actually fairly soft and doesn't hurt (she showed me on me then Seamus how to do it). I have to brush down his arms first, applying pressure to give him the deep sensory input he needs, then his back and last his legs. After I'm done brushing I have to do his joint compression, which is pushing all his joints in his extremities together 10x's each joint (shoulder, elbow, wrist, hips, knees and feet).

I was amazed when she showed Seamus and I. When she was doing it on me to show me how to do it, Seamus ignored us, playing with 'his' Little People. When she told him she was going to do it on him to show me some more, he wasn't too sure about it, he kind of froze up at first, he had one hand raised prepared to push her away. After a couple seconds of her brushing his arm you could see him relax more, he still held pretty stiff but he wasn't ready to push her off. To my amazement it did help calm him down for around an hour. The thing with this therapy/technique is that it doesn't last all day, it has to be done every 2-4hrs, the closer to every 2hrs the better. (but he's in school from 8am-11:45am, 4 days a week so it won't happen at those times)

I'm excited to see how this goes and hope it helps him so we can move on to the listening therapy too.

My little Ham's

So I decided to try to get some Christmas-y pictures of the kids tonight...tried is the key word here. Kieran doesn't much care for smiling at the camera, never really has even our professional pictures she's more smug looking then smiley. I thought I'd give it ago, but only a couple are ok. Luckily I don't do picture cards or I'd be in trouble. These are really just pictures for me to see the kids over the years, I do it every year for the holidays (Except w/ Seamus in 08 cause I was sickly pregnant and we didn't get a tree till days before xmas).

Anyway here are our fun shots. I miss our Canon T1i right now (sadly its pawned till we can get it out in January) cause the pictures would've turned out better, but these work...lol

Winners!

Sorry for the delay in posting the winners! We were pretty sick the last 2 weeks of November and felt like crud, but on the mend now.

Here we go!

The winner of the Charlie Banana OS diaper is ... Kristen!!




Daffodil Dolls Winner is...Laura!!!



And the 2 Del Monte GC winners are ... Julie!!



and... MommyTrenches!!!






All winners have been emailed and have 48hrs to respond or new winners will be chosen. As a reminder please do not enter the giveaway after the date it closes unless I've extended it :)

Wordy Wednesday

The last few days have been bitterly cold. We got hit with an "Arctic Blast" from the north and..ya...FREEZING! Its been in the negative teen's with the windchill's. Sunday night through Tuesday morning we had snow and blizzards, we got around 8-10" out there of snow (and they are expecting another 6-10" for us by Sunday). Right now as I'm posting this at 9:30pm Tuesday night according to the Weather Channel its -5°F (-20C). They are warning people not to go out of their houses unless extremely needed. The schools have already canceled for Wednesday (and its still Tuesday as I write this, and we've known since around 2pm this afternoon) because the buses wont be able to run right, its so cold that diesel engines can turn to goo right now. Thank goodness Seamus was already off school for the week (preschools and Elem. was out for the whole week for Thanksgiving break), I would not want to drag them out at 7:30 in the morning to take him to school.

Wordless Wednesday: 1992, 5yrs old

(love the outfit >.<)

Sickies

We've all had colds for the last week. Seamus has an ear infection(first in years), and the rest of us have the fun, nose clogging snot and icky painful coughs. We're getting better though. Last night we decided to go to IHOP since kids eat free there. Kieran had been fine all day, then when we are sitting waiting for food she starts grunting, so I take her potty and find she's constipated. She refused to eat anything, but would drink. The waiter brought her some apple juice (which I really didn't want, but she had her first juice last night >.<) to help her go poo. When hubby and Seamus were done, and I was mostly done, she starts heaving and throws up all over her plate and hubby (he was holding her). Poor goose. :( We were able to drive the 15minutes home with no issues but as soon as we got home she threw up again all over the floor. We put her to bed with some water and she chugged it down, and threw up again a half hour later. Changed all the bedding and her, gave her a tiny bit of water (figured getting some down, even if its coming up, is better then none at all), and she slept for 2hrs. Between 11pm and 1am she was up throwing up 3 more times. I finally was able to nurse her and she kept that down, just dry heaving though the night. She's very very mopy today, and I'm pretty sure if I gave her any food she'd throw it up again, but she's nursing ok so we'll just keep doing that.

Here's my sicky last night at 1am (daddy had to take a picture on his phone lol)