Love is.......

.....giving someone you care about a foot massage

How cute are these two rubbing each other's feet with lotion after their bath last night?????

Seeing clearly

Owen got his new glasses today!! Hooray, now he can hear and see!!! The minute the optician put them on he started looking all around. I was quite obvious that he was seeing much better!

Spring.....a time to blossom

We had a beautiful weekend here in the Northeast and got to spend a great deal of time outdoors. I LOVE this time of year. The time when the world seems to go from black and white to color again. I am so enjoying how the landscape is coming back to life. While Owen was napping, Ella and I walked around our property looking at all the buds on the trees and all the perennials peeking there head back out of the ground.

The plum trees.......

The Cherry tree......

The Hydrangeas.......

The Redbuds......

Yes, I'm quite sure my neighbors were thinking I was nuts as I walked around taking pictures of our trees and bushes! This just makes me SOOO excited!!!

The kids were equally excited to get some much needed outdoor play. For Owen, it meant his first baseball lesson!! Ella, has by now, become a little pro--she's worked real hard last year and can actually hit pretty well now!

All ready with her pink bat and batting helmet

Look at that swing!

Next Ella decided to practice her pitching skills and poor Brian had to wear the pink helmet for his at bat!! He's such a good Barbie playing, pink hat wearing, tea party attending kind of dad!!

LOVE that face!!! I had uploaded a closeup of Owen as well and it somehow disappeared as I was adding text----UGH!!!

Now, it's Owen's turn. Dad is showing him how to hit. He had just woken up from his nap and wasn't quite awake yet when we threw him into the game!

Ella and Owen watch as J takes a swing (notice them holding hands!!!). Luckily for J, Ella didn't make him wear the pink batting helmet!

Enough baseball, on to the other fun backyard stuff........like driving the car......

or hanging upside down on the swing set.....

climbing UP the slide.....

or just picking Dandelions with your brother or sister :)

Flowers and trees aren't the only things starting to bloom.... so is Owen. I have noticed so many changes in the short week and a half that Owen has joined the hearing world. Right after he was fitted with his hearing aids, I began to notice him making new sounds. In addition to the new sounds, his vocalizations have seemed to change. I can't explain it, he just sounds different. The few words that he was able to repeat now sound just a little bit clearer, and he can now say "dada" as of a couple days ago. He is also understanding a lot more when we talk to him, and is starting to appropriately respond to a couple of verbal commands without cues such as gestures. It can still be quite frustrating, for everyone involved, when we cannot explain things to him and he doesn't understand what is going on. Such as when we need to break from playing outside and go in to eat. It would make things a lot easier on us, especially him, if we could explain that we need to go in for a little while and can come back out later. In a situation like that we get a lot of crying and understandably so. All in time :)

School is still going very well. It is a long day for him, but he really does seem to be enjoying it. He has yet to give me a hard time getting on the bus in the morning....thank God....and gets off the bus in the afternoon smiling. His speech therapist is back from her conference, so speech is in full swing starting this week. I am so excited about that! His speech therapist says he's so much fun to work with and is doing well. Wish I could fast forward six months to take a little peak at how he'll be doing then!

***Fellow bloggers....can someone please tell me why I sometimes can't get my post to publish with the spaces between the paragraphs that I DID put there????? I keep going back and adding then again, and the AGAIN it's publishes without the spaces??????

First Day of School!!!

Dear Owen,

Today was your first day of school. It was a very emotional day for me, full of feelings of all kinds. I cried the entire drive there. I was worried that you would be frightened, I was worried you would think you weren't coming back home, I was worried that the day would be too long for you. But most of all I was overcome by the significance of this day. This day, it was the day I worked so long and hard for. It was the day that represented the culmination of everything I wanted to give you. We gave you a family, we gave you love, and we gave you the comfort of all your basic needs being met. Today was the beginning of new hope. It was the beginning of you receiving all the help you need so that you can reach you fullest potential. It was a silent promise fulfilled....a promise to your birth mother....a promise that I would give you everything I could, a promise that I would not only love you, but get you the help you need to make the most of your life. I would give you the life she couldn't give you, and make her sacrifice worth the pain of letting you go. Now, you have your wings, and I am going to love watching you fly.

Love, Mama

Today our little guy started school. He did GREAT!! I decided it would be best if I drove him there and let him take the bus home. We arrived at the school a little early and were greeted by his teacher. She brought us back to his classroom and Owen immediately began to play with some toys. There are only 4 kids in his class! There is also an aide in the room with the teacher. Looks like he'll be getting a lot of attention!! I was very comforted by the fact that his teacher is also an adoptive mom. I knew he was in good hands and with someone who would be very sensitive to the life Owen lived before we brought him home. What a blessing. In addition to getting a wonderful teacher, he also ended up with Speech Pathologist I was hoping he would have. I heard wonderful things about her and I was really hoping that he'd end up in her caring and knowledgeable hands.

The day seems to have gone pretty smoothly. I received a phone call at lunch time from his teacher saying that he was doing well. Later, when he arrived home, there was a note from her saying that the rest of the day went well and he had a great first day. The only issue he had was that he would not let them take out his hearing aids at nap time! I laughed, thinking what must have been going through his mind. He loves his hearing aids, so I can see him not handing them over to someone he barely knows!

I worried about his bus ride home and couldn't wait for him to get here so that he could see that home was the buses destination! I can't even think about how frightened he probably was not knowing where he was going. I felt terrible that there was no way to communicate to him that he would be going to school, and then later, coming back home. He got off the bus looking a little tired from his long stressful day--nothing a little Easter candy couldn't fix!! He perked up in no time! In his backpack was his notebook, filled with pictures of all the things he did throughout the day. His big smile in the pictures was definitely a comfort :) I am so grateful that we have access to such a wonderful school for him. There are so many hearing impaired children who don't live close enough to a school for the deaf and don't get such an opportunity. I know this is a wonderful place for him :)

All ready to go!

Owen's classroom

He looks very comfortable!

Here comes the bus!

He's home :)

Ella, who decided the house was so quiet she'd just stay in he P.J.'s and relax all day, was very happy to see Little Brother when he finally got home!

Happy Easter!

Saturday night Owen got to color Easter eggs for the first time. I had bought a "rainbow" egg coloring kit that I thought was pretty cool, and a neat (meaning clean) alternative to the traditional dropping of the eggs into the dye and wait method. The kit came with little bags, in which you placed the eggs, and several colors of dye. With the egg in the bag, you squeezed in several drops of up to three different colors and rub them on the egg---making a rainbow egg. Very "hands on", very pretty,..and did I mention neat? J was not thrilled with this new technique and called it boring. I argued that staring at an egg in a bowl waiting for it to turn just one color...that's boring! Well, the little ones had fun, except Owen didn't like the smell of the dye and was making his OH SO CUTE STINKY FACE!! Owen, who I thought would need a little practice, was a pro starting with his first egg. Ella had fun too. The best part--they were very pretty....and didn't make a mess :)

Owen was very pleased with his treats from the Easter bunny! His favorite thing was a toy camera. He knew just what to do with it and went around the house taking "pictures", leaving his candy behind. Then, while Ella went around the house looking for the eggs the Easter bunny hid, Owen followed taking a "picture" of her with her newly found egg! By the time we were almost done he caught on! We then had a delicious breakfast of Bacon, Onion, and Cheese Fritatta. Owen, of course, ate every scrap of food on his plate. Then came Owen's favorite part of the day...getting dressed. He LOVED his new outfit. It is just too precious how happy he gets every time he wears something new. He went around the house and showed everyone his new cloths and new shoes. He then waited while I dressed Ella. When I was all done getting her ready he decided he'd complete her outfit and preceded to pretend to put hearing aids in her ears!!! How cute is that??? It is the last step in the getting dressed routine, one he was sure not to let her miss!

As we do every Easter we headed to Meme and Poppy's house for dinner. Owen was quite delighted that Poppy was also wearing a button down shirt and a sweater vest! His only problem was that Poppy's top button was open, but he made sure to have him button it so he'd be just like him.

And now for the best part of the day.......GRAM MADE PICKLES!!!!!!!!! For those of you who don't remember, one of Gram's Christmas presents was jars so that she could make pickles. When we were little, Gram always made homemade pickles and we've been asking her for years to make them again. Needless to say, Owen loved them!! My sister and I agreed, they were just as we remembered them :) Thank you Gram!

The OH SO CUTE STINKY FACE!!

Egg dying fun!

Fun...pretty...and non mess making

Dad and J joined in

So pretty :)

Checking out the Easter treats

The favorite camera

Finding eggs

Owen, being the photographer

Finally joining in on the egg hunting fun!

Breakfast

The princess and the prince :)

All six of us in the car together for the first time and really feeling the need to give in and get the mini van!!

Dad and J with Aunt Ali

Gram :)

Beautiful B

Barking Brody!!

Owen leading Meme around the house

B and the little cutie dog

Poppy and Owen

Poppy, Owen, and Ella

Owen checkin' out how Meme set the table

New family photo :)

Ella and Owen pose with their Great Grandmother

Ella LOVES her big brother!! The feeling is mutual!

Dinner time!!

Eating one of Gram's pickles

He even tried Artichoke!

Dessert....yum! Meme makes good cakes!

Owen making Poppy button his shirt!

Hello to the World of Sound!!!!

Today was the big day....the day Owen' was fitted with his new hearing aids. I don't think I could have been more excited!! We arrived at the Audiologist's office and Owen immediately began pointing to his ears, as if he knew exactly why we were there. I actually think that somehow he really did know why we were there! Once again, he was the perfect little patient. He cooperated well through the entire appointment and basically let us do whatever we needed to do. He sat well through the fitting of his earmolds to his hearing aids, the programming of his hearing aids, and the verification testing that was done to ensure his settings were appropriate. At one point during the appointment Owen was sitting on my lap and I was leaning over his right shoulder talking to the Audiologist. All of a sudden it was like a light bulb went off and he realized that he was hearing me from his right ear. He turned, looked at me with surprise written all over his face, and gave me the biggest smile. Welcome to the world of sound little guy!!!

Sportin' his new HA's
Happy to hear!

Those lips!!!!

20 Years! WOW!!!

Twenty years ago I took a seat in front of a girl in homeroom on my first day of High School. Who would have know, twenty years later, that girl would still be one of my dearest friends. On April 4th, Dana and I traveled back to our High School for our 20th reunion! Wow, 20 years!!! I really can't wrap my mind around how that can possibly be. Sitting in the same cafeteria, looking at the same faces, was sort of a surreal experience. Amazing how quickly time passes. It was so nice to see everyone again. I think we all look GREAT!!!

Old friends

Back to school

Me and Traci

Me, Dana, and Traci

Dana, Christine, and me

A Little Bit of This......A Little Bit of That

Well, life around here, it's been a little CRAZY!!! I think, I THINK, things will calm down soon. Then again, I feel like I've spent my life saying "things will calm down when.......", only to find that they never really do!

Things continue to progress in a positive way. Owen should be sporting his new hearing aids this week. He will also be sporting some new glasses! He was seen by an Opthomologist this past week and it seems that I was right about his vision not being so good! He's pretty nearsighted. I'm waiting to him to have his hearing aids so that we can see which frames work well with them. As indecisive as I usually am, I think I already know which frames we'll go with as long as they fit nicely with his HA's. Of course I will be taking Brian with me for his opinion, just in case I'm not making the right decision. It never hurts to have a second opinion on things such as these. In the case of the poor sales people who must suffer through my indecisiveness, it DOES hurt them for me not to have someone with me for a second opinion! I am usually kind enough to warn them ahead of time just how long it will probably take me to finally make up my mind. My decisions are ALWAYS very well thought out, and well, that just takes a long time!

Owen is all set up to start school on April 13th!! I'm excited, nervous, and sad all at the same time. What a new world it will be for him. He'll be able to hear, see, and be getting the help he needs. I am so excited for him!! I just know he's going to do great! I am sure he is going to love school. He loves structure, routine, and having "something to do". I do worry about his fears the first couple of days, but I know that he will adjust quickly.

We've made huge strides on the animal front. We went to Sophia's birthday party at an animal farm and he liked all the animals! I was shocked! I had actually considered not taking him to the party, because judging by the "panda incident", I didn't think that goats and cows would go over too well! Ella loves it there, and I didn't want to ruin it for her. But, the way things worked out I had no choice but to bring him and hope for the best. He was very excited to see all the animals, bottle fed the goats, hand feed a few animals, and even went on a pony ride! That was much better than the screaming I thought would be going on! Needless to say, Ella had a wonderful time too!

Here are some pictures of a little bit of this...and a little bit of that...

Kisses for Big Sister...Owen LOVES Brianna!
Ben, joining Ella and Owen for some cantaloupe. Ben LOVES cantaloupe and at this point had already had two bowls!
I guess he was full because when we got back home later this is how we found him. We just love this cutie cat. He is so full of personality!

This is Zeus. He is almost 16 years old now. We adopted him, along with his brother Apollo who we lost when he was only 7 to an aggressive cancer. Zeus spent most of his life being a "scaredy cat". In his kitten days he spent a lot of time hiding under our bed and until recently wouldn't venture down from the second floor. Well, I guess he's either loosing his mind, or he's old and just doesn't care anymore, because here he is laying on the rug by the front door. He's been coming down more and more. Even Ella is amazed when she seems him downstairs! He is also Ella's favorite. The other day she told Ben "I love you Ben, but.....I love Zeus more". At least she's honest! She does have every right to love him more though. He sleeps with her EVERY night, most times right on his pillow. That old guy loves that little girl!

The little helpers carry the groceries into the kitchen. Of course this was all Wen's idea!

He sure does LOVE to be a helper

And he inspires other, usually not so hard working, family members to help too!

He tried REALLY hard to bring in the water too!

Today at Sophia's birthday party, Owen was loving Uncle Angelo!

Meeting the Easter Bunny for the first time!

The cute little baby goat. Ella was still talking about his cuteness on the drive home!

Pony ride time!

Owen's first pony ride. As for me, I stood at the fence shocked that he got on!
Who would'a thought!

Loving up the Birthday Girl!

How cute is the birthday hat on the bunny???

The favorite part of the party....bottle feeding the goats