That wonderful thing called Hope:)

Man does my picture taking ever go in waves! And this month it seems Nathan is the feature - there is no rhyme or reason to when I will pick up my camera:).

Things have been pretty normal here at the Kroeker house the last little while. Fully back in the swing of kids being back in school. I did take them out a few times last week which is worth noting since I rarely do that anymore! We went to Joso's play place on Wednesday and my church Mom's group on Friday. Both days I was rushing to get home in time to put Adam on the bus (one of the biggest reasons I rarely do go out) but still well worth it:).

Nathan is still not walking well, but he is very stable and can walk several steps while being completely balanced. He doesn't like it yet - he gets a bit upset with us when we let him go. I'm not sure when he'll be "emotionally" ready to start walking for real, but it certainly seems he is physically there! He's a bit of a mess right now because he's got a bit of a cold, which isn't helping his state of mind. He really gets around, though - I have to keep a much closer eye on him these days!

Lynsey is becoming such a big helper with her brothers! More then ever! She got Adam's breakfast for him the other day while we were being lazy in bed which was really nice:). I was at a training session at Adam's preschool yesterday morning, so she took care of Nathan while Brian was on a phone meeting - apparently she was walking him, got tired so tried sitting and playing with him but then he got bored and wanted to walk again so she did . . . quite taxing on her:). I love how she takes so much responsibility and ownership over her brothers! It's like God knew that Adam would need a big sister that would look out for him and take care of him:). I volunteered in her class on Friday and that was a really neat experience! I really wanted to see how things happened in the class and where Lynsey fit in, because if our parent/teacher conference was to be believed, she must be quite the slacker! They did this assignment where they were sounding out words themselves and writing them down, and she is nowhere near the lowest in this category - somewhere in the middle, even upwards of the middle I would say. She definitely has a bit of a concentration problem, though. I would like to see her apply herself a bit more and not be so easily distracted, but it didn't seem that out of the norm from what I saw of the other kids. Perhaps the other kids parents are getting the same reports that we got:). I did ask the teacher how she had been doing lately, and she said she has seen some improvement, which is good to hear. We'll just keep reminding her to work hard:).

How I feel about how Adam is doing varies based on which day you ask me. I'm going to share something a bit more personal than what I usually write. Last week at youth, we were discussing the Holy Spirit and how He works in our lives. I found myself wondering how He had been working in my life lately, and I came up empty. I asked God to bring something to me that I needed to change, something I should focus on, and it wasn't long before my thoughts turned to how Brian and I don't pray together before we go to bed anymore. When we were first married, we did this regularly and it was really important to me. Somewhere along the way (oh maybe about 5 or so years ago??) I guess we started feeling so tired that this habit just kind of fell away. Anyway, as I was thinking about this, I felt like God was telling me that we needed to pray for our family and for our marriage more regularly.

So I went home and told Brian, and he said he had been feeling the same way! Holy Spirit telling us something?? I think so! And who says youth is only for teaching the young people?? I think as a leader, I learn more than they do!

So we've been praying, especially for Adam and his treatment and that we will know what direction to take with it. I found out last week that the waiting list to get therapists into our home to work with him is another 8 or 9 months yet - like we haven't already waited long enough! A bit discouraging to say the least, especially since all you ever hear from people is, "The earlier you get intervention, the better!". How are parents supposed to cope when the clock is ticking and you can't get the help you need for your child??

Anyway, back to the praying thing! I am going somewhere with this:). Since we've started praying more regularly, while I still have some concerns and anxiety over his future and whether or not we are doing enough for him, I've been feeling some more peace about where he's at. This has been especially true over the last few days. I went to a training session at his preschool yesterday that was about communication and ways to get him to communicate more, and when I got home, I tried to really focus on how much he actually is communicating with us. This has really come so far and I was able to see that yesterday! He understands so much more than he did even 3 months ago, and the words he is able to use to articulate what he needs are increasing all the time! I feel like he's "with us" a lot more, like he wants to be where we are - when we ask him to come with us, he does. When the rest of the family is doing something, he is interested. He has started doing "independent work" at preschool, where he sits at a station and does some kind of matching activity or something with the help of a teacher. Sitting through Circle time AND doing independent work?? He really has come so far!

He still has so far to go to catch up with other kids his age (and obviously we don't know if he ever will catch up completely) but I continue to have so much hope. And I'm feeling a lot more peace about just doing what we can for him and TRUSTING that God will provide what he needs. I know there will be many more ups and downs, but I feel like it's going to be okay. If Brian can say one time, "5 more minutes until we go get the pizza", and Adam hears it and starts walking around saying that exact sentence as clear as can be, there has to be hope that he is paying attention to what is going on around him and is trying to learn how to talk.

So there's an update on how I feel about Adam's progress! Hopefully I can continue to post about how far he continues to come:).

My baby is trying to walk!

Well, our birthday boy did not enjoy his cake very much! He got this sudden attack of what looked like an ear infection right before we did the cake! Poor Adam:(. The good news is, he had a bath and perked right up after. Phew! Saved us a trip to the doctor which was a HUGE relief!

We had my southern Alberta family over last Saturday and it was a lot of fun! We had a house full, but everything went well! This week we have started to settle back into routine, which has been nice. I love Christmas with all the get-togethers, but it is always nice to just settle back into the mundane of every day afterwards, too.

Nathan has been cruising everywhere lately! He actually took his first unbalanced steps on New Years Day! Since then, he has been very leery of us and doesn't want to let go of our hands when we're trying to get him to walk between us. Not quite ready I guess! But he is getting so steady and has been much less whiny actually - he now likes the walk-behind toy and is steady enough to steer it a bit and has even turned it completely around a few times! My guess is by 11 months, he will be walking well. Oh and I have to mention that he learned to drink from a straw yesterday! Very exciting indeed! This will make dropping his last two bottles much easier.

Adam has been using more and more words the last little while! It's still repetitive, but he's repeating more than he has in the past. His teachers said that he's doing it a lot in class, too, which is a testament to how comfortable he's getting with his teachers. One thing I forgot to mention in my last post is that over Christmas he started pointing at things! Up until then he had really only pointed at pictures in books, but over Christmas we started asking him things like, "where's the fan?" and he would point at it and say, "there's the fan!". Very exciting for us! He doesn't do it consistently, but he is certainly on the right track. The other day, I experimented with putting some underwear on him and he didn't mind it! I wasn't sure if he would have anxiety about it, but he didn't, which is good. I talked to the preschool teacher and she said we should probably wait until the summer to actually potty train him, but she said they would start putting him on the potty for 10 seconds when they change his diaper. Apparently it worked the first day, which was a bit surprising to me since he get really anxious any time I mention sitting on the potty. Maybe they will be able to break through his anxiety! Fingers crossed!

Brian and I have booked a little getaway to Seattle over Family Day weekend! I'm a bit nervous about how the kids will do, but we really needed to do this for a lot of reasons. First of all, I need a getaway!:) Most importantly, though, I have opened myself up to the possibility that we might try living there one day, and I definitely wanted to spend some time there before making the decision to relocate my life there. Brian's parents are going to watch the kids so it will hopefully be a nice weekend away!

2013, I'm ready for you!

And we're back from a very busy and wonderful time away for Christmas! We went up to Edmonton the weekend before Christmas to spend some time with Brian's family, and then on Christmas Eve we made the trek up north to hang out with my family for a few days. The drive was so good - we had been on the road for 4 hours when Brian and I looked at each and wondered what was wrong with our kids because they had been so quiet! And not because they were sleeping, because apparently the car seat is not the right place to sleep, even for a baby boy. We were just thankful he was pretty quiet:). We had a great time visiting family and some friends, and we were back on the road on Friday. The trip home was not as smooth, but not the worst. Saturday morning our kids had their Christmas morning! It was great fun:). Adam seemed to love his bus and Lynsey was thrilled to have an art easel where she could finally unleash the creativity inside her:). Nathan didn't care too much, but he does seem to like his table! Yesterday we headed out to Brian's aunt and uncle's to have our Penner Christmas gathering. The kids did pretty well, although I think Nathan especially is just done with traveling and just having tons of people around all the time. Adam had his moments, too, but over all he coped very well through all our traveling.

Today we get to celebrate our little Adam turning 3! We are having some cake later (will post those pictures later tonight hopefully) but we already gave him his bongo drums which he seems to like:). Unfortunately, like with most of his toys, he showed some initial interest and went back to shaking his bubble stick. I would love it if we could get rid of these toys that he just shakes and doesn't really play with, but he would just find a substitute so there's no point. He is getting better at playing functionally, so I'm hoping the hand flapping will just phase out (fingers crossed!).

At Brian's family Christmas, his Mom asked us to share highlights from our year. It made me think back to 2012 and some of the stuff that happened, and I realized that it's actually been a pretty hard year. We did have our wonderful little Nathan back in February which is obviously a highlight, but the months that followed were very difficult months. Adam grew increasingly harder to deal with as his frustration at not being able to communicate properly grew, and Nathan was just not a content baby. This was the first summer since the kids were born that I didn't go out with them most days because it was just so much harder with 3 (even though Nathan had become much happier by this time) and I found myself feeling a lot less connected to friends then I have in the past. This fall was dominated with Adam's assessment and learning that he did indeed have Autism as we had suspected for a while, and scrambling to get him into a preschool program so we could start his therapy ASAP. I do feel like I am getting a bit of a better grip on things now that Adam is in a good program where he is doing well. Nathan is in a really high maintenance stage, but he'll be walking soon which will really help him. Lynsey is such a sharp, wonderful little girl that loves school. We're in a good place I think. When I look ahead to 2013, I feel like it might be a year of change for us, but it will (hopefully) not be quite as hard as this year has been. I guess we'll see what it holds!

Happy New Year everyone!