No one under FOUR in this house anymore!

It appears we have reached another milestone in our house! Our youngest is 4! We celebrated Nathan's 4th birthday yesterday with a few of his friends. He loved every minute of it! He is really getting into super heroes now (thanks to the Lego Super Heroes video game he's been playing with Brian) and his Lego Spiderman birthday was a lot of fun! He's growing up so much (I love it when he uses big words like "unfortunately", so cute!) and it's pretty special to see his relationship with Lynsey in particular grow. Today when we picked Lynsey up from school, we had just come from his 4 year well check at the doctor's office where he had to have two shots (which he was NOT happy about, he knew they were coming and he was really grumpy for the whole visit because of it, and he cried for a while after as well). He had his very special blue blankie with him to help him feel better. When Lynsey got in the van, she said something about feeling too hot, which Nathan misunderstood as her feeling cold somehow, so he offered her his blue blankie! It was so cute! I told Lynsey if she ever doubted whether or not he loved her, then she just needed to think back to this moment where he offered her his most special possession in the whole world!

Lynsey is still going strong on swim team, she is getting faster every day! I think sometimes she tries a bit too hard to pass the other kids to get to the front of the line, but It's not really a problem (yet) I don't think. I don't mind if she uses passing other kids as a bit of motivation to work harder, I just want her to still be listening to the teacher's instructions while she is doing it.

Adam has been having a bit of a hard time the last few weeks again, just another bump in the road, I guess. One interesting thing is how much he is trying to use complete sentences these days. They are working on appropriate sentences at school, and it's like it just clicked with him last week. He was in the dentist chair (which over all went a lot smoother than last time, so I'm calling it a success!) and he was starting to get a bit upset about the dentist being in his mouth, so he was asking, "Can we get out of the chair? Can we open the door?" I felt a bit bad for him, here he was asking properly to get out of the chair but we just couldn't allow it! He's doing it at home a lot, too, although it still doesn't sound like he's asking spontaneous questions. It's a step in the right direction for sure, but I long for the day where I feel like his questions aren't scripted anymore. Maybe the extra stress we are seeing from him is a byproduct of him taking a step forward in his learning, we've seen that in the past. Fingers crossed!

Happy Valentine's Day!

What have we been up to since January 26th . . . hmm. Brian was in Menlo Park for a few days, and that actually went fairly well for the most part. I had to take the boys with me to Lynsey's swimming lesson once but it actually went pretty well. Turns out Adam actually likes sitting there watching Lynsey's lesson! How handy is that. We got Nathan registered in the City Church preschool for next year so that's settled. Lynsey passed her last swimming lesson and started swim team this past week! She is doing so great! We are in the middle of a mid-winter break, and this past Thursday night we went to Facebook for their family Valentine's party. It was pretty low key but the food was good and the kids had fun:). On Friday we drove up to Blaine, Washington for our Nexus pass interviews. For anyone that doesn't know what a Nexus pass is, it's a basically a pass to the front of the line when you are crossing the US/Canada border. You get pre-screened and so you are deemed "low risk" and you can go in the fast lane! Manys a time I have looked with envy on those people racing through the Nexus line, and next time, that will be us! Unfortunately we couldn't use our passes when we crossed the border right after our interviews, but the wait wasn't TOO long thankfully. We drove up to our favorite hotel in Surrey, had some dinner and went swimming with our friends Lindsay and Chris and their kids. It was a lot of fun! The next morning we went swimming again and then went for lunch with my old friend Henry (from La Crete) and his girlfriend. So great to catch up!

There really hasn't been much else going on to report. I had a ridiculously sore throat this past week which was really crappy, nothing too exciting. Getting ready for Nathan to turn 4 - how crazy that I will soon have 8, 6, and 4 year old kids. It's like we are moving out of the young family category into just a regular family! Wow is it ever so much nicer to travel now, and even our night in the hotel this past weekend was just so peaceful compared to how it used to be. They didn't fall asleep super early, but it was a quiet bedtime and Adam actually lay down and stayed there before 9:30 I think! This is a record for him in a hotel! We are hoping to do a big California road trip next summer, by then things will be smooth sailing:).

Just living life:)

As is par for the course, after a vacation and/or Christmas, my picture taking has really dropped off this month (I think some of the pictures we have were actually taken by Brian - you know it's getting bad when he feels he has to pick up the slack;). Kidding dear!). Nathan seems to be the only one getting any camera love this month! What have we been doing . . . going to swimming lessons, school, a few social outings here and there. I went to a Natalie Grant concert a few weekends ago that was AWESOME! Matt Maher is coming to Issaquah this weekend and I need to go somehow - it's so good to hear your favorite worship artists live! Anyway, our lives haven't been too exciting, just going with the flow. Oh - Brian took Lynsey snowboarding on MLK Day (now that he's working for Facebook, he gets all kinds of days off he didn't have before!). She didn't love the lesson part, but once she was on the hill with Brian she had a lot more fun. She needs some more work with turning, but he thinks she can get there with a bit more practice. I might have a few Saturdays with just the boys coming up this winter, I guess we'll see if her enthusiasm lasts!

We are coming to decision point on where Nathan will go to preschool. We are actually really happy with RSA and how he's doing there, and they did just agree to let him come back in the fall at the same price the 5 day a week half day program for typical students is right now. There was talk of doing away with the "typical student discount" because they actually have to do a lot of the same work for typical students that they do for kids on the spectrum, but it's really actually beneficial for them to have some typical students there to model for the other kids. I think they just love Nathan and want to see him come back, so they grandfathered him in:). It could be a mutually beneficial arrangement because Nathan really loves it right now, but I am afraid if his best friend doesn't come back next year, he might not love it so much. We are probably also going to check out our church's preschool, they have a program that is apparently very good. There is an open house on February 1st, so at the very least I will attend and check it out. I am not sure if we have a good chance of getting in, they have a 3's class as well and I'm wondering if current students in that class get first dibs on registration in the 4's class. I guess we will find out! I am a bit torn - a part of me thinks he could really benefit from a Christian preschool full of typically developing kids that he can make friends with, and then a part of me really loves that at RSA he is getting so much personal attention from teachers and becoming very accustomed to being around special needs kids. He has his whole life to be in school surrounded by typical kids, maybe another year at RSA will just help him grow in his empathy for kids that are different. That is our hope at least!

Brian is currently in Menlo Park, CA for work again. He left very early Monday morning and will be back tomorrow sometime (fingers crossed he can change his flight to be earlier so I don't have to try and take both boys to Lynsey's swimming lesson again!). I can see how some women could get into a groove of doing things on their own all the time, but I don't think I WANT to get in that groove! In any case, it's good to know we can manage okay for a few days:).