From here on out.....

Last night at YW our wonderful Mia Mid counselor taught the girls a really meaningful lesson on the importance of writing down our histories. After as I was talking to James, I realized how negligent I have been of late in doing just that. What is this blog but a place to write down the stories and inconsistencies of rearing my three darling but rambunctous in the hope that someday we'll read them together and remember just how much we loved each other?

So I'm going to do better. Too many times I have hesitated to post anything because I have worried about visibility or who was reading it, so I have intentionally left things pretty lighthearted and only surface deep unless I was writing about my own feelings and not the rest of my family. So no more. It may be sad, it may be embarassing at times, but come what may someday we'll want to remember the things that were important to us and the trials we've faced and conquered.

So here I go.......

This is has been an insane start to the new year. James' work is exploding (in a good way), Tay is the manager for her JR. High basketball team and playing on a comp team as well. Noah is thankfully just plugging along, with a good attitude most of the time :) He is attending his third Braille Challenge in a few weeks. Today Karla, his braille teacher and district VI specialist sent home a note that just gushed over how far he has progressed since the beginning of 4th grade. In August he was reading 6 words per minute by touch, and this week he read 18 words. That's a 300% improvement!!! It's hard because he can read braille visually very quickly- much more than 18 words a minute- but he's supposed to be using his fingers rather than his eyes. Karla had to construct a box to go over his fingers because he was cheating so much by looking at the braille! Oh well, I'm grateful he still has enough sight to see it. Braille is so complex- it's an entire language with rules and verbage. But it is so critical for his future education and employment that he learn it. I am so grateful for Karla and all she is doing for him.

The biggest news in our family now is that Zach is FINALLY 100% potty trained!!! It has been such a battle to train this kid. He has been peeing consistently for the last year and a half, but has completely refused to go #2. He had "fecal aversion"- an intense fear of #2ing in the potty. We have had many wars over the issue, and he's spent countless hours sitting on the toilet just turn around and hide under a bed and go the minute I let him get off the pot. As of about December though he's turned the corner and has been awesome at both #1 and #2 since!!!! Hooray for him, and hooray for mom because he can no go to preschool next year:)

That's all for today, except that I have a Zone Bar thief in my house and I have a sneaking suspicion (well, not really sneaking as I just found wrappers under his bed) that his name starts with and N and he's 10 years old. I'm not really a stinker about food- nothing is really off limits in our house EXCEPT for my raspberry Zone bars because they are so stinking hard to find. I've only found them at the Harmons by my parent's house. Boo grocery stores- you need to stock them!!!!