Hello to everyone who actually reads this!  I'm sorry I've been MIA.  Let's see the last time I wrote was back at the end of May?  Wow.  I'm trying to think of what's been going on since then...

The summer was actually not very exciting for us.  Hannah had summer school twice a day, and I had to take her 'cause the bus didn't run.  The biggest issue with that was when another parent kept parking in the handicapped spot in the parking lot to run her kid in (she did not have plates or a sign and was clearly not handicapped).  Well, we ended up calling the police, and never saw her park there again! :)

Okay, let's see...Oh!  We also were fortunate enough to have a ramp donated so we can now get Hannah's chair in and out of our house safely.  The handle to her chair actually snapped in half and has caused MUCH concern for her safety.  As of now, she has a loaner base, but we are in the process of getting her a new chair since it's time for one anyway.  The next big thing will be getting a vehicle, but this new chair she's getting is not crash tested, so she wouldn't be able to travel in it anyway.  Plus, we'll have my vehicle paid off in a couple of months and really need that extra money so we can start paying all our student loans again.

At the end of the summer, the Mom's Group that I'm in at my church through a huge fundraiser for Hannah so that we can buy her a Hyperbaric Oxygen Chamber.  The fundraiser was $6,000 short, so we're trying to figure out how to go about getting the remaining funds.

Hannah goes to school 4 days a week and absolutely LOVES it!  She's getting good at learning her colors (using eye gaze), and she continues to love books and music.  Apparently she has a new crush this year.  His name is Noah, and she gets so excited to see him.  It may be because he has the same name as her brother, but the teacher says he really encourages her and pays attention to her, and she likes it.

Speaking of her brother, Noah is doing great!  He's talking SO much it's ridiculous, but so much fun...well, most of the time, anyway.  He still really likes playing with all his cars.  He likes books too.  He can count from 1-10 easily and we're working on 11-20.  He knows all his colors and has parts of the alphabet down.  Still not potty-trained, though.  Of course, he isn't even 3 yet.  I'm not pushing it, but it sure would be nice!

Kayla is also doing great!  She started walking shortly after her first birthday.  She babbles so much now, and just yesterday she started to try to repeat words after me.  She's a very curious and wild little girl, and I just adore her!  She is not timid at all.  Watch out world, here she comes! lol  She's finally starting to get a bit of hair, too.

Maybe next time I'll share some recent pictures...if anyone's still out there reading this?  Most of my family and friends are on Facebook now, so I keep up with them on there, but I figured I'd update here since I was asked to. :) 

What an insanely busy month for us!  Ready for a novel?  Guess I should update more often so it's not so long.  Let's see...where to start?

Hannah had her usual appointments on Fridays at the communication clinic in Madison and the horse riding therapy in Delevan, and she also had school on Mondays and Thursdays.  I took her to get a repeat hearing test last week, and of course the results were inconclusive.  This means that the next step is to do an Auditory Brain Response (ABR), where they'll hook up electrodes onto her head and measure the response in the nerve to different sounds/pitches to tell how much is being picked up.  She has to be asleep for this, so I'm still waiting to hear when they are going to schedule the test.  Besides those appointments, we had a couple of smaller fundraisers to work towards getting Hannah a home hyperbaric chamber.  The big fundraiser is going to be on Aug. 2nd, so mark your calendars!

Josh took a week vacation in hopes of getting to relax and get some stuff done.  We were hoping to replace our bathtub surround with tiles, but it took us a lot longer than we expected because Josh has a bad foot/ankle/leg, and needed to rest periodically, and I was pretty busy taking care of the kids and didn't really have a chance to help too much.  The tiles are in, grouted, and sealed now.  It looks good, but we still have to fix the wall around the tiles and the ceiling above the tub.  It's quite a project.

About a week after that, I wrecked my back pretty bad.  Josh's sister, a massage therapist, gave me a massage, and I saw my chiropractor last Friday and am scheduled to see him again this Friday.  It's feeling a little better, but it's still pretty sore.  It was a bit painful, but I was able to play my flute at church this past weekend, though.  It was fun playing it again.  It had been 2 and a half years since the last time I played in front of people, so I had to practice quite a bit to get my chops back.  Anyway, it was good, and I hope I don't wait another 2.5 years before I play it again.

Noah is so excited about playing instruments too!  He plays his recorder, which he calls his flute, and he is getting better on the keyboard.  I can actually hear him trying to make melodies and not just pounding the keys all the time.  He likes to turn on the drum beats or pre-recorded songs and play along.  He does have pretty good rhythm, and he knows which notes are high and low.  Josh played his guitar for the kids a few weeks ago, and Noah was awestruck.  He wanted to play too!  So we ended up getting him a cheap guitar from Walmart because, well, he's still only 2 years old and we need to teach him how to respect instruments and take care of them before we buy him something more expensive.  He loves it though.  When I practiced my flute with Josh one night, Noah was so excited to be able to play along.  I don't really care what Noah ends up playing, but I love to see his enthusiasm and love for music, and if someday that changes to academics, or sports, or whatever, we'll support him no matter what he chooses. 

One of his other interests right now are cars.  I think he has every car from the movie "Cars."  He randomly makes car revving noises and is thrilled to go out with mommy and help pull the car out of the garage.  He's talking so much!  I was letting Zando outside one day and Noah said, "Where'd Zando go?" I said, "Outside to go potty," Noah said, "I go outside and go potty too?"  I explained to him that Zando was a dog, and dogs go potty outside, and that Noah is a person, and he goes potty in his frog potty (no, he's not potty trained yet).  So ever since, Noah's been proclaiming, "I'm a person! I'm Noah, good boy!"  He's so funny most of the time.  We have started having issues with him running away from us.  Not sure how to stop that yet.  He has made the transition to the toddler bed fairly smoothly.  He does really well staying in his bed at night as long as he has his "money" (monkey) and "bank" (blanket), but nap time is a struggle.  He usually ends up sleeping on the floor.

Hannah is now a pro at walking in a straight line with her gait trainer, so we've unlocked the wheels so they'll turn.  It's really hard for her to practice like that in our kitchen, though, because it's a straight path.  We probably need to take her somewhere more open with hard floors.  She has actually moved it a little bit on the carpet before, but still needs a little more ooomph.  She gets so excited to show us what art project she made in school everytime she comes home.  Her speech teacher records some of the things Hannah does at school into her communicator, and Hannah loves pushing the switch to tell us what she did.

Kayla is a rolling fool and can sit up on her own with a little wobbling, but isn't quite crawling yet.  She is getting SO big!  She likes to explore things with her mouth...complete opposite of Noah.  She sure does give us an earful sometimes, too.  She's pretty happy most of the time and is finally sleeping in her bed at night!  She loves it when Noah plays with her, and when I put her in front of Hannah face to face, she starts giggling uncontrollably and gets all excited.  Hannah smiles.  It's adorable.

Okay, so I think that catches me up to date.  I have a ton of pictures, but haven't uploaded to xanga yet.  I accidentally left my camera outside from Friday night-Sunday afternoon, and it was raining on and off, but miraculously it still works, praise God!  Uh oh...3 little children are getting hungry for lunch...better go!

All 3 kids are sick.  Kayla has a double ear infection, and we took the other 2 in last night, and Noah has an ear infection in his right ear, but Hannah has pneumonia.  Noah and Kayla are a bit crankier than usual, but Hannah is absolutely MISERABLE!  She's been coughing and moaning for 2 days now.  Last Wednesday she was so tire she slept all day.  They're all on antibiotics, and we've been giving Hannah breathing treatments, but they don't seem to be helping a whole lot.  I'm not sure what else to do.

I'm just wondering...do people who live in the south get sick like this all the time in the winter months, too?  I'm guessing probably not.  It sucks.

Just to document it, Noah's been counting for the past couple of weeks.  He will just blurt out numbers anytime.  It's so cute.  He keeps forgetting six, though, so he says, "4,5,7,8,9,10"  Yeah, I'm not sure why he always starts with 4, but at least he's got the rest in order, right?  Kayla's been much more interactive and smiley lately.  She's so adorable!  I have caught Hannah saying "I Love You," multiple times now, but it's just all the vowels, so it sounds like "I---UH---ooh."  I almost cried the first time I figured out what she was trying to say!  Kids are awesome...but I really prefer having them healthy!