Arlington!

Friday we started our trip to Arlington! Well, Yakima. We decided to split the trip up into two days. We didn't give Nico his headphones with music right away, decided to wait until Baker City (2 hour drive) where we stopped to have lunch. We were barely passing Nampa when Nico said his first "Are we there yet?" It was hilarious. I know he doesn't really have any context for how long the trip takes, he was a few years younger the last time we made the trip. He asked a lot of questions on the trip, mainly, stuff like "What time is it?" and "Are we in Yakima yet?" Guy kept track of  how many times Nico asked "Are we there yet?" (14 times) and how many times he asked a question that wasn't exactly that, but was in the spirit of it, like "When are going to be in Yakima?" (26 times)

When we gave him his headphones with music, he was very very excited, and bip bopped along with the music he was listening to.

When we got to Yakima, we checked in, and then drove to Miner Burger. Guy always breaks his gluten rule for Miner Burger.

Then we went to Jimmy John’s to pick up some grub for Nico. 30 minutes after eating, we went to the pool! Watching Nico walk down the stairs with flippers on was funny. The two people behind the front desk got a real kick out of his getup.

He started shivering and turning blue after about 30 minutes. We stayed for a little bit longer and then trucked it upstairs so he could take a warm shower.

Saturday morning it was time to drive to Arlington!

We arrived around 10 AM. Lots of hugs all around! When Nico "met" Uncle Tom again, he said to him "You used to hold me up when I was baby". He was referring to a picture we have on our fridge where Tom is holding up Nico.

We hung out for a few hours until it was time to eat Pizza! A puzzle, cars, and some toys from when Guy was little.

Mom showed me her Microgreens!

Then we went to the beach cottage on Camano Island. Wow!! It was quite a retreat. It was so peaceful. Don't worry, there is a video below showing you guys the walkthrough. It was beautifully decorated and had everything we needed. It had two rooms, one for the bed and one for the tv. After Nico went to bed every night, Guy and I would watch a movie. And the beach you could see out the front door. It was a short walk away....

We taught Nico how to throw rocks over his head into the ocean or at things on the beach. He practiced a lot, it was sometimes scary to be near him while he did it. Sometimes the rocks went straight up into the sky.

DUCK, GUY!

Then they started a band. It was pretty good. Mom did the shuffle on the gravel for some added sound.

(Mom provided some of these pictures. Thank you!!!)

That night we went to the Chatterbox for dinner, which is a restaurant in Stanwood that serves Thai, Indian, American food (and more maybe?). They were happy to make Nico fried rice with no eggs and no onions, so it was basically rice and beef. If you didn't know already, one of Nico's favorite dishes is rice and ground beef. So this was perfect.

Sunday we went to church at Marysville Church of the Nazarene, which is where we used to go when we lived there. We saw a lot of people we hadn't seen in a while, it was really great. Nico even remembered to tell his Sunday School teacher that he was gluten free and he said No to a cookie!

After church we drove by our old house. They had painted it yellow and it didn't look the same.

Sunday we ate roast chicken and a bunch of yummy sides for lunch. That afternoon we went to the Kangaroo farm and fed kangaroos and other animals.

I asked Guy if he wanted to own a kangaroo farm and he said No. Good to know. It was really cool to see all the animals they had there.

Some other Sunday moments.

Nico and Tom raced to put their nesting dolls together. Nico spent several occasions playing with these nesting dolls on this trip.

Guy took a short trip to the beach that night

On Monday we took a trip to the beach right before heading over to the Grandparents Russell.

Other pictures from that day...

At the river

Looking for birds through his new binoculars (thanks Grandma & Grandpa!!)

Coloring eggs

 Helping Grandpa barbecue our lunch

We left Guy there that night and we took Grandma with us to the beach cottage! Nico read Grandma two comic books before bed, and then me and her watched a girl movie!! 27 Dresses, it was very cute. 

Tuesday morning we snuggled him up with blankets in front of the tv to watch a movie while eating his breakfast muffin. Nico definitely took advantage of their wide range of movie titles on our trip. We usually had time for an entire movie in the mornings before we would leave to head to Arlington.

Tuesday was a slow picture day. I took a trip to Safeway to walk around while the crew went to the creek for a walk. Thanks Mom for taking pictures! I love that he got a piggy back ride from both Guy and Uncle Tom!

Tuesday afternoon Guy and I and Nico went to visit Rusty and Ellen. They were our mentors when we were living in Arlington, so we really like to stay connected with them. They had a Thomas the Train set that Nico played with while we were there.

Tuesday evening was a yummy pot roast with potatoes and parsnips and carrots. It was very tasty. Then we said our goodbyes and drove out to the beach house for one last night before heading home. 

Our trip home on Wednesday took 10 1/2 hours! I think we agree that next time we will break up our trip in both directions, and perhaps stay over in Pendleton on our way back to Boise. The traffic in Seattle area was very bad, we hopped over to the express toll lane thinking we could do that with 3 people in the car, but I think we'll be getting a bill for that, I think you need to have a flex-pass to be able to do that. Totally worth it, though! It would have added at least another 45 minutes to our trip if we would have been stuck in that traffic. We listened to my phone and even took a short cut through Alderwood Mall Parkway to get on 405. It saved us 7 minutes. :)

We were very tired when we got home that night. Nico's friends were outside when we pulled up, and he jumped right on his scooter and started playing. Nico needed that outdoor running around time. Then dinner, showers, a quick trip to Flying M, and then bed time! While we were gone, Jeff cleaned our shower tiles, it looked like a completely new shower. It was an awesome thing to come home to!!

Today we did some reorganizing in here and ran some errands. I can't believe it's already past Nico's bed time and it feels like the day has just started. Wow! Time is just fleeing!

We had so much fun in Arlington and are looking forward to doing it again next year! Thank you Grandpa and Grandma Russell for all the food and all the gifts and the hospitality and fun and adventure. We had a blast and can't wait to see you guys again in July for Nico's birthday!

Now time for the video!

G.G. Visit and Trip Preparations!

This will be a quick update, since we are getting ready for our trip tomorrow! We are going to ARLINGTON!!! With a night stay-over in Yakima first. Tomorrow we leave at 9 AM.

Tuesday we went to see G.G.!

Nico brought the Creationary game, plus two of his favorite comic books. He can read them! Most of the books he has memorized, but if he says it wrong he can look at the words and correct himself. I was excited while at the doctor's office last week he started reading Hop on Pop and was able to read the first few pages all by himself without help from me.

Anyway, video below shows Nico reading these books to her. We were sorry to hear that G.G.'s beloved dog, Scamper, passed away last week. :( He was dealing with some health issues that just kept going downhill. He will be very much missed. We love you G.G.!

The rest of the week has been us getting ready for our trip. I purchased some stuff from the dollar store for Nico's swim night tomorrow at the hotel. Goggles, a foam sitting board, a foam noodle, and an inflatable "tire". He has been talking about this trip non stop, and is looking very much forward to seeing the Grandparents Russell!! We will see them on Saturday!

The beach cottage we're renting on Camano Island had a run in with the ocean due to a tremendous storm, but all is better now, though they told me it smells musty. They asked what kind of treat we want waiting for us at the cottage and I told them some local raw honey might be a nice treat. They enthusiastically told me that it would be there waiting for us. They said the beach was in a bit of disrepair but I'm thinking there might be some interesting things washed up that might make our beach adventures more exciting. We'll see! I bought a bucket and shovel from the dollar store too. AND a pair of sunglasses.

The other thing we did for Nico for this trip was to setup my iPhone for him to use. I downloaded all his favorite songs. I also downloaded 7 audio books from the library and loaded all his VBS songs onto the iPhone as well. Plus Tom T. Hall. We bought him a pair of Spiderman earphones for him to use. We don't want him playing on his iPad on the trip because it makes him sick, so we thought listening to stuff would be the answer. Tomorrow morning when he gets in the car he will see his new pair of sunglasses and all the swimming stuff I bought him. Then when we stop for lunch in Baker City, we will give him the headphones and the iPhone. 

"I'm strong! Take a picture!"

That's it for now... video time!

Cop, Cough, Food Allergies

Nico came home from school last Friday with his backpack full of art projects and things he had done at school. Every Friday is like this. They had several different people from the community come in to talk about their jobs, community helpers, like nurses and cops and firemen. Then they got to write out what they want to be when they grow up and as expected, Nico said he wants to be a cop. He drew himself with a frowny face because he's angry, because there's a bad guy.

Saturday we went to the Sensory Friendly Movie, they were playing Norm of the North, a cute entertaining animated movie with no real involved plot. Nico enjoyed it, even though he kept asking "When is it going to be over?" hehe. 

We ended Monday night with a slight fever (99.8). He had been sick with a cold for a few days and I  didn't really take heed like normal, he played outside a lot that day in addition to going to school. In the evening after dinner he wanted to go back out and I said yes, then he came back in 5 minutes later and said he was done. He kind of curled up on the couch and I took his temperature. He wasn't hungry and his cough was picking up. There's nothing like a sick child to get you kicked into Mom Gear. I went to the Co-op that night after bedtime to pick up some supplies for his cough. His fever was gone the next morning and his cough is almost gone completely. And he loves his "medicine"...

We got a call from his doc on Tuesday morning letting me know results of most of his blood work except the food allergies. Vitamin D was low so we are putting him on Vitamin D drops. His white blood count was low but that may be due to his cold, or his food sensitivities wearing down his immune system. We will recheck in 3 months. Thyroid was fine, and everything else looked good. Then I got a call this morning saying that his food allergy results were in and asked if we could come in. We weren't expecting results until the end of March, so this was awesome! Went in and found out he has a lot less sensitivities than we thought. Eggs, whey, and peanuts are the only ones he has to avoid completely until we heal his gut. Then there were almonds, potatoes, and red grapes that he shouldn't eat more than every 4 days. Because he does not consume gluten or corn, those results were not accurate, but the doc said that because of mine and Guy's sensitivity, it is safe to assume that Nico should also avoid gluten almost assuredly. No problem there. 

I went shopping tonight for supplies. Nico eats pancakes with peanut butter and syrup for breakfast every morning. I have been making them in the shape of numbers. Can you believe we had gotten up to 85??!?! That was this morning's pancake. It will be his last pancake for a while. I bought some cottage cheese, fruit, sausage, and supplies to make apple muffins. I also found a gluten free bread that is free of potato and egg. It was hard to find that! Potato starch is a common gluten free starch found in bread. He has been loving sandwiches spread with cream cheese instead of mayo (oh no! No more mayo! Just thought of that!) and then with deli chicken meat on top, with mustard.

Nico had a little bit of a hard time accepting the no peanut butter thing. The doc says that after a year we can start reintroducing foods. Apparently kids bounce back from leaky gut a lot easier than adults do. We are supplementing him with L-Glutamine to help heal his gut. 

Ok enough doctor talk. Are there any more pictures? Ah yes! Today we took care of Avery while Allicia and Evelyn went to Adams Elementary for Kindergarten registration! Evelyn will be in Kindergarten next year. Miss Lung (the kindergarten teacher) went up to Allicia and asked "Is this the Evelyn that Nico is always talking about?" Miss Lung told Allicia that she hears about Evelyn at least 4 times a week from Nico, telling everyone what he does with her and when her birthday is.

So here's a picture of Nico and Avery watching the washing machine. Avery can spend literally hours watching the washing machine. Sometimes I'll walk into the bathroom and see him sitting on top of the dryer, naked, looking through the top of the washer. He's even fallen asleep while leaning on the washer. Anyway, Nico joined him for a bit, and pulled up his own stool.

Other than that, we have just been planning and looking forward to our trip to Arlington in 1 week!!!!!!!! Nico knows the exact day we are leaving and tells us almost every day about tit. He is very excited to travel and see Grandpa and Grandma. 

See you next week!

New Friends

Nico has made friends with the neighbor boys! There's a duplex a few doors down. One side of the duplex has brothers Sam and Adam, 2nd grade, and 4 years old. The other side of the duplex has Aiden, 2nd grade. They ride scooters back and forth on the sidewalk and they play hide and seek. He is able to "go out to play" and I just tell him not to cross the street and to stay close to the house. I go out and check on him every so often, or I see them riding back and forth on their scooters from our window. 

Nico practicing henna

Wednesday morning was Nico's IEP meeting and re-evaluation. Every 3 years they re-evaluate the need for services. It's been 3 years already for Nico! They changed his classification from having a Language impairment to having a Speech impairment. This is big improvement. They also think he is much improved socially, so he will no longer need the resource teacher to check up on him every week. So basically, all Nico needs now is speech therapy. Big steps forward! Guy was able to be at the meeting too. The principal has a brother named Guy, so they bonded.

On Thursday Nico had a doctor's appointment with his new doctor. The waiting list for this doctor for new patients was supposedly out to May & June, but we got a late March appointment, and then a cancellation happened and we got to slip in to see her yesterday. They are running food allergy tests and a few others. We will find out the results when we go back in late March. These allergy tests are different than the ones that his previous doctor ran, they will check for sensitivities instead of just allergies. Nico did GREAT getting his blood drawn, the nurse said that she has done a lot of blood draws but that Nico is definitely one of the best child patients she has ever had. Nico watched the whole process and didn't even flinch with the needle poke. I took him to get a smoothie afterward. Strawberry, banana, orange. He wanted to sit in the cafe for a while drinking his smoothie, so we did.

That's it for this week.

Until next time!

Henna class, late blog

Blog will be updated Friday mid-morning!

Birthday Party, New Bike, Sourdough

On Saturday, Nico had a birthday party to go to. His friend Isaac from school turned 6 years old. I asked Nico what he wanted to get for Isaac and he said a transformer, so we searched on Amazon for one and Nico picked it out. He also wanted to get him some silly putty from the dollar store, so that we did. Isaac's family lives across from Municipal Park, very close to us. It was the first "drop off" birthday party that Nico has been do, where you drop the kids off and then come back 2 hours later to pick them up. Cool! I dropped him off, gave the mom a large packaged gluten free cookie to substitute for cake, told her which drinks he could have, and then went home. Guy and I got our bikes ready and we rode to pick him up two hours later. I had the trailer bike hooked up to my bike. It was a nice day that day. Nico was playing with his friends still when we got there. Happy Nico = Happy Mommy. I told him we had the trailer bike with us for him to ride home with us and he instantly wanted to leave, he said "Bye! I have to go now!" 

On Monday we went to the Discovery Center again, spent the whole time building walls and trying to keep everyone getting along.

Nico wanted to try to ride his actual bike to school, so we got it ready but he couldn't get on by himself and I had flashbacks to last Fall as he teetered and tipped along. The bike is just too big for him. I told him we couldn't ride it that day, but that we would go shopping for a different bike for him that would fit him. The next day I figured we'd give it a shot so we went to the Youth Ranch and found the perfect fit, for only $7.99. The tires were a bit messed up and after a botched attempt to patch the intertube, Jeff patched it up for us and it was good to go. Nico can get on and off this bike all by himself, and when he stops the bike he doesn't fall right over onto the ground. Perfect! He rode the bike to school yesterday and we locked it up in the bike rack. Fun.

Practicing at the park

This past week I also made my first loaf of gluten free sourdough bread. It will become a staple, because Guy loved it. LOVED it. I also made 2 sweet treat recipes recently that he loves. My cooking is adding up points!

The dough for the first rise (12 hour rise)

In the pan for the 2nd rise (8-ish hours)

The finished loaf

Sourdough bread is basically fermenting the flour, a lot like sauerkraut is fermenting the cabbage, so vitamins and minerals are quadrupled in many cases and the proteins in the flour are broken down so are easier to digest. Even I can eat it! Nico isn't too fond of it, but I am thinking of getting a milder-tasting sourdough starter so it doesn't have that ZING to it.

That's it for this week. Short and sweet and sour.

Watching Birds, G.G., Video

This weekend was The Great Backyard Bird Count, where you count and record how many birds you see in a time frame of at least 15 minutes. You could count birds on any of the days from Feb 12th-15th. Grandma Russell told us about this and we wanted to participate. She sent Nico some information and some bird sticker books (which he completed the morning he opened the package!) It was a great way to practice saying words - he wanted to say all the names and compare them between sticker books.

Our first bird counting took place last Friday, the 12th, at 6 PM, we went out on the front porch to count. We couldn't identify any species (except geese) because most of the birds we saw were far away and flying in the air. We counted 97 in 15 minutes! Nico kept track using tic marks on a sticky note.

In the last 30 seconds or so, we counted 33 geese flying in a flock. That was pretty cool.

We went to the cabin on Saturday. Lily, Lexie, and Kai were there visiting (Nico's cousins) and so Nico got to play with them (and with Grandma Salisbury!) He also wanted to count birds, so we went outside for about 12 minutes before Nico gave up - we didn't see any birds! We heard a bird squawking in the distance but never saw it. But, it was fun counting, there was snow and our weight often pushed us through the top layer of crusty snow all of a sudden, so we would "fall" into the snow a lot.

We had a great time hanging out at the cabin! Guy didn't come with us, he was trying to meet up with his friend Josh who is visiting from Korea. It didn't work out on Saturday for him to see Josh, he saw him later in the week though. Thanks for the yummy chicken and rice and hot cocoa Grandparents Salisbury!

For the rest of the weekend and even into the week, Nico asked to go count birds outside. A few minutes here, a few minutes there, he has several post-it notes with tic marks on them for all the times he went outside to count.

So after the cabin on Saturday, our church was having a Parents' Night Out, where you drop your kids off at the church and they watch them for 4 hours while you go out on a date. So, we dropped Nico off! And Guy and I, we had NO idea what to do, we really should have planned ahead a bit. We went to Whole Foods and then picked up the mail, went through a car wash, and then walked around downtown for a little while. We went into a bookstore and Guy found a graphic novel of the book The Graveyard Book (I think Gma Russell has read this?) He really wanted it but we didn't buy it (more about that later...)

Then we sat in the Co-op parking lot and talked while Guy sipped on his cold-brew coffee. We picked Nico up a little after 8 PM and there were no other kids there! He had been the only kid there, with 5 adults/older kid helpers there hanging out with him, they were watching movies. Nico had piled up the large bin of stuffed animals into the middle of the floor and was lying in it while watching a movie.

Sunday night, Guy wasn't feeling well and had a fever, so I picked him up some Pho and his desired graphic novels as a surprise from downtown, and then Nico and I went to Bible Study that night without him. Guy was delighted about the comic books (ahem... graphic novels), I had the store wrap them up as a gift. Guy was all better Monday morning, good thing because he was meeting Josh for breakfast. He was also able to see Josh & some other of the NNU crew in Nampa on Tuesday night, they met to play games. Allicia watched Nico that night and put him to bed since I had tap class. Allicia actually put all 4 kids to bed herself!

Tuesday morning we went to see G.G. in Nampa. Nico likes to bring games with him sometimes, so he brought Doodle Dice (G.G. won!), and then also a book called Hug Time.

Here Nico is, explaining something about the book.

On Wednesday we went to the library to pick up some comic books. The "comic books" I bought for Daddy on Sunday, Nico wanted some of his own, so Library. In the comic book we bought Nico for Christmas, Stinky, there are other comics listed in the back, so we looked some of them up on the website and wrote down their call numbers, then went and found them on the shelf. Guy and Nico have been reading through The Graveyard Book graphic novels at night, too. I think comics are going to be a big push for him learning how to read.

On Thursday we went to the Discovery Center. We didn't go on Monday this time because Monday was President's Day and Jeff had the day off, so their family spent the day together and we postponed our playdate. Nico played with two other kids there, working together to build a HUGE wall of cardboard boxes that they then crashed into.

Nico building an arc with one of the volunteers

This is my favorite face, after pulling one of the blocks from the arc and watching it topple.

I think that's about it......................

Now a video! Some of the things I mentioned in this post are in it. Huzzah!