Place Mats

Kristen made place mats for us to eat on tonight at dinner. She so enjoys drawing and coloring and just being creative! I like to hear her tell what her pictures are because she has such an imagination.




Here is the place mat she did for her. It started out being Paul's, but then she liked her picture so much she decided to keep it as her own. This is a picture of Santa's sleigh.











This is the one she did for Paul. It is a picture of Max from the show Max and Ruby. She drew him with crazy hair.














This is the one she did for Lauren. She wrote Lauren's name on the left side then she drew a picture of Sissy's owl. Meme gave them an owl filled with candy for Halloween and Lauren has loved that little owl. She likes to put things in and dump them out then repeat the whole process over many more times. It keeps her busy.












Finally, this is my picture. She drew our dog Degas and did a pretty good job for a 3 year old. Then she happily announced that she drew me with two heads. I asked her why I had two heads and she looked at me and said so that you can clean up the big toys.

Early Intervention

Last week our service coordinator with early intervention came out with Lauren's OT. We were going to re-evaluate services because of Lauren's progress. We had met back in August for Lauren's 6 month evaluation and set goals for her then. Even though it had only been a couple months, they wanted to go over those goals to see how much progress Lauren has made. Well, she met ALL of her goals in just two months! I was so very proud of her and all of her progress and so thankful to God for the many miracles he has worked in my little girls life. We decided to set more goals and to switch services up. Lauren's OT has came out since Lauren was released from the hospital. In fact, she has become a part of our family and I look forward to her coming out. She is such a sweet person. I was very sad that her services have been cut back from every other week to once a month. I even teared up a little bit when they told me that. We were just running out of things for Lauren to work on that was OT related and every goal we had set she pretty much did within a couple of weeks. Lauren's educational therapist had been coming out once a week. We really like her too. Well, her services have been cut back to every other week and will be eventually dissolved when a speech therapist is available to work with Lauren. We all came to the conclusion that Lauren will better benefit from speech therapy. However, there aren't any therapists with an open slot for Lauren at this time. Once a therapist is available, Lauren will get ST every week and I have a feeling at that time her OT will have to move on too. The people with early intervention have been great! Lauren has greatly benefited from their services. On November 18th I meet with Chesterfield County Public School to go over with them Lauren's health background history and current delays in order to get her enrolled in a special school program at the age of 3. She will have to qualify for services and right now we are a little bit concerned that she may not. She is developmentally on a 23 month level and she is 26 months old. Her speech is not what it should be, however, she is definately progressing. That may be the only qualifying factor in getting her into the program and even then she may not be full time. While I was a little upset to hear this because I want Lauren to not be held back by anything and I want her to not struggle in Kindergarten, I know that I am extremely blessed. I am just afraid that Lauren will be excelling in some areas, but others she may not do so good in and in the long run it will cause her more difficultly. I guess as a mother you never stop worrying even when things are going so good. It must be in our nature!