The pony ride!

Saturday morning we went to a fall festival at the UGA extension service Bamboo farm and coastal gardens with Granny, Trevor and Travis along for the adventure. We had told the boys Friday night that there would be a pony ride. Tyler has been on a pony ride before and was very excited. Will said he wanted to ride the pony/horse also. As we waited in line both boys were excited. Then we got to the ponies, Tyler got right on held onto the pommel and was ready for the ride to start. Will as you can see in the first picture wanted nothing to do with the pony even though I picked the smallest pony. So for the first three laps I held onto the horse and will and talked about how mommy rides horses and that he would have fun and anything else I thought might help him get on the pony. Suddenly he looked at me and said I ride. I turned to put him on the pony and he leaped onto the pony. Once on he was as happy as could be until the ride ended.

Will's birthday part 3

These are pictures from the boys looking at the train round house and track Granny got for Will's birthday. Tyler got two train and coal tenders to use on the Thomas rug and with the two trains Will received.

They love playing with them and it helps them work on sharing their toys.

testing results

Will had his preschool special ed testing Friday. He was given the Battelle Developmental Inventory. It measures skills in adaptive behavior (Self-Care,Personal Responsibility), Personal-Social (Adult Interaction,Peer Interaction,Self-Concept and Social Role), Communication (Receptive Communication, Expressive Communication), Motor ( Gross Motor
,Fine Motor, Perceptual Motor) and Cognitive (Attention and Memory, Reasoning and Academic Skills, Perception and Concepts). The information in parentheses is from the Battelle website describing what each section measures. He passed all sections after being home six months, of course having a brother close to your age doesn't hurt in quickly developing skills. They are referring him to the speech language pathologist (SLP) for articulation issues, which is all we thought he would need help with.

Tyler will do the same developmental screening in December. Babies can't wait the birth to three special ed program feels he needs no more services. I want him to still have an open file with them and be tested to give me concrete evidence that he has caught up in all areas. I still think he has some issues with fine and gross motor skills. I don't think he has any problems with cognitive, communication or personal-social skills. So we will see.

You know they are growing when...

they can reach stuff on the counters that use to be out of reach. Also when they stretch and try to turn on the light switches. So last night David decided he wanted to measure them. Will is know 37 and 3/4 inches, a gain of 3/4 of an inch. Tyler is 36 and 1/2 inches, a gain of an inch and a half. We have not checked their weight recently, but it has probably increased some.

Tomorrow Will will have a developmental screening with our county schools preschool special education department. We are wanting them to provide speech services to him, but if other areas of concern are noted we will have them work on those. Hopefully by mid-November he will start getting services. His speech evaluation at the Cleft Clinic is November 16th.

Will's birtday part 2

Here is the birthday cake that he choose. He loves balloons, but almost picked a Nemo cake. We used a number candle because he doesn't have the muscles and skill yet to blow out a candle. He needs to develop some of the same muscles to use a straw.
He and dad blew out the candle and then he was trying to grab the smoke as it waifed by.
Tyler enjoyed eating cake on cousin Kate's lap. It's hard to see but they both have icing on their noses. The boys enjoyed opening all the presents and trying them out. The last presents they opened up were from Uncle Andy and they loved all the puzzles. Will worked on putting together the small ones and Tyler worked on the alphabet puzzle with pictures of real items on them. Thanks to everyone for coming and celebrating his birthday.

Will's birthday part 1

We had family over for Will's birthday which was about 11 people. We were missing two of his Aunts. The boy's love to explore and "drive" Uncle Jimmy's big truck. I is a GMC 450 used to haul the horses/bulls. Tyler and Will kept saying see big truck, drive big truck. So cousin Lucas in picture and cousin JoJo took them to explore the big truck while Daddy cooked hotdogs (the boys favorite meat) and hamburgers. Tyler would rather explore the truck then play. Will would come back and forth.

The next picture is of the boys "opening' Will's present from Uncle Jimmy. Tyler liked the card, that played music. Will was interested in the present for a few minutes and then went back to playing outside. The boys love to run around and play outside.

Breakfast at Tony's

The boys really enjoyed the characters at our grand gathering breakfast at Tony’s in the Magic Kingdom. Tyler had to greet, hug and kiss every character that came by. Will really liked Minnie and Goofy, and would get close to the other characters with mom. He really liked Mickey Mouse who we took group pictures with at the end. Neither of the boys ate much breakfast, but they had a lot of fun.
The first picture is of us with Miney Mouse, the boys really liked her shoes.
The next picture is all 15 of us.
The third picture is of the young cousins with Mickey.

Character greetings

Tyler loved every character he meet and wanted to keep hold of them for as long as possible. I think he will really be in to autographs when we go back when he is older. Will liked the main characters Mickey, Minnie, Pluto and Goofy, Pooh, Tigger (he acts like him) and Piglet. He was terrified of Eeyore. Most of the other characters were okay.

The first picture is from the Animal Kingdom and is their first experience with Mickey close up. The last three are from dinner at the Crystal Palace before we started Mickey's not so scary

Halloween party. The food was okay and the kids were very distracted and it took along time to finish dinner. So one character meal per trip would be fine.

In the third picture cousin Sami is holding Tyler, while cousins Eddie and Jill stand with Pooh. Sami was a favorite person for both Will and Tyler.

sheeps and goats to chase

These pictures are from what Disney calls the affection station at Animal Kingdom. Will use the brush on this goat and then had enough of animals up close. This was the first time we got him to get close to goats and sheep, as he has not done the petting zoo at our local zoo. Meanwhile Tyler thought this was great fun. He not only brushed the goat and sheep that you see in the picture but he also went under the blue ropes around the sheep and wanted to find more sheep to brush. He did this not once but twice, before we decided to just leave the area. When told to leave the sheep area, he said, "but I want to pet them".



The last picture is as we waited for a talk on a small animal and how it is trained. Turned out to be about a turkey that is now endangered because it is not the one that is raised for Thanksgiving and Christmas dinners.

First Character meeting

We rode the train out to the Rafiki's planet watch area and affection station (petting zoo area). The boys loved the train ride. They both liked Jiminy Cricket and wanted to run up to see him and not wait in line. Grandma finally convinced them to sit next to her on a bench and wait their turn.

Since the first character greeting had gone so well we decided to try Rafiki, Tyler loved him, Will was okay till he was about two feet away and then he jumped into my arms and held on tight. Will was very curious about Rafiki, but did not want to get close to him.



Tyler had already hugged Jiminy Cricket before leaving his area. So I was not surprised he wanted to hug Rafiki. You can see in the last picture he got very curious about his facial hair and was trying to gather it together. He did not pull on it, but just kept touching it and looking at it. They both liked this area

First day at Walt Disney World

Tyler and Will as they wait for everyone else to catch up with us. Yes Will is sound asleep in the stroller and it is not even 10 am. He can fall asleep when in motion, but has a much harder time in a bed. Tyler was watching everyone coming up to the Safari.

Will and I as we start the Safari ride. He would go from my lap to the bench to my lap to facing me and holding on if something scared him. He did seem to enjoy the Safari and Tyler definitely enjoyed the safari.
Tyler on the trail thru African animals. I think this was where a gorilla was very close to the window. He was sitting down to rest a minute, as the boys had chosen to walk for a little while.



The last picture is as Tyler and Will are waiting to see Mickey Mouse at the Animal Kingdom. After we got a picture with him we went back to the hotel for a nap. Will fell asleep on the bus and it did not take Tyler long to fall asleep either.

The mouse was great

We all had a great time at Walt Disney World! It is very exhausting keeping up with two toddlers especially in the parks. Tyler liked everything, especially the characters, he never wanted to let go of them and he liked every ride he went on. Will on the other hand did not like dark rides, fireworks or all the characters up close. He especially didn't like Eeyore. We decided the boys need to be a little older before we travel to the mouse again.

As we were waiting to travel to WDW the boys said they were going to ride the airplane, ride Mikey's bus and go to Mikey's house.

They boys enjoyed getting together with their cousins. Their favorite cousin was Sami, Will wanted her to be with him all the time. We did family pictures and the boys would only sit to have their pictures taken if Sami sat with them.