Another Weekend Survived

I am happy to report that Owen, Kate, and I survived our "weekend without mommy". We all missed her greatly and were glad she safely returned Sunday afternoon.
In her absence we enjoyed time at the "playria" (play area) at the mall, a morning of cooking pancakes from scratch, a two hour trip to the park, an afternoon playing in the back yard while daddy made burgers on the grill, a ride around Knoxville looking for the Tinkerbell movie, movie night with daddy and Kate (we had to settle for a Barbie princess movie), and an afternoon at church - while I played basketball (our friend Tiffany watched the kids), we waited for Angela to return, and we went to the monthly kids program and dinner Sunday afternoon. A couple pictures of the kids doing their favorite thing, swinging, are below. Welcome back mommy...

Quiet Friday Night

Angela is off in Atlanta with the church middle school youth at the "Believe" Conference, so I have a weekend alone with the kids. I think Owen's expression below sums up our general feelings here...we miss mommy.Angela being gone makes for hectic, tiring days, but quiet nights after everyone goes to bed. So, I thought I would upload a couple of my favorite pictures from our trip to Belleville/St. Louis the week before last.We will see how we fare this weekend. I think this is the second time that I have had the kid's alone. I am sure we will be fine unless it rains all weekend and we are confined to the house. In that case Kate and I may drive each other crazy.

Assessments

Owen had his annual assessment for TEIS this week. He's continually assessed throughout the year, but this was the official assessment for his annual review where we set goals and update paperwork. To do this, they basically ask me a lot of questions about what he's doing and based on those answers they determine his "developmental age" for specific areas. I'll spare most of the details here, but I will say that God is good! In the Communicative Development (speech and language) area, he is at 16-18 months for receptive and 14-16 months for expressive (our EI tells me "everything has to go in before it can come out" so receptive is usually ahead of expressive). He just turned 16 months so that seems to me that he's right on target. It's really unbelievable to think that he's developing in speech and language just as well as any other kid. I can't really express how thankful I am for newborn hearing screenings and early intervention. I can only imagine where we would be without them now and down the road.

All that is to remind myself that he is doing great. Lately, it's hard for me to overlook the fact that he's 16 months and not walking! Not that it's unheard of, but I'm ready for him to walk! It's strange to think that with everything we've had thrown at us over the past 16 months, his gross motor skills would be the area where he lags behind. A year ago I wouldn't have believed it if someone had told me that Owen would be saying 15 words at this point and that my biggest concern would be that he is not walking. He was a late crawler, too, and even then he did a funny army crawl for a long time before he was up on hands and knees. It's just the way he is and I know he'll walk eventually. Hopefully by the time summer rolls around! It will make playing outside so much easier! But, until then, I'll be satisfied knowing that his language development is right on track and he's doing fine.