Here we come, walking down the street*

Maya's figured out that Parker gets walked on a leash, and now she wants to be the one holding it.  So I devised a 2 leash system that lets her "walk" him from the stroller, but lets me be in charge (just a little sprinkle of uncommon sense) . . . poor Parker is slightly confused about where to walk, but he's figuring it out. 

Here's what it looks like:





I feel a little bit like I'm operating a sled dog team with the stroller in one hand and the leash sticking wayyyyy out in front of me with Parker walking near the front of the stroller . . . I can't imagine what people are thinking as we walk towards them on the sidewalk.  But if Maya can't see where Parker is, she keeps twisting around in the stroller . . . and I'm trying to introduce the phrase "With Maya" to tell Parker when to heel to her.

*If you watch the video closely, you'll also get a glimpse of my fun new puffy magenta coat, and one of the new Starbucks cups in action.)

**Tomorrow December arrives, the most fun month of all.  Stay tuned for a walk down Holiday Card memory lane, starting with Maya's first holiday card (2008).
***If you see an empty space with a play button, just click it and the video will appear.

****If you took the time to read all of these stars, you get 7 points. 

Time slips away, and leaves you with nothing, mister . . . *

I haven't written since Monday?  Really?  Well, that's what happens.  Dave gets a week off from work, projects take over, time slips away, and the blog gets bumped down on the list of priorities.

We've been having a great week :)

We had some therapies on Monday and Tuesday, but canceled them all for Weds-Thurs-Fri.  3 days of blissful unscheduledness.  I'm sure that Maya misses her buddies, but it's nice to have the time off.    We've hung out with family (both sides), Maya's gotten to play with both sets of grandparents, 3/4 of her aunts & uncles, and 5 out of 7 cousins.  We've played, ran errands, and created another fantastic holiday card---coming soon to mailboxes nationwide :)

Oh, and we picked up these:

AHHHHHH!  (that's the angels singing) 

If your a real life friend of mine, or a regular reader, you might know that I have a thing with iced coffee.  I have 2 per day (ok, occasionally 3).  It has to be iced, has to be strong, has to be in a large (venti, whatver) cup.   A few years back Starbucks made these reusable iced coffee cups, which flew off the Starbucks shelves----and unfortunately, flew off of my desk at school, cracking mine straight down the side.  (Dave ordered a replacement for me from Thailand.  Seriously.)  Since then, we try to have a few back-ups on hand.  They only come out twice a year (holidays and summer) and don't last long.  So we grabbed 2 new ones this week.

And then, my fabulous sister-in-law brought me a blue one!  Blue! Someday I'll have all the colors of the rainbow.

And we even got this teeny tiny Christmas tree ornament cup :)  It's too cute (and perfect)!

(If you like iced coffee, a cup like this is really worth getting---it's double walled, so no water beads up on the outside of it.  More importantly, it's reusable (good for the planet).  AND, I just make a pot of coffee and then keep it in the fridge (in a Tupperware style pitcher) so it's cheap and always on hand.)

On the other end of the relaxed spectrum, this week we will be SERIOUSLY OVERBOOKED.  (That's in all caps because it's a scary, intimidating week.)  Maya will have her full schedule of therapies, plus a pediatrician appointment (2.5 year check-up) plus 3 evaluations for CPSE.   I'll explain what that means some time this week, but for now just know that it's stressing me out.

So we will be completely booked, from breakfast until dinner, nearly every day this week. 

Monday: (breakfast/walk Parker) Therapy A: 8:30-9:30,  (walk or dog park, lunch) Therapy B:11:30-12:10, (nap) Therapy C: 3:15-4, (snack) Therapy D: 4:30-5:15 (dinner, play, bed)

Tuesday: (breakfast, dog park) Therapy A in Manhattan with travel time 9:45-12, (nap), Therapy B: 3:15-4, (snack, walk in lobby) Therapy C: 4:45-5:30  (dinner, play, bed)

Wednesday: (breakfast, dog park) Therapy A in Manhattan with travel time 9:45-12, (nap), Therapy B: 3:15-4, (snack) Psychological Evaluation 4:30-?  (eat, play, bed)

Thursday: (breakfast, walk Parker) Music class: 9:30-10:15 (walk home, snack, play) Therapy A: 11:30-12:15, Pediatrician 12:30, (nap, walk Parker) Speech/feeding evaluation 4-? (eat, play, bed)

Friday: (breakfast, walk Parker) Therapy A: 8:30-9:30, Psychological evaluation 10:30-? (lunch, nap) Freedom!

I'm sure that I'm not alone on this front---sometimes it's really hard to explain to people how we "don't have any free time" even though Maya's little and I'm a stay at home mom.  Our free time really exists in 30-60 min blocks, which isn't quite long enough for a play date or lunch or whatever.  It can be really isolating.

So those are all of my random, strung together thoughts on the past week.  Oh, and I should include this, which was our Facebook status on Thanksgiving Eve, in case you didn't see it:

A year ago today we were having Maya's brain MRI done. This year we had breakfast and dinner with family, ran some errands, and enjoyed a therapy free day. Sometimes a year makes a big difference :) Happy thanksgiving, everyone.


:)
Hope you all had great Thanksgivings!

Free coffee at Starbucks today!

Bring a reusable cup to Starbucks, get a free coffee*

*offer good only while supplies last.



What does that even mean?  Aren't the "supplies" coffee?  How would Starbucks run out of coffee?

Anyway, it really is free coffee day.  Google it for details, or if you don't believe me :)

Two days in pictures, with no transitions between stories, and the worst and longest title ever

So, folks asked about the flier that I mentioned hanging around the neighborhood. I'd love to share it because I got so many responses! The title was "Young neighborhood mom seeks companionship" and no sooner did I hang it up than the emails started pouring in.

:)

Ok, for real, here it is (at Starbucks):

("Attention Parents of Kids with special needs" is the title)

Speaking of Starbucks, you may have noticed that you can see a giant Starbucks cup in almost all of my stroller pictures. That's a reusable iced coffee cup, and we make the coffee at home. I'm not buying coffee (and disposing of plastic cups) everyday. Here's Maya, and my cup, at the dog run:

Playing with the new camera has taught me about angles. Here she looks like she's at a park in the middle of a big city:

While here she could be swinging in a much smaller town

But really, there's just one big skinny building, and the shots were a few seconds apart.

Around 7:25 every night, we say "Maya, do you want to watch "Baby Signing Time?" And she does this:

Everyday I wear 3 rings. Last night I made pizza, and before I started kneading the dough I threw the rings in an empty baby food container. This morning when I went to put them on, I found a fourth. One of these things is not like the other . . . (Dave made it pre-work)

Maya tried to feed it a veggie stick.

We're working on veggie sticks in feeding therapy. She wants to do it all by herself (which has varying degrees of success).

While I made her breakfast, she went to work unfolding the laundry:

And she subtly tells me to put the camera away.

(An aside: A few posts back, I mentioned my "throw yourself into the universe" theory (henceforth TYITU), but I haven't had time to extrapolate at all. Way back when I wrote about the not knowing, a few interesting things happened. 1. I was forwarded an article from the Wall Street Journal about a family dealing with a lack of diagnosis for their son, and it brought to light how many people in the country struggle in that limbo situation. 2. In line with TYITU, I emailed the author of the article 3. She responded and pointed me towards an actual organization solely for families of kids who don't have diagnoses (SWAN . . . "syndromes without a name"). That's what the "swan" tag on some of my posts stands for.)

Here are some pictures from today . . . I took both of them with my phone, so the quality's not so great, but whatever. Maya & I spent some time at Starbucks this morning, which is our typical outing. She loves to look around at the people, and I like the espresso. We're getting to know the cast of characters who call Starbucks their home and my 2 favorites by far are: Loud Grumpy Old Man who tries to get strangers to play chess with him and Goth College Kid who takes out books, stares at a page while he drinks a cup of coffee with shaking hands (sometimes he forgets to open the books and just stares at the cover . . . Maya suspects he's on something. I concur.) I must be Lady Who Sits With Baby for 2 hours with giant iced latte.

Hiya everybody!

Peanut's new digs
(She moved to an outdoor hutch on the terrace because of Maya's allergies and is having a great time.)

Turkey and a big brown shoe*

Ok, technically it's a brown boot. But I wanted to work in a reference to the Thanksgiving song. Anyway, we'll get to that in a minute.

First, Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We're waiting for Maya to wake up from her nap so that we can head out to NJ to see my parents, sister & her family. Then tomorrow we're going into the city to have another Thanksgiving with Dave's family. Two thanksgivings :)

I just walked to Starbucks to grab a gigantic coffee before we leave, and was surprised (and bewildered) to see a boot on our car. Not the orange kind from the city that you get if you don't pay your tickets . . . a cowboy (cowgirl, actually) boot. On the car. Literally. Who leaves a boot on a car?

My first thought was that maybe it was in the gutter next to the car and some helpful person wanted to make sure that we saw it . . . or maybe it was a marking left from one hoodlum to another (the secret break-into-this-car code?). But surely there are less conspicuous ways to mark a car for crime. And who leaves a boot? Honestly.

Here's a pic: