New Hat and Gloves and Grapefest!

Heads-up... for those of you that check our blog regularly... I posted 2 entries tonight! (I'll have a few more to post once my battery recharges!)

We picked up a new hat and a couple of pairs of gloves at Wally World last week. Em was thrilled and even though they were still fastened together she insisted on wearing them all through the store. She makes me giggle.

The following day, Em was still very excited about her new hat and gloves and wanted to wear them to church (even though it got up to at least 70°F around lunch time).

Yeah, I know... REAL pretty, huh?
And yes, there just happens to be
another mismatched pair of gloves in
our house just like those!

Where's Mr. Blackwell when we need him?

...2 days after the famous glove purchase....

And yet again... where's Mr. Blackwell?

We did manage to take the gloves off
long enough to snack on some grapes!
That's my chipmunk!

Mmmmm, num-num!

Yup... still squirreling away a grape or two!

Zoo with Shell

Emily and I helped with food pantry a couple of Saturday's ago and the weather was so nice we decided we just couldn't spend the rest of the day inside so we called Aunt Shell to see if she wanted to hook up with us at the zoo. She was headed up this way for her class reunion that evening so we made a date.

Em had a fondness for brushing the "other"
end of the animals in the petting zoo.

Aunt Shell... hmmm... how many years
did you show sheep at the fair and you
still don't know the right end?

This was too cute to pass on the photo-op.

While the goats and sheep were fascinating, we
found an even more fascinating specimen in the
petting zoo... the little girl(s) with painted
faces really threw Em for a loop. She kept getting
right in her face and saying, "That's Nasty" or "Messy".
I'm sure the little girl's mom was thrilled.

No, we're not picking our nose, we're still
concerned about the little purple-shirted
girl in the background that has stuff
all over her face.

Yep, still checking her out...



See, Aunt Shell, this is how you feed a goat.
...one tiny piece of hay at a time.

Yeah, go ahead and pretend that you
were sitting on that thing so I could
get a picture of Em... you liked it!

Yet another picture that was too cute to pass up!

Thanks for spending the afternoon with us at the zoo, Aunt Shell!

Last Week's Activities

I forgot fill you in on last weekend's festivities!

To celebrate our 8th wedding anniversary, the three of us left Friday after work and headed to Mohican State Park for a 1 night stay and to spend the day Saturday in the area. We booked a special package that included pizza, a movie, popcorn and a gift certificate to the gift shop. We ordered our pizza, explored the lodge, located the pool and Em took special interest in the race car arcade game in the game room and then we picked up our pizza and popcorn and headed back to the room. After waiting exactly 30 minutes after eating (wink, wink) we dudded up for the pool and had some family fun time. As always, Em loved the pool and wasn't exactly thrilled when it was time to get out.

After breakfast on Saturday we checked out and took a drive around the lake in hopes of finding the place to rent a boat that we could take out for a joyride. Em took a much needed nap on our way there and woke up in time for us to put her warmer clothes and lifejacket on. She wasn't exactly thrilled about the lifejacket but after Ed, the friendly marina guy, gave her a sucker she was content.

She loved her first boat ride and
like her daddy, she loves to go fast!

Captain Dad!

Check out all that lollipop
juice on those chops! I would
have flipped if this sticky mess
was in my boat... if we had one!

Lollipop Heaven..MMMMmmmm, num, num!

Look! Someone finally has enough
hair to blow in the breeze!

The captain and crew.

Em is turning into a little teenager and really enjoys her independence. After grabbing Daddy's finger and getting him to help her with the light switch she will "dismiss" him and will frequently disappear into her room and close (slam) the door behind her. We'll often times find her sitting in her glider and reading books or playing with her puzzles. Sometimes she'll bring us shirts and pants that she's pulled out of her dresser drawers while she's exploring. I've finally smart enough to take almost all of the hair accessories out of her top drawer (where it was so convenient to get to) and moved them into an out of reach spot in her closet. She used to open all the baggies of barrettes, clips, rubber bands and everything else and shake them out onto the floor. Not a problem if you only have a few, but we're talking a container of 500 rubber bands and probably about 50 clips and bows that we have accumulated. (I know! Amazing for a kid that is just now getting hair!)

I decided to leave a small container of baby-sized scrunchies in her top drawer because there's probably about 200 of them and they can't hurt her and she can't hurt them. She loves to play with this stuff, so why not. After a quiet spell last night, I poked my head in her room and discovered she had dumped the entire bag out on the floor and was flinging them around her room. I had a need to "containerize" them so we put them in a biiiig basket. As you can see from the pictures below... the basket quickly became a bathtub for Em and we promptly began to entertain ourselves with it's contents...

Until next time... have a great day and be blessed!

Chef Boyardee's Secret Ingredient

It was Wednesday again in the Hypes household and it felt like another night where I just didn't want to worry about what to make for supper. Tom and I were both in the mood for pizza so I called the order in and he picked it up on his way home. Miss Em still isn't impressed with the idea of pizza so I threw together some ravioli and veggies for her.

We're chowing down on some wonderful Belly Buster's pizza (Yes, that's really what the place is call!) and Em is sauntering her way through her veggies and sees a few pieces of ravioli on her plate. In standard form, she asks, "What is THAT?!?" and I reply with, "It's yummy ravioli." She responds with, "Mmmmm, Num!" and proceeds to put a bite in her mouth. No expression, no excitement, no spitting it out, no indication of whether she liked it or not.

Em moved on to the corn. Not only moved on to it, but chowed it down leaving only ravioli on her plate. And, as Em is prone to do, she proceeded to dismantle and deconstruct the ravioli. She does this with sandwiches, peanut butter crackers and anything else that has been "assembled" at some point in it's life. She pulled the layers of pasta apart and revealed the "beef" filling. (If you've ever eaten Chef Boyardee you really have to wonder if that truly is beef... it doesn't look like the stuff I was raised on!)

The next part is something only Em would think of...

She looks up at me with this confused/horrified look, glances back at the dissected ravioli on her plate, looks back at me and does the sign for POOP!!! Her expression was truly priceless and I only wish I had the camcorder running at that point. Tom asked what I was laughing at and I had a hard time even telling him what she did because I was laughing so hard.

Try as I might, I could NOT convince her that her ravioli was not filled with poo. I tried telling her it was beef. I tried telling her it was meat. I tried telling her it was hamburger. She wasn't buying it. She picked up her plate and handed it to me and wanted nothing to do with it. (Thankfully, she didn't fling it like she did the other night! Oh, I was so upset with her for that little stunt.) Anyway, she decided she was done with eating for the night.

Sigh... This is one of those times that I wish she could express herself more so I could truly understand what she was thinking or this is one of those times that I'm very thankful she's not expressing herself more

Happy Fall, Y'All!

We had speech therapy this morning and before heading back home we had to swing into Buehler's to pick up some necessary groceries. Emily was PUMPED when she noticed the stacks and bins full of ginormous pumpkins all over the entrance to the store...

A Swimming We Will Go...

On Sunday afternoon, we went to Aunt Shell and Aunt Laura's house for a pool party and a cookout. Tom would have joined but he had to lead youth group. Here are some fun pictures from the afternoon.

Vacation Scrapblog

Of Storms, Speech and Bunny Slippers!

Just a quick (yeah, right) wrap up of our week in this post.

On Sunday afternoon we had the remnants of Hurricane Ike sweep through Ohio. There was quite a bit of damage in southern Ohio and by the time it came to us it still had quite a bit of power behind it. We were very blessed and only had a couple of limbs come down in the backyard. Others in our neighborhood had trees snapped off at the base, trees laying across roads and shingles flying off roofs. We had a big enough limb come down in the backyard that we had to have a friend come over and cut it up with a chainsaw and then we hauled the rest of the branches to the curb for the village to pick up. Our pile is a little tough to distinguish from the pine tree in the picture. The pine tree is on the other side of the road...the branches are in our yard in front of Tom's car... the pile made his SUV look really small.




On Fridays we have speech therapy. Here is a picture and a short video clip of what goes on there. About 20 seconds into the video you'll hear Em say "What is that?" She heard something in the next room that distracted her a bit.

We also took a road trip into town for supper on Friday night and along the way we had some conversations with Emily... enjoy!








Emily also outgrew her fun slippers from last year and since her daddy likes to keep the temperature in our house like a suburb of Antarctica I thought maybe a new pair of slippers would be in order for this fall and winter. Emily liked them in the store, didn't want to wear them when we got home and wouldn't take them off when it was time to go to bed. Who could pass on this pair of slippers....

A Heartwarming Week

Just wanted to share a praise that we've been having a REALLY good week this week. Here's the "CliffsNotes" prologue:

May '06 - Emily, was born in Kazakhstan
Jan/Feb '07 - we officially became her parents and brought her home to Ohio
Fast forward a year and a half and we celebrated her 2nd birthday
Aug '08 - Emily was diagnosed with mild cerebral palsy (spastic diplegia) and Botox treatment was prescribed

Fast forward again to this past week...

Praise 1.) Emily had an appointment with the neurologists at Children's Hospital on Wednesday to get a second opinion about a possible apraxia of speech diagnosis. I got to see her MRIs from last year for the first time and had them explained in layman's terms to me. She has does have global/overall scarring on her brain from her premature birth and apparently her brain didn't grow/develop as fully as it should have... but overall, the doc felt she would have some mild developmental delays but didn't see any major areas that would be affected. He didn't feel she has apraxia of speech. Woohoo!

Praise 2.) This is the one that really has my heart melting this week... our daughter is 28 mos. old today and just this week started calling me, "Mom". We've been doing sign language with her for quite a while now and she has been signing "mom", but it seems she's just now finding her voice. On Monday alone, she began saying: Mom and momma, Da and Dad-da, RyRy (for Ryan). On Tuesday, she added Papa (in a really cute whisper) to the mix and on Wednesday she started saying Nana. While she's been able to communicate her needs to us using sign language, I didn't realize how badly I wanted to hear her voice and to hear her say my name. I can't wait to see what she comes up with next.... My God and this kid never cease to amaze me!


Emily continues to go to speech therapy on a weekly basis and we have almost run out of physical therapy visits per our insurance limitations so we are banking one visit for after Em's botox treatment or until we know if we are eligible for BCMH funding to help provide more physical therapy. This week at speech therapy, while Em was playing/working with Audrey, I spent some time compiling a list of the words/sentences that Em says and signs. I was amazed at the length of the list. It seems odd to me that Em says things like, "What is this?.... What is that?... That's nasty.... and Are you ready?" but she's just now learning to say our names.

Stay tuned... I'm hoping to post a video of Em's new words in the next couple of days!

...nothing to do with Emily

As the title says, this story has nothing to do with Emily but it happened last night and it made me chuckle.

We have a 1st grade boy at church named Bryce who has become my buddy. He makes sure he finds me every Sunday morning to give me a hug. That's the "who". Here's the "what".

Our church held it's monthly community/family meal last night. I was sitting around the table with Bryce, his mom and several other friends and we were catching up and sharing kid stories. Apparently, I was monopolizing his mom. He quietly got up from his seat, walked clear around to the opposite corner of the table, tapped me on the arm, and as he leaned in he loudly whispered, "Excuse me, can you please stop talking to my mom so I can say something?!?"

Now I've heard his mom tell him on several occasions not to interrupt her when she was talking. Looks like he found the loophole!

Again, as in my "Cranky Emily post" what could I do, but hug him, plaster a big grin on my face and oblige his request? (He DID say "thank you" as he walked back to his seat!)

Saturday's Zoo Trip

We really didn't have any advanced plans for this long Labor Day weekend and it was kind of nice. On Saturday morning, we ALL slept in! We were pretty lazy and then decided mid-morning that we might like to take a trip to the zoo. This is where the joys of a zoo membership come into play... we can go for just a few hours whenever we want!

I thought Em was old enough and mobile enough
this time around to try out the petting zoo. She
loved it and probably would have spent the rest
of the day there if we had let her.

I promise... there was no prompting in the above
picture. I was surprised when I turned around
to see that Emily felt the goat should be wearing
her hat. It was very accommodating.

We also found 1 lamb in the mix of all the goats.
Boy, was it soft... and mellow!

We also tried out the train ride and it was a hit!

And, we made sure we visited Daddy's favorite - the Red Panda.

Although I don't have pictures of it this time, we did visit one of Emily's favorites -- the aquarium. Tom's opening comment as we walked in... "Forget about the stroller, you now have a battering ram in your hands." It was a wee bit crowded and certainly the ratio of people to strollers had to be about 2 to 1. I was content to hang back with Em and let her see the big picture of the tank. Tom felt she needed to get right to the glass and took the reins... or the battering ram by the...horns?

She loved pointing out the biiiiig fish and the itty-bitty fish with Daddy. After a few minutes, I noticed there was a diver in the tank and he was feeding the fish. He swam down to the corner where Emily was parked and waved at all the kids. He waved specifically at her and she was thrilled and blew him a kiss. To which he responded with a blown kiss back at her. After he climbed out of the tank and Emily had had her fill of fish watching, we rammed our way out of the aquarium and mosied back to the car.

It was a wonderful afternoon to hang out as a family and we all took a big family nap when we got home.

The End. ;-)

Silly Cranky Girl

Just a fun story to share...

Last night I was sitting in the big-butt chair and playing with Emily. She decided to get a little feisty with me and was acting a little cranky. I plainly stated that cranky little girls weren't allowed to sit in my chair with me and if she was going to act that way she needed to get down. I then asked, "Are you done being cranky?" To which she looked up at me with puppy dog eyes, shook her head and said, "nooooo" (in a really cute voice).

What's a mom to do in times like this except hug her cranky little girl, chuckle to herself and post it on her blog. ;-D

Today at Children's Hospital

Emily had an appointment this afternoon with Dr. Batley at Children's Hospital. We've been anxiously awaiting this appointment. Dr. Batley works in the Physical Medicine Clinic at Children's and her job was to diagnose why Emily is still struggling with flexibility and mobility after a year and a half of therapy.

The appointment went really well and once again I am highly impressed with the staff at Children's and how friendly and caring they are. Emily tends to be shy around new people at first but they all interacted with her and at one point when we were scheduling our next appointment, Em sneaked into one of the doctor's offices and grabbed her by the hand to walk her down the hall and show her some toys (and the doctor very kindly obliged to Emily's request)!

Dr. Potts met with us first and we shared what we knew of Em's birth history and what we've learned from PT and Speech Therapy so far. After she gathered some information and watched Emily run up and down the hall with me a few times, she brought in Dr. Batley to join us. Dr. Batley was very sweet with Emily and answered any questions we had.

Long story short... Emily has been officially diagnosed with a mild form of Cerebral Palsy called Spastic Diplegia. If you're interested in learning more, here's a website I found this evening that explains quite a bit of the same information that Dr. Batley explained to me this afternoon.

While some kids with cerebral palsy are given braces to wear to help with walking, Dr. Batley didn't feel this would benefit Emily because her left foot in particular doesn't have a full range of flexibility without quite a bit of discomfort. She is recommending a Botox injection to help with treatment.

Fortunately, Em's PT has mentioned this type of treatment to me in the past so I didn't laugh out loud when they told me about it. The point of Botox for CP treatment is that it should help the tense muscles relax so the weaker muscles can start building back up.

I'm still in the research process at this time to make sure there are no weird side effects or anything to this treatment and if all goes well, we are scheduled to get Em's first Botox injection in mid-November. She gets checked 3 weeks after that to see how things are coming along. If it appears to be working, she'll get a shot every 3 mos. until she seems better or until we notice that it's no longer being effective.

We've been told by Dr. Batley, our physical therapist and our pediatrician that there's every reason to believe that with proper treatment, Emily will lead a normal, productive life and there's a good shot that by about age 6 her symptoms will be barely noticeable (if at all).

While this whole thing may sound like sad news to some, we're happy to hear there's a reason for what's going on. It's nice to know what's going on and what we can do about it. We're praying that we qualify for BCMH funding to help pay for Em's continued physical therapy and speech therapy and any other treatments that aren't covered by our insurance.

The Loves of her life...

Emily LOVES exploring...

Lately it's involved looking through her dresser drawers and bringing me shirts, shorts, and pajamas one piece at a time. This week she found the next drawer up... the one with all the "hair pretties" in it. She brought out a couple of sandwich baggies full of barrettes, clips, etc. And better yet, she actually pushed for me to put one after the other in her hair. I think we ended up with over 30 in her hair and she kept them in for at least 30 minutes. A new record!



Emily LOVES her daddy.

After letting me put a thousand barrettes in her hair, Emily decided to try on some of Daddy's shoes. She decided they were very "Biiiiiii(g)" and heavy and didn't even try taking off with them.

Emily LOVES babies!

Our friends, Keith and Jessica, came over on Friday night with their kids Jonas and Kael. Emily was thrilled. She loves pointing our Kael in her picture album that travels with us in her diaper bag and on Friday she got to meet Kael's baby brother for the first time. She was so gentle with him and couldn't seem to plant enough kisses on him.


Emily LOVES her RyRy!

After church today, we all seemed to crash at the house. Emily woke up a bit early from her nap and was happy to find her big brother, Ryan, napping on the couch. She held off as long as she could (about 30 seconds) and then crawled up on the couch and sat on top of him so she could be closer to him. She REALLY loves her RyRy (and I think the feeling's mutual).