Happy Boxing Day!!

Happy Boxing Day everyone! I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas with your families. We certainly did. I wanted to share this photo with all of you. Ben has gotten more and more agile with his walker over the last few months. He likes to "jump" where he lifts his feet off the floor by using his arms on the walker. Well...this has now escalated to him lifting himself up onto his walker so that he can now sit on the back of it. He figured this out at our annual Christmas Eve party with my cousin Scott egging him on. And then of course, my cousin would push him around while he was sitting on the back of it. It was truly fantastic! All of Ben's cousins wanted a walker too so they could be as cool as Ben.

It was truly a magical night. It was the first time that most of my extended family saw Ben as a true 3-year-old...upright and walking. Instead of sitting and crawling. It was really crowded and he wasn't able to use his walker the whole evening but for the parts of it when he could, it really paid off.

We are awaiting a major snowstorn here in New Brunswick, Canada...supposed to arrive overnight. Lots of the white stuff (yeah!) and wind too. So we won't be going anywhere tomorrow....so more time playing with all our new toys that we got from Santa.

If the weather if affecting any of you out there, please don't go out on those roads. Stay home with your families where it's safe.

Happy Boxing Day!

Christmas is once again upon us

Hi everyone. I hope you are all managing to enjoy these last days leading up to Christmas. I haven't been blogging at all (although I am reading your blogs) as I've just been so busy. Above is our family Christmas photo (and more follow below) done by Megan McKinley Photography.

Since we got back from our week in Halifax doing Conductive Education, we've been busy getting ready for Christmas, going to preschool, PT appointments, etc. There is more botox in Ben's future...we're currently on the waiting list so hopefully we'll get that done sometime in January.

We're going to do another week of Conductive Ed during the 1st week of January. Again, it will be with Sarah, Ben's classmate from the last session.

We're also going to be heading to Ontario for a weekend in January for my husband's grandmother's 90th birthday party. We decided that the best gift we could give her would be to make the trip with the boys for her big party.

I feel like Ben is making good progress these days. He uses his walker constantly. Even inside the house now. We even borrowed a lighter weight walker from the hospital to use over the holidays as Ben's "inside walker" so we can take it with us when we visit family and friends over the holidays. He is getting better and better using it. He "runs" and "jumps" and even falls backwards on purpose just for fun.

We're working on giving up the afternoon nap. We're trying a 3-day-a-week nap schedule. So it's been interesting around here. Lots of crankiness at suppertime on those days when they don't nap. But they are going down at nighttime so much better and sleeping later in the morning which is great.

Christmas will be a busy and fun time for us. My sister will be home from Calgary for about 9 days which will be wonderful. The boys seem to think that she's always on an airplane when she's not here with us and they're getting excited to see her. There will be lots of family events to attend. A huge one on Christmas Eve and smaller ones on Christmas Day. We'll go and stay a night with my brother's family. And we've decided to host a "New Year's Day Recovery Party" this year. Hopefully it's a success and will be the first one of many.

Christmas feels very magical this year. The boys understand it and love all the decorations and lights. It's amazing seeing Christmas through their eyes.

I probably won't post much over the holidays but you never know. In case I don't post again before Christmas, Merry Christmas everyone! Enjoy your families. Enjoy your kids...they'll only be this age once and experience Christmas this way once.

I'm not quite sure what's so funny here...

Showing off the gingerbread men they made at preschool

Daniel helping Ben with his tie

Cuddles which quickly turn into wresting matches these days.

And my favourite...this boy is so amazing!