Happy 1st Birthday Joshua!!

Dearest Joshua,

Happy 1st Birthday my little toddler boy. This first year has been a challenge but you have made it all worth while. You are such a happy little boy who loves life, his family and most especially his daddy. Man, what a daddy's boy you are!! It's been amazing to me, watching you catch up to your big brother in so many ways. You are so sweet, I just love your disposition, even when you're letting me know you've waited long enough. I'm sorry that you had to wait while I did other things (like take care of Joey), I feel badly for that, but there can only be one only child and son, I'm sorry, it wasn't you. If there was a way (without giving up Joey) for you to have been an only child for your first year too I would have done it happily!

The strides you have made this first year, have blown me away. From refusing to breastfeed to being a great little bottle feeder (my first one too), developing your milk allergy to growing out of it by 10mos!! You love your paci enough to let it settle you down when my hands are full, you sat up early, rolled even earlier and walked earlier than I thought possible!

You put up with your big brothers abuse (I'm sorry he beats on you and bits you when he's frustrated. It just breaks my heart every time I see him doing that to you but he really does love you more than you will ever know!) And the amount of love you have for him is abounding! He's luckym I think you'd take his head off if you didn't love him so much!

I love how you are so wonderful at finding yourself a toy and occupying yourself for so long!

You were so easy to take off the bottle which I'm so grateful for as I didn't know the first step in that weaning process, you made it so easy for both of us. Maybe you'll give up the paci easy too? I'm praying it's so.

You have such a special look about you, one that says watch out world, I'm going to get you!

You sit there and take it all in, I know you're just a little sponge about everything. I think you're really going to give me a run for the money in years to come.

Thank you for all your wonderful smiles, they are so precious to me. Your beautiful green eyes just burst with love and life when you smile. Your chipmunk cheeks, my goodness, all I can say is don't lose them too soon ok?

Until you are a parent you will never know the depth of love you can have for your child and until you have two you can't begin to imagine how it's possible to love more than one. You, Joshua, captured my heart from day one and my love for you has multiplied exponentially since the day you were born! It's been absolutely amazing having you in my life. Thank you for choosing me to be your Momma.

Thank you for being the wonderful little boy that you are and being my precious little Joshy. Mr. Smelly McFeets means the world to me!!!

I love you forever and ever and always Joshy and forever and always my baby you'll be!
Momma

Joey's Speech Therapy

I've been trying to get Joey into a "classroom" setting for a long time now. WE have a program called SPROUTS that takes "normal" kids as well as those in the EI programs. It's like a preschool class, once a week, but for infants up to 5yrs old and it's free! There's a HUGE waiting list for it and when your name pops up, if you're not available for the time and day of the week that pops up, you go to the bottom of the list :( this has happened to us on at least 2 occasions now.

So I was talking to Joey's case manager now that she's back from maternity leave (had twin boys a few months back) and she told me about a speech therapy class which is 1x weekly, 4 kids to one ST in a classroom setting. I talked to his speech therapist about what she thought, if Joey would benefit from it or if it would hinder him (she's the one who would be his teacher in the class as well) She felt he would better benefit from doing both not just one or the other. However, she didn't think that they would go for that as a budget thing.

My problem with this budget thing is MY insurance is covering this therapy so whatever joey needs and is covered should be available to us! KWIM?

So I talked to the case manager about my concern and preference based on Miss Rita's experience and she said she didn't have the authority to ok it but would talk to her boss and one of them would get back to me.

Well Suzanne, the boss, called me back a couple hours later (she's great about getting back to you unlike the others!!!) and we hashed it out......

She moved us to the top of the list for SPROUTS and gave me the day and time that would work for us, we start on Monday (9-11am) then he also will get the ST that he has been getting on Friday's with Miss Rita as well!

I'm so much happier with this set up, he'll get the classroom, the interaction with other kids both older and younger at all different levels of development as well as his one on one with Miss Rita. He is also slated to start their Preschool in the fall and that stuff is mostly set up already too.

Oh and did I mention that Joshy gets to go to the SPROUTS too and so will Jonny once he's born??? Ok well I don't know what a newborn would do there other than be in my arms but it's for birth on up and I'm so psyched!!!

I've learned 2 things from this
1. It's all in who you know (talk to)
2. The squeaky wheel gets the oil! LOL

I'll keep you all update as to how this works for Joey. I am hoping an praying that it will get him to just explode his expressive language!!!!