Wedding Rehearsal

So I'm finally getting around to posting these pictures. They are from when we attended Bryan and Cyndi's wedding rehearsal. I'll post more from the wedding when I can find the time. (Not enough time in the days anymore!) Maddie in her tiera from Aunt Helen and Corey. A true princess!

Madelynn breakdancing.

Pat tickling Malachi and Madelynn. It didn't take long for them to warm up to Pat. Aiden...not so much!

Daddy and the trio racing back to the reception hall.

The boys and their God Father.

Maddie posing for me in front of the pretty flowers.

The boys going to their daddy. So cute!

My attempt at trying to get a group shot by the pretty flowers. Madelynn was willing to pose, Aiden kept screaming "No, mommy", and Malachi lost interest while I was trying to get Aiden to stand with them.

Daddy and Aiden.

Pat, Madelynn, and Corey. It doesn't get any cuter than this!

Riding Ponies

As promised, here are the pictures from riding the ponies. There is a man that sets up pony rides for donations. All of the donations go to charity. The ponies and the helpers were wonderful and the kids (mostly) had a great time.Malachi riding Dolly. She does really well kids who are wiggley and those with special needs. As the child leans to one side or another, Dolly shifts her body to accomodate the child and gently shoves them back to where they should be. It's amazing that ponies can be that smart!

Malachi enjoying his pony ride.

What a big boy!

Madelynn riding Luca.

Madelynn being a big girl!

After a short pony ride, Aiden chose to play with the wagon instead.

Aiden did not enjoy the pony ride! He screamed and cried the entire two circles around the trail.
His pony's name was Barbie.

Peyton riding the pony.

Isabelle is such a rock star! :)

She kept posing for my pictures.

Fun at the pool with friends

A couple of weeks ago I went to a public pool in Jackson with my friend, Chris, and two of her children, Isabelle (sorry if I screwed up the spelling...I can't ever get it right) and Peyton. Peyton is about the same age as the trio so they played pretty well together after they got over the shyness. Anyways, this was the coolest public pool I've ever been too. It has a whole huge area that young children can play in, including buckets that fill with water and then dump on them, a size appropriate water slide, and lots of other water squirting things. The kids had a blast. I wish I had time to go again before the summer ends, but it isn't looking likely. Next year we'll get together a lot earlier in the summer.

Malachi trying to step on the water squirting up.

Peyton swimming.

Aiden playing in one of the water contraptions.

Peyton joining in the fun.

Chris had all 5 kids singing songs and doing the motions.

Peyton, Malachi, Madelynn, Aiden, Isabelle

Maddie on the water slide. She LOVED it!

The boys climbed up and sat on the edge of the pool. It was so cute. They splashed their feet and were just enjoying eachother's company.

Madelynn loves to swim and is getting really good at it.

Madelynn and Aiden running through the 'raining' water.

Malachi swimming. Although there is hardly any water, by the end of our time there he was venturing into the deeper water (like 18 inches) and was attempting to swim. It was more floating on it belly and walking his hands along the bottom of the pool.

Chris, we had a great time with you and can't wait to do it again sometime. I'm so glad you made me go!

We also went and rode ponies after the pool, but more on that in the next post. :)

WAKE UP CALL!!!

I'm a teacher...I've worked with kids of various ages in various situations...from family to friends to students at school or church...I know how to handle them and what to watch for. One the unspoken laws of my job is to watch for signs of abuse. I'm lucky that none of the students that I've ever had had shown signs of abuse, but I have heard stories and seen pictures. One of the images in my head is that kids who have dislocation injuries in their arms or legs are most likely children of abuse. I thought that these kinds of injuries were reserved for abusive parents who grabbed onto their children by their limbs and yanked and pulled on them in hurtful ways. On Monday morning, I learned the truth to this myth.

Injuries like these are more common then most of us know. Injuries like these are most often caused by parents who are loving and caring and who would NEVER intend on hurting their children. In fact, they are mostly caused by parents who are playing with their children, swinging them in circles by their arms, picking them up by only their forearms, and other similiar cases. These things are innocent! Haven't we all played with a child like this?


On Monday morning, I was holding Malachi's hand attempting to lead him and his siblings out of the preschool room at church. They were going to the nursery so I could teach VBS. Malachi didn't want to leave and so he threw a typical toddler fit dropping himself to the floor. The force of me holding his hand and his body weight dropping to the floor was enough to cause a dislocation of his right elbow. We took him to the ER where they were able to pop it back into place, unfortunate for us, he was one of the very rare cases when the bone doesn't stay put. His elbow was set 4 times, 3 of which resulted in dislocation again. It was very painful for him and agonizing for me as his mom.

The image that I had in my head, caused me to believe that I would be accused of abusing my child, but in fact the ER staff explained that this was so very common and they've seen too many cases of it to count.

Malachi is doing well today and is using his arm nearly as normal. We will have to watch him carefully for a few days, but fortunately it wasn't anything more serious. Fortunate because dislocated elbows or 'nursemaid elbow' as its sometimes called, heals pretty quickly. Once set in place, it usually only takes 10-15 minutes before the child will begin using it. It does not require a cast, surgery, stitches, or any other procedure. They attempted to get him to wear a sling, but he wouldn't have it. Malachi's elbow will heal long before my guilt. My guilt for hurting my child, even though I didn't intentionally do it. People will say it's not my fault as he was just throwing a normal toddler fit, but I blame myself. I would never hurt my child intentionally and it eats at me knowing the pain that he went through. I'm heartbroken...

I only write to all of you in the hopes that it will be a wake up call to each of you. I hope that you'll take Malachi's story and tell your friends and family. And the next time you or someone you know are playing with your child or leading them hand-in-hand to remember my son and the pain he endured. DO NOT swing your children by their arms, wrists, or hands. Do not lift them up by only their arms, wrists, or hands. When they throw those little dropping fits, do not hold onto their arms, wrists, or hands. Be very careful of their precious little limbs, because this type of injury is more common than we know. Who knew that something as innocent as holding your child's hand could result in this...

Fancy Dresses, Sparkling Crowns, and Funny Hats

What do you do to attempt to have fun with three naughty, cranky, and tired two year olds when daddy is at work and you still have an hour before you can even think about putting them to bed? Play dress up!

The kids have reached an age where they are into playing dress up...especially Madelynn. Tonight I was able to get Aiden into it a little bit. Malachi would only wear a hat.

Aiden sporting his purple dress and headband.

Aiden took this picture of Madelynn with my camera. The kid has talent!

Malachi in his orange hat.

Aiden took this picture of me. He thought I should be included too. The scarf and hat were about all that I could make fit me! :)

Beauty queen Maddie.

Princess Madelynn.

Aiden wearing a green tutu, sparkling silver crown, and carrying his pink purse.

Aiden and Madelynn

Aiden in his purple dress again.

So, what can you gather from all of these pictures? We need some BOY dress up clothes! (and maybe some more girl stuff too) I couldn't get the boys to participate much because they know that only Maddie wears dresses! Malachi wanted nothing to do with it and I was able to coax Aiden a bit. Those pictures will be great when he brings home his future wife!

Bitter Sweet....

I'm not really even sure what to post tonight, but here goes my babbling...

We had Madelynn's last speech group today. The changed their minds and decided to retest her today rather than wait until the school year began. She tested completely in normal ranges for her age in both receptive and expressive language. Her expressive is still a little lower than her receptive, but she should continue to make progress. The decision is that she will not return to her speech group once the school ear starts. She will continue to do toddler group with her brothers and a couple months down the road, her speech teacher will come to toddler group and retest her again. If she shows that she's still making improvements, then she'll be officially graduated from speech services. If her scores show no improvements, we'll dicuss the options of getting her back into a speech group. We suspect she'll continue to make improvements, but it's nice that we'll be able to wait a few months before being discontinued from the program.

It was kinda bitter sweet leaving today knowing it would most likely be the last time we'd get to work with Maddie's speech therapist. Not only has Madelynn grown to love her, but she has also been an advocate for Malachi too. When we are being pushed toward only one option for him, she would let us know what else was available that we could push for. I feel like we had someone on our side that was being completely truthful to us regardless of what everyone else wanted us to do. Besides that, we owe so much to her for helping our little girl. At the beginning of summer, Madelynn struggled to get any of her words out, now she's easily talking in 2-3 word sentences and sometimes even using 4-5 word sentences. It's amazing how far she's come. To me, I owe her speech teacher the world! There is no amount of thanks that shows how I really feel.

Today was also Malachi's last home visit for the summer. We discussed what I'd like to do for the start of the school year. This is not definite, but it's a start at creating the plan. Josh and I will take the kids to an evening toddler group once a week and then Malachi will have two separate teachers offer him home services that will **hopefully** be more "sit down and study" speech therapy rather than play based like toddler group. The play group is great and he needs that for the socialization piece, but he has started doing some of Madelynn's homework cards for her speech class so i think he would benefit with some more of that rather than more play. The home visits will be mostly when our nanny is here which will be great because it will teach her some of the techniques that we've learned so she'll be able to be consistant with all of the kids while they are with her. Once the kids turn 3, we'll have to make some more decisions about what to do because the services available will be different and toddler group will no longer be an option, at least from what I'm being told. We'll see.....I just don't know how comfortable I am with sending him to preschool four hours a day four days a week while the other two are at home. It's certainly going to be a hard decision to make. Many prayers would be appreciate for that.

In other news, our house is no longer for sale. We had it for sale for 6 months with only one couple coming to look at it. We had two open houses where no one showed up. It just isn't selling. So, we decided that we'd take it off the market and continue to live close and cozy in this house for another year. We've lightly talked of some other options so we'll see what the future holds for us. Certainly not anything that will happen soon. I'm okay with this except for one thing....our DREAM HOME recently was lowered to $84,900 which is right where we wanted to be for houses. It's perfect in everything we wanted in a house. Unfortunately, we can't afford two house payments except for maybe one month, especially once we start paying child care costs again. So, if our house doesn't sell, there is no way we can purchase that one and chances are very likely that it won't be around in a year when we may try to put this one back on the market. I try to think about what God has planned for us, but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't completely heart broken to not be able to have a chance at that house. In my head I already had it decorated and I could imagine us living the rest of our lives there, but now those images are broken. :( It's hard to accept, but I know that there must be something better in our future, so we'll just try to get over it and move on.

That's all for tonight. I'll try to take some more pictures tomorrow. I haven't had my camera out since we got back from the U.P. :( I'm sure you all want to see how much the kids have grown in just a couple of weeks! Besides, isn't that the BEST part of this blog???? :)

Speech Updates

Today was our last day of toddler group at the LISD. Maddie has one more speech class on Wednesday and then all of the kids are done until the week of September 14th. The kids have made AMAZING progress in just a few short weeks, as we started these services the second week of June. Here's an update on each of the kids.

Aiden is talking in sentences now on a regular basis where he was just using phrases and a couple of words before. Although he has not technically been getting services, going to toddler group does offer him interactions with others, both kids and adults. He is using "I want..." sentences all the time now and is completely able to tell us what he wants, needs, etc. He is also singing songs all the time. I'm not talking about creating his own and humming...I'm talking REALLY singing like we, as adults, do. He does this with or without the song playing at the time. He is also getting better about his separation anxieties as well as those anxieties about strangers. He is fully able to interact with the adults and kids present during toddler group.

Madelynn is doing so much talking. She doesn't stutter or make the "t-t-t-t" sounds like she used to when trying to talk. She is interested in knowing the words for everything and when she learns the words she gets excited about it and repeats them a lot. For example...one night at dinner we had a can of peas and a can of corn. She kept repeating loudly, "mom, corn and peas....corn and peas....corn and peas mom." It was really funny! She also loves naming colors and knows a lot of the basic colors. She also is starting to ask questions by changing the tone of her voice. She's saying people's names and referencing them as well. Madelynn will be re-evaluated the first or second week after we return for services in September. They suspect she'll be done with speech, but they want to make sure that she continues to hold steady and/or make improvements over the long break. I can totally respect that because I don't want her dismissed too early. Madelynn continues to amaze both her teachers with how quickly she has progressed. It's like she learned how to get the words out and now she's right on track.

Malachi...where do I start??? He is a completely different kid. He is talking a ton of new words on a regular basis. He's starting to use "I want..."sentences. He names things, has learned some of his colors, and his eye contact has come a long way. He'll actually look at us when we're talking to him now! Also he is singing along to songs now and sometimes singing them on his own without the music. There is nothing better than hearing him sing "hot potato" by the Wiggles. He is asking for 'more' at the table and also consistanly saying some words for foods and snacks. He's listening more and understanding our requests. He helps to clean up more often. He interacts with his siblings on a regular basis, although he still enjoys his own time to play sometimes. And today, on the last day of toddler group, he blew bubbles! Malachi has been trying for months to figure out the actual way of blowing air out of his mouth, rather than sucking and licking. Every day at the end of toddler group the kids say good bye and get to blow bubbles...today he succeeded! It's the little things to me that seem so BIG. I'm so proud of my baby boy!

One last U.P. post.

Okay, so I had a few more cute pictures that I had to show, so here is the last of the up north pictures unless I can get my hands on some of the group shots.

Did I mention that all three kids slept in the same bed and did a GREAT job while we stayed at the hotel. Josh and I totally thought we'd be sleeping in separate beds with one or two children each.

Malachi and Madelynn were walking Baby (Grandma and Grandpa Ketola's dog) and had a great time doing it. I think Baby got tired before they did.

Malachi playing at the bottom of the slide waiting for others to come down.

This is one of the very tall slides they were doing by themselves while up north. I can't believe my babies are big enough to be doing things like that! Last year daddy and Grandpa had to climb up and slide with them.

Slides in Seeney

Malachi loves the sand. He kept laying in it.
Teeter-totter fun!

Aiden at the top of the slide.

Malachi using the slide properly. (We really stressed this with all 3!)

Madelynn getting ready to go down.

So, we stayed in a very small little town called Seeney while in the U.P. They have a motel that becomes filled with the Ketola family every year for the reunion. It works really well because the rooms are big enough for our family. Traveling with three kids involves toys, extra blankets, and in pat years 3 pack n' plays to set up...and yes, there was a little room left over. They even have a kitchenette in the rooms so it makes it easier for us to take food and make our own meals, therefore saving us money.

Next to the motel is a park that used to be a school. It's now a community building type of thing, but the old playground equipment is left. It's an "old time" playground that most of us had growing up, not the new version that has the fancy heavy duty plastic jungle gyms. Anyways, the kids loved playing with the attractions. They especially liked the (very tall) slide. I was hesitant about it because it was so high, but they did great and loved going up and down all by themselves. My little ones are growing up and starting to do things all on their own....sniff, sniff....

Lake Huron

Malachi playing in the waves.
Checking out the rocks.

"Look at that."

"These rocks are smooth."

"I love chasing the birds."

"Wow, this is a big bath tub!"

Picture perfect view of the bridge.

My attempt to get the kids in a picture with the bridge behind them.

Another great view of the bridge.

Heading towards the water for some fun.

We spent last weekend up north in the Upper Penninsula for a family reunion. One would think that traveling 8+ hours one way in a car with three 2 year olds would be awful, but they did surprisingly well. We stopped in Mackinaw to eat the lunch we had packed at a park on Lake Huron. We played in the water a little too. It was windy and chilly that day, but that certainly didn't stop the kids from diving into the water. I got some really good pictures of them playing in the water and also of the Mackinaw Bridge. More to come on other events from the weekend.