Changes

WEATHER
Fall is in the air here in Kodiak. Rain returned after weeks of sunny weather. The leaves are coming off the trees and it seems that Kodiak is in full fall-mode! I rather like the return of darkness...its a bit easier to put kids to bed when the sun is starting to set. They're more easily convinced, lets say. (anyone who spends time around here during bedtime knows that its not the most smooth parenting part of our day).

SPEECH
Today I took Nora back to speech therapy, as she had the summer off. It felt good to have her walk into the speech therapists room and be excited to be there. She just seems extra confident. It made me realize how much progress she has made with speech in the past 3 months.

Nora also had an improved attention span with speech therapist Jean and I had a moment where I thought, "wow-Nora is blossoming!". We've still got a ways to go with her speech therapy, but I'm starting to see a little light at the end of the tunnel.

STUEY
Stuey gives me a run for my money lately. He is getting over the cold Nora had and is slightly run down from it. The past week he wakes up in the middle of the night coughing, comes to my bed, coughs for about 20 minutes and finally returns to sleep. This makes him a tad (well, a LOT) grumpy during the day.

He screams loud, and is demanding. Its something else. He just starts screaming louder until he thinks he'll get what he wants. My strategy? Well, we use time outs pretty heavily. But I'm trying to shift to putting his toys to time out. He HATES it when toys are put to time out. It seems to be working.

Tonight at bedtime he was threatening to get out of bed, so I held a favorite train pamphlet he loves and told him that if he got out of bed, his pamphlet would disappear forever. He knows that I stick to my word, so he said, "ok, mommy" and laid in bed and didn't get out.

I remember he went through a challenging time about a year ago. Nora and Stuey go through their phases of change. I think with the start of preschool, this is a time of change for Stuey. Hopefully things will stabilize in a few days (or weeks!).

BYE BYE VERTIGO
The vertigo is on the out. Thank heavens. Now I only have very rare vertigo...infrequent. And usually related to rolling over in bed. And even that is getting better. My energy is back and I"m back to work this week and loving it. Taking a week off really was the pits. I love what I do too much. But I really did need to the break to fully get over the vertigo.
I won't be returning to my full on yoga practice for a while--no downward dogs unfortunately. I'm really nervous to try it. I'm doing some yoga, but very, very cautiously. I don't want to trigger a temporary spell of vertigo.

Zoya

Photos: Exercise Equipment camp when at dinner at Lisa and Gregg's house. Stuey loved the exercise balance board, stuey loved the ball.
The yoga photo was before my vertigo. I loved doing a short series of sun salutations and the kids loved joining me. Looking forward to returning to it!