October Photos are Up!

The latest photo album is up for your viewing pleasure.

Things are going pretty well in the Black Haus. Lyla informed me the other night, "You're the best daddy I ever had. I'm gonna love you forever. You're my hero." Lyla now has a pony, ice cream for dinner every night and a gold tea set for her dolls. Aside from that, she's been loving pre-school and is coming home with all kinds of new information and stories to tell us. It's kind of odd that she has a life without either of her parents around.

Quinn has gotten pretty good about pulling himself up on tables, drawers, cabinets, etc. and can now get himself back to sitting, too. He still isn't walking, though. We're not sure if he still hasn't developed the leg strength for it, he's too scared to try or he's just plain lazy. Hopefully he'll get walking soon, but for now, he's crawling like a demon and opening up and emptying every cabinet he can. He hasn't done much in the way of talking either. The most he'll say is "hi" and "mumma". However, he LOVES music. He'll sway back and forth to the beat as soon as he hears any music and he plays the instruments in his music class with total glee.

Quinn Crawling

So, Quinn finally got shaped up enough to get to crawling a few weeks ago. He has low muscle tone, which has led to developmental delays in a few areas, like mobility. Erin has been dealing with juggling his physical therapy and occupational therapy for the last six months or so. Unfortunately, the Early Intervention program is filled with a bunch of therapists who don't really answer to anyone and can shift around appointments whenever they want or not show up or show up late. Whatever works for them, which has made it very difficult to schedule for Erin, Lyla and Quinn's time.

Erin ended up taking Quinn to another therapist outside of Early Intervention who she drives to (yay for having a car!), but that makes 5 times a week he has therapy. He'd better start catching up soon to stop this madness. However, he has started making strides standing while holding on to things like tables and is crawling all over the place, which is fantastic.

So, with no further ado... here's Quinn crawling!

Settling into Autumn

The September Gallery is up! Everything is going pretty well, aside from the regular kid issues like crying for unknown reasons and whining and sibling rivalry. I'll update a bit more on that later and have some video of Quinn crawling... finally!

No Tears Today!

Lyla appears to be getting into her groove. Today, she just walked right on up the stairs without even asking me to come up to the classroom. Yesterday, she told me she wanted me to leave her in the classroom, but today was fine heading up on her own.

One of the teachers told me that yesterday, once Lyla was sitting down on the carpet, she looked around, realized no one else was crying and calmed down and stopped crying. After that, the rest of the day was totally fine.

Here's hoping I'm done with the pre pre-school tears!

Instead of chronicling Lyla's pre-school saga in my Facebook status, I realized I should use the blog and open up the info to people like... oh... my mom. Hi, Mom!

The first two days of pre-school were great. We had gone to an orientation earlier and Lyla met the teachers and saw the classroom. Then when I dropped her off on the first couple days, she was a little skeptical about the process, but didn't break down crying. To explain the process, we would enter the school, go downstairs into a little out of the way lobby and wait for the teachers to come get the kids. They would take the kids up another set of stairs and into their classroom.

The third day, since Lyla seemed mostly ok and since all had gone well the first couple days, I asked Lyla for a hug and a kiss before she headed off. Big mistake! She gave me a hug, refused to let go and started wailing and screaming that she needed her Daddy to stay with her. I tried to calm her down and failed. I realized I just had to leave and took off as the teacher who was holding her hand as Lyla went boneless, started to say, "Daddy, I think you just need to leave and..." and then saw I was already half way up the stairs.

Today, the pre-school's new plan was to take the kids in through a different door, so the parents could take the kids up to the classroom instead of dropping them off at the other door. While this worked for many kids and parents, it was a total failure for us. Lyla was fine as I was leaving her at the door, then saw the other parents going up and started to get teary eyed and turned back to find me and wanted me to go upstairs to the classroom with her. Once there, she grabbed onto me again and refused to let go. Once again, I had to pry her off and make a break for it. This time, I ended up right outside her window and got to listen to her screaming. Fortunately it subsided after a couple minutes. Any bets on how much longer this will happen? I'm hoping not much more.

I do have to say, it's nice to hear her say, "I want my daddy to stay with me forever", even if she says it while crying her head off and clinging to me for dear life. I'm sure forever will be over when she's a teenager.

I'm Catching Up!

I've got the August Gallery up! Yay for me! We're only most of the way through September.

The gallery includes pictures of crazy couple weeks for us. We traveled to Oshkosh, left the kids with their grandparents there, drove to Chicago for Jamie and Joe's wedding, then Erin brought me to the airport in Milwaukee to head back to NYC solo.

My flight got diverted due to "developing weather" and I spent 5 hours sitting on a runway in Newburgh, NY. At least the kids weren't with me! Erin and the kids stayed in Oshkosh for a few more days, then brought Jane back to NYC with them. She watched the kids while we went to Alissa and Kyle's wedding in Massachusetts.

I hope you enjoy the pictures! Now I have to start getting September pics ready. Here's a sneak peak from Lyla's first day of pre-school.