happy halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

akaiya wore her animal costume to school today and got lots of attention. one little boy actually knew who she was! we decided to skip spraying her hair pink and use a pink wig. it's a double bonus b/c mom likes to wear it too! akaiya decided to skip trick or treating and just take a nap - she's a girl after her mom's heart :)

akaiya was letting us know she was not ready to have her picture taken...

working the cheeseball smile :)

yelling like animal!

positive thoughts for annabel

one of our friends from far away, annabel, has been having some problems with her health and needs some positive thoughts sent her way. kaiya and i met annabel two years ago in salt lake city at a SOFT conference. we were so excited to see them this year in denver at the SOFT conference. annabel is a sweet little girl with the most infectious smile :) we will definitely be thinking of her often and sending lots of warm wishes out to her family while they try to figure out what's going on with her.

Click here to visit Annabel's blog

pre-halloween party :)

kaiya's mom loves halloween. and for those of you that don't know - i go a little overboard on kaiya's halloween costumes. lucky for kaiya (and mom) nana is an excellent seamstress. so every year we go to her with some wacky idea for a costume and she gives us looks like we are nuts - and then creates a masterpiece! so this year we decided on animal from the muppet show. we got to do halloween a week early b/c we went to a campground with our family today that has a parkwide celebration. it just goes to show how old mama is getting b/c NONE of the kids had any idea who animal was. they all thought she was some funky looking thing with pink hair. animal has always been one of my favorite muppets. i was sitting around trying to come up with something fun for kaiya to be and it all of a sudden clicked! animal has crazy hair - so does kaiya. animal is all skinny legs and arms - so is kaiya. animal yells a lot - SO DOES KAIYA!!! it was perfect in my mind, but oh so disappointing that kids these days don't have any idea who jim henson was or have any familiarity with his awesome muppets :) so i just rolled kaiya around and let her yell at people and pretended she was saying trick or treat...and let them think she was some sort of deranged clown or creature.

TRICK or TREAT!

very sleepy after all that candy collecting :)

more sleeping after mama tried to get the pink stuff out of kaiya's hair...

the dress...

okay, so i was a bad mom and forgot my camera when we went to the fall funraiser. but, since there were some requests, i put kaiya back into the gold silk bubble dress to get some pix. the hair is not at its best...but bear with the girl - she just got up from a nap and i tossed her into her party frock and busted out the camera :)

fun filled evening

last night we were lucky enough to be able to attend a fundraiser held by noah's never ending rainbow. they held a casino night at a country club in our neighborhood and everyone seemed to have an excellent time. there were two singers that were both amazing, great food & drink, and of course the wonderful families. there were 4 trisomy children in attendence (akaiya included) and one of the families travelled all the way from utah! it was the first time they had ever met another trisomy family in person. how exciting! dana and her family always have fantastic events and we can't wait for the next one!
akaiya initially wanted to wear a showgirl outfit in keeping with the las vegas theme. i had to convince her to tone it down, so she went with an understated gold dress and looked very classy. she enjoyed all of the attention given to her and managed to keep her little self awake until 1:00 am when we got home! she is definitely a party girl...

false alarm

well, as i suspected, yesterday's communication journal was just a mistake in wording. akaiya did not get up from a laying down position to a sitting up position. she was placed into a sitting position and maintained the position independently - which she has been doing since before she turned 1 so that's no big news...so we will continue to work on teaching kaiya to push her little self up into a sitting position. i think at this point she really has no reason to do it for herself. and kaiya doesn't do anything unless she wants to! she is a princess after all...hahahahaha

new skills ?!?!?!?!?

one of the really cool things that akaiya's school does is send home a communication journal that lets us know what she has done that day, and has a little note to tell me any specific things i might need to know. well today the note said that "akaiya sat herself up independently on the mat"! kaiya has been trying for months now to master that skill. she get's herself up on her side pretty far but just falls over at the last minute. to hear that she finally got herself all the way up makes me so proud! i'm a little sad that it happened at school and that i missed it...but hey, she'll show me some day right? i tried to get her to do it again at home, but she just looked at me and laughed and laughed and laughed... i also sent a lil note to the teacher, i just want to clarify that she really did sit up by herself. and if she is starting to sit up independently that means i'm going to have to get serious about finding her a bed that fits her. the crib is getting pretty crowded...

Akaiya at the JDRF walk Sunday October 5th, 2008

akaiya loves balloons

i went to the dollar store yesterday with my niece mary to pick up a few things for school. right in the middle of the store they have a big display of mylar helium balloons so the first thing my niece does is start talking about how much she loves balloons and oh boy are those balloons pretty... i just smiled and nodded, i knew i was going to get the kid a balloon - i just didn't want to give it to her till we were walking out b/c her walking around the store with a balloon would be a recipe for disaster! so we get into line with our arms loaded with stuff (it's so easy to talk yourself into buying something if it's only a dollar!) and i had forgotten about the balloon. this grandmother was in front of us with her grandson, and she started asking him if he liked the balloons and ended up getting him a couple of them...so then my little friend starts staring longingly at the balloons in the middle of the store - the ones right next to us in line were not good enough i guess. so we get out of line and go browse through the ones in the middle of the store. she picks a smiley face one out for herself and a disney princess one for kaiya. she was convinced that kaiya loved pink and she just knew that disney princesses were kaiya's favorite. so now we head back to the line and the precious darling says quite loudly "hey, that guy took our spot in line!" i love 3 year olds...
we went back to my house and waited for kaiya to get home from school so mary could give her the balloon that she bought for her. kaiya came in way later while mary was supposed to be napping...the first thing she saw was the two balloons hanging out on the ceiling. her little face lit up like a christmas tree. so we brought the balloon over so she could check it out. it was funny b/c kaiya is always really tired when she gets home from school. she's on the bus for 45 minutes at least before she gets home so it's a long trip for her...not that the school is that far away, it just takes that long b/c she is the last stop. so the funny part came in when kaiya couldn't decide if she wanted to be crabby b/c she was tired or happy b/c she had a big shiny balloon. she went back and forth between getting all scrunch faced and whiney and then being a scrunch faced b/c she was smiling so big. sleep ended up winning. when she got up the first thing she played with was the balloon. and listening to her giggling made me want to giggle right along with her. she gets these deep belly laughs and i swear it's the best sound in the world...