First Fluffernutter

We had dinner in the Detroit airport at some gourmet pb&j place. Everyone agreed it was delicious!

Llama!

Spring in Michigan

Slippery mud puddles!

Flower Birthday Party

Matilda's birthday cake request this year was for a cake decorated with edible flowers. Thankfully the farmers market Sunday morning helped me fulfill that request. By the time her guests arrived Sunday afternoon we had covered her cake in arugula, rapini, chamomile and calendula flowers.

 We had originally planned for the party in the park, but the heavy rain led to a location change. The hoards of kids seemed to have fun regardless of venue. Surprisingly the house fared fine. This thick layer of toys was quickly picked up and a sweep through the house recovered all of the many Nerd candies that were dropped (mini-boxes were a prize from the bean bag toss game).

 We ended up bringing our new homemade bean bag toss game into the living room. I was so excited about making this game and wouldn't let the rain stop us from chucking bee bean bags into the flower-holes.

At some point we joked about getting pictures of the kids like this but somehow we did not make it happen during the party. On her own Matilda was goofing off and requested a picture from inside the sunflower. 

As usual, these two had a little bit of fun. 

Porter is so in love with playing the bean bag toss game that when we first lined all the kids up to play he was having a coronary. Somehow he settled down and waited patiently in the line for his turn. All in all, a fun party and thanks to the rain I now have lots of fun park game ideas for the next time we throw a flower party!

Six!

Happy Birthday to my sweet big girl!

Tooth Status Quo

It may be that Matilda will be 6 before she loses her first tooth. These wiggly teeth are still hanging in there. The past few nights she has been letting me wrap or tie the wiggliest one with floss. She really loves to wiggle and move it so maybe that will move things along?

New Duds

Porter would like to show you his nice new vest. This morning Matilda very politely asked him if she could wear it to school and he quickly claimed that he needed to wear it today. At dinner he asked me if he could wear my apron to "keep his handsome shirt clean."

Party City

Matilda found some fun props as we did a scouting mission to the party store today. T minus 5 days to birthday party, 7 days to birthday!

Marathon Donut

After wearing ourselves out as spectators to the marathon yesterday, we stopped for a sugar buzz on the way home.

Happy St Patrick's Day

We did a southern California take on St Patty's Day today with corned beef tacos. Yum!

Pickles

We are dog & house sitting this week as a favor to some friends. It is a bit hectic, but Porter is just thrilled to take Pickles out for walks, play fetch and fix doggie dinner.

Our Fascinating Little Lab Rat

Porter and I went to the infant lab at one of our local  universities to volunteer for a research study earlier this month. The purpose of the study was to compare eye tracking between children with and without autism. In order to compare accurately between children, all participants are also given an extensive standardized intelligence test to match kids by cognitive age (instead of chronological age).

The eye tracking portion of it was a quick 5 minute session of Porter watching some strange videos while a camera recorded his eye movement. The cognitive testing portion lasted over 2 hours and somehow Porter just kept on trucking through it all. The researcher was really great working with him the whole time: encouraging, doling out high fives, and toward the end going at his pace to take little breaks when his endurance/attention ran out. For me, it was all so intriguing to watch how well he could follow direction and answer questions.

Today the researcher sent me a summary of the testing results. Admittedly Tim & I were a little filled with pride by his awesomely high language scores, but really it just quantified how good he is at the verbal chatter we hear all day long. It is a bit of a long, tedious read maybe for the general public but I wanted to post it up for grandparent enjoyment.  I am risking sounding a bit braggy without a doubt, but I do want to file it away in this virtual baby book. I also really encourage anyone else that has the free time to volunteer for studies. We have done it numerous times with both kids and the experience is always interesting and the doctoral students are so grateful. Here are some excerpts from the letter:

Thank you for your participation in our study on the social responsiveness and perceptual skills of children with and without autism. It was great to see you and Porter!


We are writing to give you the results of our assessment of Porter at 34 months of age. On March 1st, 2012, we administered the Mullen Scales of Early Learning (MSEL), a cognitive test that evaluates a child’s developmental level with emphasis on language, motor, and perceptual abilities. The following table lists the age equivalents Porter achieved on each scale. Age equivalent scores indicate the age at which 50% of children of a given age would be expected to score lower than Porter and 50% of children would be expected to score higher than Porter.


During the Visual Reception subtest, Porter matched shapes, letters and pictures but not words. He identified shapes that were shown to him, hidden, and then shown again among similar-looking shapes. During the Fine Motor subtest, Porter unscrewed a toy nut and bolt, strung three beads on a shoestring, built a four-block tower modeled by the examiner and cut with scissors.


During the Receptive Language subtest, Porter demonstrated understanding of spatial and length concepts by identifying the “longer” of two sticks over several trials and by identifying comparative concepts such as “same,” and “second,” e.g., “Point to the child who is second.” He also provided answers to general questions such as, “How many eyes do you have?” During the Expressive Language subtest, Porter counted twelve blocks, used pronouns, completed analogies presented by the examiner (e.g., “A man is big, a baby is little.”) and repeated sentences such as, “I like to ride in the car.” 

Scale :                       Age Equivalent
Fine Motor :                   36 months
Visual Reception:          48 months
Receptive Language:    42 months
Expressive Language:  50 months

As if we needed any more buttering up, they added this last line about our guy:

Porter is a very sweet and composed little boy. Throughout the assessment, he waited patiently for instructions, smiled frequently, asked questions about what was going to happen next and attended well to the examiner.

It will serve as a good mental reminder for me when he is in the middle of some complete fit over how I put his socks on wrong (or another major infraction in his world vision) that he is actually a sensitive perceptive boy and not just a tyrant.

Stella's Party

Stella & her crew threw an awesome party today at Debs Park Audubon Center with scavenger hunts, buried treasure in the digging area, crafting, and an algae pond for mucking. 

 Happy, smiling birthday gal!

 I see you!

 Everyone in our family took advantage of the hold-a-snake option.

We will be back again to that awesome park for more exploring and tree climbing some weekend soon.

Birthday Party Snake Fun

Adlai and Porter enjoy some time with the California King snake at Stella's party today:

Zoo Week

It was kind of a zoo week around here, and not just in the normal-hectic-life sense. We found ourselves at the zoo much more than our typical weekly visit. Monday, Porter & I had a zoo class so we got to go hunting around with 10 other toddlers finding animals with "Terrific Tails!"

Then Wednesday the new reptile house, LAIR, had a member preview so Porter & I returned again to meet Tim over his lunch hour for a quick look. It was awesome to see after so many months of anticipations. Matilda was dying of jealousy. She worked super hard every day after school this week on a big project due Friday morning so I promised her a trip to the LAIR first thing Friday after school. (Here Porter is inspecting the board for the neighborhood trivia game she created as we all arrived to school this morning.)

All my pictures of the animals inside are crappy so instead you get lots of kids-on-reptile sculpture photos. (On a big side note, see the crooked bottom tooth? It is still pretty loose AND tonight I noticed that the new tooth has broken through just behind it. She will still not hear any talk of allowing us near it. I managed some minor attempts to loosen it under the guise of flossing tonight but I am sure she won't allow that again.)

 I like that it kind of looks like she is trying to camoflage on this gecko with her new dress from India. (Additional side note, she is currently sleeping in her favorite of the new India dresses. She would prefer to wear it at all times. Pics to follow.)

 This bench is outrageously overcrowded with kids at all times.

This video is a two minute conversation with Porter about his imaginary pet tigers, while he repeatedly tries to get the last drops out of his zoo lunch juice box. Just a peek into chatting with the boy these days.

That Boy Has Got an Arm

Today while I was at work, this happened:

Also, tubing and snowman making and Cheetos for lunch. And when they got home from the mountains it was 88 degrees and they all ate popsicles sitting out front in the sun. Crazy!

Rookie Sleepover MIstake?

Giant ice cream sandwich cookies at 7 pm? Look's like we might never get these gals to sleep tonight!

Also, Happy Birthday Dr. Seuss!