Summer Into Fall

In my last blog which was so very long ago, I said I'd upload the pictures of our gondola ride up Wildcat Mountain and the hike to the Glen Ellis waterfalls. It turns out that uploading pictures from Craig's new camera requires me to upload one picture at a time. I might have been able to do 2 or 3, but I sure couldn't do the usual 5. The pixels make the photo info. to big to upload 5 at once I guess. Anyway, here are two pictures. We've made it our goal, when Liam is a little older, to hike in to all of the falls in the White Mountain area. There aren't that many, but one is 100 ft. tall (this one was 65 ft.) and none of the hikes are more than a couple miles - most are around a mile. It was gorgeous seeing the falls - Kyra was in heaven, but we had to carry Liam in and out. He wasn't much into hiking at the time. We recently went on a little hike near our home though and he was a real trooper, so there is hope!

If anyone would like to see more pictures of the falls and mountain, I can easily send all the photos out on MobileMe.

The biggest trip of summer was a week at our old hometown in WV. We spent time visiting family and connecting with cousins.

Visiting Grandparents.

And attending the 3 day Swaim Family Reunion.

All of the children, grandchildren, great grandchildren, and cousins of the above 6 siblings!

Kyra had a great time meeting cousins she had only seen pictures of.

We stayed in a 100 year old lodge where Craig couldn't believe that we had no phone or TV and shared the bathroom down the hall with another room. We did have an ice bucket though!

Liam really did enjoy playing with all of his cousins, but he did NOT want to be in this picture!

Kyra made her stage debut. (After she and her cousin decorated themselves with face paint...)

Mommy was in the play, too! It was 3 days that we will all remember forever. If anyone hasn't seen our pictures from the reunion - I can send them on MobileMe as well.

Of course, the biggest event in August was Kyra starting first grade. We had a very rough start. As I started talking about buying school supplies, Kyra became more and more anxious about being in school all day. She told me that she was afraid because the teachers were going to be bossy! Apparently, the kindergarten teachers spent a lot of time telling the kids that first grade teachers were "very serious". They may have told them more, but that's all that registered with Kyra. We had taken Kyra off of the Targeted Amino Acid Therapy that she was doing so well on because we couldn't find any studies of long term effects of the therapy. We took her off in June and I watched as she progressively deteriorated throughout the summer and her relationship with her brother went down the tubes. When we started talking about getting school supplies, Kyra started having major rages like she started having the summer after Liam came home. We put her back on the Targeted Amino Acid Therapy and the rages disappeared about 3 days later. It was amazing. There was still anxiety about school, but she was more in control. The principal has been wonderful and as soon as I called him, he began working with me to ease her back in to school. He suggested I bring her to the playground some day and he'd casually come out and visit. Then he had the teacher call me so we could arrange for Kyra to privately meet her teacher and see her classroom in advance. She loved her teacher from the minute she met her (thanks to my 2 page letter concerning Kyra's placement, the principal had placed her with the nicest teacher he has!) and this relieved a lot of her anxiety. It's just so wonderful to have her in a school that has worked with me so closely to insure a good school experience for Kyra.

Kyra now loves first grade. She gets off the bus full of smiles and stories about her day. The anxiety is still there and there have been some rough evenings, but we are working through it.

Kyra's First Day of First Grade

Liam was scheduled to begin pre-school in Sept., but it just didn't work out. He tried it for a day and only stayed without sobbing because I finally promised I would stay in the school lobby the whole time in case he needed me. I walked out of his classroom and sobbed so uncontrollably that the school secretary sent the director of the preschoool program out to talk to me. I wanted to think that Liam might relax and enjoy himself, but my gut told me that he just wasn't ready for preschool yet. He remained on the verge of tears between each activity and upon seeing me at the end of the 2 1/2 hours, burst into sobs. It seemed to be a release of what he'd been holding in all morning and a huge relief to him that I was really there waiting for him. The second day, I couldn't even get him out of the car. He pleaded with me not to send him to preschool. I followed my gut and took him home. He has plenty of time to go to school. I know it was the right decision.

There were lots of other highlights this summer into fall.

Kyra fell in love with weeping willows.

Liam continued his love for building....

and building....

stopping long enough to let his artistic sister surprise mommy with this little ghost...

and then back to more building. Liam built this creation for his friend Sean who lives an hour away. He wanted me to send it to him. I said I could send a picture instead.

Liam continues to grow in leaps and bounds in every way. He is still mommy's boy wanting to be with me above everyone else, but now does many more activities with daddy and still adores his sister, Kyra. His vocabulary has grown tremendously and his articulation is improving.

Liam is, quite simply, a treasure. We are truly blessed.

In August, we added our new member to our family.

I'd like to introduce Sunny.
Sunny is a rescue - I adopted him in a moment of weakness and total insanity. He traveled up here on a huge truck from the south, loaded with dogs who were mostly rescued from kill shelters. Sunny had been rescued from a kill shelter in Arkansas. The fact that this sweet lovable dog was in line to be put to death is unthinkable for me. When he came to the agency that we adopted him from, he had heart worm, intestinal worms and fleas. He'd obviously had a rough life.

I only went to visit a friend who was volunteering at the rescue event on a Saturday afternoon when Liam and I were just cruising around in our convertible (yes, a highlight of summer for me - we bought a new (used) convertible - MY mid-life crisis car!) I couldn't believe the number of dogs that still hadn't found homes by 5:00. I called Craig to bring Kyra to PetSmart although I refused to tell him why. When he got there, I was carrying around a 9 week old shitzu mix puppy. I thought Kyra would adore it, but she headed over to Sunny's crate whose name at the time was "Red". I had looked at Sunny earlier, but there was an "adopted" tag on his crate. (Don't like to use that term with animals for obvious reasons, but everyone does.)

The tag was now mysteriously gone. Kyra walked Sunny (called Red at the time) around for 45 minutes while Craig went home to get Sophie to see if the two would get along. I fully expected Sophie to attack Sunny - she has no use for little young dogs. Oddly, she liked him. So before you knew it, Sunny (named by Kyra who didn't like the name Red) was ours.

Sunny was described as a "golden retriever mix", but other than his loving personality, all of his behaviors scream "HOUND"!!!! He had obviously never even been in a house before as he began counter surfer and even jumped up on the kitchen table - standing on it on all fours to check our Kyra's sandwich! I was mortified. We were off to a terrible start as we discovered that he was not at all house trained, had oily smelly fur, shed a lot and was constantly getting diarrhea - relieving himself all over our front yard. What the heck had I been thinking. The last straw almost came when he growled at the kids. I contacted the agency and began communicating with the animal behaviorist who had been there the day we brought home this untrained nuisance. She sent us a 10 step program that we were to follow strictly. Gradually, things began to turn around. Sunny never growls at Kyra and very very rarely at Liam who usually did something to deserve a back off growl. He is trying so very hard to be a good boy and is really a sweet sweet dog who obviously had a hard crappy life. Yes, it was a moment of insanity, but I thought that day, and I still think, that Sunny came into our life for a reason. Heaven help me, I have no idea what it is at this point, but I'm sure we'll find out.

As if Sunny joining our family wasn't a big enough storm, the kids experienced their first hail storm and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen. It wasn't so much the size of the hail (as seen above next to a dime), but the amount of hail and how incredibly fast it poured down. Of course, Kyra, my ice lover, wanted to eat it all, but settled for just carrying it around in hands while it dripped all over the floor.

The highlight of September was the Fairy House Tour. It was magical seeing all of these little girls dressed as fairies everywhere you looked. Fairy Houses were everywhere built by artists and by children. The girls even got to build their own fairy house and watch dances from The Fairy House Ballet. Chasing fairy bubbles was a huge highlight! (I can send more fairy house pictures on MobileMe to anyone who's interested.)

Nothing better than eating Fairy Fluff!

Except, that is, unless it's having your very own little fairy!

Kyra is mine.