Potty Training

We've been putting Jesse on the potty off and on for months and nothing. We've sat him on the potty with a sippy cup of juice or milk and nothing. I have always joked that we could let him run around naked and he wouldn't pee unless he was in a diaper or the bathtub. Jesse surprised me while Tony was deployed and went potty once, but nothing since then........ until tonight. I had just gotten bath water run for Jesse and I put him on the potty for a few minutes. After a few minutes I heard it.... yep Jesse totally went number 1. I am so proud of him. He is growing up more and more every day. He's helping me around the house with taking care of dirty diapers and picking up toys. Anyway, I know I've been bad at updating so I thought tonight's accomplishment was good cause for one so here ya are. Now, it's off to let the dog out and get a lunch box ready for Jesse in the morning.

2009 Annual Buddy Walk

It's that time of year again. We are getting ready for our Buddy Walk.If you would like to make a donation in our teams name. You can do so by visiting the page for Team Jesse. All donations are greatly appreciated and will help families with children with down syndrome. Thanks for checking us out.

Just some pics

Don't have much time to blog right now, but here are some adorable pics and I'll try and get another blog done in the near future.

Stressful times

Last Friday I got a phone call from my dad. I immediately knew something was wrong. I had just talked to him Thursday to wish him a happy birthday. We normally talk about once a week so two calls in two days, well something was wrong. He said I’m sorry baby, but I’ve got some bad news. Big Momma passed away today. Big Momma was my dads mom. I knew it was coming since she has had a lot of health problems for many years, but it still hit me like a ton of bricks. I stayed strong for my dad on the phone, but was hurting so bad inside. I hadn’t seen her in over 15 years, and hadn’t talked to her in probably a month or so. She’s been weak and takes naps often so it’s hard to know when a good time to call is. She had been struggling with her breathing for a few weeks and my Aunt had been staying home with her since her problems had gotten worse. My Big Momma died in her bed with my Aunt holding her. It was a peaceful passing from what I’ve been told. Most importantly is that now she is no longer in constant pain.

This has been the first death that’s close to me since my mom died a few months after Jesse was born. My moms passing was a total shock to all of us. It had been over a year since I had seen her and she had never gotten to meet her first grandchild. My mom was my best friend and losing her was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to deal with. It was a very tough month when we lost her. We were traveling home for the funeral and everything else we needed to take care of and we were in a car accident that could have easily killed Tony, me, and Jesse. Anyway the point is that was the worst month of my life hands down. I think the only thing that could affect me more than that is if I lost a child. I didn’t deal with my moms death very well if even at all. I can honestly say that I don’t think I would have made it through my mom dying if it wasn’t for having Jesse to take care and live for. He is truly my whole world. I have pushed so much to the back of my mind and that is where it stays… for the most part. I have my times where I break down and just cry and grieve, but I feel I do a good job covering it all up. Tony doesn’t even know that I still can’t come to grips with it. The point of all this about my mom you ask. Well, lets just say that since getting the news of my grandmother on Friday I am now dealing with everything I have pushed back to the back of my mind.

My mind is in overdrive and it won’t stop. I’m not going to go into detail about everything running through my mind, but I will share a few things. Was my mom in pain when she died? I’m pretty sure she was and I just can’t deal with that fact. I hate to think that my moms last moments were in pain. I’m also scared of who I am going to lose next. You see they always say it comes in 3’s, well I’m not sure about 3’s, but about a month before we lost my mom we lost my Grandpa Jeff who was Big Mommas husband. Just a few months before we lost Grandpa we almost lost Big Momma. I was around 7 or 8 months pregnant with Jesse. Big Momma had a lot of problems and died on the table a few times. Doctors were obviously able to bring her back, but it was real sketchy for a while. I remember that I was pregnant because my dad didn’t want to tell me because he was scared that it would hurt the pregnancy. So anyway, back to my thoughts, who’s next? I’m normally not the kind of person who thinks it’s all about me so I’m sorry if it sounds like it. I’m not one for talking about my feelings when it comes to being emotionally hurt and spent, but I’m hoping maybe by blogging this it will help.

There are a lot of really AMAZING, great things going on with our family right now and eventually I’ll blog about those things, but for now it’s hard to write about the great things when all I can think about are the bad things.

If you made it this far thanks for reading my ramblings. Now I need to go and fix Jesse some lunch and start to get ready for therapy. My next blog will be cheery I promise.

ABC’s and turning 4

We are 4 now! Jesse had a wonderful birthday yesterday. Tony put aside his gaming and I put aside twitter and face book. We watched Signing Time, played, and had lots of cake and ice cream. I think it was the perfect day. We decided not to do a big birthday party like last year because we might not have another birthday with Tony home and wanted to spend it together without all the commotion of a bunch of kids running around. We went through pictures of Jesse through the past 4 years and remembered how small and sweet he was. We watched the videos of the first time he crawled and the first time he walked. It was so good to just sit and go through all the old pictures and videos, but it was kind of sad to know that my sweet boy that was happiest laying on mommy’s chest is now grown up and just wants to run and play. Jesse has made so much progress this past year. He amazes me every day with his accomplishments.

Now onto the ABC’s. When school got out in June I really started to focus on the ABC’s with Jesse. In just a month he now knows the entire alphabet and sings them by himself with no prompting. If you write a letter he will tell you what it is and is so proud of himself every time he does it. Of course that probably has something to do with the fact that I pretty much always make a big deal out of it like he just got done doing his first night as lead role on a big Broadway production. I’m his mom though so I’m supposed to do that right? Well, I do and he loves it! Now I have to give credit where credit is due and say that none of this would be possible without Rachel Coleman and the ABC Signs dvd from the Signing Time Series. This has been one of Jesse’s favorite dvd’s for a while now. I just can’t say enough about Signing Time. It has helped Jesse so much and has become a very important part of our days here in the Baker house.

It’s lunch time for us so it’s time to get this posted and get to cooking. Will update again soon.

Sharing videos for your viewing pleasures

Ok so I need to update, but it's late so I'll share some videos and update when I have some time. Here are some vids of our lil' mans pre school graduation. He's growing up so fast. I still can't believe he'll be 4 next month.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Endocrinology appointment

Jesse had an appointment to see how his thyroid meds are working and I'm glad to say they are working great! There is no need to change the dosage or anything. Now all we have to do is have labs done every 4 months or so to make sure the meds are still working.
We have our annual I.E.P. appointment next Wednesday so I will be sure to post about that experience sometime next weekend. I'm sure it will be an interesting appointment since I'm bringing an advocate. I'll post about why later. For now though it's almost 1am and I need to get the trash out and get my butt to bed. 6am comes early around here.