Family

Family: Bryan's been great at being a stay at home dad. I know he goes crazy, and that it's not exactly his cup of tea, but he's been doing a great job with Kiernan. I couldn't do a better job myself. I'm glad I married this man :) Bryan also speaks Brazilian Portuguese to Kiernan on a daily basis, so Kiernan knows some phrases in Portuguese better than English. That just shows me I need to spend more time with him! My time will come after this semester is over :) Kiernan has learned so much the past couple of months, it's crazy.
Bryan took him to his 15 month check up and an audiology appointment. Kiernan's hearing is perfect so far, and he did great in the sound booth. Kiernan is 98th percentile for weight, 92nd percentile for height and 90 something percentile for his head. The doctor said that we definitely need to measure his head again at the next check up to make sure it's not abnormal. We're not worried since Bryan and I both have...VERY big heads (though I'm pretty sure mine is bigger than Bryan's).
Kiernan has also recently fallen in love with steering wheels/cars. He likes cars because they have round things that spin (steering wheel and wheels). he's starting to make a vroomm sound when he plays with them now. Bryan even got him to pretend to drive a car with the wii wheel. He loves to give raspberries on your belly and find your belly button. He knows how to say no in his own way ("ah" while shaking his finger or hand at you), he pretends to do "this little piggy" on your feet, and tries to tickle you. He also likes to try to put his shoes on us, and our shoes on him. He's a *LOT* easier to put down to bed now (goes right to sleep after I sing him two songs before putting him in his crib), and is *FINALLY* sleeping through the entire night (11 hours!). He takes one nap a day, but that typically is anywhere from 2 to 3 hours. He has his canines in now, so that makes for 16 teeth. He's probably the most social baby I know. we went out to eat, and he saw another kid his age, and started waving hi and they were interacting with each other and having fun. Then the other kid's mom sat down and blocked the view. Boy, did that make Kiernan mad. The other family was really nice and shifted their kid so Kiernan could see him again, and he was as happy as a clam. Very cute.
He cannot say any words perfectly (with the exception of Hi and Mais), but he does have specific word approximations that mean something to him. We counted and he has: mais (more), hi, bye bye, nose (honk), baby, doggie, kitty, mama, daddy, grandma, that, see, leche, night night, bath, fralda (diaper), sock, banana, cheese, ah ah (no), zapatos, down down down, up up up, out out out, hot, elmo, all done. And yes, I do count what he has all the time, I like to know because of my job :).
He understands a lot more than that (such as eyes, belly button, and songs that we sing [itsy bitsy spider, 5 little monkeys swinging from a tree, 5 little monkeys jumping on the bed, clean up song, he's started showing a preference for skid a marink], give me, give ____,).
He still dances like a maniac. :) I love it. He also loves to do the songs that I mentioned above, especially if you stop and wait for him to do the next action.


Yeah, enough bragging, this is a boring post for most of y'all. :)

Work and School

First off, I love my job. LOVE it. I hope I get to stay next year, we'll see how things go with budget cuts and all. It sounds like I'll be there next year, but I'm not holding my breath just cause I was the newest hire in my program. I really couldn't ask for a better job. I just hope I'm actually doing it right and benefiting the families that I'm meeting with. If I don't get hired, I'll go back and do my K-12 student teaching to get the K-12 hearing impairment endorsement.

School: An entirely different story. These assignments are just beating me up. If it weren't for the classes, student teaching, lesson planning and homework, I'd be able to put in a lot more effort into my job and get closer to working on being certified in AVT or AvEd. That takes at least three years :) (seriously, this learning school stuff? it never stops). I love my student teaching placement, I just have a hard time separating what I'm doing in preschool from my job, so sometimes I feel I'm presenting stuff that just might be too advanced for some of the kids I work with, and it's not that they're below level or anything, I'm just not thinking in the right developmental age. Once this semester is over, it'll be a lot easier to remember the developmental steps, process and milestones that are more applicable to my job. I just completed my 9th week of student teaching, that means I only have 7 more weeks of it left. I've passed the halfway mark, that means I *will* survive, and I've gotten good feedback on all assignments so far, so things are looking good so far.

Fellowship: Still gotta work details on that. I might have to fly out of town for a week or two do complete it after all instead of doing it in the state in order to meet the needs and requirements of what the directors want from me. No big deal, was just hoping to stay in Utah so that I could manage school, work and family better. Either way, I can still do it. I am learning a lot from it, and hope to continue learning more about dual sensory impairments.