Grizzly Bear!!

Stephanie is learning this week at school about the Grizzly Bear.

When I am explaining to her about how the bear stands in the river and salmon comes in up in the river and he eats them she couldn't understand the concept.

Thank God, for mini movies on the Internet I was able to show her how amazing these animals fish their food! You can click on the link so you are able to enjoy the mini movie! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1tgPoi0hWjk

My visit to the Dermatologist

I have Psoriatic arthritis (2 years) and plaque Psoriasis (for more than 10 years). I went to visit the Dermatologist today. I have been using Raptiva for 5 months and I had great results. I was able to see some Psoriasis spots disappear.

I was so excited until I received a letter from the company that makes Raptiva, that medicine has been recalled due to deaths related to the effects on some patients.

The doctor prescribed Enbrel. http://enbrel.com/

I need to inject two time a week for three months and once a week after the 4 month.

Hopefully this will continue working on my skin.

Cynthia's Inmigration Project

Cynthia (my oldest child) has an immigration project.

Her "immigrant" is Kristi Yamaguchi. She is happy to be reporting about her is just that she is a second generation of immigrants. Cyn feels that she needed a person that traveled from their native country and establish their first generation after them.

For a class project, Cynthia had to fill up a pillowcase with objects that will help the immigrant in a new land, such as a picture of your family, a game to stay busy while traveling, a dictionary to learn your new language.

My hope is that she learns that we are blessed. Even though these are hard times we are living, that she is able to find compassion in the stories that her teacher is talking about immigrants in her class.

2nd Annual Polk County Science Olympics

Cynthia was invited to participate in the Science Olympics in the Polk County Community College. It was a beautiful day with an excellent weather and "love bugs." Love bugs are insects that are attached to their bums and just try to fly at the same time. These bugs are weird, they don't bite.

fgfs

After the introduction in the auditorium, we proceeded to go outside in the green area and participate in the activities, including obstacle course, soccer kick, football pass and "how far can you jump." All of these outdoors events were measured in centimeters for competition. I know Cynthia loved the obstacle course and she completed it in 26 seconds.

Cyn doesn't like love bugs, so she was shrugging through the outdoor activities. Then we proceeded to the inside activities and they had measuring a gummy worm, measuring her head and how many marbles can fit in your hand.

When the competitions were done, at the Auditorium the Olympics had a Scientist fashion show that included Isaac Newton, Einstein among others.

It was a very interesting and fun day!

Happy 3rd Birthday Zachary!!

Is just amazing how a year flows by!

Zachary is a blessing in our lives. I have seen my two older children love on him like you wouldn't believe. The girls are compassionate and try to understand everything he tries to talk to them since Zachary has Speech Delay.

When you have two older children who develop "normal" as people can say and all of a sudden you have this little bundle of joy that tries his earnest to articulate his words and you still have a faint idea of what he is trying to say... is just hard at first to get used to.

Just after his second birthday I took Zachary to a speech therapy where he got diagnosed. When the therapist told us that he needed speech therapy I was grateful that we can do something for him so he can have a better quality of life. The sad thing was that the therapy was going to be very expensive and we could not afford it.

Fortunately, the therapist (God bless her) told us about a federal program that your income is not required to receive services. That program in Florida is called "Early Steps", it helps children until they reach their third birthday in different services like speech delay and occupational therapy.

After being refereed to the program and gone through their different interviews, we finally got a speech therapist. She came to our house and she sat on the floor with Zachary, he only spoke 5 words.

The speech therapist was nice to him and eventually after 5 months into the therapies Zachary was able to say around 40 words. He increased his vocabulary a lot.

Another factor that has helped him a lot was his love for the Wow! Wow! Wubbzy Show. Zachary would stare at the show and my prayer was that he was able to be brave and say words that he has heard from the show. So besides learning the name of the character Wubbzy, his next word from the show was; " I am Sorry". Amazing how he understood what sorry was. Zachary amazes me more and more!

So now my new challenge will be potty training! I am looking forward to it. I heard so many times that boys take a little longer to be potty trained. I guess I just have to pace myself and be patient.