Early Intervention

About 2 weeks ago, Mark and I went to a dinner party at the house of a wonderful couple from church. They periodically invite over about 5 couples who are from different "circles" of friendships and have a great evening of enjoying dinner, games, and getting to know one another more. It's awesome! I could go on an on about how special this couple is but back to my main post...

During the dinner, I was chatting with one of my friends who is a Doctor at Carle. The Early Intervention program came up in our discussion which led to a few emails and some referrals and BAM! that's where we are today.

I met with the coordinator for the Early Intervention Program this morning to fill out paperwork for Samuel and Hannah to be evaluated for speech and development. That free evaluation will take place at our home on March 28th. I'm very much looking forward to seeing where we stand and seeing if we need to further therapy (especially speech).

At 18 months, Sam was evaluated at the Post NICU Developmental follow-up clinic and passed the developmental part fine. The only slight concern was his speech. The Carle Speech Therapist said that because the twins were such late walkers that their speech may take a while to blossom. Apparently, when kiddos are focusing on a skill like walking or crawling, everything else sort of stops while they learn to do those skills. She said that we should check with our doc at 2 years and go from there.

I wasn't real happy with that conclusion as I know they are both lacking in the speech department. Don't get me wrong, they babble constantly. They "talk" to each other and then giggle, they'll point to things and babble and they'll say a handful of words. Their ability to understand things is perfect though. I can give them 2 part commands (i.e. go upstairs and get your bear) and they follow those fine. They can point to things when I ask them as well. So, I wasn't worried so much about the ability to understand - just the ability to express.

After talking with the coordinator this morning while she was at our home, I feel very excited to take this next step of evaluation. I gave her all pertinent info from the time they were born to now including milestones, meds they were given in the NICU and personality quirks. We talked about words they did say, if they seem to get frustrated easily with communication, and how well they understand. She did make a good point that the fact that they understand things just fine but just don't express communication is better than if it were backwards. It's easier to help them with expressing words than with comprehension. They also will point to things if you ask them to "point to the duck" so we know their comprehension is fine. She said from what I had told her during our brief chat this morning (and mind you she's not a speech therapist - just been around this for a while), that Sam and Hannah would probably both be qualified for the speech therapy program (qualification means that they have a 30% or more delay in speech communication). Apparently the guideline is that at 2, kiddos should have a vocabulary of around 50 words.

We'll know more on the 28th of March when my babes are evaluated in both speech and development but for now I'm just continuing to work with them daily as I have been... flashcards, lots of books, and lots of snuggling mixed in! The coordinator said that a lot of times this happens with preemies, especially twins, because (1) they are a little behind in general and (2) they develop their own language so they don't need to talk. It also makes a difference that they have an older sister that has very advanced vocabulary and speech (I was told today). So, we'll see... if they do qualify for speech therapy, I'm excited to begin and see how much my babes will grow leaps and bounds! So, pray for us in this process! I'm excited to see how the Lord will use our family...

An answer to prayer

The month of January has been a significant month for Mark and I. Our church has set aside the month of January for a special time of fasting. Mark and I started our fast the first of January and ironically enough started seeing immediate attack from the enemy. It's been a crazy month of health issues for our family. As some of you know, Mark was diagnosed with mono at the beginning of the month (and that's on top of the other health issues that he already has). He was extremely fatigued and just downright feeling crummy. He would go to bed at 5:30pm some evenings and sleep until 7am (he's usually an early riser). The doc even put him on bedrest for a week.

We continued to stay strong in the Lord and draw our strength from Him. His power is made perfect in our weakness, isn't it?! Every Wednesday throughout the month of January, we had a corporate prayer meeting at church. I have to admit that when I hear the words "prayer meeting" I never used to get really excited. This month was totally different! I attended the first 2 by myself as Mark was at home in bed. The Wednesday that he was on bedrest I headed over to the church excited to see what the Lord had in store. It was an awesome night of prayer for me and a night of getting deeper with Him. At the end of the night, one of our pastors called me forward to stand in the gap for Mark. They annointed me with oil, laid hands on me, and a group of our fellow believers prayed earnestly for Mark's healing.

Fast forward a little bit... I get home and send Mark and email to tell him about the incredible time of worship that I had (yep, I emailed him... because he was on bedrest he was in our room all day long and most times sleeping. I didn't want to bother him but I knew he was doing a little bit of work on his computer so I thought I would send him a message). The next morning he told me that he felt like he had been healed of mono! Praise Him! He said that about 8pm the previous night (while I was at prayer meeting), he almost texted me that he had had a sort of "awakening" where he felt he had been healed. 8pm was right after the church had prayed for him! His energy level went up the following days and he was able to go through his day without naps. All the glory to Him.

I was definitely sad that I had to go to church those first two Wednesdays on my own but I know that the Lord had it all planned out. I needed that time by myself to really devote myself to prayer and to focus on my relationship with Him. I've done so much growing these past 4 weeks that it's incredible. I am so thankful for my Savior and for what He's done for me. I have a new thirst for His Word like never before and a new devotion to Him. Thank You Jesus!

Another answer to prayer happened this past Wednesday at prayer meeting. We were praying for those that we wanted to go out to that aren't saved. Mark prayed for one set of our neighbors and I prayed for our next door neighbors, J & A. I prayed that the Lord would give us opportunities to share Christ's love with them - however that might happen. Mark had just talked the night before on love at Fusion and I was reminded about sharing His love with those around us. Anyway, I prayed that in some way I might be able to connect with them. That night when I got home, I had an email from a girl named "A" in my inbox who was responding to the craigslist add that I had for a Cardinal fitness gift card. We texted back and forth and the next day her husband said that he was going to come and get it. He asked for my address and the response that came back cracked me up. He said, "well, we live at 803 ... and so we won't have that far to drive." It was our next door neighbors whom I had prayed for the night before!!!! I blessed them by giving them the gift card.

I am praying for more opportunities to go out to them and build relationship with them. I think inviting them over for dinner is next on my agenda :)

I love how He answers us when we call. He hears our prayers and answers them according to His will.

Thank you Lord for healing and for answering prayers in my family lately. Thank You for divine appointments to share your love.

PS. This is Mark. On another note, God has blessed me this month at work as well. I found out that my quarterly sales numbers were outstanding and I'm getting this biggest quarterly bonus I've ever received this month. We've also been praying earnestly for our college ministry, Fusion, and we had the biggest turnout ever this past Tuesday. We've also been praying that the Lord leads us on our missions trip this summer to Ghana, Africa. The Lord has blessed us, as we've received almost the total amount due for the trip. We are looking forward to being able to share our faith story of His provision. We are also praying about our involvement with Youth For Christ International in Ghana. The Lord is leading us there too. All to His glory. He is God and I am not.

It's my favorite thing...

This is what Mady told me tonight when I went in to tuck her in after Dad did the bedtime routine. She wrapped her arms tightly around my neck and whispered, "It's my favorite thing..." I asked her what she was talking about. There was a short pause and she said, "wrapping my arms around your neck is my favorite thing."

With tears coming, I told her "it's mommy's favorite thing too!"

I love that little girl!

Starting the year off with a little FREEZER COOKING

Ok, so I haven't been really good about this whole blogging thing lately. I've had family asking me to start back up again so here goes... I am going to try to be consistent!

This past Saturday I got together with 2 friends from church to spend all day cooking. I've always wanted to try freezer cooking but it's definitely not something to tackle yourself... especially the first time. They had brought up the idea of taking a day to cook 15 meals a piece... 45 meals all together. I was all for it!

The week leading up to the big day was spent picking out recipes, figuring out how much of each ingredient that was needed and getting all the pots and pans, crockpots, and utensils ready to go! I think we purchased, cooked and shredded something like 52 chicken breasts!!

I arrived at the house at 10:30 ready to go. We began by cooking all the meat - hamburger, chicken and the pork for the pulled pork BBQ went into the crockpot. I cooked 15lbs of hamburger! Whew! Then after we cooked all the meat, we started assembling meals. Here's what we made:

Chicken and Veggies with Stuffing
Shepards Pie
Chicken Tortilla Soup
Chicken New Orleans.

Chicken Cassarole,
beef and bean burrito mix
Spinach lasagna
Ham, Potato, Cheese casserole
Sloppy Joes
Italian beef
Hamburger dish
Chicken Parmesan
Chicken Lasagna
Meatloaf
Pulled BBQ Pork

It was insane! But, oh so much fun! We cooked and assembled all day. I think the last meal was put together at 8:00pm and then we started clean-up. The fun part was trying to carry everything home and get it all in my freezer - thank goodness for a deep freeze!

It's been so nice on crazy hectic days (lately especially because we have had a house full of sick people) to just pull out a meal and warm it up! Plus, we totally saved on $$ buying everything in bulk and then cooking. It only cost me around $90 for all that!

Dinner time is crazy in our house just because the babies are usually tired and hungry at that point. Mark is usually just getting home or getting finished up in his office and I'm beat. So, it's been nice to have this little life-saver called "frozen meals" in my freezer. I think it may have to be an every 6 weeks type of thing. And maybe next time we will cook all the meat the day before (each person do a different type of meat) and I'm sure that would speed the process along as well!

All in all it was a fun day and I'm so glad I did it. Here are some pics from the 'event' (they were taken with my phone so they aren't the best quality!) :
Mixing up the Chicken Lasagna
Me being the organizational person that I am loved putting the foil on the finished meal and then writing the instructions (and sometimes a little note) on the top!
The finished Product! It may not look like a ton but the meals in the back are stacked 3-high and a lot of the ziploc bag meals are stacked as well! Yay for food!