Happy 6th Birthday!

Ayla's blog is a bit behind......and there will be additional posts forthcoming with updates for the last few months but in most recent news: Peanut celebrated a milestone BIRTHDAY! 

Thursday February 12th was the day 'Little Bunny' (as she has referrred to herself for the past several months) has now become 'Big Bunny' and turned 6 years-old. Ayla has been looking forward to this day for WEEKS! 

Thursday morning she awoke with a fire under feet and itchy fingers- she wanted to get out of bed and open gifts(Peanut is not a morning person.At.All.). A mad-dash to get ready for the day and it was a race to the kitchen to inspect the gifts. Can you tell she's a little excited? 

 Little Bean has an obsession with opening boxes and packaging- it's one of her favorite activities. Imagine her delight to have received a gift from her aunt with gifts inside of gifts inside of boxes....Ayla was excited and kept repeating over and over, "What's inside? Let's see...oh look! Let's see what's inside!" as she hastily ripped and tore into the boxes.

One treasure: a coin purse, with REAL MONEY.  

 Below is her excited face over discovering she received a bag of "monies!" 

 Peanut is currently interested in Peppa the Pig, Mickey Mouse and generally into small figurine toys with moving and removable parts/accessories. One of the preferred pastimes is watching the Disney Collector on YouTube which is essentially, an unknown woman who reviews toys. As a result, Bean is well versed in about any and all current toys. True story: just walk with her down any toy aisle and she can name them all AND can tell you how they function. She's our little 'rain-man' and adept at memorization and routines.   

The picture below is her excited 'one finger point' because one of her gifts was a Peppa the Pig Picnic Car. She exclaimed, "This is what I ALWAYS wanted! I love it!" 

Score.....except she says this about almost every toy she receives :-) 

Since her Birthday was Thursday we decided to host a dinner celebration on Sunday with family and friends. The house was packed and it was grand!

Ayla enjoyed the attention and especially counting and obsessing over the many gifts. We informed her that after everyone had eaten we could then sing Happy Birthday and open gifts. Throughout dinner Ayla was checking plates and keeping tabs on who was finished eating and who was not...she wanted everyone to have an empty plate so the gift opening could commence. Quite comical: she'd walk up to someone, observe their plate and say, "Oh yep, Gray is done with his food!" then she'd move along and say, "But Josie still has food on her plate!" This went on until Ayla deemed that everyone was finished and she was ready....whether we were or not! It's difficult being patient. 

She lined up all of her presents, counted them and then the fun began! 

 There were many presents (spoiled girl!) and all who came knew how much Ayla enjoyed unwrapping and opening gifts so each present was wrapped and ready in what we call, 'Ayla-Style'. Such fun she had ripping into one gift, tossing it aside and ripping into the next one. It's not that Ayla doesn't care about her gifts, she just wants to know what else is inside the other packages?? 

Grandma Jane sent a fun gift: it was deemed the "everlasting gift box" because there were about 20 items individually wrapped inside a box and of course, Ayla insisted upon opening each one....that took a while (though it was entertaining).

Big Bunnies request this year for a cake was a "Bunny Cake with LOTS of sprinkles" (her exact words) in which she "Could destroy! Like this!" Then she took her hand and made short chopping movements and smashes. Wish granted!  

Ayla even helped in the decorating of the Bunny Cake which was quite lovely and unique. 

Farewell Bunny Cake! ...and for the next few days we were picking pink-frosting out of the carpet....since Ayla thought it was a great idea to 'fling & shake' her hands afterwards. :-) 

The real cake was then served which was Ryan's famous German- Chocolate with Ice Cream. Delicious! 

Now that Bean is 6 years-old, she has graduated from the Stars JumpStart Therapy Program which is very sad. However, she continues to qualify for services and will attend the clinic once per week for outpatient therapy services (instead of 4 days per week as was the schedule). She still attends Kindergarten half-days and thoroughly enjoys her time in school.  

She has also qualified for another outpatient therapy service through the LillyPad Program which will increase to providing services a few days per week after school. We love that these programs are available and they have been such a blessing in Ayla's life- we have seen such leaps and strides in her life as a result. How fortunate we are!  

Pictures, Tube Change, Bunny and Allergies

The month of September arrived and departed rather quickly! Ayla continues to enjoy school and JumpStart throughout the day and her favorite aspect of school is still "the bus" and "crafts" (especially the cutting and glueing). 

  

First school pictures! 

Ayla dolled-up for Kindergarten pictures and we managed to capture a photo of her being cute before heading to school.

Most mornings Ayla does NOT want to get out of bed and prepare for school...she will sleepily request, "Want to stay home and snuggle- no school today please!" Peanut is a night-owl and mornings are a challenge. 

Below: imagination at work! Bean is beginning to 'pretend play' with her toys which is such fun! We love to listen to her sweet little voice and watch her create fun messes as she plays, talks and sings.  

 The concept of money is still being learned and when Ayla sets her mind to desiring something she is quite adamant and persistent in acquiring. For example: she has been requesting to purchase the Barbie potty-training Blissa cat set because she already has the Barbie Taffy Dog Training set (thanks to her Aunt Justine). As result, we've been instructing her that she needs to do chores and save her money in order to purchase Blissa the cat. 

One afternoon, Ayla brought her piggy bank to Ryan, dumped out her coins and excitedly exclaimed, "I have money! We can go to the store and buy Blissa now!" She also received some coins from her Aunt Josie and money from a family friend so she was more than excited to have "money" to purchase Blissa.

How can we resist? As soon as I pulled into the garage from work, Ayla was already standing at the door, shoes on, money in hand ready-to-go wearing her excited-happy-face while shaking her arms in eager anticipation. 

 Playing with the sand kit and her Blissa Cat. 

For a long time, Ayla was on a 'monkey trend'. She HAD to wear her monkey pajama's and haul around her monkey toys. Recently, she switched over to a 'bunny trend' and has insisted upon wearing her bunny pajama's, jumping like a bunny and asking us to refer to her as "little bunny" and pet her head. 

For Halloween she requested to be a rabbit and after searching the Halloween stores, we eventually ordered a rabbit costume online. For a week Ayla would inquire into when her bunny costume would arrive. The day finally came and Peanut was soooooo excited! Since then, she has been determined to wear her bunny costume everyday, all night long and everywhere we go. It's quite funny!  

As always, Ayla is a great little helper. She wants to be involved in whatever activity we are doing, especially in the kitchen. From an early age, Ryan has been cooking and baking with Ayla in the kitchen and the trend continues. 

 Scooping cookie dough for baking! 

Hanging with cousins! 

This is fun: Ayla's first curlers!

Her hair turned out rather kinky and wild so it may be a work-in-progress with the curlers.  

Some GREAT news! 

It's been three years since Ayla was tested for allergies and and with her previous blood work tests, it was determined she was allergic to eggs and peanuts. As she does not eat orally it's been simple to avoid those items. However, when she did come into contact with them, her face and hands would break-out in red hives. 

 A recent allergy blood work came back and she is no longer allergic to eggs and only mildly allergic to peanuts- hooray! We had been informed that it may be possible she could eventually outgrow the severity of her allergies but we had no idea it would be so quick or become such a non-issue, what a blessing!   

To celebrate (and test this new information) we took Ayla out for lunch and allowed her open a bucket full of peanuts....not a single hive to be found afterwards! 

Bean has since discovered her new favorite "kinder egg surprise" food item: peanuts! 

They are easy to shell and make a cool mess. Ayla is a bit OCD and loves LOVES to open packages and remove items from their wrapping....which is dangerous when we are at the stores. :-) So we purchase a bag of candy or other small wrapped items for her to unwrap. She calls this activity 'opening kinder egg suprises' and likes to play this activity throughout the day. As she is unwrapping she will talk to herself and say things such as, "And what do we have inside here? Oh look, it's an egg surprise!" 

"Here we have a....peanut!"

It is quite amusing to listen to her mutter the same phrases over and over to herself. The clean-up afterwards is still a task we are developing...she does not like to pick-up after herself, at all. We are still testing ideas that may prompt her to want to clean-up as thus far, not much has worked in that department....

Did we mention that in August Ayla's feeding tube needed replacing? This was tube-change #13. It's a bit frustrating especially since Ayla is old enough that she remembers the procedure and has anxiety over the process...it is not comfortable. We've tried almost every design and brand of feeding button and they each have their quirks...we are looking forward to the day when Bean learns to eat and we can say goodbye to the tubey-tube! As such, Ayla is very protective of her tube and will often remind us, "Be gentle with it- do not break it!" 

We've also noticed that since Ayla began school in August she has been sick with a cold, almost constantly! We're hoping her immune system adjusts and we can all breathe easier once more. I'm sure she has a lot of 'germs' to catch-up with since we've managed to keep her healthy for so long.    

Family Pictures

About Time....! 

As a family, we have not taken the opportunity for professional pictures....just had the usual candid shots and casual poses. 

For the past five years we have been *saying* that we should probably schedule pictures and then..another year goes by...and another. Ayla is getting SO BIG and we finally stopped thinking about it and took action.

Thank you Jen Schow Photography for sharing your talent! Jen also took the awesome picture of Ayla which is displayed inside the St. Luke's Wall of Hope and donated her talent to the 'Lay me down to Sleep' volunteer photographer organization...she took pictures of our sweet Zoey as she passed away. You could say: Jen holds a special place in our hearts. 

JenSchow.com/blog

Below are a few of our favorites.