Fall Colors and somewhat new Noah

Saya, the Whale Rider.
At the Lake Sammamish Park, Mike pushing Noah and Saya in the stroller.

Kids invented this game where you throw leaves on my car.

Sean and Aly running around the front yard.

Aly looking at the water and birds.

Now that the fall is in the full swing, the kids are mesmerized by the bright colored leaves and changing scenery around them. Sean asks why leaves are falling, why it rains a lot these days, why it's dark outside when he leaves his therapies, trying to register what changing season means in his little head. Kids love to play with the fallen Japanese maple tree leaves in our front yard. The tree is over 40 years old and is magnificent. Unfortunately, it stands right in front of our house, covering a big part of our roof and makes a humongous mess pretty much all year around. It's a lovely tree though and it's a part of our life now.

Last Sunday, we took the kids to Lake Sammamish State Park since we had extra one hour in the morning and was sunny outside. We are so lucky to be close to such a beautiful park. There were ducks, geese and all kinds of wild birds paddling around and one little friendly (or very hungry) duck who came close to us looking curious. The lake was serene with a few dead logs on the beach, surrounded by fall forest. Saya and Noah had to stay in the stroller, but they had fun looking at the birds and water. Sean and Aly were running around, throwing sticks in the lake. It was a little windy and chilly, but we were glad we took the advantage of an hour we gained and enjoyed fresh air.

I am happy to say that Noah is responding better to therapies now. He makes more eye contacts and he is definitely there, his mind and body making good connections with what is going on around him. We had speech therapy this morning and he was looking at the therapist and me very intently and made a lot of appropriate sounds. He said "eating" at the ABA therapy at home yesterday. My beloved therapist, Malawaina, said she got teary hearing his sweet voice. Since he mainly makes sounds like "bababa" "da da da" we don't really know what his talking voice sounds like. I've heard it a couple of times and he has the most angelic voice I've ever heard. When his eyes and mine lock, I feel like everything stops around me. I just love it. It's happening a lot more often now and I think this is a beginning to him coming out from his little shell.

Aly has been using potty for a couple of weeks now. She still wears pull ups and has occasional "accident", but she tells me when she has to go. All I have to say is, "ok, go upstairs to potty" and there she goes like a big girl. We are doing construction right now for downstairs guest/multi-purpose room (I say multi-purpose because I know kids will take over it) and the garage. We finished the laundry room project and they are working on extending the garage space forward. It looks awesome!

Little Miss Saya is talking a lot and she is just a funniest kid. She loves bath now finally and she gets really mad at Daddy when he pulls her out of the bath. The other day when that happened, she cried for me as Daddy put a diaper on her. When he brought her downstairs, she stated "Bye-bye Daddy!" as if she is saying "ba-bye, you can disappear now" and when Mike tried to carry her, she gave him a major cold shoulder by turning her head in an exaggerated motion. It was really funny.

Anyway, I can write more believe me, but I should stop because I probably lost the audience already.