Firetrucks and First Steps Family Fair

Today has so far been a pretty productive day. Milla is napping right now so I'm taking some time to relax.

As is always the case on Saturday mornings, James and Reiss made pancakes and sausage for breakfast. Plain with maple syrup and "white" (powdered sugar) on top for Reiss. Occasionally, he will eat a blueberry pancake too, but he really just likes to eat the blueberries before they are buried in batter. For Daddy, it's plain pancakes and blueberry pancakes with maple syrup. That is, unless Reiss insists James put white on his as well. Mine are chocolate chip and pecan and blueberry and pecan with maple syrup. Occasionally, I will slice a banana on top. Milla doesn't - or perhaps I should correct myself and say won't - eat pancakes.

After breakfast, Reiss and James went outside to mow the front and side lawns. James uses the real mower and Reiss uses his toy mower we got at KMart a few years ago. Today, the KMart mower decided to die. R.I.P., little toy lawn mower. So, another thing on the agenda for today: Go buy another mower. Normally, we don't just go buy our children things for the heck of it but the toy mower is one of the kids' favorite toys so with the old one breaking, we decided it needed to be replaced.

A little later, we attended a First Steps Family event. First Steps is Indiana's name for early intervention for infant and toddler developmental programs. It is called First Steps here and in a few other states. In other states, it is called something else but I can't recall exactly what right at the moment. It was not an "open" invitation event, but rather an event where only First Steps recipients and their families could attend. Milla gets speech therapy through the program so we received an invitation.

Children in attendance at the fair were allowed to pick out three books for free. So we came home with SIX brand new books for which we didn't spend a single penny! There was a girl "manning" the book tables - there were FOUR huge tables of books to choose from - and she was wearing a Target shirt and the bags that were given out for people to carry the books were Target bags. One could reasonably conclude that Target played a part in providing the books at no charge, so thank you, Target!!

There were was a firetruck and an ambulance there - outside, of course, not inside with all the other stuff. The firefighters brought safety dogs with them and put on little shows with the dogs demonstrating fire safety. In addition to the book tables, there was a free ID card station and table after table of informational literature on programs for children of all levels of special needs.

There were two reps there who gave me some very helpful information regarding the Medicaid waiver program for children with learning disabilities. And before anyone judges me at the mention of the word "Medicaid," this program is open to people of all income levels. Even if the child does not meet certain requirements for all benefits while under the age of 18 because of family income levels, they do qualify for it once they reach eighteen years. It's very confusing and too much detail and drama to try and explain in a blog post that is meant to be a light-hearted recounting of our Saturday.

They also had tables of water bottles, bags of chips, cookies, hotdogs, and lemonade - again, all for free! LOVE, love, love FREE! Eating the way we do, we couldn't have everything there though, so I grabbed a bottle of water, a few bags of chips, and two lemonades. We popped a squat and drank the lemonades and off we went to see the firetrucks outside before leaving.

One of Reiss's favorite things in the whole world is firetrucks. Just don't blow the horn or he will freak out. We always make sure any fire personnel we come in contact with when looking at firetrucks know this and politely ask them not to blow the horn. They are always happy to oblige because even they don't like being so close when those things go off. They will do it for children who ask but they say those children usually want them to do it over and over. Too much noise, if you ask me. Good thing Reiss has noise sensitivities!

We climbed all over the firetrucks, inside and out. Reiss got to listen to his heartbeat with a stethoscope in the ambulance. He ran his Hot Wheels truck he was carrying all up and down the stretcher. He and Milla both tried phoning in an emergency. Okay, not really, but they were very taken with the phone and cb speaker or whatever it's called. They played and jumped around inside both trucks with several other children but not once did any of the other children ask to hear the firetruck horn....thank goodness!

As we were leaving the church where the fair was, which just happened to be the same church where Reiss goes one day per week for Parent's Day Out, he and Milla sat down on the little childsize park bench. It was precious and once again, I was kicking myself for not carrying our camera with us at all times.

Next we went and got lunch from the usual Saturday place and brought it home for a picnic out on the deck. Reiss, Milla, and James ate their lunches. I ate nothing and finished off the bottle of water from the fair. Since yesterday morning, I have had rotating flu symptoms. First, it was a headache, then achy body pains and then it was a sore throat. Today, it has been achy body and sore throat and no appetite since breakfast. I'm just glad it's not so bad to prevent us from being able to enjoy the weekend.

After everyone was sufficiently done feeding their faces and throwing the "dirty" almond cookies (we tell Reiss they are dirty because they contain gluten and he cannot eat them) off the deck that are always given to us by the Asian restaurant owners, we headed for KMart. KMart did not have a toy lawnmower.

Next up, ToysRUs. They only had two types of toy mowers and no cheapy $5 ones like the one we were replacing. One of the mowers they had was a bubble mower. No, no, no. Big fat Mommy veto. No more "bubble" toys. We have a zillion of them and probably every single one is currently sitting in the garage covered in a thin layer of bubble "slime" - what I call the bubble solution when it dries after the toy is not cleaned after use. The only other choice was a popper mower of sorts. The balls in it are very small. It doesn't make anywhere near the amount of noise a traditional "popper" toy makes.

$25.99 (not including tax) later, we have a new toy mower. Yes, I balked at the price and no, I didn't want James to shell out that much money but I also didn't want to drive all over town looking for a new toy mower, at naptime, no less. New mower in hand and everyone strapped safely into the Mommy truck and home we came.

Milla fell asleep approximately fourteen seconds into the ride home and Reiss sang trying to wake her. We got home and Reiss played outside for quite some time, covering nearly every square inch of grass we own with Daddy in tow. They both came in and headed for a good place to nap and that brings us to now....Everyone is asleep but me! And I'm the one not so hot so I am getting off here and going to get some Z's while it's still quiet. Na-nite! (at 4:30 in the afternoon!)