Going Out on the Town

 After our nice little Saturday with the kids, we invited our niece over to babysit and we went out on the town with friends to see a show.

We started at Harry's because... Harry's.  Andrew tried to take our selfie.

 Needless to say, it did not go well.

 So then I tried.  Better!

 But then some Phi Mu's offered to take our picture for us.  They were graduates coming back to visit their first year out of school.  That was an interesting conversation!  Boy, that time of our lives was a LONG time ago.

 Well not long enough that we have forgotten... :)
So we made our way from Harry's to Elliott.

 The show was super fun!

It was a stage of many colors.

 The front man for the band was definitely a showman! He was all over that stage.  He had moves like jagger, if you will.

 He wore a red sport coat and gold shiny boots.  I loved him.

At the end, he got dragged across the stage by his feet.  He also sang Last Dance with Mary Jane and dedicated it to us (Indiana town people) which made me really happy.  I love when there's even a little bit a personalization.

A great time was had by all! Nice to get out and do some adult stuff once in awhile. :-)

Purdue Game with a Friend

 Tommy's friend Bode was at the game and we asked his mom if he would want to join us where we were sitting.  She said sure and the boys were so excited.

 They had a great time! The whole time they were either talking about Purdue basketball (surprisingly) or just saying potty words.  Haha!!

Charlotte wanted to be a part of it too so she was throwing in words at will.  Too funny.


You can see in the video how jacked up they were for the game. Actually they were just talking about things that STINK.  What?? I don't know.  Six year olds.  Good times though!

First Family Purdue Game of the Year

Just kidding. We actually went to a game in February so we'll say this is the first game of the season.  There we go.  That's better. 

 We have new seats this year behind the visitors bench.  It's quite a hike to get up and down those stairs when it's potty time but the seats are great!

 Family selfie!! Not as crazy as years in the past though.

 A pic with just the ladies this time.

They have a new bobble head Pete.  He and she are number one!

A new season of watching the Boilers has begun.  Go Purdue!

FIeld Trip to the Purdue Farm

 I signed up for another field trip for Tommy's class.  This time it was a trip to the farm at Purdue. 

 We hopped on the decrepit bus and took off.

 Instead of going from one barn to another and another, they brought a sample of all the animals they had into one barn.  They had a couple beef cows, a couple dairy cows, two pigs, hatching eggs, baby chicks, hens, fish, sheep and a tractor.  Tommy was impressed, I swear.  He just didn't want to have his picture taken.

 He finally came around.  My chaperone group was the girl with the purple hat, the boy in the navy coat (who specifically asked for me, awww) and Tommy.  They were a perfectly behaved group.  I was super lucky.

 Check out those hatching chicks! They were pecking their way out as we watched.  Very cool.  It also looked incredibly exhausting.

 We had to get a picture in front of the tractor! It was my group and Mrs. A's group.

After we visited the farm, Mrs. A decided to take the kids to Happy Hollow park.  What an excellent park! We had so much fun.  The kids were about to explode while they waited to cross the parking lot.  As they ran and screamed across the parking lot to the playground equipment, Mrs. A said, "The natives have been set free!!!"

They certainly had.  It was so fun seeing how much fun they had.
 

I made this happen.  I'm pretty sure that's Tommy saying, "What is happening????" The kids LOVED it.  They were having so much fun.  More and more kids kept getting on.  Less and less kids were holding on.  One girl fell off and got a face full of mulch.  It was the wrong girl to get a mouthful of the brown stuff.  She has an easy gag reflex and started spitting. I thought we were going to having someone HURL.  Luckily, she got all the mulch out of her mouth without vomiting and we moved on with our day.  Thank goodness! What would you even do with a kid's barf in the mulch? Bury it? Ha!

So we made our way back to the school and picked up Charlotte who was crying/screaming about not coming with us on the field trip when we left the school.  Poor thing.  But all was well when we came back and informed her I was taking her home with us.  We went home, ate lunch, and we all took 2-3 hour naps.  It was an amazing day.

Purdue Game for the Family

 We haven't been to that many Purdue basketball games as a whole family.  It seems we attend a couple a year. 

Our very first family picture at a Purdue game! Tommy had no clue what was going on! :)

 The following year we went to a couple.  Tommy grew hair and we blocked out a memory.

 Tommy got to sit in the fancy black seats a couple months later.  It's not a whole family picture but I LOVE the thumbs up. 

 This was the first one all four of us attended in 2013.  Look how little and yet how big Tommy was.  Awwww.

This picture is from a game in 2014/15 season.  Our family pictures are getting crazier!

And crazier still, 2016!!! Lots of fun! This picture was near the end of the game.  The kids were getting restless.  Despite the look on Tommy's face, we did have fun!!

 Charlotte just wanted to play games on my phone. :)

 But she did do a LOT of clapping! She wore her cheerleader uniform.  She loved it! She loved the basketball and the cheerleading.  It was all very exciting.

 Tommy enjoyed his snacks.  Andrew enjoyed the win. Oh, sorry, Spoiler Alert. :-) We won. 

GK was there!  Hey Gene!

 Gene Keady and his 3-Pete Team were at the game being honored at half time.  It's been 20 years since that team won the Big Ten Championship 3 years in a row. Very cool. 

 Speaking of Pete, Charlotte got restless so we did two laps around the concourse.  She wanted to stop at every spot and get her picture taken.  It was so dang cute. 

 Charlotte was sporting her #wcw even though it was Saturday. :)

 There was a LOT of cheese for the b-ball picture.  Not sure why. :)

 Then it was Tommy's turn to run around the concourse.  We got our picture taken with Gene Keady.  We made good Keady faces, I think. 

 Tommy measured his foot against Isaac Haas.  It. Is. Big.

 Yep, he's a big dude. 

 Hey Tommy, can you put your hand over Haas's handprint on the basketball? No way, Jose.  ;) He's FIVE. More independence than the original colonies! He's growing up! ;-)

 Charlotte is also in the "I do it" independent stage of a two year old.  Lots of independence around here.  Battles everyday, everywhere! Fun! :-) By the way, a 2 year old has a better attitude at a late basketball game than that lady that is photobombing us in the back.  Yeesh!

The kids had a good time no matter how restless they were.  Tommy didn't really want to go since Grandpa and Grandma weren't going to be there.  But he did come around and enjoy his soft pretzel a little. :-)
I think even Baby Princess Aurora enjoyed the game too! We would like to thank everyone around us for putting up with our wildlings.  Good memories made that night!

Star Wars Game

 I don't know if you've heard about this movie, Star Wars something or other,  coming out recently but I guess there were 6 movies before it and it's going to be huge.  Anyway, it was a heavily marketed movie, so heavily in fact, that they even were promoting at our home Purdue game. 

 My parents and father in law took our tickets and took Tommy to the game because Tommy is a brand new fan to the franchise.  But it's hard to see them.  Let me zoom in. ;-) 

 Not much better but at least you can see them a little now.  Tommy is probably asking LOTS of questions right at this point.

 We had the opportunity to go to the game too. We weren't planning to go but we got a call from the Deichman family and they offered us some tickets.  Sweet!! Plus Gaga said she could watch Char Char Binks so it worked out splendidly!

 They had light saber fights during halftime and they had a lot of characters come out during the time outs.  It was awesome. 

The characters even stood in the concourse so we could get our pictures taken with them.  Tommy was a little terrified since Darth Vader was, no joke, about 7 feet tall.  Awesome!  He may have been scared but he was also super excited! 
What a cool event.  Not only did Tommy love it but so did we. It was also super cool to see the Deichmans.  We haven't seen them since Tommy's second birthday party. What a fun day!

Research with Tommy T

In our pediatrician's office, there was sign for a research study being done at Purdue.  It was for 4-5 year olds who stutter.  They wanted to study language development in kids who stutter at an early age.  I thought I'd check into it.  

Tommy easily fit the profile and he was cleared to be studied.  The first meeting was just checking the place out and informing the mom what exactly they would be doing.  I did not like it. But I figured if Tommy didn't want to do it, he'd make it clear and we would just opt out.  

The beginning of every Saturday was playing games and being assessed in language development.  This part was fun.  

Then we would go into one of the rooms.  Scared face emoticon inserted here. ;-) This is the dinosaur room.  I sat back and just let it happen because I didn't know how he would react.  They turned on Tom and Jerry and loaded up his face with monitors.  OMG.  

I could see him in the computer monitor but that was it.  There was one point where he leaned forward to see me and smiled and got totally distracted so I went back to hiding. :-) 

 So this is Tommy connected to all the sensors.  The superhero light sensors, as we called them.  He pretty much HATED this.  The worst part was that there was a sensor attached to his top and bottom lips.  Then he would have to say weird words like NIMPOFUM and Daddy helps Bobby Paint a Picture or something along those lines.

 The first time he had to sit and do this for nearly an hour.  Can you imagine? He did AMAZING.  They were very impressed with him as a 4 year old being able to do all this.

 The Penguin Room was not as bad for him.  Maybe worse for mom. :) He had to have these sensors attached to his head and then he watched videos and rhyme words.

 He did amazing with this too!!

They made me sit out of the room for this one.  But I got to watch on the monitors, hear the audio of him talking, and see him on the screen.

 Each one of these lines shows one of the monitors on his head.  This is his BRAIN working through the things he was seeing.  It's amazing.  Now as a mom, this is scary because you wonder what is it doing to his brain.  But according to all the information they gave me, there's no more harm in doing this than watching TV, radiation-wsie.  They can't lie in a research study, right? :-)

They would show him words and he would have to say if they rhymed or not.  The other time in the penguin room he had to listen to a story and the story would have weird words and random sentences that make no sense inserted in it.  Like, "The girl took his her frog to his her room and they their room was blagerstom."  That's only exaggerating a little.

 The coolest part about watching the monitors happened with this game.  He was "fishing" for these puzzle pieces and as he picked up one fish, it swung back and forth.  As it was swinging, one of the lines on the monitor went up and down like crazy to match his eye movement as he watched fish.  That was pretty cool.

 They did a hearing test to make sure he could hear well.

 They also did an attitude test on him.  I had to leave the room for this one too because they said answers can be much different if parents are in the room.  He answered all his questions with full confidence in how he speaks.  We want to keep him with this attitude! He is now enrolled in speech classes at Purdue which is kind of exciting.  He is learning some basics such as rates of speech and they are also covering what bumpy speech is.  Before this point, we are not sure he even had a clue.  It's time to start talking about it, I guess.  We didn't really know how to approach it and they are giving us a lot of great ideas on how to talk about it.

What this research project is doing is studying the changes in a preschoolers brain as the child is developing early language skills.  I don't have the exact percentages but a large percentage of kids who stutter discontinue stuttering around age 8.  It just goes away.  The smaller percentage (I'm thinking it's less than 10-20%) continues.  They want to see if they can tell what is different in early language development to determine who needs early speech therapy as they are going to continue to stutter the rest of their life.  Since Tommy is genetically loaded (he has it coming from both sides), we went ahead and started speech therapy due to the odds he will continue.  

Tommy was child number 136! I can't believe they've convinced at least 140 kids to do all this so far! But how great is all this? I hope they can find some answers that will help children get the therapy they might need instead of putting it off until they are older (around age 8) which is the suggested method at this point.

 Tommy took some convincing each time.  He really didn't want to take his Saturday to go do these odd things.  But he usually negotiated some sort of deal for himself and it all worked out.  One Saturday when he REALLY didn't want to go, he finally said to me, "If I go, can I get a Thor mask?"  I said, "Absolutely."  He came along without a peep.  Whatever works, right? One day, I told him he was helping lots of other kids by doing this and he came along no problem.  It's just the right words on the right day, I guess.

Every time he goes in for the session, he gets to leave with a cool prize.  His speech teacher told him that at his last session for the study, he needed to ask about the superheroes in the cabinet.  He talked about this ALL WEEK.  Then when his last session came up, every chance he got, he would bring up the superheroes.  He would get a break from the video he had to watch and he would bring up the superheroes.  When can we get out the superheroes? Is it time for the superheroes? How about now?   Not yet, Tommy.  Just wait, Tommy.  Almost time, Tommy.

 Finally, he got out of the penguin room and he could see the superhero stuff sitting on the table.  He STILL had to remain patient while they removed the monitors.  He was so very patient.

Finally he came to the table and looked over the prizes for the week.  He could choose between a Hulk, a Spiderman, an Ironman, a Lightning McQueen, or a Harley Davidson motorcycle.  Do you know what my Avenger-loving child decided to pick on this day?? The freaking motorcycle.  My mouth dropped the to the floor.  I looked at the professor and the grad student and they were doing the same thing.  We all burst out laughing.  Way to keep us on the our toes, Tommy T.  In his defense, he said he picked Captain America's motorcycle.  Okay, dude.  I like your style.

So the next step in the process is that we do a lot of this again after he turns 5.  Then they check in with us every year to see how he's doing.  We get a full write up on what they're learning in the study and we get paid (college fund moola) so I hope they learn lots of awesome things from our awesome dude.

Sidenote: Tommy was playing basketball outside one day and he started saying nimpofum over and over.  Ha! He remembered! So don't cuss in front of him!! ;-)