Milestones

Awwwwwwwwww. It is so nice to be loved. You guys are great. In the past few days, I've had several of you dear readers contact me to make sure everything was ok here at the McElroy homestead. And yes, indeed, all is well. Sorry for the long hiatus, sports fans!

On the heels of Thomas being gone for 11 days at Burning Man was a week of Elliot's school being closed in preparation for the new school year, and then both Elliot and Thomas getting sick. So that made for lots of parenting and not a lot of blogging for moi! Also, this is my 100th post! That milestone, and the fact that it is also almost the one year anniversary of this blog, combined to give me a little case of writer's block. But I've finally gotten over myself and decided to just write a post, already. So here's the news.

First up, I must give my dear hubby a hard time for taking very few pictures at Burning Man, despite the fact that he stole my camera for a week and a half. And he has no pictures of himself at the event, either. But here is a fantastic picture of Thomas, aka Ranger @pparatus, in all his Burning Man glory, taken by photographer John Pettitt. You can check out more of his work here. You can also check out photos of this year's event in the Burning Man photo gallery, here.


Next up, Elliot is now a kindergartener! He doesn't officially meet the cutoff date-wise, but he is definitely ready to be in with the older kiddos at School of Autism, having already met the majority of his kindergarten benchmarks (little superstar!). We all love having him go to the afternoon session at the school instead of mornings, and he is doing great. He will most likely do two years of kindergarten at SOA, and then we'll make a decision about mainstreaming. Here is the big boy in a rare moment of stillness.


Also a big shout out to all of you who took your cars to get washed on August 28th for the School of Autism fundraiser through Washman Car Washes. $10,400 was raised for the school that day. Woo hoo!!!!!

And here is Imogen, who is going to turn one year old this weekend (can you believe it?).


Since Elliot hasn't followed the typical developmental milestones, every little thing that Imogen does never ceases to amaze me. I had no idea, for instance, that pretend play started by 11 months old. Here is little Miss Idgie pretending to talk on the phone. I couldn't get her most impressive phone voice on video, though, in which she holds the phone to her ear and says "Herro!" in her best Asian accent, at full volume.

So there you have it. Stay tuned for first birthday pictures this weekend, and I promise to save you the panic and will never neglect my blog for so long again!