Prince Vince Meets the World

Time’s Up

christinamolin — Fri, 27 Jan 2012 16:26:25 +0000

Vince and I are flying back tomorrow. We have had a very productive and successful trip in many ways. I will get into the results of the school meeting and mainly the meeting with the new therapy centre that did not leave me very impressed at all.

I finally got a real run in this morning. The first of the week. I blame it on the many minus degrees and the darkness… It felt great, but a bit heavy in the snow. My shoes are all clean and shiny after running in the clean snow. And this afternoon we spent quite some time outside in the snow and Vince enjoyed it!

Big Day

christinamolin — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 05:18:06 +0000

Vince and I are in Sweden this week to prepare a few things for the move.
Today is the biggest preparation day so far. We are meeting with day care,school and his new therapy team. We are choosing a typical class for Vincent, that means full inclusion.The place we will live is a smallish town just north of Gothenburg and there is only one school. There will be three kids born -06 who have DS. After a lot of researching cities and areas we found this was actually the only one where the people I spoke to were only satisfied with what the municipalities, cities and schools had done for their children. We are hoping it will continue like this. So far the *official* people have been in contact have all been positive and listened to our wants and needs.Lets see what today brings!

Vincent

christinamolin — Thu, 19 Jan 2012 12:32:58 +0000

Vincent is doing great. He just wrapped up his dance class which he enjoyed a lot. He is still doing swim classes and has private classes twice a week. He can swim a few meters alone and he jumps off the little jumps in the water, pushes off from the bottom and swims back to the side and climbs up and jumps again.
He still has his 4 therapy sessions a week at KiGa and he is moving along there too. Speech is the main thing of course, but he is learning new words and he is more communicative to people.

We have all our DVDs on an external computer drive as the kids were just scratching the DVDs up and it was a constant mess. The bad part is that I have to try to figure out what they want to watch (actually what Vince wants to watch all Edgar watches is a documentary with Willie about hospitals…). This morning Vince got really mad at me. He told me he wanted to watch a movie, and explained TREE, REPAIR MAN, WOLF, AXE, MONSTER and DANCE. I had no clue. I tried a few and he got more and more mad telling me the same things over and over again. As I turned on another movie there was a preview for the movie Vince wanted: Beauty and the Beast. Well of course, the dad is the inventor who uses a lot of tools. He gets lost in the woods while on his way to a inventors contest (or something) with his wood chopping machine which has an axe. In the woods the wolves are coming. The father ends up with the monster/beast and in the end Belle and the beast are dancing. But to get to that point he was really furious for a good 10 minutes before I finally got what he was saying all along.

Next week is a big week. Vince and I are flying to Sweden on Saturday. On Wednesday we have a meeting with Vince future school, principal, teacher, therapists and the responsible person from the city. I am nervous, anxious, freaking out and excited. We have chosen a regular school at this time. I think we are satisfied with the choice and I am starting to have a lot less panic attacks about the subject.

We will also meet with Vince new therapy team in Sweden next week and I am excited about what they have to say and what they propose for a therapy plan. More than a bit nervous about this actually…

Hopefully we will also be able to see the place where we will live, there are some kinks, but they should be solved by mid February.

Dance Class from a few weeks ago. The kids were doing a lot more when us parents were not in the room, we know cause we usually watched the sessions through the key hole in the door in order not to interrupt them.

Vince thought I was taking a picture instead of filming with my camera, hence the cheese stand still look.

Edgar

christinamolin — Wed, 18 Jan 2012 07:24:47 +0000

He is pretty funny 85% of the time, the other 15% he is a pure monster. Terrible twos are hitting us hard and he can do everything on his own. And God forbid that you try to help him along with something to speed things up. His newest thing is that he has to have two spoons when he eats his yoghurt. He goes to the drawer and grabs a handful and says two. If you ask him how old he is, he is five (really two).
He is talking a lot. Like A LOT. Some of his words are a mix between Swedish and German, like nyssel (Schluessel und Nyckel meaning key). He mainly talks German but understand Swedish and English as well. He rarely answers in English except for a few words he always uses. It is rather interesting to have a kid who hardly speaks at all, and one who is really advanced in speech. Especially as all ‘experts’ on bilingualism and trilingualism tells you ta expect your kid to start speaking a lot later because the child has to learn many more words. Edgar usually talks in 5-6 word sentences and he picks up big words easily. Same with phrases (Like laying in bed and screaming OH MY GOD MOM COME at 5am in the morning, and when I enter his room he says Thank God Finally (Gott sei dank aentlich!). Vince is picking up a lot from him too. However, Edgar knows Vince is the big brother and hence the boss.

Eds eating with his two spoons and doing his best Vincent cheese imitation:

Kettlebell

christinamolin — Tue, 17 Jan 2012 10:16:10 +0000

Oh my god in heaven. I bought myself a kettlebell, complete with training DVD.

Do you know how they work? You kind of swing it back and forth and around and up and down and you get this fab, toning complete body workout. YouTube it and you can see for yourself.
The running I can do, fairly easy. Just close my mind and keep going. Listen to the music, spot someone or something on the trail and all of a sudden a km has passed. This thing? Exhausting. I went for the 8kg and now almost 40 min after the workout my arms are still complete jelly.
Countdown to half marathon 1 this year (March 25th, Graz), is now on. Instead of counting the long runs down, I will cross off a kettlebell workout with a relief two times a week. If I can stick to this, I am hoping to cut my last half marathon time with 10%. The key to that phrase being if I can stick to it…

In Other News

christinamolin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 13:01:42 +0000

I am feeling pretty convinced that I absolutely need these:

Asics Gel DS Trainer 17**

**I mean come on, it even has DS in its name. This shoe was made for me!

Twin Cousins

christinamolin — Fri, 13 Jan 2012 12:58:24 +0000

In September the kids got new twin cousins. For whatever reason we have not visited them before this past weekend. So we packed the kids in the car, loaded up with books and toys to keep them happy for as long as possible and headed through a snow storm in the Alps and ended up on the other side of the country in Upper Austria.
The kids had a blast playing with big cousin Tobias and Edgar was rather eager to squeeze and pull the twins as soon as he could. He was very amazed with babies coming out of the tummy. Yeah, there will be great conversations in the future I am sure.

I was unable to get all cousins in one pic, so unfortunately twin Valentin is not on this picture. But hey, they are twins, and look pretty much a like, so just imagine one more cutie like this but with different eye color.

Edgar, Vince, I, Tobias and Jakob.

Run Forrest, Run

christinamolin — Tue, 10 Jan 2012 13:33:07 +0000

Some time in later October I started having muscle pains in my thighs after running. Mainly on the back side of the thigh. I tried resting, both voluntarily and after surgery. I tried Voltaren gel and I tried anti-inflammatory pills. Nothing really helped. Finally, I made an appointment in late December with a private sports doctor. But before that appointment I went for a 15k run, just in case she would tell me that running was out of the question for a month or so.
Fortunately, that was not the case. But she did say that I need to do more back strengthening and stomach strengthening exercises. She also cracked my back and made foot imprints as apparently I need insoles for my running shoes. Some 70 euros later and with two new appointments, one for x-rays and one for a physical therapist, she sent me home. After the back cracking the leg felt a lot better and I did not feel anything during the Silvesterlauf.
The x-rays showed nothing special. The physical therapist looked at my back and had me do some strange back bending exercises before she confirmed that my legs are not the same length. The left leg is about 0.5cm shorter, causing me to run unevenly, or more correctly, to put the weight differently on different legs, hence the pain. She then pressed a point on my butt and I was about to knock her off her feet. The pain was BAD. Just what she had thought, a typical case of Piriformis Syndrome. She offered me a big, bad shot in my but that I politely declined. After that appointment, which was last Friday, my left leg is back to feeling heavy while running and the shooting pain from the butt and down in the leg while sitting. Not really comfortable. I stretch and stretch and stretch some more. Sometimes it helps, sometimes not so much. I have one more appointment with the back cracking lady and that should be good.

In the mean time, I am picking up my insoles for the running shoes next week. Hopefully that will help too.
I decided to do a half marathon in Graz on March 25th and this week I jump started into week to of this intermediate running schedule. Let’s hope the back cracking lady fixes me up good.

A New Era

christinamolin — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 18:54:43 +0000

We tried going to the movies today, Vince and I. He has not been before, and I figured it was worth a try. He liked it once the movie started, but was a bit afraid of the commercials in the beginning. And yeah, it took him A LOT of convincing and him biting my ear [hard enough for bad words to come out] to even get him in. But then he stayed in his seat for most of the movie. He preferred sitting in the very front row after about half the movie so we moved up there. Next time I will get two popcorn as sharing was not even considered. If he was going to stay in there he was to be in sole custody of the popcorn. He ate the whole thing too. As for the movie, Alvin and the Chipmunks 3, it was OK. Kind of cute, not too long and worth seeing.
But now I know, a new era has begun and we can start going to movies!

Spring Feeling on the Playground

christinamolin — Fri, 06 Jan 2012 17:37:12 +0000

We took advantage of the nice weather and Mr Bs day off (Austrian holiday today) and headed to our favorite gross motor park to play. The weather was great and the kids (our) were only half devils after a night of very little sleep for some reason. At 4.30 am Edgar announced the morning by screaming OH MY GOD MAMMA COME. That after having screamed for me every other hour during the whole night. Parenthood is so much fun.

Anyways. Pics from today:

And of course a Cheese/Thumbs up pic