Happy 11th Birthday Flor!!

Flor turned 11 on January 6th! I can't believe that she is that old....because that makes me REALLY old. Remember I met her when she was turning one, so a whole ten years ago. So crazy to even think about. 

Flor's birthday is hard for a lot of reasons- 1) We just had Christmas 2) she is hard to shop for anyway, and 3) she doesn't get the joy of it the same way as the other children. She doesn't know why the day is special, but we celebrate anyway. 

This year, we asked her where she wanted to go for dinner and she shook her head no to about every option given her except Texas Roadhouse. She doesn't have any clue what that is, but since she nodded yes to the option, we took it. 

We had a great time at dinner and then we came home and had presents, cake & ice cream. It's funny that we have a cake that we pretty much stick to for every child and Flor's is strawberry shortcake. It's a nice lighter option after all the holiday baked goods :)

I accidentally put these pictures on the last post because I didn't remember that they were from Flor's birthday. But, here we are out to dinner at Texas Roadhouse.

From Hallie

Our pictures of her opening gifts are sorely lacking. I have zero and these last few I pulled from Devin's phone. Yikes. We promise to do better next year Flor!!

A few things about Flor at age 11:

*While she still hasn't grown much height wise, she is starting to put on the pounds! She has quite the round belly. In just a few months, she gained four pounds, which is more than she has gained in her entire four years with us. So now she weighs like 44 pounds or something. Haha. Wahoo Flor!!

*Flor is a mama's girl. She most definitely prefers me to anyone I think and goes around saying her one word all day long "mama, mama". She likes to cuddle with me (and anyone else) for short periods of time before she's up and on to the next thing.

*Flor continues to go to school in the functional skills classroom, where she works on her IEP goals. Some of her goals this year are to open and close the bathroom door for herself, take down and pull up her pants when she goes to the bathroom (she goes sometimes, but that does not mean she is potty trained!), identify emotions of characters in stories like "happy and sad", participate in adaptive PE for 15 minutes straight (by far her worst performing goal- she just knows what she likes and PE isn't it), and use appropriate touch at school (high fives instead of hugs and kisses- I think we will be working on this one forever). Her teacher is really not my favorite and frequently texts me just to tell me that Flor is naughty at school, but when I ask if she has ideas on how to work on it, she can't give me any. Flor is really not that hard to deal with and is not naughty like that at home, so I am not sure what the issue is at school. We have changed and adjusted her meds a few times at the request of the school, but we think they are working fine. Anyway...an ongoing saga there.

*Flor is generally a happy girl and likes to tease. She likes her rocking horse from Christmas, coloring, playing her ipad, listening to music (and waving her arms to the music-- music is her love language), jumping on the trampoline, eating, riding her bike (kind of- working on this), and torturing her siblings. 

*Flor will eat almost anything put in front of her- and she is a GREAT eater. The only things we have to prod her to eat are green vegetables. She has a real skill of picking out the things she likes on a plate and leaving the rest (i.e the lettuce and things like that). She does NOT like chocolate and that is about the only thing she really won't eat. 

We love our Flor! She brings such a happy and special spirit into our home. We would not trade having her and the experiences we get with her for anything. We are so grateful that Heavenly Father saw fit to send her to our family.