Sonel Update

My cousin, Mia and her daughter, Whitney, came for a visit. Mia is also my hairstylist (the best ever!). Sonel has visited her several times at the Salon, but he never would talk much. She got to see him act like the jabber box that he is.

We had a wonderful Christmas. It's always so much fun to watch kids squeal with excitement as they open their gifts. Of course, for Hope, it was her best Christmas ever!!! (She says that every year.) Poor Sonel, he woke up on Christmas eve and came into the living room saying "It's Christmas, it's Christmas". I told him not until tomorrow, and he cried for probably an hour about it. We have a little snowman that we move each day, on a calendar and Hope moved it for the next day, before she went to bed. He kept telling me to come look at the "snow". I had bought everything really early this year, so the poor child had to look at presents for a month without opening any. He was so excited and had a good time and played all day. His favorite toy is a wooden train set. Here are a couple pictures from our day.

Setting up the train set.

Sonel "playing" the Glockenspiel.

We will be leaving for Florida this Tuesday. Sonel is equally excited about that. He keeps saying "We're going on vacation to Florida". We're driving, so it will be a couple days before we get there, since we're from Indiana. I can't wait to get out of the cold! Sonel will finally get to wear his Spiderman sandals that I bought, when he first came here, on the beach.

Brenda

TOO CUTE

Every time we head to town, Sonel asks about going to Chuckie Cheese's. The thing that makes it so cute is...he calls it Chucker Chesus!

Sonel was SPEECHLESS!!!

Last Friday we went to Dr. DeHeer's son's school to talk to the third grade class. First, I showed a few pictures of where Sonel came from and pictures of his surgery. When I finished talking, the children wanted to ask Sonel some questions. Mind you that I prepared Sonel for this 'event' in his life, a few days ahead. On the way to the school I even bribed him with a Happy Meal. But I told him he couldn't have the toy until we were done talking to the kids...and that he HAD to talk to them or I wouldn't let him have the toy. Well, the first question came and all eyes were on Sonel (they wanted to hear him talk so bad), he sat there rolling his tongue around in his mouth! I had to answer every single question for him, because all he did was tricks with his tongue! When we were done I told him he could at least tell them "bye". The room was totally silent and Sonel managed to say "bye" to the kids and when he did, there was a BOOM of applause and cheering! Well I had to give him his toy because he did speak to them. As soon as we went out the front door...he starts yapping up a storm! WHAT A STINKER. I promised the kids in the class that I would make a video of Sonel talking and put it on the blog so they could hear him. I will make the video, I've just had a really busy schedule the last few days. Tomorrow I'm taking Sonel to "StoryTime" at the local school and then I have to do some work for my web site, so I WILL get the video done, but it will be in a few days.

Brenda