On Top of Mt. Laundry

My simple and thoughful New Year Resolutions

2011-01-05T10:34:00.000-05:00

Rather than focusing on one or two major New Year Resolutions like losing weight or going sky diving (you have me considering it, Karyn!), my plan is to approach every day with anticipation, humility and with a passion I've been lacking.

Growing older does bring about a certain awareness, and although I don't regret or want to change things I‘ve done with my life, I recognize now there is more I can do. What I’ve come up with are straightforward and easy, but also wonderful and definitely life changing for me. My list seems short and simple, but the words are true of my heart.

These resolutions aren’t intended to last just this one year, but my lifetime. They will help me move closer to being comfortable and happier with me and when I feel the satisfaction and fulfillment of a blessed life, I will have better tools to help my boys find it for themselves.

Therefore, this year will bring whatever I choose and I choose to stop doing what I’ve been doing and to stop accepting what I’ve been accepting. It’s time for more and it starts with these simple, thoughtful and personal resolutions:

Love my boys unconditionally
Save a little extra money
Keep learning how to use my voice when the bullies taunt
Believe I’m not the person I was
Celebrate more and worry less
Call my family whenever they're on my mind
My parents spent a small fortune on braces, so show the results more
Do one act of kindness daily
Love who I am
Recognize the demons before it’s too late
Make new friends
Refuse to allow shame back into my life
Cut off my anxiety before it grows roots
Feel my worth all the way down to my toes
Greet every new sunrise with a smile

Seeing that I haven't posted a blog since October first, maybe I should put on there to update you all in detail more often!

Thankful for volunteering Thursdays!

2010-10-01T11:16:00.002-04:00

Early last week Devin brought home a schedule for the parents who signed up to volunteer in their Kindergarten classroom. I was very excited to see this. Back when Hunter was this age, I was at his school two days a week. I helped in the lunch room and library, but never in Hunter's classroom. His teacher at the time, one who has finally retired, didn't want parent help. She had been teaching that age group for over twenty years. We actually thought at the time of Hunter's IEP meeting that her experience would be beneficial when actually she was stubbornly stuck in her ways.

Devin's teacher, Mrs. M, is a newlywed who passed out a parent volunteer sign up sheet within seconds of introducing herself. She not only appreciates an extra set of hands for this age group, but she understands the excitement and love shown by the kids when parents suddenly appear at their classroom door. Both times now Devin has been surprised when I show up, even though I tell him that I'll see him in his classroom at 2:00!

I left my house yesterday, really looking foward to being smothered by five year old bodies, smiles and questions. They didn't disappoint! When I arrived at the classroom with my crooked yellow Visitor's badge clipped to my shirt, the children were in two lines, one for boys and one for girls, playing a numbers game. Devin saw me and his face lit up and he said, Mom, you're here! I held out my hand to stop his sprint toward me and he sat back down in his line.

I sat down in one of the few adult chairs in the room and watched as a boy with a miniature green fly swatter and a girl with a red one of her own looked at their teacher and waited for her to say a number. When she did, they looked to the dry erase board and, wobbling unsteady while keeping their toes on a masking tape line, they leaned left and right, back and forth, each false smacking at the numbers until one of the finally spotted the number. Then their teacher would announce a point for whatever team and mark it on a small board in her lap. The team that scored would throw their arms high, pumping them up and down without a sound in a silent cheer. It was the cutest thing! Then the boy and girl who had played that round turned to their classmates, passed the fly swatters to the next in line, then walked to the end of the line and sat down. Before the game was over, they were asked to find numbers that come after what they heard and then what came before and they also mixed up their lines so it wasn't just boys against girls but red versus green.

All through his game, Devin would turn my way and give me that great big grin of his. How could anything go wrong with that face in my life? When he was told to go back to his seat, he took the long way around and with arms outstretched like a plane and taking off just as fast, he ran to me and I gave him the hug he was looking for. I took my place at the green table and read a short and simple, copy machined book to the four interested faces looking at me. The book was full of beginner words called Sight Words. I read the book first, pointing at each word with my finger and they copied. Then we read it together, still pointing with our fingers. Simple sentences like, I am a little zebra and I am a little lion, etc. Then I'd choose one of the kids to read the words while using their fingers, making sure the other kids follow along and then when they all had a chance to read, we got to color the books! While they colored, I'd ask them to spell a sight word or ask how many letters a sight word had. While at the same time the other kids were at other tables of different colors, playing games or reading their own sight words with Mrs. M.

Last Thursday when this was done, I helped out Mrs. M by taking the children's work down from the hallways and I cut some paper with the biggest paper cutter I've ever seen. This week, though, she didn't have anything for me to do, so I was able to see Devin and his classmates sing a song about the five senses and draw two people talking since talking is something we do with our mouths. It was at this point that the Devin I know started coming out. He was going crazy with his oversized pencil, making it do all kinds of fight moves on his table instead of working in his five senses book. Suddenly, his pencil went flying off to the side and softly clacked along the floor. Instead of standing up to retrieve it, Devin jumped down and slid on his belly a good three feet to snatch it up. He then stood back up, apologized for dropping his pencil, and got to work on his drawing. I think Kindergarten teachers see just about everything, but they choose which behaviors to curb and what Devin did wasn't all that loud or obnoxious, it actually looked natural and how he just popped back up and apologized for loosing his pencil was just priceless!

In the picture above he is sitting with his classmates wihle five of his friends were given awards for having earned all green circles on their behavior charts for the month of September. You might remember me writing about Devin scoring a yellow (green, yellow, red and bad, bad blue!) on his second day of school. His friends were called up and got to choose something from a cardboard treasure box. One boy picked play dough, another a small Cars frisbees, a girl a Cat in the Hat book bag. Since that second day, Devin has brought home nothing but green which earns him some computer game playing time when he gets home. In regards to his school work, he's earned many stars and stickers but also more than a couple requests to be a bit neater. Tim and I are hoping that with more practice, there's hope he'll have better penmanship than either of us!

Devin also gets excited when I come on Thursdays because it means that he's a car rider. Although he does love to ride the bus, on Thursdays, he doesn't have to wait for the bus call because he can leave right with me at the end of the day. On this Thursday, he told me hi s eyes couldn't see. So I offered him some help to make it to the van without that sense. Once there he used his sense of touch to feel the open van door and climb into his seat and buckle his seat belt. He contiuned to pretend until he heard the DVD player start, but he quickly clenched his eyes closed again when he caught me looking at him.

Summer 2010 in Pictures

2010-09-04T08:44:00.000-04:00

Instead of taking many days typing up what we did this summer, I thought I'd create a picture slide show, similar to what I did for Hunter's 10th birthday. There's a small amount of text to explains things a bit. Much less time consuming for me! However, the song choice was my second pick. The video is only as long as the song and I needed more music for the amount of pictures I chose, although I did delete some, unfotunately! If I had my way, you'd be sitting there for awhile still! Hope this gives you a sense of the fun and love shared during our summer in Northern Michigan.

Create your own video slideshow at animoto.com.

Back to School!

2010-09-01T17:51:00.001-04:00

I have felt bad for my middle child the past week and a half. He's the only one who hasn't started school! It might be a bit confusing this year as I have three different calendars with three different handbooks! What I mean is, I have three boys in three different schools!

Hunter caught the bus at 6:40 AM on August 23rd for his first day of sixth grade. Middle school! I have posted pictures of us at Tim's summer softball games before and the school you might have noticed in the distance was the middle school. I stressed myself something awful all that day. Even though I took deep breaths and told myself, Hunter can handle it!, I couldn't help thinking of combination lockers, three minute time limit and classes in different rooms. Even though, as a student with an IEP, Hunter went on two tours of the school at the end of last year and we went and saw the school again when he was given his locker combination and class schedule. At our end of school year meeting, I suggested possibly having another meeting within the first couple weeks of school because of these concerns, but the school is doing a wonderful job! The Intervention Specialist, who is the same lady who worked with Hunter in 4th and 5th grade, is right on top of things. When Hunter arrives every morning, he meets with her and at the end of the day he meets with her again. One of the goals in his IEP is better organization, so I need to send thanks to the IS for making sure Hunter brings home his school work! So, Hunter is doing so far, so good. The first day he said he needed to ask for help with his locker combination, but other than that, no complaints. In his words, he's "surviving".

Bryce was next to start school. He doesn't have an IEP like his biggest brother, but he is considered speech delayed as he isn't talking as much as a three year old should (as my two year old nephew Landon proved to me last week while he was here with his mama). With that in mind, he was placed in a preschool that would best fit him and it just so happens to be in a different district than Hunter. We had an open house him on the same day Hunter started school. We were a little late, Devin, Bryce and I, as the only entrance I knew of to the school ended up being on the backside (although they have a sign out front that makes it seems like it's a main entrance) so we had to walk around the school to find where we needed to go. B's room is actually inside a portable classroom with wooden steps and handicap access. I had never been in one up till then. There are probably eight or so other kids with one teacher and an assistant. The classroom is on the smaller size of the rooms inside the school, but what it has the school doesn't is air conditioning! It's just a window unit, but it was making a difference!

Bryce didn't have any problems at all joining the kids among the toys and books while the other parents and I listened to what the teacher had to say. I also met the speech therapist who would be working with B. later we walked hand in hand, we joined the other parents and kids following the teacher down the school hallway to see the gym and then the playground. The next day was Bryce's first day! When Hunter first started preschool...oh, let's not talk about that. Those were some long, stressful times! Devin didn't go to preschool but he did go to pre-k and most of the time he went without a complaint, but on some days he'd cry and whine. I drove both Hunter and Devin. It was about 12:15 when a white van with a school bus yellow School Transportation sign pulled into the driveway and sent Knight into a frenzy. Bryce had already helped me put on his shoes and rode around in his brothers Jeep while we waited. He climbed out, let me put on his backpack, and then climbed into a car seat inside this strange van without hesitation. He looked around with a smile and let the lady drive away with him. It was kind of scary how easily he was taken away, but I know he was going to have a good time. Through a communication notebook I have read how well he's doing, but I've been taking him to playgroups and such for a year before preschool, so I knew he was going to transition just fine. Sniff.

You might think that Devin is going to the elementary school Hunter attended, but he's not. If he were, I would only have two different school calendars, not three. Devin is going to a school in another county because the kindergarten classroom he would be going to if I hadn't taken advantage of anothers open enrollment is having kindergarten classes only two days one week and three days the next. For how much school's expect kindergartners to know these days, that amount of time is too small. Devin was accepted, but he had to wait a week and a half after Hunter started before he could go, too. Almost every day Devin was asking me why he couldn't be in Kinder Camp again, which was the two weeks, two and a half hours a day he attended earlier this month to help him get ready. Then when Bryce started to go to school then, too... Poor Dev!

Last night he went to bed with a smile on his face knowing that in the morning I'd get him up and it would be his first day of school! Now, if you remember back to when he started pre-k, he was also excited about that. He behaved about the same way the night before and in the morning, he was asking to go before it was time, but when we got there.... This morning, Devin didn't ask to leave earlier, he didn't really talk about going to school at all. He ate his breakfast, got dressed, helped me pack his lunch and backpack, brushed his teeth. He wanted to wear his sandals but agreed to wear shoes and socks when I reminded him he couldn't go out on the playground with sandals because of the wood chips possibly hurting his feet. Then we got in the van with Bryce and headed to the school. We saw two school buses and each one he needed to know the number of the bus. One bus we passed had parked at a stop sign and we could see the driver standing up and facing the kids. I assumed they were getting hollered at, but as I passed that way headed home, the hood of the bus was up! The bus was empty though.

Devin let me take more pictures of him at the school and as you can see, he was his goofy self! This kid is always smiling! These first three days I can walk him to his classroom, but starting Monday, he has to walk into the school on his own. His classroom is pretty easy to find as the kindergarten hallway is straight down from the school entrance. Since we had brought all his supplies to his classroom open house the day before, all he had in his bag was his new Spideman lunch box, which I had taped a note of encouragement to. Devin said his teacher read it to him. He hung that up in his cubby and took his seat at his table. After a few more hugs and kisses I told him I'd see him when the bus brought him to the house we baked a couple dozen cookies for and I walked away. He called me back and I thought, OK, here it comes, but he was still smiling, he just wanted to know what he was supposed to do! His teacher told him to go ahead and start coloring the picture she had put on his table and he went to it and Bryce and I left!

Since Devin is going to an different school, the bus can't drop him off at our house, even though there's a house three doors down that the bus stops at! It was suggested by the school secretary when Dev was accepted at the school to ask that family if it was all right if we waited in their driveway to catch the bus. After telling Tim this, he said bake them some cookies and go ask. So we did and they agreed. I'm only having the bus drop him off there after school though and that's probably a good thing because, even though he was happy to see me and told me a little bit about his day, mostly he complained about the walk to the house and wondering why the bus won't go to the house. I tried to explain, but I don't expect him to understand. It was hot today, over 90, and on the way back he asked me, in a tone that made it sound like he was on the edge, Can't you see I'm losing air here? We made it back to the house without me giving in to a piggy back ride and without him passing out. He brought home his first piece of kindergarten artwork and a great attitude about going to school!

Once again, going to different schools might cause a problem, but only if Devin finds out! This weekend is the county fair. Both districts that Hunter and Bryce are going to school in are in this county, so they don't have school the rest of the week. Devin however does. I don't think he'll notice as Hunter is usually gone before Devin wakes up and Bryce doesn't go until after lunch, so it should be OK and Devin might surprise me and not care because he wants to go to school. It's a tease to me though because I had one day, today, where, for a few short hours anyway, I was ALONE!

Thanks for reading.

Yo

A little tutorial if you're new to geocaching.

2010-09-01T15:48:00.000-04:00

I was asked some weeks ago to explain in more detail what I do exactly when I go out geocaching. I didn't take the time, sorry! Recently I read via FB that my cousin Carl and his family out in scorching AZ have turned on their GPS and now another cousin back home in Michigan is interested trying it out, so I decided to sit down and write something up and posted some pictures since I'm more a visual learner myself. After all that, I posted the darn thing in the wrong blog!

I do have a geocaching blog called The Cache Checkers, which is my username at the geocaching.com website, that I posted our hunts at, but I found it was too much work to go between both blogs. Even though you can find my old stories at this blog, I decided to just post everything here, On Top of Mt. Laundry (and boy has the mountain appeared bigger these days!) instead of over there. I can't just copy and paste what I wrote because I lose all my pictures, so instead, here is the link to my defunct blog and my sought after entry.

Get out and enjoy! Go Geocaching!! A tutorial.

Hope it helps you to understand this interesting hobby!

Yo

End of May Update and Ready for Summer!

2010-06-02T17:07:00.008-04:00

Hello all!

Update started May 31st about 8:00 PM.

I can’t believe another month of 2010 is over! According to the calendar, it’s not officially summer yet. Although there have been a few days it sure has felt like it, others are more seasonable and much more enjoyable. This past Memorial Day weekends started out at a comfortable 81 degrees and ended with a high of 87 and a thunder and lightening storm. In that aftermath, it’s going to be a the perfect high of 82, but too soon it'll be up there again. Ugh. I won’t be outside of the air conditioning much, I can promise ya! LOL

There have been quite a bit of firsts in my boys’ life this past month. Two of which happened only yesterday. Every year we’re invited to the birthday party for the two boys of family friends. They were both born in the first weeks of April and then last year, a baby girl was born in the first week of May. In celebration of their births and Memorial Day, the family had a big birthday bash at their lake, which included a bounce house and a dip in the lake.

In the years past, probably because of their age, the boys didn’t go swimming in the lake. I wasn’t prepared for Hunter to want to go swimming with them; no swimming shorts bought that fit him yet and not enough life jackets with us for all the kids there. Hunter asked me again if he could join them in the lake, so I said, What the heck. Go swim in your jean shorts. I asked one of the boys to volunteer their life vest for Hunter and we strapped it on. But then, the moment of getting into the lake from the dock was facing him. First he thought he’d go backwards down the ladder. No. Then he thought he’d run in and jump like his friends had done. No go. He sat down and put his feet in the water, thinking he’d just slip in. Uh uh. Finally a boy emerged dripping from the water and offered to jump in with him. Another boy did the same and before Hunter knew it, he was in the lake, coughing up a bit of the water from his lungs. After all that worry, he had this huge smile on his face. Soon he was climbing back up on the dock and launching off the end like the other boys.

In other news , Hunter did well at the science fair. I’ll be honest with you and say I wanted to be a pain in the butt mom after the results came in! There were about 20 other science projects there and the majority of them got a first place ribbon. Hunter wasn’t one of them. It looked to me as if all the projects that had some sort of example along with the poster board presentation earned the higher ribbon. Earlier that day, Hunter told his judge about his project, The Moldy Investigation, but he doesn’t remember if he told them why he didn’t bring in any of his test subjects (I just had a shiver thinking about those tomatoes!) It wouldn’t have been healthy for anyone to open those sandwich sized plastic containers. I can bet that one of those kids would have indeed opened up a container and sent mold spores up into the air. Hunter learned allergies, respiratory problems and in serious cases, death can occur when exposed to mold spores. His poster board presentation wasn’t the neatest. The things he cut out were jagged and uneven, but it was colorful and had his two week journal on it as well as mold facts and pictures he took. This project was all his, from the subject matter (shudder) to the words, look and presentation. I’m so proud of him for what he accomplished.

We haven’t had any incidents where Hunter has hit or pushed his brother for being annoying. In the past he has done exactly that instead of telling Devin to stop or walk away. He hasn’t been walking away because Devin is Hunter’s shadow. Devin is at that age where he wants to be where Hunter is and do whatever he’s doing. Hunter is doing a great job of telling Devin when to stop and when he wants to be alone. But that hasn’t stopped Hunter from telling me how annoying Devin is and most recently he's told me that little brother’s need mute buttons.

A couple weeks ago, Hunter went with some other special education students for a field trip to the middle school. He returned again the following week with his fifth grade class. They were given a tour of the school, saw their classroom, met some teachers and did a mock drill to prepare them for the three minutes they’ll get to go from classroom to locker to classroom again. I haven’t seen that part of the school yet, but I’m told the sixth grade classrooms and lockers are all in one hallway and there won’t be any running from one end of the school to the other like I remember doing! Hunter’s current teacher has told me that all the sixth grade teachers were once elementary teachers, one actually came from Hunter’s original school that closed down. She also told me most of them have a background in special education. It helps to know this, but there’s no denying I’ll be a wreck come that first week of school in the fall!

Devin actually had two firsts to speak of over these past few weeks. Although he didn’t go far from the ladder, Devin also enjoyed a dip in the lake this past weekend. Also without swimming shorts, he eagerly put on his Tweety Bird life jacket and said he wanted to jump right in and swim out to Hunter and his friends. His dad tied a rope to the back of the life jacket and told Dev to go for it. Up until that final step, it looked like he would actually just jump in, but then he realized what he was about to do and stopped short. Tim lowered him in, but once there Devin freaked out, screaming he couldn’t swim. A fact I promise you I am very well aware of! Tim pulled him back out, but Devin really wanted to be in there. We coaxed him onto the ladder and at his own pace, he climbed down and was soon floating and bobbing in the water. He never made it out to his brother, but he was a very happy boy the whole time. I thought it was going to be a battle to get him to come out, but then the thunder rolled and he knew from the reactions of the boys swimming around him that it was time to get out.

The other first he had he’s been trying to do again! After a hard day of being almost five and almost three year olds, Dev and B were in the bath having a grand time when suddenly what should appear but an eruption of bubbles big and small. Devin moved over and said, What was that?! I smiled and said, What did you just do? He said, Um. I farted? I said, Yes, you did and that’s what happens when you fart under water. He thought that was so wonderful and kept trying to fart again until I told him to stop in case he accidentally poo’d in the bath tub!

T-ball has begun! Devin has had a few practices and one game so far. There is another tonight, but I’m hoping to get this posted before we go, but being in the company of a chatterbox and a climber, it’s always up in the air what I can get done! Devin is much more interested in playing this year than he was last. Although there’s no stopping any of the kids from playing in the dirt, Devin does it without standing back up and saying how bored he is and that he wants to go home. When a batter goes into the box, they are given a certain amount of pitches before the T is put on the plate and they hit the ball off that. Both times Devin was up to bat in his first game, he hit the pitches. No need for the T! Keep it up, Dev!

His last day of pre K is this Friday, the day after Hunter’s last day of fifth grade. Hunter and I are going to keep that a secret, though. If Dev realizes that he’s going to school, even for the half day, and finds out Hunter will be home without him…you can imagine the fuss and whining he’ll give me! I don’t have anything scheduled for Dev to do over the summer break. Hunter has his summer camp the end of July, but Dev will get plenty of playground and water park time with little bro Bryce, plus three weeks up north with the grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins and this year we’ve decided to go back to the beach house in Oak Island, N.C. in August, so there will plenty for him to do! I can’t forget that Dev has already been assigned homework and Hunter will be meeting with the math tutor sometime this summer, it just hasn’t yet been worked out yet. I’m thinking Bryce will be given some fun activities to do over the summer from his speech therapist on Thursday.

Devin’s imagination is going as fast as his mouth. He’s always playing make believe or talking make believe. I posted on FB about the time I was pushing him on the swings and he said to countdown from three and blast off to Mars. Then he surprised me saying he wanted to go to Pluto. When I started counting backwards from three, he told me I had to start higher because, since Pluto was so far away, we needed a bigger count down. I’m thinking of painting his room, which has been the same since he was born, into a rocket and outer space theme and taking the glow in the dark planets hanging from Hunter’s ceiling and putting them in Devin’s with the glow in the dark stars.

This is his pre k picture. That funny face he's making on the right? That was the group picture sent home with every kid! LOL

Devin is loving pre K so I have no fears about him not wanting to go to Kindergarten in the fall. He was hesitant of course, going to pre K at first, but, although shy, he wants to make friends and have fun more than anything. When he first started pre K, I had him signed up to go from 8:00 AM to 1:00 PM. He was all for it, but then he wasn’t so much because cartoons were turned on for the kids until 8:30 when the rest of the children arrived. Devin wanted to play, he didn’t want to watch TV. He explained it to me this way, with emphasis and a bit of a whine on the last word, I can watch TV at home. So we moved his arrival and departure back a half hour. Some mornings he says he wants to go before he even eats breakfast, but then I remind him that the kids are watching cartoons at pre K right now. He says, Yeah, it’s not 8:30 yet. Five minutes later he’ll ask, Is it 8:30 yet? On the drive there he’ll say, Don’t drop me off until 8:30 because I want to play, not watch TV.

Bryce’s first experience to share wasn’t fun for either of us. It also happened this past weekend. For those of you who have been in Bryce’s company, he’s an eater. If there is food out of his reach, he does his best to get to it. He has a very good relationship with food; he eats all his dinner and finishes off what Devin doesn’t eat and he has a huge sweet tooth. There isn’t much difference between Bryce and Devin in regards to weight and height and they are 22 months apart! When we arrived at the BBQ this weekend, I gave him a couple cookies to settle him down before the food was laid out. Yeah, yeah, I should carry apples, carrots and bananas with me…right. Bryce does love apples and bananas, but he knew he was gonna get some goodies that day and he was soon digging in. By the time we went to bed, he had more than his share of candy, cookies and cake. We were asleep in the camper when I heard Bryce coughing and then gagging and then puking. Poor guy was whimpering and heaving, experiencing his first too many sweets tummy ache. I got him over the tile of the little kitchen before he made a mess of the bed he was sharing with Devin. All Dev did was roll over. Once poor B was done, I got him cleaned up and he layed back down on his pillow with a sigh. I wiped down the floor and climbed back into bed myself. He seemed to be OK the rest of the night and the next morning.

Bryce had his third birthday this month, well, last month. He’s part of the reason my update is a few days late! Every time I sit down, he sits down with me and wants to cuddle not with me really, but with my arm! The little stinker takes the closest arm and hugs it and wraps himself around it. He likes to take my hand and rub the side of his face with it. He also does it when he’s hurt or upset, a new comfort thing for him. We didn’t really have a party for his birthday. At Hunter suggestion, the five of us went to Chuck E. Cheese and had cake when we got back. Unlike Devin who checks in with us every few minutes at Chuckie's, Bryce goes to where ever his eye wanders. He hasn’t learned yet that a drink on a table isn’t his just because it looks like his or to not try to take over a game of skeet ball, his favorite, because he wants to play. For those reasons I’m not that far behind him and for those reasons I can still interact with the baby that’s still in him but soon will be only a memory.

I tried to enter a video along the side of the paragraph above, but it doesn't work the same in a blog as it did on my website. Please follow the link here and turn your head sideways to watch us sing Happy Birthday to Bryce.

I posted a couple weeks back on FB that I got B into a preschool classroom. It didn’t turn out the way I thought it would. Back in November I decided to get my son evaluated because of his lack of speech. The program here in Ohio is called Help Me Grow and Bryce immediately began going to a social playgroup that was two and a half hours long and a speech playgroup for one hour. He loved it, never had a problem leaving me behind, so when I was told that the rules in Help Me Grow wouldn’t allow Bryce to continue with the groups after he turned three, even though there was only three weeks left in the school year, I started asking around for a place Bryce could continue interacting with other kids his age. He does have an IEP and I could get a speech therapist (ST) to come out to my house, but I wanted Bryce to be at a center so he could interact with other kids. First I was told, Take him to the park. I do take Bryce to the park a lot, it’s a great way for me to procrastinate, but it’s a guessing game if there will be kids there at the same time. Then I was told there weren’t any other playgroups that they knew of.

Finally the new director for the program invited me to bring B to a preschool in a town about twenty minutes from my house, only five minutes further down the road from the playgroup location. Of course I was all for it and waited impatiently for the ST who was working out of that preschool to call me. She told me what days she was there so we decided Bryce would come Tuesday’s and Thursday’s from 12:45 to 3:00. So Dev and I took B to the school and then Dev and I went and found a geocache and then got some groceries before returning to pick up Bryce. As we walked down the hall a woman I didn’t know came to greet me and introduced herself as the woman in charge of the preschool. After that, the first thing Boss Lady said was, You can’t leave Bryce here like that. I was speechless for a second before she went on to explain that Mr. Director was misinformed. Her decision was the final one and she didn’t have room for Bryce, that she was full and even if she wasn’t, Bryce couldn’t be left here without emergency medical forms and other paperwork filled out.

That was understandable, I said, let’s fill out that paperwork now. I don’t know if Boss Lady was having a bad day or what, but I swear the smile she showed me was fake. She said it was too late in the year to be accepting a new child into her program. She said Bryce was welcome to get his twenty minutes of speech two times a week as is stated in his IEP, but it would be against the law to allow him to be in the preschool classroom. She was full at this time, nothing she could do about it, but Bryce was signed up and ready to attend in the fall. If I really wanted him to attend a preschool this year, then two other locations had room for him. Those places were much too far to travel to from my house and by the time I got it setteled with them and another ST, the school year would be over.

For those of you who know me, I am a shy woman who avoids confrontations. Although I’ve gotten much better, I still tend to bite my tongue and step aside sometimes. However, we were talking about my son and I didn’t agree here, so I had to say something.

I said I understood that Mr. Director had the wrong information. He had met Bryce at the playgroup and agreed Bryce would benefit from this setting and the school year was still in session. Mr. Director went above and beyond for my son and I was very appreciative. I asked Boss Lady to talk to him so this wouldn’t happen to another parent who was just looking for a place for her child to get speech without having one of her people drive way out to our house and my not having to go way over somewhere else just to be able to have my kid interact with other kids. I asked her to reconsider this situation. Bryce would only be there for about five sessions and he is a child with an IEP. The school year is still going on and he needs services. We talked about it some more and came to a decision. Bryce could continue to come on Tuesday’s and Thursday’s, but not for the full two and a half hours and I couldn’t leave the property. So Bryce is there for 45 minutes and Dev and I either play on the playground or watch a movie in the van until he‘s done. Hope the Boss Lady is a bit more sunny in the fall.

Although Bryce isn’t talking in sentences, he is using more and more single word and two word phrases. He is also imitating like crazy! The ST is working on pointing and identifying items that Bryce will need or do in a days activity and saying hi and bye to people he interacts with. A few things he’s done at home is wait at the door with the dog, but instead of silently hoping and staring at the door like Knight does, Bryce will stand there and say over and over, Go outside. Go outside. Go outside. Another time he was being very loud while looking directly at me. I thought he was just exercising his vocal chords for the enjoyment of my ears, but then he comes up to me, grabs my finger and puts it up to my lips and makes a slobbery Shh sound. He wanted me to tell him to hush. LOL One other thing is while we were outside blowing bubbles, Dev picked a dandelion and gave it to me and I tucked it behind my ear. Bryce saw this and maybe because there wasn’t a dandelion in his immediate area, he choose a small bubble wand and practically shoved it in my ear canal! I helped him to put it on my ear and he was happy with the result.

A few time lapsed pictures of my boys at the cook out:

Tim has been busy with three times a week softball games. We can only attend the Friday night ones as the others are too far away on school nights. After school is out though, we might attend them all. Devin likes to go and although he gets bored with the game, he’s quick to retrieve any foul balls that fall on our side of the fence. Tim has more responsibility with his job and will be traveling more. He tried to get a manager’s meeting up in Traverse City to show off his home town area, but flying twenty people in from different states ended up being too costly. So he’ll be going somewhere in New York in a couple weeks for a few days.

I was going to tell you all about what I’ve been doing around the outside of my house, but this update is already lengthy and I haven’t even put the pictures in I want to share, so I’ll save that for another post in a few days. Someone also asked me why I don’t use my geocaching blog anymore. I don’t because, by the time I do that hobby as well as my new hobby, entertain and tend to my boys, housework, errands, etc, etc, and more etc., I just don’t have the time to keep up with two blogs. So when I can sit down and write, I’ll do so all here, in one spot. That way those of you who like to read what I write will get it all in one place. I do want to share some of the cool finds I’ve made geocaching. It’s a great outdoor hobby I like to do and Hunter seems interested in going with me again!

I hope everyone had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend! Thanks for reading!

XOXO

Yo

Science Projects, Pre K Tests, Don't Forget the Dogs!

2010-05-02T08:41:00.000-04:00

I don’t know what the weather was like in your neck of the woods, but here, it was the perfect day weather wise. With hardly a cloud in the sky, there was just the hint of a breeze and the sun was so warm and comfortable that Bryce and I spent almost the entire day enjoying it. We went to two different outdoor playgrounds today as well as playing in our own back yard. I even filled up the small water table we have for him outside! Tomorrow morning (May 1st) we’re going to spend the morning outdoors because the forecast goes down hill fast after the lunch hour and it‘s being said it may last three days. I’ll definitely be listening to our weather radio tomorrow.

Hunter is doing so much better in school. His latest report card came back with all grades but math above 80%, but even math, at 76, was much better than the 68 recorded for the previous grading period. Math was not my subject, but Tim and I have been helping Hunter and his determination is what brought up his math grade. We are in touch with a tutor recommended by Hunter’s teacher, but as the tutor is a senior this year, he doesn’t have the time right now to start helping Hunter. With us being gone for some of the summer and the tutor taking his own vacation, the two of them won’t be able to get together until August. After talking about possibly finding someone else or just waiting until then and doing what we can with our son over the summer, Tim and I think that Hunter meeting up with the tutor in August and have a good couple weeks with him before Hunter begins 6th grade will be a good thing. So it’s all working out.

For those of you who are my FB friends, you may remember the picture I took of Hunter while at the Arrow of Light ceremony a few weeks ago. Hunter is no longer a Cub Scout. In front of the other pack members, parents and visiting representatives from the local boy scout troop, Hunter and two other boys stood straight at the front of the room as our pack leader read a prepared speech about the different arrows of light. She lit a candle for each color and each time she started, a line of that color was drawn across each of the boys’ cheeks. Right now we’re not sure if Hunter will join the boy scouts. Some of the reasons we’re still considering is the drive to a different town for the meetings. They meet more than once a week and they do many more activities, all year round. Tim has more responsibility with his job and had to miss a few meetings so far this spring. However, I did talk with a mom of a boy who is participating in his first year of boy scouts and she tells me it’s not as much parent participation as it was in cub scouts. She tells me her son is having a blast and I think that’s because he was also enjoying cub scouts. Hunter went because we wanted him to go. Having a blast isn’t how Hunter would describe the experience. Stay tuned.

As you all probably know, Hunter is an avid bookworm, just like his mom. Actually, I think he is even more of a bookworm, but, honestly, if I wasn’t going here, there and everywhere, I’d have my nose in a book more often! Hunter always has a book in his hands and they aren’t just fictional. Most of the time he is reading facts and figures, albeit the information is mostly under a weird and crazy catagory! Some of the things I have learned, thanks to him telling me every time we drive any where, are; jellyfish eat and poo using the same hole. They are teaching elephants to use a toilet in Thailand, if you like doughnuts, thank Hanson Crockett Gregory for putting a hole in them (because he couldn't get the insides to cook without burning the outside). There was a woman who slept for 47 years (in a coma) and a dog who ate 23 golf balls...and lived. Some hero's you may not know about are: Our third president, Thomas Jefferson, is to be thanked for bring to the U.S. from Italy the first macaroni machine. If you like macaroni and cheese, thank President Jefferson! Then you can thank Augustus Jackson for experimenting with ice cream and inventing all kinds of different flavors!

Hunter will be participating in a science fair at his school in May. The final judgment will be on May 10th. I’m not sure how many ideas went in and out of his noggin, but he came out with a decision and a title. Hunter’s 5th grade science project fits him perfectly. Maybe you can guess at what it might be if you think of his personality. He is going to show his classmates and those judges what happens when you don’t take care of the dishes of food that you’re too lazy to bring back to the kitchen! Called, The Moldy Investigation, Hunter has selected some foods and placed them in sandwich sized containers and tucked them into a dark corner of the pantry. Every day after school he checks on them and writes down his observations. He’s even taken a couple pictures. Out of his six subjects, the strawberries and tomatoes are already showing mold and are smelling awful. It’s only been a few days! His other choices of bread, sliced carrots, and an orange are different in texture, but the last subject, half a Twinkie, isn’t different at all! (I’m not surprised.)

Devin is still in the run for the Happiest Boy in the World award. He’s also trying for the World’s Most Annoying Brother, having been nominated and judged only by you know who. Hunter has started to put an electronic toy lock on the knob of his door again, something I thought was long ago lost in that bottomless pit that he calls a bedroom. If he wants something in there, he can usually find it. But he has to want to find it. If it’s me wanting him to find something, he almost always comes back empty handed. Dev doesn’t quiet have the steady, careful hand that’s needed to avoid activating the alarm. I’ve had to tell Devin quite a few times to stay out of Hunter’s room. During the times I don’t catch him, Dev often puts back what he takes out.

He’s been complaining about growing pains recently. Just the other night he was putting on his PJ’s in his bedroom and was saying his legs hurt. He conned me into carrying him to the couch to watch some TV before bed, then two minutes later, he was jumping off the couch, rolling and flipping across the floor. That night, though, I could hear him whimpering in his sleep and as I massaged his calf muscles, I could feel them tighten up. Poor guy. It does seem like he’s been growing over night! He’s now about 47 pounds and I a few days back I wasn’t prepared when he came running and I about broke my back catching him!

His time at pre-K is going great! I don’t think he’s complained about going once in the past two weeks. His whining would start when I announce it’s time to go and Hunter gets to continue to watch TV. We leave less than ten minutes before the bus picks Hunter up, but to hear Devin talk about it, we’re leaving Hunter behind to watch the same cartoon for all the day! Once we get there though, he enters with a smile and he leaves with a smile (after I get a great big hug). The center has a huge playground behind it, divided into fenced off areas for the different aged kids who stay there. Some kids arrive at 6 AM and are picked up at 6 PM. I’m so thankful mine aren’t in that situation!

Devin’s enrollment in Kindergarten at the school that is only a few hundred yards behind his pre-k classroom was up in the air until last week. I choose to go the open enrollment route and requested an application at a school that is about the same distance as the one Hunter is currently going to. The biggest difference between the two is this school has Kindergarten all day, every day, while the school Devin will go to next year for 1st grade, only has two full days one week and three full days the next for Kindergarten. The other difference is school size. If you don’t remember, Hunter’s first school was closed the summer he finished his Kindergarten year. That fall, the K-5 from his closed school and the K-5 from another closed school all went to one school that already had K-5 students. This school was then downsized in class level only. It became K-3 and the older building in front of it, which had been until then the STARS program (special needs kids), was designated 4th and 5th grade. Just typing this out for all of you is making me feel better about sending Dev to a different school!

Anyway, I got a call last week that Devin has been accepted for their Kindergarten program and asked that I bring him in for what they called an interview. Since this was my first typical Kindergarten experience (Hunter had already been in the school system for three years by this time) I agreed and brought Devin into the school office after a day at pre-K. The same woman who gave me the enrollment package those weeks before took Devin to a room without me and there she asked him to write his name, showed him a list of letters and numbers and to tell her which ones he recognized and ended with him drawing the shapes of his choice from a sheet she put in front of him. Although Devin is singing the ABC song and counting the steps he takes, any animals he sees and other things, I haven’t really sat him down with worksheets. I wasn’t prepared for someone to give my son homework before he even started school!

Now to Bryce. He will be three in about two weeks! That‘s my first thought about him right now, the second I have to share would be that he hasn’t broken anything yet! At this age, Hunter was attached to my hip and wouldn’t even attempt climbing any playground equipment. Devin at three would do it, but absolutely not without the help of an adult. Bryce…Now and then he’ll stop what he’s doing and come over to you for a hug or a kiss, but other than that, he goes on any and all equipment. Nothing is too big or too high for him. If he can’t do it himself, he’ll eye it from all angels and then look at me for help. Once conquered, we share a high five and then he’s off to the next adventure. He loves being outside. Having the rear of the house made up of all windows, looking down on the fenced in back yard, is the perfect set up for Bryce and I. I can come in and make a meal or clean up a bit and he is just a look out the window away.

With Bryce turning three, it means he can no longer attend the two times a week playgroup he’s been enjoying. Help Me Grow is very strict about the age cut off. Next week I’ll be meeting with the team that recently gave Bryce his speech and language impairment diagnosis to discuss objectives and goals for his IEP and which preschool he’ll be attending. The only concern Bryce is showing is a delay in expressive communication. He’s not talking in more than just a word or two. Some of you might be wondering if there is a possible autism diagnosis in his future. I say no, as Bryce is only mirroring Hunter with the lack of speech and stimulating behavior. Then again, no child with autism is the same, but each child evaluated to be on the spectrum is put there using pretty much the same check list. Where Hunter had quite a few marks on that piece of paperwork, Bryce only has two; lack of expressive speech and slight stimming behavior. When excited, Bryce shakes his hands a bit. He doesn’t flap, he shakes. It’s like, when you’re pushing your arms to lift that barbell just one more time and your muscles shake and shiver with the exertion? That’s what B’s hands look like. Hunter’s arms flapped like a bird at this age, from his elbows to his fingers and over the years that has tapered off and is mostly gone. You might be thinking it’s still the same thing and you might be right. This is my opinion comparing my two son’s together, but it is also the opinion of the same psychologist who worked with Hunter when we first moved to Ohio and who has played and evaluated Bryce in his playgroup setting. I suppose it’s another thing to stay tuned for.

Tim has been traveling a lot so far this spring. He spent a work week in Colorado Springs, a few days in southern Florida, is right now in northern Michigan and then comes home just to drive over to Sandusky the next day for four more days. This time of year is always busy for him, but he also enjoys talking with the customers and going on a ride along with the sales people. With all this time he’s on the road added to the times the boys and I travel out of the area, I do consider myself lucky that I’ve only had to call out for a rescue twice. Once I ran out of gas after dropping Hunter off at school when we still lived in Michigan and once I blew a tire while traveling back to Ohio from Michigan. Then there was this past Wednesday and the fact that my rescuer was 1,400 miles away!

Bryce and I were on our way home from playgroup with about 45 minutes to go before picking Devin up at pre-K. On a stretch of busy road, a dashboard alarm suddenly went off. My temperature gage was all the way up to the H! I pull over without any real worries about blocking the lane of traffic because cars share this road with Amish buggies, so the shoulders are paved and wide. I didn’t want to push it so I turned off the engine and called my insurance company to see if they had a number for a tow truck. Once that was done, I dialed 411 and got what I thought was the Enterprise car rental a couple towns over that Tim uses. The number I paid to be connected to ended up being their fax machine! Then I called Tim down there in sunny Florida and told him what was going on. He had me send him pictures from under my van’s hood and had me look on the pavement underneath. At that time, I didn’t see any leakage, but when the tow truck took my van, there was radiator fluid coming out. Even being that far away, my hubby came to the rescue by having a friend contact me to see if I needed a ride. By then I had been in touch with Enterprise and had learned that they couldn’t come pick me up for two hours! To make a long story short, we picked Dev up on time, got a rental car without too much hassle and my van was fixed less than 24 hours later. Even though it all worked out, I don’t want to do it ever again!

My addiction to geocaching has gotten better in my words, worse in my hubby’s. But on the other hand, he says he’s addiction to slow pitch softball is a good thing and I’m thinking when he travels an hour to get there and play, gets home past 11:00 on a week day and repeats that twice a week, soon to be three, although the third one will be closer, I’m saying, not so much! I’m thinking I need more time for my hobby. I can do it during the week, but only one or two if they are kid friendly and easy to get to. Tim has been having practice on Saturday’s and games on Sunday’s (and don't forget the weekday games)…when do I get to satisfy my need? If I have your vote, post a note on his FB page. LOL

The other members of our family, rat terrier Kit and black lab Knight, are doing great. Knight is showing some grey on his muzzle and is slowing down after a dozen or so retrieves. Kit is still a bundle of energy. She goes just about everywhere with us, even if she ends up staying in the van. She's my little vacuum cleaner; all I have to do is clean up the bigger things in my van and she hops in and sucks up the rest (cereal, french fries, chicken nuggets, etc.) That's why she's so eager to go with us, there's always something on the van floor! But she also gets to go walking with us in the woods when we go geocaching. Her I can let off the leash, not so much with Knight. He never really listened to me anyway because I'm not the one who takes him hunting. I guess play and food from me aren't high enough on his list next to hunting and Master Tim. Knight is also going deaf, so a leash free walk no longer works for Knight and I. I almost adopted a cat, even though the hubby was texting in the negative from another state. Unfortunatley it wasn't meant to be...right now.

I hope this update finds you all healthy, happy and stress free. Spring is the time for new growth and as we watch the trees bud and the flowers bloom, I'm wondering if any of you need a fresh start? Do something again, maybe start something over? Or maybe just try something new? My crazy, ahem, oldest sister Karyn is going sky diving. Over the past couple of years she has taken a look at herself, made some changes, accepted some things she couldn't change, and is just loving and appreciating life. She is one wonderful lady and I'm glad I can call her family.

Take care everyone and thanks for reading!

I finished this the morning of May 2nd and it still hasn't rained. It certainly does look nasty out there!

March 30, 2010 Update :)

2010-03-30T16:13:00.010-04:00

Hello again everyone! I thought I'd type up an update before we leave for the Easter weekend.

Hunter -

For those of you who haven't read my updates in some time, my son is 12 years old! I can't believe it, but he did indeed have his twelfth birthday on December first. We didn't do anything huge to celebrate. He chose his dinner and activities and invited a friend over and they stayed up way too late!

Life seems to be going pretty good for him, but he still isn't telling me too much on his own. I've been playing 20 Questions with him for some time, trying to learn what goes on at school and inside that blond head of his. Often our conversations go like this:

Me: So, how much trouble did you get in today? Your teacher and I have been discussing how it might be helpful to hang kids by their toes...or...Did you kiss so and so yet?

Hunter: No. That's not going to happen. Mom!

But then he tells me about some of the things he did and tells his dad again over the dinner table. The teasing gets him to loosen up.

His last report card was better than the previous. He brought his grades up in social studies, science and math, but they are still below 80% (he's not failing). Remembering vocabulary words aren't easy for him and I can't always make the definitions silly or gross, which is something he's always enjoyed. I'll mention that in the next paragraph, but I wanted to tell you that we've begun looking for a math tutor for him. His dad and I aren't much help to him with math. It wasn't my best subject to begin with and now we have the school system changing around the way the kids are learning what we already know. I end up taking time to look through his math book to remember, then I have to learn the steps he's doing to be any help. One night Hunter brought his finished homework to me and I looked at the answer sheet provided by his teacher and discovered that almost half of what he had done was wrong. I called him back and we sat down to see what happened. Hunter has always had trouble doing something differently than the first time he was shown. In this instance, he was dealing with exponents, parenthesis and nesting parenthesis. Working with just exponents, he knew what he had to do first, but when you toss in parenthesis, it changes the order. I'll just say he left the table and shut himself up in his room. I gave him a bit to settle down. He doesn't like people to see him when he's upset. Finally I got him to talk to me about it and he said he doesn't understand why he got them wrong, that he did his best on his homework and how math is so hard.

I felt so bad for him. I knew I was doing my best, too, but I also knew that I could be holding him back because I wasn't confident in what I was doing, either. So Tim and I talked and decided to find him a tutor. There are no learning centers in our area like Sylvan, so we inquired at the school and his teacher provided me with the name and phone number of a high school senior who she believes would be a good fit for Hunter. The cons are that this person is a senior this year and that he'll only do it during the summer. I'll probably ask him to help Hunter over the summer, but after I'll have to look elsewhere. A home schooling mama I know also has a son on the spectrum and she suggested a tutoring company that would probably come to our house and since Hunter has an IEP (Individualized Education Program) the school will either pay for the cost or be able to help me with it. So I'm going to look more into that.

Hunter had his Pinewood Derby last Tuesday. His car, edges rounded and painted to resemble a blimp in a game he and his dad play, did OK. He didn't place in the top three, but he wasn't last. He didn't really put much effort into his car and honestly, he doesn't put much effort into scouts. This is his last year as a cub scout and we're not sure if we'll continue with boy scouts in the fall. The older boy group does much more activities and actually meets twice a week compared to the handful of events and one meeting a week the cub scouts do. Depending on the time of year, Tim sometimes has a hard time taking Hunter to the Tuesday night meetings and now Tim has even more responsibility with his job and doesn't think he can participate with Hunter in boy scouts. If Hunter was more into it than he is, I'd be more upset, but he's not. It doesn't look like scouting will be in my son's future, at least not until Devin can join when he starts first grade. I'm OK with it. No matter how much I want him to enjoy something I'd like him to do, I'm not going to force him. I will keep mentioning all the fun and awesome things he could be doing, but if he says no, what more can a parent do but ask they try? And he did.

Hunter is into anything gross, crazy, silly, weird, disgusting or shocking. He has our DVR recording shows like Dude, What Will Happen, Destroy, Build, Destroy, Monsters Inside Me, The Most Extreme, Fatal Attractions and Untamed and Uncut. The last few I mentioned are based on real life stories! One even had Hunter a bit teary eyed. You can't talk to him when he's like that, but we talked about it after. He couldn't believe that someone could make such a bad choice and have such fatal consequences. Besides agreeing it was terribly sad, I remember telling him that sharing this person's story with us educates us on what not to do and avoiding that kind of situation. One show, though, The Lost Tapes...not so real...or they could be, I suppose, if you believe in Big Foot. But I doubt a huge octopus is living in an Oklahoma lake. He was arguing with his friend Steve that it was true. When I read on Facebook that my cousin's hubby was going to be featured in an episode of MonsterQuest that was about the Dogman near Manistee, Michigan,

I recorded it for him. He enjoyed the mystery of it all...and now wants his own fake guts.

Hunter has a great sense of humor. His teacher has told me many times of his antics and teasing in the classroom. She says he gets along great with all his classmates and that his humor and interests help in that area. In the past he has scored poorly on oral assignments because of his tone of voice, but this past assignment, a poster board book report in which he advertised a book of his choice to his class, the teacher could hear him all the way at the back of the room where she purposefully put herself. I really like Ms. D and would love it if she were able to go with Hunter into middle school in the fall.

Devin -

Ohhhh...the four year old! If you ever need a reason to smile you can just think of my son. I have never seen a little kid happy so darn much! When I come into the living room at seven in the morning, he's there, "invisible" on the couch, laughing the entire time. His imagination takes me to the ocean, where's he's catching some waves on his surfboard (the soft side support from a travel bed), performing rolls, head stands and balancing acts in a recliner big top circus, he's a friendly dolphin in the bath tub.... I could go on and on. He is a very active little boy who shows love for his brothers, his dad and I and his dogs.

Devin is also loving his Pre K program. I'm thinking of paying for another day a week because he asks me every morning if he's going to Pre K and how much he likes to be at Pre K. He goes on Wednesday and Friday's. On Wednesday a woman who plays many different musical instruments comes to the center and now that it's warming up, he can play in the huge fenced in playground in the back. When we ask him the names of his friends he says he doesn't remember, but he is telling us what he does and gives us the whole lunch menu. He says he eats it all, so it appears he's eating better for them than he is for us!

Devin is the most helpful child I have ever met (but I've heard all about my niece K'ryn's recent do gooding!). On the weekends I get let out to do some grocery shopping on my own, Devin is almost always the first one to greet me and he carries the bags to the kitchen without having to be asked. When he's not causing havoc with his brothers, he's helping them by telling me what they need. For example, if Bryce needs a new diaper he tells me and also gets me the supplies I'll need. Devin also acts as the go between for Hunter and I, mostly at Hunter's request!

Devin's favorite form of communication is using Skype on the computer. He talks about calling people all the time on it, but once you get him sitting and facing that person on the screen, my little chatterbox clams up and acts all shy! I don't even listen to the radio while we're driving in my van anymore. Devin talks and asks questions constantly. One day I listened and answered, listened some more and then he said, That's all the questions right now. Of course I have to mention the day he and I were waiting with a couple other parents, watching Bryce from a one way mirror play with a little girl at playgroup. Devin turns to me and asks, Does Brycee's friend have a penis or not? So I explained very briefly that Bryce's friend did not have a penis and thankfully that answer was acceptable.

Devin is very excited about spending the weekend at his Aunt Amanda's house. On the way back to our house just this morning I said to him, We need to start getting our clothes and toys ready because we're leaving for Michigan Friday morning. He asked, What we will be doing there?, to which I replied, We'll be staying at Aunt Amanda's house with Rayne, Randi, Emma, Landon and Aunt Tiffany. Dev threw his arms and legs up in the air as much as he could while being strapped into a car seat and explained, Yeah! I like them!

Bryce -

As I type this, my almost three year old angel is doing what he loves to do best, drawing. My husband mentioned something about painting the walls while the boys and I are gone. I think it might be too early for that, but maybe not as I, in a frustrating day, threw away all the crayons, markers, colored pencils and banished all the pens and pencils to a secret place little hands don't know about. Hunter has his own supply and I warned him that if any of his writing and drawing stuff comes out of his room, they will be thrown away! Bryce has left his artwork on the walls, windows, TV's, counters, table tops, doors, furniture and even bed sheets! Where Devin prefers to continue his pretend play until his coloring or painting resembles chaos in color, Bryce prefers to cover his paper in circles, squares, rain clouds and now letters. Thanks to an episode of Blue's Clue's where Joe (Steve's friend who replaced him) goes on an alphabet hunt, Bryce wrote the word JOE! He also can say J, O and E and he can count to ten!

Two days a week Bryce attends a playgroup at a clinic built for special needs kids. Although Bryce hasn't been evaluated for anything, I do have him working with a speech therapist because he isn't talking as much as I think he should for an almost three year old. For those of you who remember Hunter's earlier years and the concern then, Bryce is his opposite. Where Hunter didn't want to let go of me in a social environment, Bryce can't get away from me quick enough. Where Hunter had tantrums and would hit in frustration because he couldn't communicate his needs, Bryce just tries to do it all himself.

Bryce does have some of the same stimulating behavior that Hunter had at this age. Bryce does flap his hands when he's excited. I don't know if he learned this from Hunter or if it's his way of showing excitement, but he is doing it. I probably will have Bryce evaluated for autism when he gets a bit older. It's in the family and he's not talking. I don't think I'd be doing right by him if I didn't.

Life in NE Ohio is going pretty good. I finished my new flower beds and now just need to go get some flowers to put back in there. This year we may actually pave our driveway so we can put up a basketball hoop. My plants survived the winter, hooray!, and I'm going to get more for the indoors. Our small pond though isn't doing so well. The neighbor's ducks have been living there. It wouldn't be such a big concern if it wasn't pretty much just a big mud puddle. There is no natural flow or spring so the duck poo is making for a pretty ugly scene. Tim called the neighbor and they talked about it, but it's been three days now and the ducks are still at the pond.

My addiction to geocaching is growing! I have found 16 caches since the snow has melted, bringing my count to 114 found. Dev and Bryce are usually with me, Kit almost always. I took out the hide I did back in October and changed out the container. I was inspired by Hunter to create a more surprising find, one I hope to read comments about as other geocachers find it. With this hobby I've met three other ladies who also geocache. I've been out quite a few times with one and plan on finally meeting up with the other two and possibly my first cacher friend as well on April 10th for a geocaching marathon!

Tim has a busy month in April. It looks like we'll be seeing him on some Fridays and just on the weekends. He has to go to Sandusky, Colorado (without me this year. Sigh.), Florida and Michigan. We're looking forward to watching him play in the first slow pitch softball tournament on the 17th and 18th. If any of you would like to come and visit while he's gone, maybe change a few diapers, definitely share in the laughter, then come on out! :)

My email, yoandkids@hunterweekly.com does not work. My website doesn't exist anymore. Feel free to send me an email at yolandag@sippycupcorner.com or text me at 440-781-5151. I can also be found on Facebook. Search for Yolanda McPherson Gallagher.

Have a great Easter!

Back at it!

2009-09-30T12:20:00.005-04:00

Hi all. It's been way too long in-between posts. I decided not to fret about it and just write on a day worthy of being written about. Doesn't mean I'll get to writing about it right away, but I'm hoping to make it happen. Here it is Wednesday and I'm going to talk mostly Monday. I"m also going to delete my Cache Checkers blog and just talk about those adventures here.

First off, I hope everyone is doing well. If you keep up with my Facebooks posts you'll know that Dev, B and I recently returned from bringing our rat terrier Kit to the vet. She cut herself pretty bad on our woodland adventure yesterday. It had been a partly cloudy day, but knowing today was going to be rain, rain and more rain, the younger boys, Kit and I went to a park in the making.

A park in the making is most definitely what it is! It has one pavilion, a porta potty and lots of mowed grass. Right now the trails aren't really trails so we spent most of our time walking through the woods. B had one bumpy ride in the padded seat of our all terrain wagon. He was OK with it, laughing most of the way. We were there for a geocache, I am addicted, but also just a walk in the woods with colors all around us and dried up, crunchy leaves on the ground. So crunchy, Dev and I had to stop walking so we could hear ourselves speak! The more and more I hunt for these things, the more I dislike caches in the woods! Especially when there is no hint given! With the cloudy skies and leaves still on the trees, my GPS was slow to update. A find or no find, we enjoyed our time on that walk and Kit seemed fine, appearing from all sides, keeping us in sight, although she could definitely locate where we were by sound!

Monday started off rough. While my morning coffee was brewing I turned on my computer and as I sat down to check my email I heard a click and then the sound of a machine humming down to silence. A push of the button on the tower front and a flick of the switch at the back did nothing, like I knew it wouldn't. I called for my hubby who was thirty seconds away from leaving for work and he confirmed with an annoying smirk that, Yup, your power supply is capoot and I'm going out of town for two days, ha, ha, ha!

We have another computer in the house, the one I'm currently typing on (feel free to suggest Tim get me a laptop). He built it for my online store use and I'm not allowed to have any fun on it. I can check my email, update my FB status and type on my blog, but no games for me and most definitely not for the boys. Since Dev can't read yet, he clicks on anything and everything and that equals trouble.

So, I took my coffee down here in the finished basement where it's at least 10 degrees cooler. In the summer it's a great place to be, not so much so during the colder months. I actually did have some store work to do, so I turned the power on, sat down here and reached for my wireless mouse...but it was gone. Bryce loves to come here and spin in my desk chair. Wide, soft and with raised arms to keep him from falling off, he crawls into it and kicks off my desk, spinning so fast my stomach turns sometimes just watching him. In his excitement, he often kicks the mouse onto the floor or once I found it upstairs. It wasn't under the table, it wasn't upstairs and I spent a good 30 minutes looking for it. Finally I gave up and came back down here and tried to update my FB status using the Tab button. Oh, that was time consuming and so very annoying.

After suffering through that, I decided to continue to try and find it under more and saw how dusty and dirty my house is. I haven't done an in depth cleaning since the spring and realizing that was like sitting all healthy in a doctor's office during flu season. It's something I don't do because I'd probably get sick. So, like the flu bug, I tend to avoid such situations where I might catch myself the cleaning bug, but there are times that it can't be helped and looking for that computer mouse was the start of one of those times!

Since I was searching in the family room, I started the fight there. Tim had already moved the board games and the like from the fireplace mantle to Hunter's closet. With that done, the room already looked less cluttered. I continued by boxing up the old VHS and cassette tapes we hadn't used in years and also packed away the empty music CD cases. I cleaned up the DVD collection, de-cluttered the top of the big screen, wiped down the fireplace and surrounding area, moved in and out some toys between there and the boys' bedrooms. There aren't a lot of rooms in my house I can rearrange, but the family room is one of them so I moved the couch and treadmill around

Oh, the couch. I hadn't cleaned underneath the couch since the spring. My boys play in this room a lot. They jump up and down on that couch, they eat on that couch.... I wasn't quite sure I wanted to look under that couch. With a quick breath I toughened my You're already half way resolve and lifted the back of the couch forward and over onto itself. Hmmm. I won't go into all that was under there, but three kids and six months time....Yeah. I grabbed two Wal-Mart bags, one for garbage and one for salvageable items, and got into it. During this time, both Devin and Bryce were upstairs, keeping themselves occupied with just a little direction from me. Each time I went upstairs to check on them I switched off all the lights Bryce had turned on. Returning back downstairs it was a good bet I'd be switching them off again. Then suddenly, as I start to sort thru all that mess underneath the couch, Bryce appears and wants the intact but grimy Goldfish cracker underneath a dryer sheet and demands the hair balled and melted to the floor sucker. I had to carry him kicking and screaming from the room and bribe him with Blue's Clue's and a cookie.

I finally got everything separated and vacuumed up the mess and put the couch back down. Cleaning goes faster when you listen to music. That day, however, I turned on a recorded episode of The Oprah Winfrey Show I had saved. On it was the story of a stay at home mom who had survived a terrible plane crash but was horribly burned and scarred. It was a terrifying story of her struggle and survival while her family admits to considering taking her off life support during her three month, medically induced coma. My reason for bringing this up is this: Oprah had gotten a letter from another stay at home mom who wrote about being bored and mostly bothered by being at home with her kids all day. Oprah not only invited this woman onto her show, but asked her to spend the day with the burned stay at home mom and then come meet her, Oprah and talk about the experience on TV.

The mom who didn't appreciate the opportunity that staying at home brings a parent, the joys of seeing her children grow, of hugging and holding them whenever they needed to be, was humbled. She didn't see for herself, but she heard from the burned mama's own lips how her children 9, 7 and 4, were scared of their own mama's appearance and wouldn't go near her for weeks. She also heard of the grief and agony the burned mama's husband had for his wife as she lay covered in so many bandages that only her red painted toenails showed. She saw firsthand her new mama friend struggling behind her smile as she went through seemingly mundane tasks like making her kids breakfast and taking them to the park. This mama has to wear rubber gloves on her hands to give her children a bath and still, months after her accident, can't pick them up and out of the tub.

I don't mean to stand up on any soapbox for stay at home mom's. I am proud to be one, but I have to admit that I sometimes have the same feelings as my fellow stay at homer did when she wrote that letter to Oprah. For some reason or another, I decided to watch that episode instead of listening to music while I cleaned. I would have gotten the job done faster, but instead I cleaned, I listened and I appreciated.

But then I went back upstairs. Devin was screaming down at me how thirsty he was and that I needed to get him a drink. My once soft spoken and well mannered three year old had turned into a bossy and bratty four year old. I took the straw bottle he was shaking in my face and asked him to come into the kitchen with me. Once there, I implemented some tough love. With Devin watching me, I took his much loved blue straw bottle and I dropped it right into the garbage. He immediately started crying and when he settled down, I pulled it out, showed it to him and said that was exactly how I felt when he behaves the way he does when he wants something. What I did had been spontaneous and as he broke into tears I thought, Oh, my gosh! What have I done?? I have talked and talked about this all before and didn't want to say it again right then. Actions can speak louder than words and it looks like my possible overreaction, depending on your point of view, worked. Devin is using Please and Thank you's once again!

One more thing I'd like to add.... When Tim cleaned the games off the mantle downstairs and put them on the top shelf of Hunter's closet, he found something surprising. For some time now, Hunter has been doing great with his toileting habits, or so we thought. Apparently he's not. He's been hiding his accidents in a box on that shelf in his closet. I haven't noticed up till now because Hunter keeps the closet door shut and the bedroom door as well to keep Bryce out of there. Hunter hoards small items that are still a possible choking hazard to his little brother and they are all over the bedroom. So, it's back to putting Hunter on a schedule with certain must do's to get this back on track.

Thanks for reading all this and I hope it gives you a little insight into our lives! :) I do have pictures to share and hopefully can get them up for you to see when I get my other computer back.

Till I type again, take care!

Yo

More words to write than pictures to show!

2009-05-28T14:31:00.005-04:00

I blame it on my lovable hubby. I don't have many pictures to show because he took my camera with him on a four day trip...or maybe it's that Devin has been taking so many pictures that not only does it fill my 1.0 GB memory card but he drains the two AA batteries...or maybe it's because I take it away from my curious two year old and forget where I hide it.... Or maybe it's just me being lazy and missing photo opportunities.

Right now, I should go take a snap of what Bryce is doing. He let himself out the sunroom/computer room door to the back yard. We've just had a thunderstorm that poured rain down on us so hard, the splatter of the drops reached as high as my knee as we looked out from the cover of our garage. Bryce is out there, going back and forth between the fresh, cool, fun wetness in his water table and on the top of the closed plastic outside toy bin. He doesn't know where to begin, but the end result will be a soaking wet, happy boy!

I'm hoping the clouds that bruised the sky have passed on to drop their much needed water in someone else's yard. I'm glad we've had two good down pours in two days because we haven't had a single drop in two weeks! My grass is dead in spots, a first for us at this house since we moved here in early 2003. But, rain, rain, go away because Devin has his first T-ball game today!

Technically, he's not old enough to play but we know one of the coaches and it's all for fun at this age anyway. He's been to a few practices in which he only actually played ball for the first fifteen minutes. The rest of the time he joined in the fun with the kids on the bleachers. Tim has a good attitude about it all, but I admit I'm being pushy! I want him to get in there and play already, but I understand the need to follow his, Devin's, lead. Hunter has never been into sports, although he loves to watch, so I'm eager to get the ball throwing for Devin. We've been working with both Hunter and Dev in catching and using a bat and a ball on a T. Devin is being stubborn when it comes to wearing the dark blue helmet with the the grid like mask over the face. This helmet is made to be adjusted to grow with him by a nifty dial on the back that clicks with each new size. Much better than the helmets I used during summer softball that shifted just about every time I swung the bat!

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I just took a break for a couple hours and it's back to pouring down rain. During this time away from the computer, I took a great photo of what Bryce was doing at the moment and sent it to all who are in my email address book. If you want to be included in my mailings, please send your email to me at yoandkids@hunterweekly.com. :) You'll get email notices when I update either of my blogs, too.

I spoke of Dev first, so I'll continue with him. It's great having conversations with him and seeing him talk along with other people. We were in the store just today when he approached two little girls in a shopping cart and told them about the blue light saber he was carrying. Then he turned and gestured to the blue and white backyard bouncing ball in the cart and explained solemnly that he had to get a new one because his dad popped the old. After small chat with the mom about how those big balls come and go, we said goodbye and Devin turned to me and announced he had made some new friends.

The other night Devin insisted on having his light left on for bedtime so he could play a certain game on his bed. I agreed to ten minutes and set the digital timer. I closed the door behind me so the light wouldn't sneak under Hunter's door across the hall and joined my hubby in the living room. A few minutes later, I heard Devin's door open. I assumed he was going to appear with some excuse or another, but instead of thinking I'd meet him in the hall, I found he was shutting his door again from the inside and there on the floor in front of the door is a teddy bear. I took the teddy bear out to Tim and told him what Dev had done. We were both very curious, so I went back to Devin's room and asked him why his teddy bear was outside alone in the dark hallway. He said, I just don't want to play with him anymore. I said, OK. That's fine. How about I put him here, on the floor by your bed, so that you'll find him when you need him next. Without looking at me, he replied with a frown, No, thanks. Take him away. I don't want to be his friend right now. I did what he asked with thoughts bouncing around in my head of what a teddy bear could do to a 3 1/2 year old to be banished.

This past weekend he discovered that the Jeep Santa had left for him under the tree has a faster speed then any of us had thought. No longer can we just causally walk along side him as he goes, but now we must pick up the pace or Dev will leave us behind. A couple weeks ago he was refusing to give Bryce a ride in the passenger seat. When I told him he was then done riding in his Jeep, he hopped out and said OK as he ran the other way! I don't know if that rule finally soaked into that cute head of his, but now he lets B ride with him every time and when his younger brother isn't interested, Dev stays close until B changes his mind (which is pretty quick usually).

Our lawn tractor is another thing that Dev has gotten good at driving. He knows where the key is, how to turn the throttle up and how to activate the blades. He insists on wearing the ear muffs that Hunter once needed to attend parades or hockey games and often prefers to stand at the wheel instead of sitting between mine or his dad's legs. If he's inside the house when the tractor starts, he comes running out with those ear muffs and if he hears another lawn mower running, he goes to every window wondering if his dad is home and doing the grass cutting without him. The steering wheel is twice the size of his Jeep and much tighter to maneuver. Dev gets his hands on there and really turns with his arms to get the machine to go where he wants. I told him he must eat more meat and veggies so he can grow bigger and weigh more, than he won't need his dad or I to sit on the seat with him. He says he's OK with that, but I don't know. He's eating habits aren't very good!

Last Wednesday late afternoon, Devin traveled with his dad to an away baseball game his dad played in and then the two of them went from there to a hotel in Pennsylvania to stay the night before continuing on to my brother in law's second college graduation in Maryland. The only pictures they brought back with them was a whole lot of audience shots, some blurred some not, some crooked, some I couldn't tell. Dev was the proud cameraman of the day. By cell phone picture updates Tim showed me Dev eating a big waffle with an even bigger amount of whip cream on it and Dev posing happily on a smooth and sandy beach off the boardwalk in Ocean City, MD. Phone conversations told me of delicious BBQ's and fun birthday parties (Jamie's son turned one year old while they were there). It sounded like it was a good time all around and I am sorry that Hunter, Bryce and I didn't come along.

I seriously considered all of us attending, but there were a few factors I had to consider. One was, where we would all stay? There are five of us and two dogs. We would have had to rent a hotel room and leave the dogs at Jamie's? No, so we'd have to either bring them with us, put them in a kennel or pay someone to tend to them at the house while we were gone. But the biggest decision maker was the fact that Hunter is still in school. Sure, most kids would celebrate being able to miss three days of forced attendance, and believe me, Hunter would be first in line for his very own noisemaker...or three...but these are the last few weeks of school. There is no more homework and more fun days than work. They had a pizza party once with a small carnival after one day, they went and listened to the older kids play band instruments another, and they went to a wax museum. I know there's more I'm not remembering, but Hunter was actually looking forward to going to school and I didn't want to take him away from it. So, that's why we stayed behind and I terribly missed the two loudest people in my house!

Hunter did bring home a small piece of homework the other day. For many assignments he's allowed to type out his words instead of writing them. He brought home part of his work and had to finish typing out the rest. The assignment was to write directions on something and he chose the task of teaching someone how to clean their bedroom. Here is what he had to share on the subject:

Here is how to clean your room: First, you pick up your toys and put them back in your toy box. Next, you pick up your books and put them away. Then, you get your vacuum and vacuum the floor. Next, you watch out for ants. If you find an ant, kill it. If it is dead, get rid of it. If it's alive, kill it some more. Finally, you flush it down the toilet. Make sure the ant doesn't bite you and then you show your parents your clean room and they might give you $5.00.

It was only one ant! Tim read through it and had a good laugh and said Hunter made it sound as if we're infested! I was actually on the phone with Tim downstairs when I heard this pounding over and over again from above my head. I went upstairs to investigate and found Hunter beating at the floor with what I don't recall, but I did see the ant he pointed out, two black dots separated from each other. I haven't felt the house shake with anymore hits to the floor, so I think it was one unlucky scout ant who's disappearance was a signal to his fellow ants to keep away!

I'm going to end it here for now so I can give the boys an early dinner before leaving for the T-ball game. I haven't heard anything yet, but I have my doubts about it being played in this weather.

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No T-ball game. The rain continues and the boys play the Wii with a holler from me now and then to knock off whatever they're doing that allows me to hear them all the way upstairs.

My youngest rug rat still isn't talking, but he's doing his best to sing along to Blue's Clues. I need to get a video of it, but every time I try his only interest becomes being the one WITH the camera, not the SUBJECT of the camera. That's the only time he seems to forgot his favorite cartoon! Tim can't help but joke about Bryce's big ears, and now the joke is if those ears really work! B only listens when he wants to listen. When he's focused on something, he's like Knight is when he sees even the smallest of his master's pick up his ball. Nothing else exists to him except for that ball. In Bryce's case it's Blue Clue's, the dog water bowl, the dog food, a pen, the toilet, the buttons on all electronics.... No matter how many times you say no or how many high octaves your voice can reach, Bryce has a set goal to create whatever trouble he can with whatever object he can. The closer you are to him, the faster he will do his job.

Let's not forget the Two Year Old's Temper. I think it deserves to be capitalized so I can express how much a big deal it is! I feel pretty confident other mothers who have been there and done that will agree. Neither of my older boys ever really had a tantrum or a screaming fit. Devin would throw himself to the floor, but that was it. No sound really came out of his mouth except for his cries that were made even softer by the muffling of the carpet. If I was able to catch Bryce in the act of doing something, or before he could attempt to make trouble for himself or me, he would simply stand there, feet rooted to the ground and his hands would go down to his sides. Where his body is still and normal though, his head is tilted up to the ceiling like he's asking, Why me? and then his mouth opens wide, it's in an expression that could have been the model for that Edvard Munch's painting called The Scream. Then, he really does scream. He screams so loud your hands flinch toward your ears and it's so long you wonder if the neighbors can hear through the open window and are considering calling the authorities. It doesn't happen very often, but when it does you might think, Glad that's not my kid!

He has silent fits as well. The other day I needed to get the lawn mowed so when Hunter got home, I closed all the bedroom doors (bathroom is always closed after the flushing of a washcloth and the bathing in that ceramic basin) and latched the stairway gate closed. I told Hunter I needed his help for about twenty minutes to mow the lawn. It takes much longer to do our lawn, even when I divide it into sections and do it over two days time. Though Hunter is quickly approaching 12, I can't trust him to care for Bryce. So I turn on Blue for B, suggest Hunter read a book in the recliner and I head out to the back lawn to check on them all in twenty minutes. If somethings up, Hunter will come out to the back porch and wave his arms. I was outside maybe three minutes, picking up the toys so they don't turn into plastic chewed on chunks, when I hear a crash through the open sunroom windows.

I rush up the back steps and through the closed sunroom door and find Hunter climbing back up the stairs. In his hands was the ceramic bowl I had put a snack in for Bryce earlier, broken into three pieces. Hunter was quick to say he didn't do it, that Bryce suddenly threw it over the stair rails to the landing below. I believed him, I knew Bryce did it and realized he was probably very upset with my denying him access to the stairs, his other brother and other potential trouble below.

Tim wasn't sure if I should share this next piece with you. I see nothing wrong with it, but there are many different attitudes out there, as we all have experienced or seen I'm sure. I may not have mentioned it here before but I know I've shared it in phone calls with many of you. Bryce gets his knee and thighs stuck in the space between his crib slats. The brat did this every night! If it didn't happen between the time we put him down and he fell asleep, it happened at three or four AM when he realizes he's stuck and lets out a painful cry that sends me running to his bedroom. A couple times I got myself a bit worked up too because I couldn't get his knee out by just turning his body with the leg or gently working it up and down. Something had to be done.

Crib pads were not going to work. We've watched what he does. He starts by lifting his leg above him to flex like a dancer stretching, toes down, then he lowers his leg inbetween two slats, back or front of the crib, where ever he happens to be, and it falls in perfectly between the smooth wood. Suddenly he's wedged in there above the knee like a piece of building material lowered into a pre-cut fitting. He can't lift his leg up nor can he move from side to side. He's stuck, scared and crying out in pain as he struggles to get his leg out. We come a runnin' and help him get free, hush the cries and soothe the tears while whispering complaints to each other about how the heck we are gonna solve this.

Since he first started doing it, many months ago, we began attaching a blanket to the front of his crib and securing it with the top part that flips up and down to make it easier to reach a bigger baby on the lowest mattress setting. Sure, that worked to prevent his leg from getting stuck on the front side but the back and even the sides sometimes, the threat was still there, ready to grab and hold him tight. We had some left over tongue and groove pine paneling left over, so we pieced it together and secured it to the crib slats on the back and sides. It doesn't sound all that great and most definitely doesn't look all that great, but now he can't get jammed between the slats and the blanket is still working for the front. Now and then his leg sneaks under the blanket and we rush upstairs and repeat steps one, two and three, but overall it's working and there are no more bruises on his legs, from the crib anyway!

I am finally finishing the flower beds I started when I found out I was pregnant with Devin. Thanks to those of you who gave me home improvement gifts cards for Christmas. Because of your generosity I was able to purchase red retaining wall bricks to match the red in my roof and the shutters by the windows. My plan was to transport the out of control purple ground cover that I can't remember the name of. My once bright green thumb has faded to a pale shadow of its former self . When I first put in the original bed when I moved here, I was good at it, loved doing it and it looked great! Then I got big and pregnant and didn't tend to it, then didn't make it out with a newborn, when I finally could again, I was repeating that cycle. Now I've done a lot of spring cleaning and work on the house all around. It's not finished so I won't be sharing a photo until it's done.

What I started to say was I transported that ground cover to the second bed I never finished because it was now ready to be finished so I could redo the original bed, still with me?...but something went wrong. Two days after I replanted them, they were dried up and dead. They were hard to move around because they were overgrown and the roots were spread out, but I was confident I had tucked the root balls into the ground and topped it off with some steaming mushroom mulch with an aroma that I'm sure drifted off to attract Peppy la Pew. After another day it was clear the petite flowers weren't just out of bloom, they were dead. I pulled them out and evenly spread the black mass inside my small wall and am still contemplating getting new flowers this season or waiting until next year. ??

While outside with and without my boys, Kit made her canine breed proud. I wrote on my Face Book page about the bunny nest she found in our abandoned dog kennel. Unlike last spring where she just dropped the dying baby at my feet, this year she practically tossed it ten feet to land in front of Devin and I. Then the darn dog killed a chipmunk two days after I took a picture of one while it sat on its back legs on my front step. I had seen the cute critter there five mornings in a row, like he was waiting for me to make a memory out of him. Kit brought me its punctured body. While mowing the lawn I almost chopped up another carcass but turned away in time to just squish it under a wheel. You can use your own imagination of what it looked like after that. The last one she caught in front of all five of us as we walked into our garage through the big door. The poor thing had no escape route as the back door of the garage was closed. It turned one way, then the other before accepting its fate. I was mad at her for a long time when she first killed the baby bunny and then kept killing chipmunks because she kills just to kill. I didn't yell or smack at her because that's what she's supposed to do. I think though, after that first kill, she could tell by my tone that I didn't really like it because she kept following me and putting her front paws up on me while outside. Inside, she would watch me from where she lay and then want to snuggle down in my lap. She's a good dog and a great addition to our family, even though she drives me as crazy as my boys do!

That's it! You can carry on with your day. I'm sure I haven't taken up too much of your time! :P

Be safe!

XOXO

My boys in one word each and then some more!

2009-04-26T21:44:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone. I know it's been about a month, but life and all that! :) I'm happy to report that my website is up and running! At this moment it's missing some colors and such and I haven't posted any new pictures yet, but one thing at a time!

Before my boys and I went north for Hunter's spring break, I had planned on posting a blog update that used a single word to describe each of my boys lately. Now, it's only a one word introduction because my blogs will never be that short. Ever! :)

I'll start with Hunter. His describing word is AWESOME! When I saw his report card this grading period, I actually went into a cheer. Natalie (my cheerleading coach) would be so proud! 'A-W-E...S-O-M-E! Awesome, awesome. TOTALLY!' You might remember how upsetting his last grading sheet was. He had gone down a lot in math, from an 83 to a 60. He had just started double digit multiplication, but part of his problem is his printing. He can't keep his columns straight and everything gets mushed together and he ends up computing the wrong numbers. I also felt the need to contact his teacher to ask her why we weren't warned of his falling grade. We very well may have been able to turn it around before that report card.

I wasn't really given an answer to my question, but at home I put Hunter to work with more math problems. You can imagine his reaction; sighs, grumbles, comments. But he sat down to it and this report card was the result. I had to celebrate and it did make Hunter smile, although he tried to hide it.

But on the other hand.... He's been having bathroom accidents again. Only three, but they've all happened in the past month or so. I'm not sure what's going on there. He says he's just forgetting, but we're talking about it. He's always made comments under his breath about things, but now his comments are louder and he's giving his opinion, which is good and all, but he's doing it during times when he should keep his mouth shut. For example, we were at a friends house and he told the mom, 'But you should have...'. The woman knew she should have, but she doesn't need someone else's 11 year old kid telling her that.

Someone asked me how Hunter did during the annual Cub Scout Pinewood Derby. I don't remember if I shared anything with you all about it. If I did, I'll be brief. Both Tim and I were very proud that Hunter chose not only the design of his car on his own, but he was out there in the garage and with his dad's help, if needed. He sanded down his car the way he wanted and prepared everything for the wheels. He drew out a color design for it and painted it. It was all him. He didn't win any awards except a ribbon for his participation, but he was OK with that. Dev was old enough this year to have his own car. While Hunter was doing his, Tim shaped out a Wii remote control out of Dev's block of wood. Devin painted it white and I used a color pencil to create the buttons. His car was a hit and he eagerly accepted races against the older scouts.

Hunter showed A LOT of patience with Bryce just today (4/25). Hunter's door is always closed during the day. He has many small toys and other things in his room that would spell trouble if Bryce were to find them. So when the door is open, it's like Bryce can tell the difference by the sound between it and the the other three doors in that hallway. Tonight B made a break for it and eagerly dove into the wooden chest Hunter uses for his toys, passed on down from my younger years . Hunter talked sweetly to him and coaxed him out with a bribe of a squishy ball. It worked. Bryce followed like a horse to water and Hunter was able to close his door without creating a tantrum.

Devin's one word is Stubborn, and definitely with a capital S! He puts up a huge fuss about using the potty and absolutely refuses to do number two. If you were to tell him no to something, or heaven forbid, if you were to turn off the Wii, he can be ear shattering sometimes. He's also telling me he wants one thing for dinner, I make it, but no, he wants something else to eat. He's gone to bed hungry a few times because of this. He loves his original style Sunny D so much that he cried and cried when his dad brought home the "smooth" kind. Dev recognized the difference because the usual gallon jug we have has an orange cap and this one had a yellow. I had to send him his room to finish his fit. I finally got him to give it a taste, and ya know what? He liked it, the brat! :) He's still annoying Hunter non stop and taking things from Bryce at every turn, but then my middle child tells me he loves me, gives me a sloppy kiss and says he'll make me happy by doing a head stand.

Bryce can be described with a simple but powerful word; terror. He is the cutest little monster in bare feet. I've shared some of the things he's done with a few of you, but here they are again, and more! He poo'd and took off his dipe and scooted his dirty bum across his bedroom floor. He poo'd during nap time, took the dipe off...enough said.

We have to keep the bathroom door closed at all times now - he flushed a washcloth and we have a septic tank. Thankfully all seems well, but leads me to wonder what else he may have flushed?? He walks around with his finger in his nose more than he does without it. I have overcooked many things in the microwave because I assume the digital timer is showing the time, but actually, all four spaces are full courtesy of his small fingers and I end up burning popcorn or blowing up a hot dog because I'm adding the time needed to a screen that says something like 7052 already! But, before I can overcook anything, I have to find the missing microwave turntable.

Is there a career out there that inspects chewed up food?? Every meal Bryce will partially chew his food then take it out and place it in front of him and push it around with his finger before pulling it apart. Gross! And his latest surprise was discovering what we call creepy crawlers, a very slow brownish red bug that attempts crossing the great terrain of Mt. Laundry. Usually I vacuum them up or relocate them outside, but some have starved to death, or, as what happened just the other day, have had their legs pulled off by Bryce. Oh, that was sad. The poor bug couldn't do anything but lay there and wave its two long antennas....

It's been too long to remember what we did in the couple weeks before we headed north for Hunter's spring break, so I'll just get to that.

The 440 mile drive up to my hometown was uneventful. My boys are good travelers! A DVD player, snacks, toys and Magnadoodles help pass the time. I don't remember what time we got there, or what we did that Friday night, but I do remember my sister, Tiffany, sending me a text during the long drive north asking where I was and what time I thought I might arrive. I replied back my answer and thought her text was odd because I knew she was jealous I was going home and she wasn't.

About 20 minutes after we arrived I heard a car door slam and Tiffany appeared outside the window of my parents house. She had tricked me! She drove down from Marquette (five hours) to spend a quick Easter weekend with us! We were all very happy to see her.

On Saturday Hunter, Tiffany and my mother-in-law Linda went geocaching together. Read more about that in my The Cache Checkers blog (as of now, 4/26/09, 9:30 P.M., it hasn't been written). That night we had an early Easter dinner of a juicy pork tenderloin with a tasty strawberry rhubarb sauce. I remember the asparagus with hollindaise sauce and deviled eggs, but I can't remember what the other good fixings Kathy made were. We had the holiday dinner that night because Tiffany had to head back home Sunday morning.

On Sunday morning the Easter Bunny left a letter for Hunter, Devin and Bryce. It said there were nine eggs of a different color for each boy. Once found they would find inside some one or five dollar Bunny Bucks. Once collected, they could use them to buy things from the Easter Bunny Store. All they had to do was find it. Hunter looked right at the door with the sign Easter Bunny Store hanging from the knob, but he walked right on by! Eventually he came back and opened the door to a whole lot of good stuff for him and his brothers. The Easter Bunny out did himself, well, herself, this year. Thanks, Grandma! :)

I don't know in what order we did these things, but my parents took Hunter and Dev to Monsters vs Aliens. It was a hit with all four of them! We met my father in law for lunch during the opening day of the local dairy twist. After that he joined us at the park during one of many trips we took there (my parents live a stones throw away).

We visited my sister Amanda in Charlevoix. I can't believe how big her baby has gotten! He'll be a year old next month! She kept Dev and B for me while I took Hunter, Rayne and Randi geocaching (you know where to go) and they all had fun jumping on the girls' Easter present; a full size trampoline with safety net. She cooked me my all time fave dinner of yummy spaghetti with garlic bread! I don't get that meal at home because my hubby doesn't like it anymore (what's wrong with him??).

We also had dinner with my mother in law, who often eats alone because her hubby works nights. She made the boys their favorite dish of fish sticks and french fries while she and I had some tasty shrimp. The boys enjoyed the bubbles their grandma gave them and jumped on her bed, well, Devin did anyway!

There was a P.S. on that Easter Bunny letter. It said that their favorite fuzzy creature had given their mom some money for a new Wii game for Hunter and Devin and that they could pick them out when she took them to Traverse City. (I left out Bryce! What a bad bunny! LOL)

I remember it was our last day there when we went to the city. We went to the mall in hopes of riding the carousal, but luck wasn't with us that day. The colorful horses were shut down for maintenance. We did stop at JC Penny for Grandma. We also went to Petsmart and brought Kit along with us. Her retractable leash wasn't returning to its housing, it was out all the way and staying out. Hunter carried her inside the store while I found a leash and opened it up, then Devin enjoyed himself walking around the store with her. While sniffing dogs her size or just a bit bigger, Kit got mean. Then a Great Dane appeared around the corner and she stopped and went the other way! I also picked her up a simple bed to put in the front passenger seat of my van. That's her usual perch and now the bed will collect her hair and not the seat to pass onto the bums of my passengers! Grandma got her kitty something as well, and then we did some geocaching there.

We also dug for buried treasure! I'm going to write about that in a separate entry so I can include pictures.

We had a great time up north with family. I tried to meet up with a couple of friends, but unfortunately, that fell through. I'm told they will get together with us this summer. We did have a bit of a hiccup on the drive back down to Ohio. The DVD player that keeps me sane died. We had to find a Walmart and pick up a new one. We also came home to a house with no groceries...but that isn't anything new!

Red Envelope Day

2009-03-21T10:00:00.002-04:00

Some information taken from http://www.redenvelopeday.com/index.html

When: March 31st, 2009

Get a red envelope. You can buy them at office or party supply stores.

On the front, address it to:

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave NW
Washington , D.C. 20500

On the back, write the following message:

This envelope represents one child who died because of an abortion. It is empty because the life that was taken is now unable to be a part of our world.

Please mail the envelopes with us on March 31st, 2009. Not before and not after. If we all do this together, then the President will be overwhelmed with our message in a short amount of time.

If you agree with our motivation, please forward this event to every one of your friends who you think would send one too. There were 50 million children in the United States that died without having a chance to live. We are hoping to match that number with these red envelopes.

Those who believe abortion is wrong find it hard to use their voice and when they do, they are left feeling ashamed. I believe it is true that those who feel abortion is wrong are in a minority.

So find yourself a red envelope and help us show the President that we have found our voice and what we have to say needs to be heard.

Yo

Back to life, back to reality....

2009-03-19T21:38:00.000-04:00

Hey all -

I'm saying back to reality because staying at The Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado Springs was most definitely not my reality!

If you have no idea what I'm talking about, then you need to read my blog updates more often! :P Quick background - because of Facebook, I found an old friend who couldn't brush me off so easily like she has in the past. (Love you, Katie!) She hasn't been very good about keeping in touch, but she was getting better at it and we both started talking about my flying out there to see her (it's been 10 years). We planned on my coming out there before Bryce turned two in mid May, leaving on a weekend and being gone a couple week days, which meant Devin would have to be taken to day care until I returned. Then my husband found out that the conference he would be going to over the week of his birthday would be in Colorado Springs. My sweet hubby suggested I come along with him, that is, of course, if I could find someone to take care of the boys while we were gone.

I was short on time because the tickets needed to be bought fairly quickly. I called my parents who said they'd have to check their calenders and while I waited I called my sister Amanda who said she would do it if my parents were unavailable. Thankfully my parents came through for me, so a ticket to Colorado was mine!

My parents arrived late last Saturday afternoon. On Sunday morning we took them to their first NE Ohio pancake breakfast which is a big deal around here. They tasted the sweet nectar of our local trees atop pancakes that soaked up the thin syrup like a sponge. By the end of the day they said they felt they had a handle on the boys' routine, so Tim and I packed up and headed to the airport to catch an 8:00 A.M. flight Monday morning.

It got very windy that night but the rain stopped and we were airborne without a problem and headed for Houston. Every seat on that plane was taken. Anything left open was filled by passengers waiting on stand by. Like my hubby, the man in the window seat must be a frequent traveler because his eyes were closed when we buckled ourselves in and didn't open once during the two hour and forty minute flight south. He shifted a bit, but he never looked upon the wonder outside that window. I hadn't flown since our flight to Florida back in 2004 when we boarded a cruise ship, so my eyes were glued to that small portal for some time.

We had about an hour layover in Texas and then we boarded a much smaller plane, two seats on one side of an aisle, one seat on the other. Tim told me that most of his travel time was spent on these smaller and much louder planes. I had the window seat this flight and even though I've seen it before, I was just in awe at the marvel that is air travel. Until we were embraced by the clouds, I looked down at the landscape like it was all a model, a child's play land or an adults hobby town. But then, ugh, I remembered I hadn't taken out a piece of chewing gum. It not only helps the ears but it calms my stomach and head.

We landed in the second largest state without incident and walked to our rental car. Seeing what they assigned us I had to wonder if Enterprise felt we deserved something nicer than the typical four door vehicle. Did they know I was a mini van mom, soon to be driving to practices and games (more of that later), or see Tim as the truck guy that is and will forever be? They gave us a silver Dodge Charger. It didn't take long for my hubby to roll down the windows and crank up that base! He sure did look good behind the wheel! :P

We cruised to the hotel where we were greeted by a gentleman in a suit. He welcomed us to The Broadmoor, gave us a colored map and verbal directions to where our room was inside the West Tower. He also put a cream colored placard with a computer print out of our last name. We drove up what I'm sure in warmer months is a well groomed drive and pulled in under a two columned overhang and were greeted by two handsome valets. One opened the door for me and then took our bags out of the trunk while the other opened the door for Tim and then drove the Dodge away. Both took notice of our name behind the windshield and greeted us formally. That was the first sign of the little details that makes The Broadmoor stand out among other hotels (but not like I've been to a lot!).

If I remember right, the hotel was built in 1918 and it still had probably the same look as when those gold colored trim glass doors first opened! I like flowers and all, but there was way too many of those prints for my liking. I don't think there was a single stretch of carpet that wasn't all flowers or bordered in flowers. All the chairs were high backed and comfortable, most a thick dark wood with tasteful designs carved along the majority of the exposed wood. To save time for all of us, let's just say we were treated like celebrities.

We asked the valet to keep the car close as we were just dropping off our bags. One thing I wasn't prepared for was how often I interacted with a hotel employee and felt I needed to tip. Tim didn't have anything to give the man who wheeled our bags up to our room. I had a five dollar bill but thought that was too much to give him. However, during the walk to the elevator he told us some of the history of the hotel, where we could find what we needed while there and some local attractions we might want to visit. He was very well spoken and a wonderful representative of the hotel. He deserved that five dollar bill of mine.

Once back out in the car, I set up Richard (my TomTom GPS unit) and looked up the Air Force Academy and saw it was about 15 miles away. We took the exit to the visitor's center and were surprised that the building was inside the main gate. We pulled up to a female soldier who asked Tim for his ID, his reason for being there, where the rental car was from and looked in both the back seat and the trunk. I lived four years on a base in Utah and never had my car searched, but I can understand her precautions. Along the two mile stretch to the visitor's center we passed a couple of scenic pull overs which we enjoyed on that windy day. I don't remember for sure, but I think the only picture I saved from that trip is the one of the chapel. The day was grey with brown grass and naked trees. It just didn't make for a pretty picture.

There was a small museum in the visitor's center. It consisted mostly cadet pictures and what they have to do to be accepted and what they do while there. It also had a dedication to the first academy graduate to get the purple heart. Tim wanted to get himself a shirt, but they were very pricey. I had my eyes on a pair of earrings but changed my mind. I did pick up a toy jet for Devin.

Afterwards we headed back out and stopped at a liquor store and picked up a bottle of wine. We were going to see Brandon, a high school classmate of Tim's, and his wife for dinner and weren't sure what to bring. We picked a bottle that goes with everything and found we need not have worried as they love all wine and had two wine racks plus a bar full of other yummy adult beverages. While the men took the biggest hunks of meat I have ever seen outside to the grill, I stayed in the kitchen and drank a Corona with a fresh lime and chatted with the lady of the house and the cutest one year old blondie I have ever met. The children's names are alluding me, but they have a four year old boy and their daughter just turned one. Even though her mama says she was sick, the little thing was an adorable ray of sunshine on that chilly evening. Her laugh was the softest I had heard in a toddler and it was contagious.

Tim doesn't know this but I saved him from a serving of peas! Along with fresh steak we were being served salad with veggies, mashed potatoes and it would have been peas if I hadn't shared the fact that Tim has banned the small green balls from touching any of his dinner plates. So instead we got sweet corn kernels and they had chocolate chip and macadamia nut cookies for dessert. Oh, yes. I also had a few too many glasses of wine.... If you've read my geocaching blog then you already know that I missed breakfast with my hubby and couldn't get out of bed until almost noon! If not, click here after you've spent all your time reading this one! :P It was an enjoyable evening and I'm glad we got to see Brandon after all these years and meet his wonderful family.

To find out what I did with a hangover echoing through my head, read the blog I mentioned above. Afterwards, I headed over to see an old classmate of mine. One I hadn't seen in just about ten years! Katie has lived in Colorado a few years now. Before then she was in Virginia, but has now found a good place in the high altitudes of the Centennial State.

I hadn't traveled all that way to do anything special. Just seeing her and reminiscing was my primary objective. I actually arrived at her house about a minute before Katie did, so it was her "Mini Me" who answered the door. Rae-Ann looks so much like her mom, I thought I had gone back in time. That moment was one of many I would have of Katie in her younger years. Some of those looks...whoa!

Katie and I decided to go out for a couple hours by ourselves. There was a Mexican restaurant down the street where we could talk about the good 'ole days. Besides Rae, there was the oldest Martin, or Marty, and then the middle child, Taylor, whom Katie referred to as Stump. I hadn't heard her younger brother Kris's nickname in a very long time! I could see Kris there in Taylor and I think the trophies on the wall reflect some of his uncle's great sportsmanship.

However, the kids weren't all that keen on letting us go. I asked them if I could have their mom for an hour or two because I hadn't seen her for many years. They said OK, but we would soon find out that they didn't mean it. They acted out as kids tend to do. It started not long after we sat down with a phone call from one of the boys saying that he got into a fight with his brother and Marty's glasses were broken. The eatery was slow and dinner arrived not long after, but Katie had only just begun enjoying her Spanish rice when her cell phone rang again. Her other son was calling to tell her that they had now broken the leg off the small table by the front door. Katie predicted that Rae would soon call because the other two did, and she was right! We finished up and headed back to the house where Katie asked me to stay behind in her Jeep. What was said between her and the children is for her and them alone, I'll just tell you that while eating some ice cream at the local Dairy Queen, Katie experienced another blast from the past. We couldn't text on cell phones back when we were young, but Rae-Ann used this technology to fulfill the wish Katie's mom once hoped for years ago; that her daughter would have a daughter of her own that would do unto her all that Katie had done to her mom. In Rae-Ann was all the drama young Katie had layered on her mom over the years. Hmmm. Maybe I should stop complaining about having all boys? :)

I was out late that night, but there was still a shivering valet waiting to take my car. I saw no one in the hallways or the elevator and my hubby was snoring when I let myself into the room. The next morning I headed over to Katie's again. I didn't have to share her with the kids as they are all in school. We had plans to meet another old school mate, Tom, but when Katie called and said we were on our way into Denver, he said he wasn't feeling well and to have lunch without him. So instead Katie showed me the good and the not so good side of the city. We eventually slid into a Wendy's and had a simple lunch with a lot of talk. Right as we were about to order Tom called and said he was ready for lunch. He was on the other side of town and we were hungry, so we said we'd come over when we finished. What I remember most about the city is the new football stadium. It's not a closed circle but is open on two of the sides and the tops of those sides make a wave instead of being circular. Also, when no one is in the seats you can see the color is blue, but in the middle of one side you can see a horse made up of white colored seats with two red ones for the eyes.

With the delay before seeing Tom we could only stay a couple hours. It was great seeing him after all these years and apparently he has a much better memory than I do! Some things I remembered, like him being the first boy to give me a pair of earrings, but other things, like my telling him to get off the back of my tandem bike and leaving him behind, I don't remember. He says it's because he was shaking the bike and made us fall, and if that's true then it serves him right! LOL

We headed back to Katie's to discover along the route that my dinner plans had been cancelled. I came into the house with Katie and we discussed with the kids what we should do. A few ideas were tossed back and forth but none of them panned out because of time, money or lack of desire. Katie suggested I tell them what geocaching was all about. At the time I didn't think she was truly interested, but we had nothing else to do and the kids perked up at such a strange word.

I told them briefly what it was and showed them on their computer where to go. They said they wanted to try it so we all climbed into Katie's Jeep and I put my GPS in her window and told them what it was and what it would do for us. (I'm not going into a full description about it. If you'd like one, please see my other blog.) I had found two caches hidden not far from each other less than two miles from the house. When I shared the name with them Taylor knew right away where it probably was. The names are usually a clue of some sort, either in location or a hint of some sort of the actual hiding spot. Once there I showed them my handheld GPS and how my hubby gave me this one because it was more rugged and made for being carried by hand, unlike my TomTom on their mom's windshield which can break if dropped and the antenna would be covered if I were to carry it outside the car.

Skipping over the details here, I'll say all three kids and their mom were hooked! Katie has since, with the kids and with adults, found five caches and she's only been doing it a week!

On Thursday Katie was supposed to work but she decided to play hookey and came up (or was it down?) to the hotel to have lunch with Tim and I. After that she wanted to find one more cache with me. It was great seeing her and now she won't be able to get rid of me! :P

Later that evening my GPS led me to an old stone church that had been refurbished and turned into a restaurant and bar. There I met one more childhood friend. Erika left the school we both went to back in the 3rd grade. It was my good luck that my hubby had a biz trip in that state and even better luck that three people from my past were able to meet up with me. She didn't have a lot of time, but in that short span we shared memories of people, places and things. It was great seeing all of them again. We've exchanged phone numbers and emails and I'm hoping we'll stick to our promise of keeping in touch.

On Friday morning we returned our flashy rental car and boarded the same flight we took to get there and backtracked. Our layover in TX went by so fast that when we arrived at our gate they had already been boarding the plane for twenty minutes. Like our flights to Colorado, the flights back to Cleveland were booked full. I had a window seat again in one, and like before, the man with the best view in that tin can closed the blind half way and went to sleep in the other.

Our last flight was full of bumpy turbulence, but that wind helped us along and we landed 30 minutes early. We caught a shuttle to the truck and I called the house to let them know we were on our way. My parents had a couple problems with some things inside the house, but it sounded like the boys were wonderful and it was overall a great time. My parents were quick out the door the next morning, skipping breakfast and on the road before 9:00. It wasn't because we were back and they wanted out as fast as possible, (at least that's what they led me to believe! LOL) but because my grandma back in Michigan was in need of their assistance and they wanted to get back for her.

OK. That took forever. A couple things I'd like to say about my boys. Number one is a question to myself. Why, oh, please tell me why, did I go through the effort of scrubbing the walls of pen, marker, crayon and pencil when there is still a toddler who doesn't know any better in the house?!? Hunter prefers a pencil because it's easier to erase and they don't use pens all that much in school, but he was writing a letter to his cousin and I wanted him to use a pen so it wouldn't smear. I think some blame should fall on Hunter. Why he pushes his chair in every other time but not this one is beyond me, but he left the chair out and the pen in the open position. Bryce almost always sits next to his brother at the table. Many a picture I have taken with Hunter doing his homework and Bryce scribbling on paper next to him. Hunter left, Bryce switched chairs. First Bryce turned the page of the notebook, leaving Hunter's letter clean of ink scribbles but covering his homework on the next page. Then he made circles and lines all over my Amish made table, which bothered me the most, then he climbed down and left his mark all over both sides of the dining room half of the kitchen island. He was decorating the second side when I found him. I won't be cleaning that again any time soon.

Dev is doing great. The weather is warmer so he's been going in and out about twenty times a day. He loves his big Santa gift. He drives that Jeep all over the back yard and we've been out to the pond to feed the fish. He doesn't mind Bryce as a passenger and neither of them want to come inside, even when the light is fading and the cold air comes back to remind us that summer isn't here quite yet! He can't seem to hush up and has even corrected me when he thinks I say something wrong. Like 55 minutes on the timer isn't 55, it's 5-5 minutes. He also reminds me to turn off the light when leaving a room and, listen to this! If I'm dumping poo in the toilet and don't close the lid, he tells me to put both seats down! Hooray! LOL

Hunter Bud has gotten himself in trouble three times this week. Devin had been hitting him and instead of telling me, Hunter kicked him in the crotch. They were downstairs when I heard Devin start screaming and crying. He was able to tell me what happened and Hunter hung his head because he knew it was wrong...or he was mad he got caught. We had to have a talk about that and then a few days ago he lied about what homework he had (it was a writing assignment), saying he was only supposed to read from his Ohio History book when he was supposed to write a letter to a pretend friend saying why he signed his name to the Declaration of Independence. I didn't realize this until I was helping him gather his things back together to put in his book bag and glanced at his planner. It was bed time already so instead of getting up and watching cartoons in the morning, a fresh piece of paper and sharpened pencil were waiting for him.

The third incident happened just today (Thursday). I asked him what homework he had and he pulled out a two sided math work sheet and said he had to write a comparison between what he eats today and what the settlers ate back in the late 1700's. Wow, I said, that's the most homework you've had at one time. I asked if he had OT or ST because he leaves the room to work elsewhere and sometimes misses out on classwork, but then I read the following in the communication notebook:

Hunter has a ton of work. I asked him to stop reading. He did not stop and most of what he is bringing home is "in-class" work. Check planner.

His love for books has finally gotten him in trouble. He always stopped before but it sounds like this time whatever story he was reading just wouldn't let him go. I understand that completely, but I only get in trouble with myself, or my hubby if he runs out of undies, when I choose a book over my chores. Hunter got in trouble with his teacher. I told him that what he did was disrespectful to her and that he can only read books during his free time or if he asks his teacher and she says yes. I also told him he can read a book on the bus instead of playing his Nintendo DS, but I don't think he's going to trade the video games for a book yet!

All right. I'll end this novel here. I still have quite a few new pictures to post. If you read this entire thing, I thank you! Hope you are all well. I don't have my new email up and running yet, so you can still continue to use yolandag@bpafreekids.com or hunterandyo@yahoo.com. Everyone be safe and I hope this weekend feels like spring wherever you are!

Dear Mom and Dad. What the heck are you thinking? :)

2009-03-05T16:17:00.000-05:00

I dedicate this update to my parents, Eldon and Kathy, who have agreed to take care of my boys next week. This is a cross between a belated update and a letter to them.

I've been delaying this update hoping I could get my website up and running. I've had enough of the poor service from my provider. I've complained about them over the years; website down, no incoming or outgoing email. Sometimes no incoming but have outgoing, sometimes vice versa. It's been pretty pathetic so I told my hubby I was going to make the change. He told me he'd find me a new provider, but the man went one step further and got things pointed in the right direction, but too soon! I didn't have my site ready to transfer over and now, poof! Gone. I've been in touch with my provider, who made a snide remark about my transferring providers as well as gave me the info I needed. I'm hoping I can figure it out myself as my hubby has been working late and would like me to do other things besides work on my site.

In the mean time, I've been doing some spring cleaning around here. From jobs as easy as dusting to a bit more in depth like cleaning and organizing closets to things that take a bit more elbow grease, like washing walls of caked on food, decorative crayon/marker/pen designs and wavy, zig zag creations of juice from the spout of a sippy cup in the pudgy hands of Bryce. I think I'm going to miss those reflections of light on those dried up liquid tracks on the walls of my hallway. There are some marks I've left alone, some I haven't gotten to yet. I'm in no hurry as I'll be cleaning them up for the next three years at least!

I considered delaying the posting of this update until after say, 10:00 A.M. Saturday morning, when you, dad and Kath, will already be on your way from Northern Michigan to NE Ohio with no Internet access and the chance to turn around. What I share in this blog entry might make you think twice, but you were game and prepared when we arrived for the Christmas holiday. After telling them about B knocking our Christmas tree over and taking off all the ornaments, and I'm sure I told them other, wonderful, memory making things as well, they came up with a solution. They picked up a live Christmas tree to avoid a repeat scenario and will be planting it whenever spring finally arrives in N. Michigan. They are two, so if they split up and each cover one half of the house, they might survive my boys OK! :P

Why, do you ask, are my parents coming to visit? Why not?? It's not just a 48 hour drop by and go, the kind we're used to around here, but they are staying for a WEEK! My wonderful, amazing, terrific, and superb mom and dad said yes to my request of caring for my boys while Tim and I left on a plane Monday through Friday. You see, my hubby has to go on another business trip. This time he's headed to Colorado Springs, CO for a conference. My thoughtful hubby remembered my interest in visiting my friend and cousin Katie who lives near Denver. We have discussed it, but never really came to a decision. Than he found out where his conference was going to be and he said if I could find someone to take the boys for that week, I was welcome to come with him.

I called my parents with high hopes, and they didn't let me down! They had to check their schedules of course, but my dad was fairly confident they could pull it off. Thanks to them I can get away for a few days and stay in a nice hotel and see people I haven't seen in years! Not only does Katie live in Colorado, but so do two other people I went to school with. I'm very excited to go and fortunate my parents gave up a week of their lives in Michigan to spend with their grandchildren. I know it's a long drive and they have their own lives. I travel so often back to Bellaire because I want my boys to know who I'm talking about when I say Grandma and Grandpa. Your saying yes and showing your excitement when we talk or in your emails proves to me that you want to be with my boys as much as I want them to be with you.

So, they will arrive here sometime Saturday afternoon. They'll take a part in the daily routine in our house, get themselves reacquainted with the surroundings and on Monday morning, take the place of Tim and I for five days. Hunter wrote them a letter to say how happy he was that they were coming and told me he hoped Devin wouldn't annoy them too much!

I'm pretty sure they'll read this before heading out, so, Dad, Kath, here are some things you can look forward to!

Bryce loves Cocoa Puffs. It's his favorite cereal. Even though it turns his poo almost black, I don't mind him eating a big dry bowl of it in the morning. One morning though, he had one of these bowls and afterwards I cleaned up his chocolate face and let him loose to continue running circles around the house. I went downstairs to fold another load of laundry and when I came back up with an armful, Bryce's mouth was dirty again. I wondered if he had found some lost Cocoa Puffs. I didn't think much of it and started down the hall to the bedrooms when Dev called out, Mom, look at his hands! I looked and they were covered in something brown...and then I breathed in that smell. A smell that seems to coat my nose even when I know no one is poopy. A stench I can pick up on in the food court of a busy shopping mall. 21 month old Bryce was covered in his own poo!

He was not just covered in it, oh, no. He was eating it! What I thought was chocolate on his face. No. It was poo. What I could see on his tongue and on his tooth. Poo. There on his shirt, his pants and in his hair. P-o-o, spells poo! So Bryce got his bath at 10:00 in the morning and he was not happy about it. Afterwards I inspected the floor, the recliner and couch, the banister and the walls, but it seems B was still focused on the poo on him and hadn't outsourced any of it yet.

You'd think I'd remember to do one simple thing. How can I not notice when I pass it by 50 times a day? You'd think I'd remember what happens when B takes notice and what I have to spend time doing afterward! I'm talking about the easy task of pushing a chair in at the table when it's not being used. My passing it over this week led to me brushing off and then vacuuming up salt he made a pile of between his legs as he sat happily in the middle of my Amish manufactured table. Hunter is very good at remembering, but he left his half drunk root beer there and Bryce helped himself to the puddle he created by climbing up from Devin's empty chair. I often let Bryce scribble on paper while Hunter is doing his homework next to him, but B thinks that sitting on the table gives him a better viewpoint of his artwork. Maybe it does!

During a wave of spring cleaning, I cleaned out and organized our craft supplies. I found an ink pad at the back of one of the drawers and decided that it shouldn't be in there. I put it on the top of the organizer to return to later. As Mommy Syndrome dictates I didn't return and it stayed there until I saw it some time later in the black hands of Bryce who was standing in the living room fussing at it with lips, teeth and a tongue as black as our lab! Not only that, but on the floor were two little ink foot prints. Now you might be asking, what were Tim and I doing while our child was eating black ink? Tim was watching TV and I was reading a book...B was right behind Tim and behind the table from me. That just goes to show you how quick and silent they can be! I think he may have shook the craft organizer trying to get a drawer open and knocked the ink off the top. I can't say where I was when that went down. I plead Mommy Syndrome.

And the last thing one should know when spending time with my Bryce is not to using a scolding voice when he's holding something hard, like a baseball! If he knows he's not supposed to have it or thinks you're going to take it from him, he'll throw it. He's Tim's boy and brother to Devin, so he throws surprisingly well and his force and aim is just right for knee height of a woman my size! (Bring your shin guards, grandma!)

Now, you might think B is sounding like a handful, but his brother is almost two years older and about a head taller. First I'll says he says the cutest things like, Let's rock and You're going down while playing pirates with his dad. After seeing me snacking on a couple small candies from Hunter's school Valentine's Day party, he brought another piece of candy to me and said, I brought you something. Can you open it for me? He can surprise you with hug requests and knows how to compliment, but what's the opposite of a sweet child?

Dev whines A LOT these days. He hollers no and cries over simple matters and has been spending time alone in his bedroom or on his bottom with his back to a wall. Hunter said the other night that Dev may hold the record for the world's biggest whiner!

When he's not whining, he goes up and down on the pee pee coaster. Sometimes he's eager to run to the toilet and use it like a big boy, and sometimes he screams and cries. I tried making it a game, like how many times can we give Mr. Potty our pee to drink and watch him swallow it down like a whirl pool. It worked great the first few days, but not so much any more. Before he would tell us when he was poopy, but now he doesn't and when we find out, he throws a fit and tries to run away. But when he does create those small bubbles he aims to pop, he is one happy little boy and eager to slap out some high fives.

And then there's our open floor plan. Our living room and dining room are together in a rectangular shape with a kitchen separated by an island that is like the tip of an arrow. It leaves plenty of room to run around in circles, which the littlest man of the house loves to do. Devin has been running circles around B for a long time, but now, Bryce is running too and soon they'll be making risky passes like Nascar drivers. Right now, though, Dev wants to crash like a race car, but the one he wants to see crash is Bryce. They'll be running in circles, Bryce leading the way laughing the entire time, when Dev will come up behind him and make his move. He puts his hands on his back and gives a little push. Usually nothing terrible happens. Bryce falls down, catching himself on hands and belly, still giggling, maybe a little gasp. But sometimes Dev gives a little bit harder push or Bryce falls on a toy or maybe Dev pushes him at the wrong place in their track like he did last week, when B fell face first into the short wall of the kitchen island. His nose was immediately bloody and cheeks streaked with tears. Devin was quick to apologize and he's been better about keeping his hands off his brother. I'd holler at him about it, had him sit on his butt enjoying nothing when I catch him, but it wasn't until I told him about what blood is and that it really hurts when you bleed that Dev took it easy with Bryce. He still pushes at his brother, but it's in the living room area, the widest part of their personal race track and not around the walls. Still he needs to be reminded and although they are having fun and it makes me smile, accidents happen.

He had a great time with a couple of sticker books. The have now been tossed out because he would stick and peel off and stick back on and peel back off until the stickers would fall out and to the floor as he walked with the book. We found stickers on our socks, on the seats of our jeans, stuck to the top of the dogs head and Kit was seen doing a little dance to get one off her foot before she tore at it with her teeth (brings back memories of my dad putting tape on the cat's feet. He did it first, Kath. Honest!). I thought I collected all the stickers but I still find some in the clean laundry or stuck to a toy.

I'm looking forward to the warmer weather. More trips to the playground, but on cold and rainy days, a trip to the soft playground in the mall is great entertainment. The last time we went Dev followed around one little girl with curly blonde hair. I tried to get a picture, but they were moving too fast. He never really said anything and she didn't mind the attention!

Even though Hunter is in school all day, it doesn't mean you can't take my place yelling at him when he's home. :) OK. Don't yell at him because he thinks he has to get up so darn early to catch the school bus. Your an early riser, Kath, so you'll probably stay up with him. Me, I rise slowly to make sure he has his lunch and he's not wearing his dad's pants and then I crawl back into my warm bed. So if you want to go back to sleep, go for it!

Don't yell at him when he gets distracted by his brothers while trying to do his homework or by his own pencil or fingers. If he wants to do the homework in his bedroom, that's fine, but please do check on his progress or a 20 minute assignment can turn into an hour.

I know you wouldn't yell at him unless he was in danger or putting someone else in danger, but when was the last time you yelled at a kid? My sisters and I haven't been under your roof in years, I won't say how many, but a long time! I know you're out of practice, so, please do yell at him if he plays a computer game that is inappropriate for his younger brother, who likes to be with him after school. Please do holler when he swings back at Devin for hitting him. It's actually great that he's not sitting there and taking it like he has in the past, but I'd rather not have them getting into fist fights when they are still so young! And do scold him when he hesitates to the question, Have you brushed your teeth? Of course, if you feel the need to yell at him or any of my boys for other reasons or to hug them just because, please do so. :) (But do remember what I said about Bryce holding something hard!)

One more thing about Hunter before I sign off is this: He takes a spelling test every Friday. I can count on one hand how many times he's gotten two or more wrong. Even though he sees his great scores and he hears praises from us at home and his teacher at school, he didn't have the confidence to participate in the spelling B. He said he didn't want to be up in front of the whole school, and I can understand that part! Anyone have any suggestions on what I can do to help him get the courage to join his classmates in an event like this? I know he would have done very well.

Apparently I'm not getting any email and haven't been able to send out using my hunterweekly.com account for some time. Hopefully I can get my site back up and running soon! I know you all can't wait to lay your eyes on some good looking boys! :)

Hope everyone is well!

Yo

School reports, wonderful poo and bath burps.

2009-02-03T11:02:00.001-05:00

Hello everyone. I hope all who read this are enjoying life and good times. It's getting better here now that we're thawing out! It's predicted to be in the 47 today (Monday), 58 tomorrow and 61 on Wednesday! There is a downside though - out with the snow, in with the mud.

Let me start with Bryce this time around because he's behind me now, climbing from one side of the back of my chair, standing there and patting me on the back before climbing back down on the other side and doing it again.

If you haven't been to my web site yet, please visit and check out the duet he and I have going in video form. I've been trying to get him to say ma-ma. Yeah, yeah, it IS usually da-da, but he's my kid so I'm gonna try! I should have turned my camera on about ten minutes before, when Bryce was real interested in the going back and forth we do through out the day. I didn't think about taking a video until after he had walked away. I grabbed my camera and went down the hall looking for him and found him "reading" books in his bedroom. So his participation wasn't as eager in the beginning, and in the middle, there's a pause where he either forgot what he was doing, or just wanted to stare at the camera. It's still cute to watch.

While that was fun to be a part of, something else wasn't. I let Devin choose a new toy after I had done something to him on accident (which I'll mention later - serious mommy guilt!). He wanted an ambulance so we brought the toy home, which is about the size of his garbage truck, but if you haven't seen pictures of that, then I'll say it's about the size of your typical bathroom trash can. Why I thought of that as a comparative, I haven't a clue.

Anyway - Bryce was playing with the buttons, opening and closing the doors and pushing it back and forth, sitting next to the kitchen island, but on the living room side. I don't know what he did but I heard his pain cry and found him standing up in the place where he was sitting with the ambulance a few feet away. I knew he hurt himself something awful, because his mouth was open with eyes clenched tight, but nothing was coming out. It was like he was behind a sound proof glass wall. But then he inhaled and that transparent barrier shattered as my baby let loose. There was no blood so I cuddled him for a bit and when he settled down I took a look at him. He had small, angled indentations on his left cheek and the bridge of his nose (which is probably what hurt the most) and a purple mark just below his eye brow. I've been trying to imagine what he did, but he's 19 months, so it's anything and everything!

Bryce loves to take a bath and his baths are taken with Devin. They both splash and dump cups of water, ignoring most of the toys in there with them for a cheap restaurant kid drink cup! Devin is much better at dumping, but Bryce has no complaints. The more Devin pours the water, the more Bryce laughs. Faster and faster they go. Pretty soon, Dev is getting B with the water and he gasps as he partially drowns and then laughs. No matter how many times you tell him it's too close, Dev always gets closer and Bryce continues to gasp and laugh. At the end of bath time one night, I reached in to get a thoroughly soaked B and he let out this huge belch. Too much bath water!

Not only is Devin helpful in rinsing his little brother in the bath, he's been helpful in taking off his own wet Pull-Up and putting a dry one on. A few weeks ago, he was wearing one Pull-Up all day long because he was making it to the potty (pee only), then he just stopped. He was going through so many I ran out and didn't have enough training underwear as back up. I called my hubby at work and asked him to bring home some more and he came into his house, a house where testosterone rules, with a package of pink Pull-Ups! I could not believe it. I said, Babe, did you not notice these are pink? He said he saw the 3T-4T size and grabbed them. Uh-huh. Pink for girls, next to them would have been blue for boys. He scowled at me and said, That's what you get for asking me to get them. OK. So now his three year old son is walking around in Disney princesses and the colors pink and purple!

So, Devin is being helpful by telling me he's wet and proceeds to take off his pants and wet diaper and throws it away and puts on a dry one. I don't always know he's doing this until he tells me so or I see him throw it away. Unfortunately, he does more than pee in them. One time he hollered for me and I found him with poo smeared down his leg and the Pull-Up around his ankles. Another time I found him with legs clean of poo, but the circular poo, hence the cleaner legs because it stayed in a single clump, had rolled out of the dirty diaper and onto the floor. Tim was the lucky one when a third time, home alone with the boys, Dev took his diaper off and, I'm guessing it got stuck, sat his poopy bum down on the carpet. Wonderful times! Thanks for the great memories, Dev! I think he's going to tell us he's poopy now BEFORE he takes off the trainer. Better yet, he might just go sit on the potty. Fingers crossed everyone!

On a sad note, I don't think Devin will be going to gymnastics anymore. The past few times we've gone there, he's refused to go in, and once in, he refuses to cooperate and sits on a line while the other children bounce, roll and flip around him. When we're home he wants me to look at him do the things he's learned in gymnastics, but once there, he's a brat. It brought back memories of Hunter not wanting to play the piano anymore. All was fine there, though, until Mr. Miller moved away and then his replacement moved away and Hunter had to start all over again with a third instructor. I didn't push him then and I won't push Devin now. I would have loved to be involved in gymnastics and I took piano lessons but quit. But they aren't me so I'll back off. Gymnastic lessons last all year, so we'll try it again in the fall.

Tim has a different car seat in his truck. Once Devin is in, there is front part like an arm rest that is pulled over his head and down in front of him. Then you have to snap the belt into the buckle between his legs to secure it. The straps are at their longest and still tight on Dev when he's in his winter coat. I'm not very familiar with this car seat as I rarely have the truck alone with the kids. One day I did, though, and when I pushed down on the buckle of the car seat...I pinched Devin between the legs and he screamed and cried...that's why he got a new ambulance.

A couple weeks ago, Hunter's class was scheduled for a field trip to a science center. Since I now have a part time day care provider I was going to chaperon, something I hadn't done since Hunter was in Kindergarten. The day before the outing a group from the science center came to the school and talked of what the children would see and do. In a note Hunter brought home later that day it said the field trip was canceled because of some safety concerns. When I asked Hunter about it, he said some boys were sniffing one of the items the science center group brought with them and others had thrown some red powder up in the air. So some bad choices from a few ruined it for all. And for me. I wanted to go on that field trip! :P

It ended up being a good idea that they didn't go because I got a phone call late the next morning saying Hunter had thrown up and had a fever of 102. I had decided to take myself shopping and was about 40 miles from the school when my cell phone rang. I had to call Tim, who I knew was in a meeting, but I caught him at the right time. They had just taken a break and he was able to pick Hunter up and meet me back at the house. Hunter stayed home the next day as well, so he got a four day weekend, but he really wasn't himself until Sunday.

Hunter had his first book report due last week. It was actually called a book commercial with an oral presentation. He picked an AR book, which is a book he's read and been quizzed on for comprehension. He had many to choose from and it took him two days of looking through them to decide which one he wanted to talk about. He choose Swindle by Gordon Korman and when he brought it home I was a little concerned because it was fairly thick and he only had a few days to put his commercial together.

The assignment was to take a small paper bag and put on the front the book title and author's name and then an illustration about the story. On the side panel the main characters and a description about them, the back panel a short summary and the last panel (the bag would be cut flat and it was planned to be in that order), Hunter's rating of the story, one to four stars and why he rated it the way he did.

Then he had to gather together four visual aids. Hmm. The main visual aide we should have had was a baseball card since the story revolved around that. Hunter doesn't own any of these and we probably could have made our own if our computer didn't think it has a perpetual paper jam (grrr)! We went over his main characters and summary and decided he'd cut out a house and we'd prop it up and he'd use two of his Star Wars characters for the two best friends in the story, then a small stuffed doberman pincher from a McDonald's Hotel for Dogs Happy Meal and a ghost finger puppet (because the house is supposedly haunted).

The hardest part for Hunter was the oral presentation. Well, following all directions for the oral presentation was rough for him. It involved writing cues on index cards he would refer to while standing in front of the class. He sat at the table with paper and pencil with the goal of writing down the main points of the story. Half an hour later, he had written down only two things. I've talked with Hunter before about him not writing things down. His reading grade has dropped because he's not putting thoughts down on paper. He told me that he has so many thoughts in his head, he can't get them down. Tim, the teacher's and I are working on this. A new goal has been added to his IEP. I'll talk more of this after the book commercial.

So I sat down across from my son and took the paper and pencil and told him I'd act the scribe. This way I learned about the entire story in ten minutes with Hunter talking and me jotting down what he agreed were the main points. I actually copied everything but the title and author's name for Hunter onto his paper bag. He'd need a double sized paper bag with his printing! I sent in the work Hunter printed out and my notes from his re-telling so his teacher can see that he did do all the work himself. I put his index cards together and we did a practice run through, a small part of which you can see in the video on my home page.

When he finally had his turn in front of the class, his teacher wrote in the notebook that he did an excellent job. During the practice run, Hunter never even looked at the cue cards we created. He said he didn't need them during his presentation, either, and that his classmates and teacher laughed and were grossed out during the part where one of the boys reaches his hand up into the body cavity of a frozen turkey!

Hunter's grades dropped in reading and TEN POINTS in math. He is now one point above failing in that subject. I had no idea he was doing so poorly. We knew he wasn't asking for help and had an emergency meeting that resulted in Hunter putting a book on end at his desk to let the teacher know he needed help. He doesn't like to ask for help and we're thinking it might be because he doesn't like the attention drawn, although sometimes he thinks he can just do it without help.

A few weeks ago I had another meeting with his teacher and we talked about how his writing comprehension isn't where it should be. As was very evident in his re-telling of the story to me for the Swindle (do I underline that or use quotes??) oral presentation, he has no problem comprehending it. But when asked to write the words down himself, he falls very short. During that meeting, math was mentioned only ONCE. She said that during the math test this year, Hunter can't go back and forth with a scribe; he can't say yes in one area and not the next. It's either an all or nothing thing.

In the teacher comment section of his report card, she wrote, Doesn't ask for help. This really irked my husband because there was a meeting about exactly that and if he's not asking for help and she can see his grade going down hill, then he thinks, and I agreed, that she should be offering him help or finding out why he isn't asking for help and determine if the current set up, if he's using it, is working like it should. Some fault lies with Hunter, can't blame the teacher for everything :). He often refuses to use extra paper and tries to work out a problem in a small space that his big, blocky printing just doesn't fit into. His works gets squished into each other and he ends up computing the wrong rows or can't make out what he wrote among the jumble. He has absolutely refused to use large block graph paper in the classroom. The teacher and OT said he actually got mean about it. He doesn't want to use anything that makes him different from the other kids. Instead we're trying to get him to use a piece of scrap paper so he'll have more room. If he thinks he has room on the actual worksheet, he uses that. I'd love to have his worksheets be printed where there's no space between problems, but they don't come that way.

Hunter didn't like it at first but he's accepted the fact that he has to do two things from me, math and writing, each night on top of the homework his teacher assigns for him. He has to re-write the math problems on a separate piece of paper and he does a writing assignment. The last one I had him do was, Imagine you can fly. Where would you go? He gave me three good five sentence paragraphs, but the paragraphs were more like a list, like, I would do this...I would do that.... I re-wrote his ideas into a three paragraph story and we talked about the differences in how the paragraphs looked when compared to each other and how they sounded to read them. If you're curious, Hunter wanted to go to Australia because he would get privacy there and eat his favorite snack of cheese without interruption. He said he'd wear his best looking outfit, fly very fast but not let anyone see him because he'd want his super power to be a secret. He concluded that he'd fly to important places and be people's hero because he knew himself to be a good person.

My sister Tiffany called me two Tuesday's ago at 10:00 PM. I knew she and her hubby Mark were wandering the countryside again as they tend to do a couple times each year. I was a little perturbed with her for calling me and saying she was on another jaunt and currently in West Virgina. I admit I got a bit mad because they had once again set off from their home in Marquette and my house wasn't on their itinerary! That was on Sunday and when she called Tuesday night, there were two thoughts in my head. Either it was an emergency or she was coming my way. I''m happy to say that she was coming my way!

They thought they'd be here between 1:00 and 2:00 A.M. Well, I'm sure you read or heard about the ice storm that hit Kentucky. Well, they got into some of that and then the winter storm warning in my neck of the woods. I told them I wouldn't be up when they arrived but that Tim and I would get the camper nice and warm and the bed ready so they could just crawl into there and I'd see them in the morning. When I got up with Hunter at 5:45, their car wasn't in the driveway! I called and got Tiff and they said their were sitting in a block of ice and had to pull over often to knock the build up off their windshield wipers. They were in Akron which is, on a typical day, a 45 minute drive. I headed outside to try to shovel away my worries with the foot of snow in my driveway when they still hadn't arrive at 8:00 and Tiffany didn't answer my call. At about 8:30 they finally arrived and I was so relieved.

My BIL immediately went into the camper and fell asleep. Tiff came in and had some breakfast. Hunter was home to see her because school had been canceled that day. We didn't do much with the terrible weather and they left the next morning, but it was great to see them even for such a short time. I'm looking forward to hugging her again in the summer.

You've shown your love for my boys and I if you've read all of this. Many hugs and kisses to you! Hunter has a four day week this week and next. I'd love to just pack up and head north, but not this time. Two years ago my sister Amanda came down from Charlevoix because her girls had the same days off as Hunter. No visit from them this year. She has said that she'd like to come down this summer and take the girls to either Cedar Point, which is about two hours away, or the water park, which is twenty minutes away.

Everyone take care.

Yo

Sickies, sickies and even more sickies.

2009-01-23T13:19:00.000-05:00

Those of you who are lining up and eager to come and see us, it is now safe to do so! The last two weeks here have been with sick germs abound! First it was the common cold, graduated to the flu and then some of us even had the stomach flu. It really started the last couple days we were north for the Christmas holiday. Then we were free of all viruses just to have them return two Tuesday's ago, when Bryce got sick and I couldn't bring him to the sitter, which meant no gymnastics for Dev. It lasted a few days and then Tim started feeling it. The following Tuesday, instead of going to gymnastics happy and healthy, Dev then had a fever and body aches, so once more we stayed home. Before he caught the bug, he had been complaining of his ear hurting and we found he had an ear infection and I started giving him the cold pink antibiotic. It was his first one ever.

We thought Hunter might get by with just a cough and runny nose, but as I took a shopping day last Thursday, the school called my cell phone, telling me Hunter had vomited and had a fever of 102. I was 30 miles the other way and called Tim to see if he could pick up Hunter. He did and we got to the house about the same time. Hunter still wasn't feeling well Friday so he stayed home that day, too. I had a meeting scheduled with his teacher on Friday, but we rescheduled for later today (I'm writing this at 6:00 a.m.).

We all seem to be better now, so come on down, up or over, whichever direction you need to take to get here! :)

Hunter did miss another day of school and not from snow, ice or the sickies. The Friday before MLK, Jr. Day many schools in our area, around the country actually, were closed because it was just too darn cold! The week before we got over a foot of snow, the next week I don't think it got higher than 10 degrees. Hunter calls Mother Nature crazy because this past Saturday it reached 40 degrees. The boys and I watched the icicles drip from our frozen gutters and the sparkling, fluffy snow in the yard that was over a foot deep lost its shine and pushed down on itself and is now just a couple inches above the shoveled driveway. We had plans to go sledding at a friends house this weekend, but we all agreed there wasn't enough snow anymore and what we did have was hard with crusty ice. Now the weather is back to being freezing and there is a winter storm coming our way. (If you are on your way, drive safe! :P)

I'm going to change things up and start in reverse and start with me. I've had my nose in the books I got for Christmas, so the house has suffered! Before I got into that zone, I had cleaned out all three boys' rooms of old, broken and unwanted toys. I did the same to the family room downstairs and then tore into organizing and cleaning out the store/dog room (a room that doesn't get a lot of heat. Brr!) Most recently I cleaned out my pantry and am happy to report that only about a half dozen items were past their "Best use by..." date! Now I need to give my attention to the most unorganized room of the house, my computer/hobby room.

Tim twisted his ankle on Sunday during his weekly basketball game. He's been favoring it since, but doesn't think it warrants a trip to the doctor. The building Tim works in has been around for many years, but as the company grew, they didn't relocate, that just slapped on new offices as they went. Therefore, there were windows not to the outside like you would think, but from office to office. You could sit at a desk and have a conversation with someone on the other side of a wall through a window with the glass removed. Besides that, it was just run down looking inside. It has finally been gutted and redone with new carpet, new paint, new furniture. Tim's office is actually going to get a window to the outside! If I hadn't recognized the building from the outside before opening that door a few days after the work was finished, I would have thought I'd gone to the wrong place. It looks 110% better.

Bryce is getting so big! He is catching up to Devin and they are 22 months apart. He has been sleeping through the night four out of seven nights. Last night was one of them and it feels great to not wake up until you want to! I opened my eyes this moring at 5:50, ten minutes before the alarm was to go off to check on Hunter. I came upstairs and sat with my oldest until he headed out to meet the bus at 6:17, bundled in a warm coat, hat and mittens.

I took a two minute video of Bryce. He's been vocalizing a lot. Tim and I have started the ma-ma and da-da wars, but so far B is ignoring us both and saying ya-ya. He's also waving bye-bye (toward himself) when he gets down on his belly to head downstairs. The past two nights he has sat down at the table and eaten not only his entire meal, but he's climbed down and come around the side to eat mine!

We are still calling him The Destroyer of Homes as everything he passes, from magnets on the fridge, whatever on any and every table, books on shelves, toys on the floor or put away, it doesn't matter. Everything he touches is either thrown, tossed or pushed aside and there is this cluttered path left behind him. Every time, too many times, each and every day! Oh, well. How much fun can a floor really be with no toys and just the clean lines of a vacuum? (It does look good while for the short time it's clean though!)

Except for the Mohawk I can't tame on Devin's head, my middle son is doing well. He spends most nights sleeping soundly under his favorite blanket with a couple of stuffed puppies close by. As his room is directly above ours, we don't need a monitor in there to hear him cough or cry out in the night. Now and then I hear him cough, but he has been sleeping through most nights.

For some time he was using the potty every 30-45 minutes, keeping one Pull-Up or training underwear dry from morning to night. Now he's being a stinker about it and is refusing to use the toilet. If he does, he complains about it the entire time. Now he's been wetting himself often, even getting the chair and couch wet. We'll keep at it and hope he'll get over this hump.

Everything coming out of his mouth is understandable. I'm not remembering the last time I had to ask him to repeat himself. I often tell him to look at me when he's talking and speak up, but each word coming out of his little mouth is a real word. I didn't note anything down, but I do remember him telling me to go away when he wasn't feeling good (sniff), telling me to, Stop that, when I tried to tickle him or play with his hair (which he still does to me), and he did call one of his toys stupid (there are worse words, I suppose).

I don't remember if I mentioned this in my last update, but Hunter was bullied again by the same boy who was picking on him on the school bus. This time around this boy had a friend in on it. This was during recess and apparently really got Hunter down. The teacher noticed and was able to talk to him about it. I know the teachers of these boys know and am told the parents were notified. Anyway - it's been a couple weeks since then and Hunter tells me there hasn't been anymore incidents between himself and either of these boys.

He keeps bringing home high scores on his spelling tests, but it seems his teacher is concerned with his writing skills. From what she briefly wrote in the communication notebook, there's concern of how Hunter is doing in writing assignments; taking what he's read and writing about it in his own words; how, why and his feelings. We need to decide if he's just writing something simple and short because it's him having to print it, or if he's not understanding what needs to be done. When he's had a scribe write for him, he says a lot more because he's not the one writing it. This year the school did get him an Alphasmart, so maybe it's just he needs to be able to use it more than what he's being allowed to. On my end though, I think I do need to get him some sort of typing course.

I'll end this entry by typing out one of Hunter's assignments he brought home. It was a worksheet he did after his class read a story where one of the characters helped his father sell newspapers in his newsstand on Saturday nights. First off, I didn't think it was Hunter's because the words had spaces in-between and the letters were the same size. Hunter confirmed it was his work and his dad and I got a good laugh from his honest answers.

Helping Out

The question: What jobs or chores do you have to do in your house?

Hunter's answer: Clean my room (he has more than that, but that's the biggest one).

Question: How is doing these chores a help to your family?

Answer: I just do it.

Question: Would the jobs get done if you did not do them? By whom?

Answer: Yes. Mom and dad.

Question: What job do you like the most? Why?

Answer: None, because I don't want to do any of them.

Question: What job do you like the least? Why?

Answer: All of them - cause I do.

Question: Are there some jobs that you work on together with your parents or sisters and brothers? What are they?

Answer: Yes. Clean up other rooms.

Question: If you could make up the job assignments in your house, which jobs would you give?

Answers:

Yourself: Nothing

Your brothers and sisters: Everything

Your parents: Everything

Your pet: Nothing

Do you think it is important that people are assigned chores in order to help out in a household? Why or why not?

Answer: Yes. It goes by faster.

I hope everyone enjoys the rest of their week.

Oh - since Tim rebuilt my computer I don't have my address book, so please send me an email so I can put your address in my address book.

1:31 P.M. - Hello again. I typed the majority of this update in my comfy recliner chair under a blanket with my hubby's lap top. I didn't get it finished and proof read before he appeared by my side to take it to work at 7:45. So, I've finished it up now, but since I haven't posted it yet, I can tell you how my meeting with Hunter's teacher went.

It seems that Hunter is having difficulty writing paragraphs. He just wants to write one or two sentences about the subject, but he's not completing the assignments by being so brief. We talked about ideas of how to get him interested in writing more and we put together an outline of how the paragraph should look like, what questions he should answer, etc. He's writing again to his cousins, so hopefully that will help.

He's been refusing help from a scribe, probably because he's the only one in the class with one. It's obvious to us that his assignments are longer and with more detail when he dictates what he wants to say to the scribe. I'm going to try and show him this by having him write out what he wants to say about something and then record what he wants to say about the same subject. I hope I can show him how much more he can do with a scribe in this way. I was told today that his 4th grade testing is an all or nothing thing. He can't have a scribe for certain areas. He either has one or he doesn't. They did a practice math test and because he refused the scribe he didn't write detailed answers and did poorly on those problems. He also has an Alphasmart in the classroom. I've started researching typing classes for him.

Thanks for reading!

Happy Belated New Year everyone!

2009-01-11T21:39:00.000-05:00

I think this will be the shortest update on record! I just finished posting pictures for you to see and spent the better part of the day purging the boys' bedrooms of toys they don't play with or are broken, but mostly just cleaning it out. (Tomorrow I do the bathroom. How many expired items do you have in your medicine cabinet?) Hunter's room took forever and he is no help at all. I just want to go and spend my remaining time sitting in front of the TV ignoring Mt. Laundry next to me. I'm imagining that pile would make one nice pillow....

Our drive up north was the best. The boys rode well, the roads were clear; we had no issues at all. My poor husband on the other hand had the worse time. It took him much longer than normal because he was driving up on icey roads and in the snow. Thankfully he made it up there safe and sound.

Like last year we had no plans until the rest of my sister's arrived the day after Christmas. So the boys and I attended my moms side of the family get together on Christmas Day. Tiff and Mark actually arrived earlier than in years past and were able to join us there.

We spent Christmas morning with the IL's, went to the get together mentioned above, and returned to stuff our faces some more back at the IL's that night.

The next day we had our holiday with Amanda and Saturday, a gift exchange with my dad. Our boys opened their Santa gifts at the IL's. Check out the picture slide show to see what Santa brought Dev. Hunter's big gift was a Nintendo DSL. (Bryce can share in Devin's present.)

We had fun in the snow, fun with the Wii, fun playing board games and enjoyed each other's company while making one heck of a mess in the house (five kids and seven adults staying the night with more coming during the day!) Of course, those who enjoy the hunt went on a few geocaching adventures! Check out my other blog to read about those.

Tim headed back to Ohio the Sunday after Christmas, but the boys and I didn't come back until the following Saturday. Those last few days were pretty rough for Dev and B. They caught themselves a stomach bug and had a bit of a fever and both threw up, but thankfully on different nights! Our last night there I considered staying another day because Bryce was up every hour fussing. Before we left my dad gave me a roll of paper towels and a garbage and said if I'm prepared for the baby to throw up then it won't happen, and he was right! The ride back home went just as well as our ride up.

Except for a few Christmas decorations Devin had brought into his room, our house is back to its original state .

I'm sure I've missed something worthy of sharing with you, but I didn't keep track and I'm impatient to get this up. I've been home for a week now and should have done this before!

I hope you all had a safe and happy New Year and wish you the best of health and good fortune in 2009!

Yo

Mostly gross but with a few laughs.

2008-12-18T22:36:00.000-05:00

Hello all!

Even though I changed my home page to show some holiday spirit and posted some pictures a few days ago, I'm only just now sitting down to tell you about the last two weeks.

I didn't think I would be writing this at all, at least not during day time hours! I stayed up late the night I posted the pictures because, , my computer died. It was bogging down and freezing up, being overly annoying when I only have a handfull of minutes at a time to sit there. Then I left for the weekend and my hubby turned it off. Now we know he shouldn't have done that, because, sadly, it won't boot back up again.

My hubby can fix it, as he's done previous computers in the past. He actually built this one quite a few years ago and saved us a lot of money. However, when someone works with computers all day every day, you can't get that someone to come home to a computer job, not willingly or happily, at least! I don't know when I'll be able to use it, so instead I have his lap top to use in the evenings. During the day I can use the smaller computer downstairs, but that is supposed to be for our business only. There is no firewall, no virus protection on it what so ever. I have an Internet connection there only to view my orders and to print postage. As I am addicted to computers, I have been wandering down there often to check my email and chat with some ladies I've known for a few years now.

I have presents divided and packaged up in piles designated as Tim and Yo. My hubby isn't heading north for the holiday until the 23rd. He'll have a lot more room than I will, so will be taking a large plastic tub filled to the top with presents. I'll only be bringing up exchange gifts and a selection for each of my boys to open at a family gathering held the same day as our arrival up north. It actually starts at 2:00, but to make that hour we'd have to leave here by 6:00 a.m. That's probably not gonna happen! We'll shoot for 9:00. With potty breaks and half hour for lunch, we should be there by 5:00.

Let me get down to it as it's getting late.

Usually I have more to say about Dev and B than I do Hunter, but not this time! I took note of a few things to share with you, the first on my list are the 95-100% grades he's been getting on his weekly spelling tests. A recent one he came home with was for 101% because his penmanship was clear and even!

On December first, Hunter's 11th birthday, the regular fourth grade teacher returned. I've told you about it before, so I won't repeat myself. I requested a meeting with her and she agreed. My babysitter is only part time and already had a full house for that day so I brought Devin and Bryce with me. Devin was very excited when I said we were going to Hunter's school to meet his teacher. Devin ran to his room and came back with his Go, Diego, Go! backpack.

Mrs. G's planning hour started at 11:00, so Dev and B and I arrived jus before then. Hunter's school is called an intermediate school, located in a much older building in front of the elementary school. The layout was poorly made. There is a big front door, but that's not where they want you to enter. I park on the parking lot, which is at one side of the school. I walk past the front door carrying Bryce and followed by my backpack wearing three year old with this face consuming smile on his face, to the other side where there is a walking path from this school to the one behind it (Hunter has to go to the elementary school for lunch and gym. Lovely.)

Afer being buzzed in we then had to climb three floors to the office to sign in and be announced to Hunter's teacher, who we must go back down two flights of steps to meet in her classroom. For some reason Devin wanted me to get to the bottom of each flight before he would take hold of the handrail and come down. Had Bryce been his usual wiggle, let me go self, I would have had less patience!

I was a little put out when I first entered the classroom and saw Mrs. E there. I don't recall her title, but she's like a coordinator between parents and the IEP team. This wasn't anything official, I just wanted to meet the woman who was spending more hours with my son than I was.

Mrs. G is probably in her early 50's, but you wouldn't have guessed that if you were just looking at her mouth and the neon yellow gum she was chomping. After the introduction it wasn't that noticable in her mouth. Maybe she was just freshening her breath. We discussed how Huner handeled the meeting she, Mrs. T and Hunter had the week before. How Hunter was behaving with Mrs. G in the classroom and the differences between the teaching stles of Mrs. T and Mrs. G. To cut myself short, I feel pretty good about the situation and Hunter has no complaints. (Devin did great sitting in few different desks and checking out the chalkboard. I sat B in Hunter's chair and he spent most of the time scribbling on the back of Hunter's paper. The rest of the time he spent climbinb all over me.)

Hunter takes forever in the bathroom at night. Using the toilet, taking a shower and brushing his teeth can take over an hour. I've cut it down considerably by taking the book away from him before he goes in there. Now he gets the job done and reads the book before going to bed.

I'm wondering if there's one book I should confinscate because of what it's teaching him! After he was done in the bathroom I entered to find the walls splattered with spit balls! LOL I told him he could do that all he wanted, as long as he cleaned up the mess!

I'm not sure how it happened, but Hunter came home from school one day with his eyeglasses broken. The left side was completely snapped off near where the screw is. It was unfixable so I called the eye doc and asked what kind of warrenty there was. He's only been wearing them since the spring. I was told as long as we turned in every piece we'd get a complete replacement, even the transitional lenses, which were scractched up. Even though the woman put a rush in with the order, it would take a few days and that meant duct taping his glasses back together. What I used wasn't exactly duct tape. I really didn't want anyone seeing the grey tape or the black of electrical tape holding my son's glasses together. I found a cloudy clear tape that we've used to help visquine our windows and that held his glasses together until yesterday, when we traded them for the new pair.

Oh...yesterday. I got a horrible scare yesterday. I'm going to break off and tell you about it. Hunter gets home about 3:20. We left the house and traveled the 30 minutes to the eye doc to make the switch. We came back to the nearest town to our house and went to the BK drive thru. Tim and I were going to his company Christmas party and leaving the boys with a sitter, hence the fast food run. I made a left turn from the BK, behind a black pick up who then entered the right turn lane onto the bypass that was put in a few years back to help ease the congestion that is created when you put cars and Amish buggies together.

Before the truck turned I saw a car stopped at the sign at the end of the bypass and then it was blocked from sight by the black pickup. I started to accelerate as the truck moved away, when the car suddenly appeared in front of me! I clenched the steering wheel with both hands as I slammed on the brakes. As I squealed to a stop just inches away from the back panel of that car, I saw the startled face of an older woman who continued driving away. I stayed there for a minute or two, catching my breath and expressing the greatest grattitude to a van which is up there in miles but has a good set of brakes! The car behind me gave me all the time I needed, no blares of the horn to get moving. Had the roads been even the slightest bit icy, I'd be needing a new van. All three boys were safe and secure, although it did wake Bryce up from his nap. We made it home, I handed the children over, then I proceeded to drink four glasses of wine too many and felt it in the morning!

Back to Hunter...he got a phone call! Tomorrow they are having some sort of carnival for the last day of 2008. He and another boy will be managing a game where they will build a pyramid of plastic cups for kids to throw a ping pong ball at. The boys have talked together twice about their booth.

This last one actually happened over the Thanksgiving holiday, when Hunter's grandparents were here. Apparently Hunter had an upset stomach one night and ran to the toilet to vomit. His grandma found the evidence and cleaned up the commode the next morning. However, I didn't know the extent of the sickness until Hunter tells me right before he goes to be that he needs new bed sheets. Why? Because he threw up in his bed before making it to the bathroom and spent the rest of the night on the floor instead of coming to tell me. I got his room cleaned up and told him to come get me right away if this happened again.

If you think that was gross, then read on.

Through Bryces's baby monitor I can hear when Devin is crying. One night I heard his cries, so I put my soft and warm terry cloth robe on and stumbled my way up the stairs. He met me at his bedroom door and said that he needed me. I asked him what was wrong, in which he replied with a cough...and then he puked all over the front of my robe! Thankfully I was protected in that or else it would have been a thin t-shirt and nothing on my legs to stop what I couldn't see coming at me in the dark hallway! After that purge, a new sleeper and a drink of water, he went right back to sleep.

Don't stop now, keep reading....

Devin is learning about things that are smaller and bigger. I've been showing him different sized balls and he uses the words himself in describing things. When children sneeze, they often close their mouth. Devin did this and told me he had a small amount of snot on his nose. I wiped it up with a tissue and we carried on. He sneezed again and came running, shouting, It's bigger, mama. It's a big one! Um. Yeah. The bottom of his face was all snot. It took two Kleenex's to get that off. Bigger was right! (Hey, Uncle Mark! Ya ready to spend some qaulity time with your nephews?!?)

Devin has been testing my patience to the limit. He's throwing things at the dogs and chases poor Kit around so much, she spends a lot of time in my shadow. He hits, pushes and takes things away from Bryce that I'm imaginging myself dividing the house, one side for Dev and the other for B. I had had enough the other day when Dev took an orange plastic recorder (like a small one piece clarinet) and hit Bryce on the head. He knew I was mad because he was apologizing before I had covered the short distance between us. I don't have a problem with smacking a little bum now and then and this was one of those moments where I was going to try and make an impression. I grabbed his right shoulder with my right hand and pulled back with my left. Devin's instinct was to put his hands on his backside and still clutched in his hand was that darn recorder! The bottom knuckle bone of my thumb hit that hard plastic and I instantly froze up in pain! I had a purple spot for two days afterward. Note to self: Take offending toy away first!

But Devin is nothing compared to Bryce, The Destroyer of Homes. At least Devin is old enough to listen and obey when we say no. Bryce? He laughs in our face. Sure he does stop, but look out as he throws whatever it was we wanted him to stop doing at you. If you're within a few feet of him when he drains his sippy cup...watch out, because he chucks that thing hard and contines to pick it up and throw it until it's been refilled and placed in his hands. Is there a coffee table in your house? Does it have drinks, books, perhaps clean clothes neatly piled atop it? Bryce is faster with his hands than Knight ever was with his gator tail! Forget to push in your dining room or office chair? Too bad, because now you have salt and pepper on the table, napkins thrown on the floor and paperwork, CD's, or your computer behaivng strangley because a 19 month old changed a setting you have no idea how to switch back.

I called my parents the other day to warn them of Bryce. They smiled and they chuckled. He's the typical toddler, they said. We're ready for him, they claim. I tried to explain that B is like a set of twins in one body, that you think you have him where you want him, but then he's way over there pouring out your drink you thought was safe because he was with you over here and while you're soaking that up, he's at the other side of the house, checking to see what plants were watered and which ones weren't and then suddenly deciding that they all needed to be repotted.

On Sunday I'll be driving to Traverse City to pick up Devin's big Santa gift. I told Tim that I'd probably just leave all three boys with my parents if they were going to be home. My husband says, Oh, no. Don't leave Bryce with them. Why not?, I ask, becoming a little defensive about his apparent lack in trust of my parents babysitting skills. He replied, Don't leave him with them on your first full day there. They won't want to watch him again!

I've closed myself up in a room with no heat so my typing won't keep Tim up. I'm tired, I'm shivering, and I have a lot of packing to do tomorrow!

I hope you have a safe and happy Christmas!

Love to all,

Yolanda

24 hours and a few other things

2008-12-06T22:59:00.000-05:00

Hello all.

How many have you finished Christmas shopping? I’d like to say I have, that I started early like I said I would this year…and last year…and the year before. I think the blame lands on family who don’t share ideas until mid-December! :P

If I could put some sort of clock in this update, you’d see that I started this at 7:36 this AM, December 5th, but am now only sitting back down at 9:18 AM. Since 7:36 I’ve peeled Bryce out of his wet sleeper and changed his bed sheet. He takes a bottle every night, no comments, and if he has two, which he did last night, and sleeps on his tummy with his bum in the air, which he does every night, he’ll wake up soaked and unhappy.

Since 7:36 I’ve gotten Dev into his big boy underwear and ran with him six times to the potty, four of which were false alarms and one was only a little squirt and dribble of pee, but he looked up at me so happy and proud.

I’ve fed them both breakfast, which Bryce threw on the floor to fill the tummies of dogs instead of his own. I didn’t push Dev’s chair in when he left the table, leaving half of his waffles behind. I heard grunts later and look at the table and see B has climbed up on the chair and was now on his knees eating Devin’s waffles. I let him eat them as he worked so hard to climb up there and Devin is eating less and less these days, I didn’t think he’d come back. But I was wrong and had to make Devin some more.

Apparently the children’s TV channel Noggin was having a dance party at 8:00 in the morning. All programs for two hours were upbeat and full of dancing. Devin thinks I make a great dance partner and I’ll agree only because I was the only adult on our carpeted dance floor! Our favorite one was from Jack’s Big Music Show where a woman played the guitar and sang a song about dancing and freezing. One part went like this,”…freeze like a tree with no wind in your leaves. Don’t shake your knees, don’t even sneeze!” I don’t think we’d make good competition for So You Think You Can Dance because Bryce did A LOT of laughing!

Since I’ve started this, I’ve had to make room for one and then two little boys who wanted to share my chair. B in the back practicing his massage therapy with his feet, and Dev in the front wanting to type but instead content with moving the mouse around so I’d sometimes be typing here or in IE or typing when I shouldn’t be and the computer would yell at me, which would send Dev giggling because I told him the computer was yelling at me.

Now it’s 10:22 and I’ve gotten up a few more times to tell Dev to stop burying his brother in the couch pillows and Bryce to stop turning the TV on and off. When I turn on Christmas music later, I’ll then start asking him to stop skipping through the songs! But now I’m going to remove Bryce from behind me and start a load of laundry, because if I don’t do a load or two a day, I won’t be queen atop just Mt. Laundry, but an entire range. A scary thought!

Here it is now almost 4:30 and I haven’t sat back down here. Not too much has happened. I finished getting out the Christmas decorations, so our tree is up and B is fascinated with it. Last year all he wanted to do was pull them all off, but this year so far he’s just touching them and staring at the lights. I used my cell phone to take a picture because of course my digital camera has no batteries. This time it isn’t because I took tons of pictures, but because I left it in the cold van to drain the power for no good reason.

Now it’s Saturday and here is where I had two paragraphs that wouldn’t save, so I had to reboot and have since fed my family plus two. Hunter had two friends over for his birthday and I’ve taken them to see an animated movie called Bolt. It had a good story line I wish I had thought of….

Once back home sitting on the couch with Tim, he mentions that Bryce started to gag himself with his fingers on purpose. He tells me that he had to smack B’s hand away from his mouth a dozen times and while discussing it, we can hear retching sounds down the hall. Bryce started to get fussy and he’d been down for 45 minutes. Tim hopes he’s not poopy. I say to make him a bottle and when giving it to him, take a deep sniff. The only muscle Tim and I moved were our eyes as we looked at each other, willing the other to get up and tend to the baby. Poor Bryce! Third Child Syndrome just isn’t right!

Relax, we didn’t ignore him much longer. Tim and I exchanged a few impish comments before I got up with a glare. The child wasn’t completely down yet. I had given Tim the option of taking Hunter and his friends to the movies while I stayed home with Dev and B. He told me to go. I got back at 9:00, 30 minutes after the scheduled bedtime and planned on finishing an evening without my two youngest, and there I was, back at work again. 24/7 with no spontaneous breaks in sight and the scheduled ones are no more than two hours! (And as I write this paragraph, I hear my husband call to me; Bryce is fussing again, should we check on him? The “we” mentioned was me.)

I’m not saying this to make my hubby look like the bad guy, really he’s not. He admits he doesn’t have the patience or understanding sometimes and would rather I be the primary caregiver. He is a wonderful husband and father, a man who would rather work two jobs to make ends meet than have his wife work while a stranger raises his children. There aren’t many things he concedes to, but in this he shows me great admiration, with a small dash of annoyance on top!

I only wrote down a few things this week to share with you, and since I’ve already gone on for a bit, I’ll try to make this brief. No promises, though!

Devin got in trouble at gymnastics. Honestly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened yet! At 3 ½ he’s the youngest child in the group (and the only boy) with a whole lot of energy and not use to structure and direction in such a wide open environment. I watch from a balcony above the gym and I want to go down there and jump on that huge rectangular trampoline!

The second part of their lesson involves going from one station to the next, practicing a different gymnastic skill at each one. In one place they practice head stands, another they swing from a bar or climb a rope, hang from a bar and bring their toes up to their fingers, sit on the pommel horse and lift their bottoms up and form their legs into different positions and finally they are supposed to grab on to a bar and walk their feet up a padded wall to finish with flipping over the bar to land back on their feet.

All this is supposed to be done in a clock-wise circle. We’re talking three to five year olds here. Most of the seven children can be redirected. Mr. Jim is great with children and they rush to follow his silly instructions. The circles made by Devin and one little girl always have a few more lumps, zags, dashes and squeals in them than the others. This day in particular they were all over the place. Mr. Jim usually doesn’t have seven kids by himself. Miss Carr unfortunately has been out the past three sessions. She not only is an instructor but a competitor and injured her shoulder. Hopefully she’ll be back soon. Mr. Jim told Devin quite a few times to get behind so and so, do the bars and that he was next on the horse, but Dev would jump out of line and run amok.

There’s a sign up in the viewers balcony that says, Please do not talk to your children. I don’t want to talk to Dev, I want to holler at him! Mr. Jim took control and sat Dev and the little girl down, said that if they didn’t want to do gymnastics, than they would sit there and stay out of the way of the other children who did. Mr. Jim kept glancing up at us in the balcony and I’m hoping he didn’t take my mean mom look as directed at him because I was doing it for Devin who continued to wave and smile at me from his seat against the wall! Finally he caught on and sat there quietly and he was soon invited back to continue, which he did very well.

Bryce is quick. I think he might be quicker than any other toddler! I come back into the room after being gone just a few minutes, and B is on the table surrounded in salt and pepper. Thankfully none got into his eyes! I turn on the TV, start a Blue’s Clue’s recording, turn around and see Bryce has taken Devin’s uneaten corn and thrown it into all previously unknown corners of the house! I don’t dare take five minutes to start a load of laundry for fear of what I’ll walk into when I’m done. Like I’ve told my hubby many times in many ways; So what. Not a big deal. Nothing’s broken. Everything’s fine. Don’t get so worked up and, don’t clean up until they’re in bed!!

Hunter had me fuming one morning, and probably annoyed his teacher as well. I noticed he forgot his lunch in the fridge, so I made plans to go into town. Since it's a fourteen mile drive I would also go to the store and attempt the library. I've been avoiding the place because B has been VERY vocal!

Anyway - Hunter has lunch at 11:30. The boys and I were ready by 11:00 so we all got in the van.

Last week I lost my van key. I have my key on just a single ring. The other keys I keep on a ring that hangs from my van's automatic gear shift. Before hubby left on a biz trip Tuesday morning, he pulled his van key off and gave it to me. I don't leave my key in the van anymore because Dev tries to help me by locking the doors and twice now he's locked my key in the van!

Anyway - I still often forget to grab the key off the hook just inside the door, and that morning was no exception. I went back in the house and reached for it...but it wasn’t there.

I immediately knew Hunter was responsible. I'm sure I've told you all how he loves to horde small things, including keys, and this one was a single, shiny silver key, just winking at him from its hook. Just in case my assumption was wrong, I looked all over the floor, in a couple pairs of shoes underneath the key hook, but no key. I ran up to his bedroom and looked in his stash places; under his pillow, in his safe and in a small treasure chest his grandma gave him. It wasn't there.

Hunter will not eat the food served at the school's cafeteria. He has to have the same thing each day. The only thing that differs is his dessert. I called the school and it wasn't the usual lady who answers the phone so I had to explain more than I would have had Teresa picked up. But after a few minutes she called Hunter down and he came on the phone.

I told him he had forgotten his lunch and that I was on my way to bring it to him, however I couldn't because my van key was missing and asked if he had taken it. He said yes. I asked where it was. He said he couldn't remember. We backtracked and he said it was in the pocket of the pants he wore the day before. I told him how upset I was that he took a key that was on the hook and we were going to talk about it some more when he got home. I told him to apologize to his teacher for the interruption and to have a good day.

He later told me he didn't recognize the key, which I understand as it's always been buried among the many on his dad's key ring, but with him it's about not touching anything that's not his or he hasn't been given permission to play with. He doesn't do that with friends and in stores, but with family he does.

OK. I’ll end it there. I don’t know if we’ll be geocaching tomorrow. We didn’t today because Tim had to spend the morning in the office and then Hunter had his friends over. It’s supposed to be a high of only 23 degrees tomorrow, and that’s pretty chilly!

Hope everyone is well. Take care and be safe.

Yo

P.S. Will post pictures tomorrow!

HOLD IT! Sit back down, please. As I was saving pictures from camera to computer, the step before uploading them to my website slide show and writing something about each of them (just so all you know the steps I take because I want to) I come across a picture I took of my TV remote control. Why, do you ask? Well, I forgot to tell you about the incident with the remote until I saw the picture. I have since replaced the remote and have added the time to the growing list of things I probably won't forget.

It was supposed to be quiet time. Bryce was done for his nap and I told Dev he could watch Dora the Explorer as long as he stayed on the couch, underneath his blanket with Kit. I then went downstairs to run on the treadmill. I heard some rumbling and thudding from above and knew what it meant. Devin wasn't sleeping, in fact he was playing with Knight and they were shaking the house. I sighed and finished what I was doing, ignorantly thinking the worse Devin was doing was getting dog slime on his hands and the couch from throwing a tennis ball that keeps magically appearing when I will testify with my right hand on the Bible that I had put that darn thing back outside!

I slowly climbed all fourteen of my steps and found a very happy black lab on his belly with his tongue lolling out. In his eyes you could see the happiness a game of fetch was for him, and between his paws there wasn't that greyish, grimey, slobbery ball, but my remote control!

Tim has taught Knight many things on top of the training received as a bird dog. Some of the useful things (to the man of the house) are; to retrieve a golf ball hit in the back yard, fetch a piece of wood for the stove upstairs, open the refridgerator door and bring a bottle of beer to the master and, the point I'm getting to is, find and bring the TV remote to the lazy person in the recliner.

So Knight knows he has permission to fetch that silver oblong thing at least once. Here comes the little master and tells Knight to fetch it once, twice, three...four...?? Who knows how many times that needed piece of equipment went from little hand to sharp teeth. I can tell ya it was enough to eject the four AAA batteries, which thankfully were not ingested by our 85 pound knot head, but enough damage was done that I had to work at putting the batteries back into place. It might have been all the teeth marks, or could have been the slobber, but whatever it was it was sufficient to retire the remote to the trash can.

When I told Devin that the TV remote control was not a doggie toy, I got the big eyed look and an, I'm sorry, mama. Ah, well. Nothing broken but some TV time, and we could all do with a little less of that.

Teachers, toilets and toddler beds!

2008-11-25T20:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone!

I am so thrilled to be writing this to you today! Two nights ago I had to reboot my computer because it was being terribly slow and giving me error messages. Annoyed, I turned it off and back on again and the first screen it showed me was blue, which is a sign no computer owner wants to see, especially when she hasn’t backed up her system since the spring!

My computer crashed. I didn’t want to believe it, so I rebooted it again, but got the same fatal error. I had to accept it with a sigh and a cuff to the back of my head, reminiscent of my days under the care of my oldest sister. :P I did not want to take the next step in this story, which was telling my husband what happened, someone who works with computers and their problems (and the people who create those problems) every day. Without him telling me, I knew he didn’t want to spend the time or effort on it. With his leaving town today and returning tomorrow night and then family coming for the holiday, he didn’t have any time to spare. I knew this, and he knew I knew this, but he had to tell me anyway in that loud, annoyed and impatient way he has. And I told him, even though I know he knows, but I told him anyway, that my family and friends are in this here computer and if he didn’t do it, I was going to call the traveling geeks and spend at least $100 on something he could fix for free. I also mentioned some other things I won't talk about here, since this is a family blog!

I left him to it and when I came back later, he was burning music CD’s to take on his business trip. Success! He had worked his magic, so here I am! Darn it though that his victory didn’t fix my outgoing email problem. It seems every three months or so I have trouble with my provider. Last week it was incoming mail and beginning two days ago it’s now my outgoing mail! I’ve sent them another email which I’m told has been forwarded to another person to get it fixed.

Anyway – let’s get to my boys!

Hunter’s school called me today about 1:00 to say that he was being sent home early. I sent a text to my husband who had been on the road for about three hours by then and passed on the news, with a couple extra words like, Got in fight. A few blank lines down I included the letters JJ, for Just Joking. Apparently he didn’t see that part because he immediately called and said, What’s this? Did he win?? This is a running joke with us because Hunter will probably never get in a verbal battle, let alone a physical fight. My son wasn’t in trouble. Because of the previous day of rain and today’s snowfall, the school was sending kids home early before the roads became hazardous. He returns to school on Monday, which is his 11th birthday!

Monday marks another significant event for Hunter. If you go back to my update around the time Hunter started fourth grade, you’ll remember my telling you how Hunter and I went to his classroom to meet his teacher and learned that Ms. G had been in an accident and would not be returning to the school for some time. Well, that time has come. On Monday she will be there full time and Mrs. T is out. I’m told that today and yesterday she had one on one meetings with every student and I was reassured that she read Hunter’s file. What she didn’t do, however, which sits a bit foul in my stomach honestly, is attend Hunter’s IEP meeting which we had yesterday morning and will be in effect from yesterdays date to November 23rd 2009. They told me she would only be doing so much in these first two days back, but that she and Mrs. T have been talking about Hunter. I know that the two teachers were meeting with him today to talk about a solution the IEP team and myself agreed on. Read more about it below.

Hunter still isn’t asking for help and it’s affected some of his grades. I’m getting ahead of myself. While reviewing last years IEP, we talked about the class aide. I asked how that was working out this year and the faces across from me went from smiling and eager to blank and uncertain. Apparently there is an aide in his class again this year, as there is supposed to be, but the aide is assigned to one child specifically and has not helped Hunter at all. He doesn’t need a lot of help, but he does need some direction at times when the teacher’s hands are full with 31 other kids. According to the paperwork in front of every person at that meeting, Hunter should have been receiving assistance in the classroom up to December 1st. My reason for being upset is that Hunter has brought home quite a few tests where he has gotten many wrong because he didn’t remember to use scrap paper so he would have more space to write out his answers. It’s those little things that make the difference with him.

To make a long story short, we agreed that Hunter needed some sort of cue to let the teacher know that he needs help. We think he doesn’t ask because he doesn’t want other kids to see him asking for help or getting something wrong. So we came up with the idea of using a small item of some sort provided by his teacher. If it’s something of his he’ll want to play with it. When he takes this item out and puts it on his desk, that’s the signal for the teacher or the aide to come and see what he needs. After that I felt better about signing the new IEP.

Last week was parent/teacher conferences. We couldn’t get our sitter to cover for us, so Tim stayed behind with the boys. Mrs. T was very positive about Hunter. He is still doing great work in all areas and he has made noticeable improvements in his printing! The only thing counting against him, although Mrs. T chuckled about it and I, having been guilty of it myself, had to as well, is Hunter sneaking in a page or two from the current book (or three) he’s reading when he should be doing his school work! She says he puts it back in his desk right away, but in-between subjects she knows what he’s doing!

On to Devin and I have great news about him! He’s using the potty! For the past two weeks he’s been wearing underwear while at home. In the morning he tries to go when we take off the diaper and he is great about putting the underwear on afterward. Actually, last week he didn’t wear anything at all but a shirt and, well, I didn’t get to him in time and he pooped all over the floor. There was a trail from where he headed toward the bathroom, so he tried to make it. But following that trail was Bryce, who stepped in it and was reaching down to play with some when Tim and I came on the scene. What brought us running was Devin’s wail because he knew what was happening. He had the same reaction when he peed in his underwear for the first time. But here we are in the second week, maybe about five days wearing underwear and have only had four wet accidents and only one of them was real big! He hasn’t pooped in the toilet yet, but he’s interested! He often calls for me to run fast to the bathroom behind as he sprints ahead, just loving his little bum in either Cars or little dinosaur underwear. In his excitement he often overshoots the bathroom door. His left leg is still going while his right leg stops as he tries to turn into the bathroom with a Whoa! That was close! I turn the light on for him and he lifts one lid and I remind him to lift the second lid while he tucks the hem of his shirt under his chin and proceeds to make bubbles with a huge grin on his face! After an especially good amount of bubbles he’ll jump in the air with his arms up and exclaim, Yes!, giving me a high five and sometimes telling me to give him a hug.

He’s also caught the eyes of some ladies! Last weekend the weather was crappy so we took everyone to the spongy playground in the mall. Hunter being almost 11 and too tall for the equipment meant for kids no older than seven or eight, found himself a seat in the back and read his book (any surprise there?). Dev and B took off to slide, climb and conquer. Tim and I took turns leaving to shop and coming back and positioning ourselves by the open entry way, preventing B and other quick children from escaping. During all but maybe the first 20 minutes of the hour and a half we were there, two boys and their parents came to play. These two boys, on the other hand, were one head taller and the same as Hunter and also both were quite a bit wider. At the start they were just walking around and sitting on some of the equipment, but then they started chasing each other and running and knocking each other over. At one point one of the boys jumped over the side and into the miniature version of a local minor league baseball team's stadium, landing on a four or five year old who was sitting inside. The smaller boy was OK, he pushed back, but I couldn’t believe the parents just sat over there and let their children, who were well over the height limit measured by the charming forest creatures clustered around the measuring stick by the door. On our way out Tim called security and reported the family and honestly I didn’t feel guilty at all because those boys were obviously too far grown to be in there.

I said all that in preparation for this! On our way from the indoor playground, Devin ran a bit in front of us, emphasizing the movements of his arms and legs. He stopped when we called, looked back and then continued walking and ended up next to two girls about eleven or twelve. He looked up at the one nearest him, smiled and waved. His eyes fell on the purple, large sequined bag she carried over one shoulder. He took a step closer and touched one of the shiny discs and then told the girl he liked it! Then he walked next to them like he was their traveling companion. The girls kept looking at each other and giggling. Finally they took a left into a store and we had to call him back because he was going with them. They looked back and giggled again and when he saw, he waved, too.

We finally got Dev a real toddler bed and not just a crib with one side missing! After getting sticker shock for how much a new Devin sized bed and mattress would cost us, we rummaged around Craig’s List and found a race car bed and mattress for $50! So after Hunter and I got back from geocaching this past Saturday morning, Tim drove about an hour to get the bed. While there he filled the tank at $1.58 a gallon! Devin loves his bed, but within seconds after sitting on it the first time he said, Where’s the steering wheel? (I realize now I forgot to take a pic.)

We probably would still be procrastinating if B hadn’t suddenly appeared beside Tim sitting in the recliner. Apparently he had not only climbed out of his porta crib, but landed quietly and without injury on the toys scattered through out his room and then left by the partially opened bedroom door. It was a work day so I stayed up with Bryce who fell asleep just before midnight and I could put him back in his crib without worrying, at least until morning, of him climbing out and wandering around. The next day I took the crib apart and reassembled it in B’s room after retrieving the missing side from the attic. Devin slept two nights I think it was on a single sized air mattress before we presented him with the race car bed.

Bryce is doing absolutely wonderful! He’s not eating everything in sight anymore. He’s become as picky as Devin, which means the dogs are going to be getting fat this winter because almost his entire meal lands on the floor! He still does not like my dropping him off once or twice a week with a sitter. As soon as I open the door he starts to cry. I’m told his crying bouts are getting shorter though. Sometimes Bryce just walks around not touching anything, but I can see he’s thinking behind those soft brown eyes. He’s looking at everything around him, wondering what he can get into next, working things out. We found out what happens when he throws his dad’s cell phone on a tiled floor, what he can do with a pen you didn’t think he could possibly get to open and did you know an 18 month old can make the number 116 appear on your TV screen and make you spend an astonishing amount of time trying to fix it and not being able to figure it out??

Well, I think that’s all for this week. Be sure to check out my website. I made a video of Hunter and a science experiment he wanted to share with all of you.

Everyone have a great Thanksgiving!

Yo

Report cards, stubborness and mess makers!

2008-11-14T12:06:00.000-05:00

Let’s start with this morning (11/13). Devin had waffles and a yogurt, Bryce a waffle and some cut up banana because I didn’t want to clean up the mess he makes if given yogurt. When I let Bryce loose Devin wasn’t done. I was dumb and went downstairs and started folding a huge pile of laundry, since I do live, as my blog is titled, On Top of Mt. Laundry. Anyway, I was making progress when Bryce appears at the bottom of the stairs like I knew he would, and toddles quickly over to me, all smiles. He’s still snug and warm in a red footed sleeper. As he draws closer I notice his belly and chest are smeared with something…pink. I smell sweet fruit and see his stubby fingers and chubby cheeks are covered in cold yogurt! Oh, no. I don’t wanna go upstairs. Please, don’t make me! There’s no one else here but me and the child who didn’t finish the yogurt and doesn’t remember to throw it away when he’s done.

The table and the chair Bryce climbed up on were smeared with the drying goop, but all I could find on the floor underneath and around was the empty, suspiciously yogurt free container. It seems without me around the dogs parked themselves underneath Bryce and pounced on that container before it could spill its sticky contents onto the floor. I considered laying Bryce on the floor and having the dogs lick him clean, but I decided that wasn’t such a good idea and stripped and wiped him down.

Then, Devin wanted Fruit Loops for his afternoon snack. I gave him a bowl and put the half empty box on the counter. Later I hear him filling up his bowl again and I called to him to only fill the bowl one more time. I hear it again and when I came back into the room to tell him that was enough, he told me it was for Knight as he patted the dogs head as Knight quickly ate the bowls contents before I could take it away. The cereal box was then empty.

Poor Kit has come running to me and cowering between my feet. Soon after, Devin appears from around the corner with a toy chasing Kit, or his pop gun shooting Kit or using his head to ram Kit. Neither words, time alone, nor a pop on the bum is getting my point across of, Do not chase Kit!. He’s also getting a little rougher with Bryce, but Bryce is holding his own. It’s being pushed down that gets him upset and seeing Dev smothering B with couch pillows gets me worked up.

It was the beginning of the eighth sleep filled night of putting B down to slumber when he didn’t make it through to morning. Devin shows up every other night, but Bryce was with that wonderful Sand Man for so many nights in a row I felt spoiled! But this one night my poor boy must have had growing pains. He woke up twice and the only way I could get him to go back to dream land was rocking him and massaging his right leg, which he kept moving around like you do when you try to get rid of those stubborn pins and needles. It was almost 4 AM that second time when he finally stayed down until 9:30, and then he was his happy and adventurous self!

I am going to start seriously potty training Devin. I’ve been letting him take the lead, but he’s going too slow for me. I don’t want to scrape any more poopy diapers! LOL Seriously, though, I only have so many diapers now that fit him, and he is coming up on 3 ½ years old! You’d think if he can tell his dad to drive faster because he’s poopy, he could sit on that seat and do the job!

Shall I mention Devin and his curiosity with boogers? No, let’s skip that one. But I will mention the 5:45 AM wailing that roused me so fast if I had been in the bunk beds of my younger years I probably would have knocked myself unconscious! I went upstairs squinting in the light over the table where Hunter was eating breakfast and into Devin’s room. When Dev paused from a cry I could hear Bryce beginning to fuss in the room next door. I quickly scanned Devin, wondering if a leg was broken. I asked him what was wrong. He sniffed and hiccupped that he wanted Kit. WHAT? Apparently Kit woke him when she left to climb into the great ball of blankets Hunter’s now vacant bed had become. Not sick, no pain, no blood, just that the dog had left him. I called Kit back into the room and lifted the blanket as she made herself comfortable. Devin rubbed his eyes and told me, Thank You. Bryce had fallen back asleep but I was up for the day and saw Hunter out the door.

I’ve mentioned before how I’ve started putting Devin and Bryce’s clean clothes in baskets instead of taking the time to fold and put them away. Bryce just meanders in each room and pulls clothes out of drawers. It’s easier and faster to just gather them up and plop them back into baskets. (I thought about putting names on each basket, but wondered if I did that, would I put clothes away ever again?) I have two bookshelves in the same room as this computer and every single wonderful, blessed day I have with this child, there is one part of the day where I find him in the middle of pulling all my books down or at the end where he’s perched himself on one of my treasured hard covers, chattering happily while assessing his hard work around him. All I can do is sigh and hope he hasn’t ripped any jackets. I use to shelf them in order as many of them are part of a series, but I don’t bother anymore. No, I’m not packing them up in boxes. I love my books.

Hunter had a dentist appointment last week. I am still shocked but very happy to report that Hunter will reach his 11th birthday next month with not a single cavity! He has been doing a poor job brushing his teeth now that school is back in session because I’m not hovering over him. Most mornings he doesn’t do it unless I tell him to. He had a lot of plaque to be scraped off this time around, but the doc gave him two thumbs up!

A few weeks back Hunter brought home a progress report. He was doing wonderfully in all subjects but Social Studies, which is actually called Ohio History in his 4th grade classroom. His score in that matter was 60%. From that report on I had him bring home his textbook and for his reading assignment he read that book instead of the Goosebumps or chapter books he so loves. His first report card of the year came home this past week. In past years that seem to have flown by this information was on colored, oversized paper, like I was opening a large but thin greeting card with the school’s mascot, a cheery looking husky, on the front. This year though, it’s a simple piece of your typical computer printer paper with bold boxes and some grey shaded areas. Inside these boxes I find that Hunter is doing excellent or satisfactory work in all but three areas. Art is low on the list of his favorite subjects. He’s never liked being told what he had to draw. He was given an S- in that little box with the comments of, “Needs to follow directions. Does not use care in completing work.” His Social Studies grade was a 70, up from a 60 a few weeks back! The other unacceptable grade (I told Hunter anything below 80 would make me unhappy) was a 77 in…Reading. What? WHAT? No way! Even back in Kindergarten Hunter had high scores in reading and has passed every AR tests he’s been given. I looked over the list and saw that for writing he was given an 89. Huh? Now THAT is wrong! Obviously there was a mistake. I sent in a note to the teacher, asking if she may have inadvertently switched his Reading and Writing grades. She wrote back and said that, yes, she had. She got it straightened out and Hunter’s school record is now correct.

I’ll end here with one more thing. If any of you have tried to Text me over the past two days, I was not able to see it. My cell phone had a software glitch and was doing things on its own and locking me out of other things. I traded it in for a new model of the same make and my Verizon rep. transferred my address book and music over to the new one, but was unable to keep my messages. So I wasn’t purposely ignoring you, I just couldn’t read or respond. I also have a request in to my email provider because I haven’t been able to send out emails, incoming is working fine. This update is almost done, but right now my emails not working I can’t tell you to stop what you’re doing and read it immediately! :)

I hope everyone is enjoying this unseasonably warm weather. I know were in for a big change here tomorrow!

Take care,

Yo

Our weekend in Hocking Hills.

2008-11-11T13:28:00.000-05:00

No more Kentucky days! I’m kinda bummed about that since last year I briefly met a mom I had been chatting with since I was bout 5 months pregnant with Devin. Nevertheless, after going there for six years we’ve moved on to another location, with no complaints from me! Kathy found us a great cabin in 80 acres of woods in Nelsonville, Ohio, more specifically, the Hocking Hills area fifty miles southeast of Columbus. Both Tim and my brother in law Jeff know this area for hunting and both wish their schedules had been different so they could have joined us. With five kids and five adults, we were already a full cabin!

Before leaving I had printed out online directions to our cabin in the woods. The page was full of turn after turn on roads I felt I’d get lost on. I asked Tim if I could borrow one of the two GPS systems his company owns, but he was taking one to N.D., and someone was taking the other. I was fine with that. I had the directions and my cell phone; we’d make it one way or the other. Then Tim came home and thanked me for patching up his favorite hunting jacket that a mouse had made a path through with my own Tom Tom brand GPS! I quickly got familiar with it and chose a male voice called Richard to help me get to Nelsonville. Soon I was referring to this piece of technology as him or Richard.

He got us there with no problems at all. Once we arrived at the two track to the cabin the blue arrow on Richard’s screen that represented the GPS unit in my van floated off into nothing, but the cabin was easy to find once on that rugged road. The boys and I arrived about the same time as my parents. After waiting a few minutes for the owners to come and give us the right key (parents had already stopped at their house and were given the wrong one) we followed the leaf covered two track to the cabin. Sister Jennifer arrived about an hour or so later and Karyn and the kids arrived the next morning.

Even though we had seen each other in July, every meeting we have is like a reunion. I get family withdrawals living in Ohio with no family around. (Another hint to those who want to start new…just in case you’re feeling dense.  ) We didn’t have a lot planned, but what we did schedule was going to be fun!

Karyn and the kids got there in time to unpack before we had lunch and then headed to the train station. Devin got to ride a real train! After about a 30 minute delay the whistle blew and we were off. We sat together in an open car with a roof. At first I thought the wind was going to be cold, but it was perfect. When I heard the entire adventure was three hours long, I thought choosing to sit in the open with Bryce was going to be a problem, but Bryce loved the train ride. When we started moving he settled back in my lap and watched the scenery go by.

We passed some wide open spaces and saw some deer, but we also clanked and bounced through some dilapidated looking neighborhoods. There were houses that were only ten feet or so away from the track! Thank goodness the only train that used those tracks was the passenger train we had tickets for. I bet naps in the houses on our path weren’t scheduled around a baby’s routine, but also the whistle blowing train as well!

Our tour started off in one direction and then stopped and reversed back the way we had come. It was annoying at first until the people on the other side of our bench agreed to switch seats. On the way back we went past the train station and on to a remake of an 1800’s village on the property of a college. We leisurely strolled through weathered cabins where the children walked on stilts, rang a school house bell and made their own wax candles which ended up looking like ginger roots.

The next field trip was to COSI. Take a look at the link and see the pictures taken there for a narrative of what we did. Richard (my GPS) let us down a little. The COSI he took us to was actually a branch of the science museum at the Columbus Museum of Art. We were only about a mile away, but we had to park and ask for directions. (Can you guess how much I detest city driving??)

We read that with our age group (children, not the adults!) it was estimated that our trip there would be about two and a half to three hours. We arrived at about 12:30 and left as they were closing at 6:00! With five kids there was plenty for us to do and linger at. It was a great time.

The next morning Richard took us to Sears where we had the first appointment at the portrait studio there. Like last year the children were well behaved and we were quickly done. It may have helped that we had gummy worms and Blue’s Clue’s on a portable DVD player that kept the attention of the younger ones!

When we weren’t out and about we were in the cabin enjoying each others company. We played adult and kid games, decorated an edible haunted house, turned orange craft foam and real pumpkins into Jack O’ Lanterns. The cabin came with a trail we estimated to be about half a mile long. We walked that together and the children just had a lot of fun playing in the small front yard with the leaves, stones and dirt. Oh – the cabin also came with a hot tub and a fire pit, although we didn’t use the latter.

I probably missed something in there that you might learn about later amongst all the pictures I have yet to post. Hope I was able to convey to you, Tiffany, what you missed and am looking forward to you being there next October. 

Yolanda's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad 10 Days

2008-11-11T02:21:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone. Yes. Here is my update, finally. After all the heck I gave my dad and Karyn about sending me pictures immediately after our weekend together (with Karyn I joking told her to do so even before unbuckling her children from their car seats) here it is almost a month and still no update!

Well, I was composing a short story for you all, a continuation of Alexander and the Terrible Horrible No Good Very Bad Day. My version was called The Later Years and was about a mom and four boys, ahem, a husband and three boys, so, obviously, it was about me. Unfortunately, perfectionism creeps up and takes over sometimes and as I don’t get much personal time around here, I haven’t finished it. Instead, I’ll just list the things that made one week so awful.

• Before Tim left for a 10 day trip to N.D., Devin said, “Let me help you, mama” and locked the van doors with my keys in it. We were dropping B off at the sitter’s before gymnastics. Tim was able to rescue us.

• My husband left me for 10 days with three children and a dog in a house with three entrances and five windows at ground level (I have a point for mentioning such details.)

• The first couple nights were fine. I think it’s good to be separated from your spouse once in awhile. Being apart helps you remember why you love and appreciate the one you married. I was missing my hubby with every bump in the night. Sleeping downstairs each sound reverberated through my ceiling. Most of it was Kit, jumping down and traveling back and forth between the body heat of Hunter and Devin in their beds. I finally made her a bed downstairs next to the fire and she settled down. I only made things worse by watching a suspenseful movie, therefore the mention of how many doors and windows we have because I checked and rechecked them all!

• One morning I walked into Bryce’s room and right into a wall of stink. He had been in a poopy diaper long enough to get a nasty rash, therefore producing an unhappy boy.

• Oh, yes. While my husband was still gone spending his time with men, dogs and feathers, Devin did it again. This time I have to take some of the blame. I was unloading groceries and Devin was still in the van. I came back and took him as the last load, closing the van side door as I went. Nothing so bad about that, right? Wrong! The next morning we all went out so innocent and happy, looking forward to the library and chicken and French fries, when what do I discover? The van doors are locked. What do I see hanging from the ignition? That’s right! My keys AGAIN! Devin’s sweet voice asking me what’s wrong made it even more memorable! I gave Bryce a piece of chalk to keep him occupied, sent Dev into the back yard and attempted what I saw the policeman do that rainy day I first locked my keys in the van a few weeks back, starting this chain of three times a charm crap. It worked, ‘cause now I remove my keys each time I turn the van off and my gentle attempt to break in also worked! After 45 minutes I was able to unlock the door.

• Can’t forget the breathtaking fact of Kit being sprayed by a skunk. Apparently our fence doesn’t keep the bigger critters out. I’ve been lax since the installation of our simple fence, so when Kit went outside to do her business before lights out, I just let her go. I saw her ears perk up as she started down the steps and then she sprinted off in that way she has that sends squirrels running for their lives. I heard her bark and then suddenly stop. She didn’t squeal or growl, she just turned around because she was back scrambling up the steps sneezing and hacking almost as fast as when she took off. She was in the house and rubbing her face in my couch cushions before I caught whiff of a burnt balloon smell. I’ve never actually smelled a burnt balloon, but if I do, it would be the first stage of a skunk spray. It wasn’t until morning, after I gagged my way into banishing the dog into the garage, removing the cushions and pouring out bowls of vinegar did the characteristic skunk smell take over.

• Tim still gone and me still having a hard time sleeping and silently cussing that the man of the house is gone AND he took the 90 pound dog and left me with a ten pound shivering weenie!

• Hunter was picture perfect during this time. Getting his homework done, showered and into bed. Waking up without problems and catching the bus. Helping me with his brothers, just overall being the ideal child. Then I read in his communication notebook that he’s been writing “concerning and worrisome” entries in his school journal. What does he write? The teacher doesn’t say! How can she write to a mom telling her her son wrote something troublesome and not tell her what it was or give her a copy of the entry?! The only thing she wrote was to ask him about it. I did and Hunter told me of his last two entries. When I asked him if there was anything in there he wanted to share with me about his feelings or actions, he said no. I wrote asking the teacher to explain in more detail. Either she ignored it or didn’t see it. I finally had to call the office and leave a message for the teacher to call me. Finally I get a copy of the journal pages that were causing me stress. He wrote things like, “This is sick” “I wish all schools would shut down” “I don’t get any respect” and “I hope I get what I want”. I reminded the teacher that Hunter still uses other people’s words when he talks, mostly TV characters. If he doesn’t know what to say, or in this case, write, he’ll repeat something he’s heard. I told her unless there is a pattern of thought here, not just these few sentences, I’m not concerned.

And the winner of Yolanda’s Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad and LONG 10 days is…

• I walked into B’s room to wake him from his afternoon nap. What I saw first registered as too cute. He had taken off his diaper and was sleeping with his little bare bum in the air. But as I got closer and breathed through my nose, it wasn’t so cute anymore. Underneath and around and on my youngest son was poop. Poop on his bottom, poop on the sheet, poop smeared around the inside of his crib. I picked him up, wondering if it could be even worse? Yup. The hands rubbing his tired eyes were poop encased. The stinky stuff was on his shirt, on his face and probably had been in his mouth because there were dried smudges on his lips. Oh, yeah. I gave him a bath, tossed clothes and sheets into the washing machine and spent a good amount of time scrubbing the crib inside and out. Hunter and Devin never took off their diapers, but I don’t remember seeing them with their hands down their pants as much as Bryce!

Tim returned home with no problems and with a cooler full of wild game. He was welcomed home with hugs and kisses, but also with the evil eye from me! 

A little boy named Max.

2008-11-06T08:48:00.000-05:00

Read and see pictures about a little boy who has a story to tell. Even if you don't want to hear it.

Do you like scavenger hunts?

2008-11-01T08:52:00.000-04:00

Last year I came across a link to the Great Cloth Diaper Hunt while chatting with other moms about cloth diapers. I love scavenger hunts and found myself addicted after I discoverd that first little diaper icon. I have participated in the GCDH two times now and each time my eyes are opened to the wonderful world of work at home moms and natural family living. Not only is the hunt fun with rhymes, riddles and trivia questions (which can easily be Googled if you’re stumped!) but you can bookmark stores that have caught your eye to return to later. Most sponsors have discounts only for participating hunters, many of which run through December and holiday shopping!

How does it work? It’s very simple! Registration began October 15th. Once you register here, you start visiting all the participating sponsor sites and hunt for the Diaper Decisions diaper to earn entries into 65 random prize drawings, including two Grand Prizes and one Ultimate Grand Prize! The hunt starts Saturday, November 1st at 11:00 AM EST!

If you’d like even more details you can visit the Rules and FAQ page at Diaper Decisions.

Growing too fast. All of them!

2008-10-08T21:09:00.000-04:00

Great news with Hunter! Although I still find myself going upstairs to check on him each school day morning, Hunter is always ready with coat and shoes on with backpack nearby in plenty of time to catch the bus. However, there have been a couple dark mornings when I'm glad I checked on him.

One morning he wanted to wear a blue shirt, but they were all dirty (scattered all over his bedroom floor and not in the laundry room) so he pulled out the only blue shirt left in his drawer; a sleeveless, mesh styled tank top that I had missed while clearing out the summer clothes. After my explanation and his mumbling that what he was wearing was fine, he changed his shirt.

Another time I reached the top of the stairs and found Hunter sitting in the recliner. He probably was wearing his shoes but I couldn't tell as they were buried in quite a few folds of denim.

I asked Hunter to stand up for me and as he did, he hitched up his pants, held them, and said, I think these are dads. Ya think? He was going to go to school in a pair of his father's pants because I had made the mistake of putting them in Hunter's clothes pile and not Tim's.

I'll probably show my tired face upstairs, where Hunter turns on every single light fixture, for another few weeks.

He brought a progress report home and like last year he is doing 85% or higher in all subjects except for Social Studies. Currently he has holds a 65% there. I've asked him to bring those books home and he forgets and Ihave written a reminder in his notebook again to have his teacher remind him. His writing is still pretty bad. I think he should have been left handed. I've watched him play and eat with his left hand, but it's his right that he prints with. He positions his paper like he were a left hander, too.

I've written down a few things that Devin has said that have just been too darn cute, but my list has disappeared. I think it become a canvas to my little artists that eventually ended up in the trash can. I can remember Devin saying, Yes, sir! and saluting me when I asked him to do something (Toy Story). The other night as he got out of the bathtub and was wrapped snug inside his duck towel he said to me, I can't move. My batteries are dead. I picked him up and he told me that he needed new batteries. I threw him on the couch, which recharged those drained batteries!

He has started to say no to just about everything I tell him and he's whining something awful! Tantrums are becoming more regular. Eventually I tell him to go away because I don't want to listen to it anymore. He does. He goes and sits on his bed then and does the same when he's in trouble. The other day he was doing a great job nicely wrestling with Bryce on a pile of couch pillows. Then he became not so nice when he kicked Bryce in the head. I comforted Bryce and ordered Devin away. When I went into his room five minutes later I found him just sitting there quietly on his bed with a frown on his face. He did apologize to Bryce and they both continued on with the pillows.

I don't want to jinx it...how do I say it without tempting fate?? (Bryce has slept through the night for almost a week!!) That's all, now hush!

He has gotten so big! I think he'll be bigger than Devin. He's not even two yet and he comes just about up to Dev's shoulder! Some of my medium diapers aren't fitting him anymore. Devin was wearing mediums up until a few months ago!

You'll see in this weeks collection of pictures a good sized gash on B's nose. The boys were playing outside, Devin with Knight's hard plastic bumper. I don't know what exactly happened, but it sounds like Dev threw the bumper toward Bryce and either the bumper did it, or maybe Knight did, or maybe Bryce fell down from one of the two, but the end result was a very upset Bryce with a good sized cut on the top of his nose. It bled quite a bit. Thankfully now you can barely see it, which is great because...the boys and I are leaving for the annual Christmas pictures tomorrow!

For seven years now my sister Karyn and I have been meeting in Lexington, KY to have pictures taken of our kids together and then we give them to our parents and sisters for Christmas. We met in Lexington because that is the half way point between my house here in NE Ohio and hers in NE Georgia. It actually started when Hunter was two and Jennifer K'ryn a small three months old and we lived in Michigan. How time flies. Over the years other family members have been going. Last year was the most with everyone attending but the husbands (dad was there). We rented a cabin last year to hold us all. This year though, after determining we've done all we'd like with the kids in the Lexington and Louisville area, I was surprised to hear Karyn saying she wanted to go to Columbus, here in Ohio. A 3 1/2 hour drive for me. No complaints at all! LOL We've found ourselves a little cabin with a hot tub on 80 acres in Nelsonville. On Saturday we're going to go for a train ride, Sunday spend the day at the HQ of COSI, and Monday morning are the pictures and then a pumpkin festival. We'll all go our separate ways Tuesday morning...unless I can convince my loving, wonderful family to come back here because Tim is gong to be gone the entire week. He is leaving for North Dakota with Knight. They are both dreaming of duck and pheasant but it sounds like there is going to be a lot of everything where they're going.

I believe Jennifer's hubby is coming with her, but I don't know if we'll be seeing him. I'm told he's going bow hunting. Tim considered coming when he heard this, but after looking at his calendar and seeing his North Dakota trip during that same time, well, it's obvious where his heart REALLY is! LOL (Love you, babe.)

The only person not coming is my...sweet...sister, Tiffany. Her and her wanderer husband just got back a couple weeks ago from a trip out to CA to see the Redwoods. They don't know how to travel in a straight line. I know they stopped at a relatives house in ID I think it was, then spent some time on the hot southern red stone of Utah before continuing on. I'm sure there were quite a few more stops in there! If we want to see her over the Christmas holidays, then she can't make it to the cabin in Columbus. I'll get over it eventually, Tiff. :P

Tim is actually leaving tomorrow, too, on a trip to Michigan he knew was coming, just not when. Early Tuesday morning his paternal grandfather died after about a years battle with cancer. I was saddened to hear of his death. I only really saw him during family reunions and could tell he loved having everyone together. Tim and I did see him briefly last Christmas, but honestly, I couldn't bear to look at him. He was so frail and thin, having to sleep in a portable bed inside his house and not in his own bed. The situation reminded me of my mom and her death of cancer back in April of 2003. His service will be on Saturday. Tim and I had already discussed that he would attend alone. Great Grandpa G. will be greatly missed.

Hope everyone is well. Love to all.

Yolanda

This is long, but it's a must read for everyone.

2008-10-06T12:46:00.000-04:00

An Autism Mom's Open Letter to Dr. Paul Offit
By Julie Obradovic

Dear Dr. Offit,

I am writing in regard to your new book, Autism’s False Prophets: Bad Science, Risky Medicine and Finding a Cure.

It would be premature to say for sure, but I am willing to bet I would be considered a “False Prophet” in your eyes. I am a mother who witnessed her daughter regress into Autism, and I am a mother who believes it was because of her vaccines. I dedicate much of my time to helping other parents who experienced the same thing with their own children.

Please show your respect and click here to read the full letter.

Good/bad for Hunter, Super Dev and B's such a lover!

2008-09-24T18:04:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone!

I’m starting this in the early AM on Monday, September 22, 2008. Let’s see how long it’ll take me to finish it!

First off - Happy Fall! Is it feeling like a change of seasons for you? It does here in the mornings and evenings, but during the day it’s been getting into the mid 70’s. Yesterday the sun was so warm, a high of 78, we closed the windows and turned the air conditioning back on! It’s going to be clear and mid 70’s the entire week! Plenty of time to play outside, a place were both Devin and Bryce love to be!

Hunter had a friend over yesterday afternoon for some fun and then we went out for pizza. They played outside almost the entire time. They chased Devin around and played catch with a small football. Kit also joined in the fun with the football and Knight was there, dropping a wet and slimy rope on everyone’s feet.

It was during this visit that Hunter’s friend told me during a time Hunter was not around that he, Hunter, was being teased on the school bus. Another fourth grader bullies other kids, too, but Jonathon tells me he tends to pick on Hunter more than others. Jonathon spoke to his mom about it and she suggested he stick up for Hunter, which Jonathon said he did. I asked Hunter how he felt about it and he said he was frustrated because he asked the boy to stop but the boy doesn’t. I told him how some boys like to make fun of others because it makes them feel better about themselves. For right now I told him to just ignore the boy and I’ll be asking about him every day. I told him if this boy interferes with where Hunters wants to go or is trying to do something and can’t because of this boy, then we will take it further than just ignoring him.

In the years previous to this, the teachers have always responded to my questions of teasing and bullying by saying that everyone likes Hunter. That he has a great sense of humor and brings things to school for Show and Tell (in earlier grades) that the kids are really interested in. Other kids were always volunteering to go with him and the OT/ST when they took “Hunter’s Group” into a different room. They didn’t know what it was all about, but they knew it was fun to leave the room with Hunter.

Anyway – I wrote about this in the communication notebook to his teacher and will wait and see if she has anything to say about it. Tim suggested we could talk with the boys’ parents about the teasing, but I know it comes with going to public school. I don’t think it can be avoided, but I’m going to do some research on the subject, see if the library has any books Hunter can read with the hope he can handle it himself and stop the stress it creates in me!

On a super, wonderful, fantastic, magnificent, great, excellent note…can’t think of any more words to convey my complete happiness, here is what I found upstairs one school morning. The night before Bryce must have had an upset tummy or something because he was up every couple of hours. I didn’t pull him out of bed, I just rubbed his back while he drifted off to sleep, but he woke crying quite a few times. Devin appeared downstairs once asking to sleep with me. I told him no and bribed him with a sippy cup, knowing that he was going to probably overflow his diaper. He’ll never be night trained for the potty if I kept that up, but I was tired and those stairs are a pain in the butt when you’re half a sleep!

Anyway - Hunter’s been getting up now at 5:30 to get ready for school. I appear at 5:45 and find him about a quarter of the way there and usually have to stand over him to finish getting ready. That morning Tim woke me with an apology, saying he hit the snooze too many times and it was now 6:20. The bus arrives at 6:30! (Don’t give me heck for not making Tim get out of bed for Hunter. Now that Dev and B have been going down for a two hour nap from 1:00 – 3:00 every day, I can take a nap, too. Tim can’t.) I cussed and untangled myself from the bedding. Our bedroom is downstairs in the finished basement, so it’s getting colder down there faster and that morning air made my steps quicker than they already were. I was already preparing myself, thinking that I’d be waking up everybody to take Hunter into school, so I was quite shocked to find Hunter sitting on the couch already dressed. I threw question after question at him and all his answers were yes! The only thing he hadn’t done was put his shoes on. He did that, put on his coat, tossed his book bag over his shoulder and left the house. I went back downstairs and crawled into bed, telling Tim he was off the hook ‘cause Hunter was ready to go.

If I hadn’t gotten up, though, I don’t know if Hunter would have actually gone out on time because he was watching TV and when he watches those goofy shows he likes (The Mask with Jim Carrey) he loses track of time. It also helps that everything is set out and put together the night before, but that I think is to help my sanity more than to help him! 

One more thing about Hunter this week. We had very high winds last weekend because of Hurricane Ike. I was talking to Hunter about that and he said he was going to go get his weather book that talks in more detail about hurricanes. I hear book after book slapping together and go see what he’s doing. I find he’s not looking for the book by reading the titles on the book spines, he’s pulling each book out, looking at the front, and then dropping it into a growing mountain of books on his bedroom floor! The mountain had peaked pretty high by the time he found what he was looking for. A threat of a shovel and garbage bag got him to put them back on his shelf.

For some time Devin has been calling himself Super Devin. I’m not sure where it came from, but as Super Devin he climbs on top of things and jumps to the ground. Also as Super Devin he seems to have conquered his fear of being thrown up into the air. Before he would cling to you, possibly scratching you, if you lifted him above your head. Now he wants to be tossed into the air. I often browse online stores and once saw super hero capes made for children. I decided to try making one for Devin. The area around the neck came out smaller than I had planned, but otherwise I’m very happy with it! At first Devin didn’t want anything to do with it, even though he kept asking me when I was going to finish his super cape and was very excited when we went to the fabric store to get the materials. He has since worn it quite a few times. The pictures I took of him, one is on the main page of my web site, he is actually naked underneath!

Devin is doing great in gymnastics! I mentioned last time that he was starting, but I didn’t share any other details than that. I have pictures and a video of his first 45 minute lesson, but he’s since had two more which he has already done much better in, but I didn’t take a video.

Devin has a couple cute sayings he’s been repeating. One is, “I love…” fill in the blank. It could be a color, or a toy, but if he likes it, he’ll let you know! I have talked about how Bryce is too little to do some of the things Hunter and Devin can do. Now when Devin doesn’t want to do something he tells me that he’s too little to do it!

Most nights he snoozes until he hears Hunter in the morning or until I wake him up at 7:30. Bryce on the other hand still gets up at least once a night, four out of seven nights. Rarely do I get a night where both of them sleep through, but it does happen, and when I wake to the alarm at 6:00 A.M. I’m so happy I was able to sleep through! Now, if I can trust Hunter to get himself going without me that would be even better. Plus if I can get Tim to not make so much noise, I might get a full night sleep!

Bryce sleeps through the night about 3 nights a week. I’m sad to say that he is no longer breast feeding. He was only nursing at night and then he started sleeping through the night. Without those feedings my milk has dried up. He would get some, but he had to suck and suck and suck to get maybe 30 seconds of milk. So when he gets up at night now he gets a warm bottle of whole cow milk instead.  After the bottle he goes back asleep for the rest of the night.

He is keeping up with Devin. I saw him once try and throw the couch pillow back at his big brother! He’s a master of the stairs, climbs up on to just about every thing he can, and has thrown his food at the dogs like he knows they aren’t supposed to be sitting under him, waiting with wet chops for pieces to drop.

Did I tell you he’s been going to day care? It’s an in-home environment and he goes one day a week for just an hour while Devin is at gymnastics. There is a play area in the viewing balcony at the gym. I discovered this after finding a place for Bryce to spend the time as I didn’t want my vocal, energetic 16 month old disrupting gymnastics. Anyway – She came recommended by a friend. She’s had a home day care since her son was born, 21 years ago. Bryce starts to cry when I hand him over, but once he spies the Magna Doodle, no more fussing and I don’t exist! She’s a nice lady and agreed to use the cloth diapers without hesitation at all. After that first day she asked for brand names and web site addresses. Her daughter is pregnant and she wants to talk to her about cloth diapers. Each time I drop him off, he arrives in a clean and dry diaper with extra ones in a bag. He’s there barely an hour and every time I pick him up, he’s in a new diaper. Personally, I think she’s trying them out. They are definitely cute and they do the job!

Bryce has become a hugger and a kisser. He’s raising his arms to be picked up now and once you do he’ll put his right arm around your neck for a squeeze and then he buries his face in your neck. He’s imitating kisses! If you’re on his level he’ll come running up to you, gives you this look like he’s saying, Hold still now, I’m going to give you some love, and then he’ll hug and nuzzle on you. Those of you coming to the get together in October be prepared for lots of loving from Bryce!

Last Monday was AWFUL!! It started about 7:15 P.M. when I began drawing the boys a bath and the power went off. This was the day of those high winds I mentioned before. A branch from our tree came down with a lot of smaller branches and debris as well as quite a few shingles from our roof. We heard our neighbors tree fall to the ground. Tim was scheduled to head down to Columbus in less than hour. He set up the generator for me, and then he was gone.

I shouldn’t really complain because not too many people have a generator. Even though ours is small, it does keep our refrigerator going and if I keep the power restricted to a couple lights and one TV, then it’ll last eight hours. There is no need to run it at night yet, so I set my cell phone’s alarm clock and went to bed. As I closed my eyes I sent out a wish to the Sand Man to keep Bryce sleeping until the morning light. As I mentioned before, he is no longer nursing and without the generator running, I didn’t have a way to warm up a bottle of milk.

The fates were against me already! At 4:30 I heard Bryce through my bedroom ceiling. I grabbed my flashlight and made my groggy way up stairs. After shielding the light with my shirt, I went into his bedroom and tried rubbing his back. That didn’t work so I brought him out to the rocking chair and after about five minutes or so he fell back asleep. I gave him a bit longer before putting him back in his bed, but as soon as his head touched the pillow he was awake and crying again. I closed him in his room and rushed outside in just a t-shirt to start the generator. It fired up on the first pull. I ran back inside and used the microwave to warm up a bottle. The bottle warmer takes 4x’s as long and I was in kind of a hurry! I shook hard and tested and then gave the bottle to a tired eyed, unhappy Bryce. He eagerly took it and laid back down. He didn’t make another sound until I woke him up later.

Unfortunately, Devin woke up and was close to shedding tears himself until I took him and his blanket to the rocking chair with me. I had since donned my hooded sweatshirt and pocketed my cell phone. Devin was back to sleep and I was on my way when the alarm on my cell went off. I turned on the TV, hoping Hunter’s school was closed so I could leave him to sleep and go back into slumber myself, but, alas, it seemed like everyone else’s school was closed but his!

I slid carefully out from under Dev and went and roused Hunter. He got ready and met the bus without a hitch. I watched a morning news show for a bit and then woke Dev and B for breakfast. After that I continued sorting out toys and clothes to bring to Goodwill. Why do I do it with a three year old and a 16 month old in my wake? I don’t know, but someone tell me to stop! Everything I put into a box was pulled out. My piles of separated clothes became one pile with drool or juice all over them!

It was about 11:00 when I decided to drive to a town 30 miles away to check a PO Box we have there. I’d planned on taking the boys to the park and getting lunch. Of course we were half way there when it started to rain.

I’m going to confess something to you that you might not agree with. Feel free to flame me and then confess yourselves something that you do, because there is always something, that I can flame you in return. Usually both boys are asleep when I arrive at this post office. I lock the doors behind me and take about 20-25 seconds to go inside, open a box, grab the mail, and back outside. On this day Devin was awake and eager to use my keys. I tossed them to him but instead of unbuckling him and letting him come out my door, I left him secured in his seat. I got out of my van in a rush, locked the door, and turned toward Devin’s door as I closed mine. The knowledge of what was happening hit me like the salty wave of the ocean when you don’t turn sideways to lesson the blow. I started to reach my hand to stop the door, but my personal protection mode snapped in place and I pulled my hand back before fingers were broken.

I took a few seconds to cuss quietly to myself before peering behind the tinted windows to see Devin waving at me and Bryce slobbering on a toy. I took a deep breath and cussed at myself some more. I had just locked my boys in my van, I was standing out in the rain and Tim was out of town, over three hours away. Who else was there to call but the police?

I did have my cell phone in my sweatshirt pocket still (at least I had THAT going for me!). I called information because it wasn’t a huge emergency and got the phone number to the local police. It took only a couple minutes for an older officer to arrive. While he opened his trunk he told me how he had just done this same thing at the gas station the other day. I don’t know if it was true, but he made me feel better about it (although I doubt he had little ones in the car!)

He pried back my door and placed a wedge that inflated a bit in between. Then he reached in with what looked like a thicker version of a bent wire clothes hanger and on the first attempt was able to left up my door lock. While he was doing this I heard his radio squawk and my van information and location was broadcasted for all with police scanners to hear! I had to sign a release for him to do it, probably in case he broke my door. Although I didn’t fill anything else out, I’m sure there is a police report of it in their files!

I actually ended up not going into the post office that day!

Devin didn’t seem to really care, he was having fun playing with my keys. I pulled my van key off the ring and started my van, feeling such a rush of relief flooding me from head to toe.

The park was out so we headed to the Burger King, one with a very big indoor play land. I didn’t think much of the empty parking lot. It was only 11:30, not quite the lunch hour yet. I unbuckled the boys and we rushed to the door…which was locked! That’s when I noticed the sign that said they had no power. But the lights were on! They probably just left everything on from when the power was out. I then had to take a wiggly Bryce back to the van and drag a screaming Devin who was mad that we weren’t going to be getting chicken and french fries and play. We did eventually get that, but we had to go elsewhere with a smaller play land.

Once home my boys had already got some Z’s in the van so I didn’t attempt to lay them down. We stayed outside for a bit. I raked up the leaves and sticks that were all over the fenced in play area in or back yard. I left quite a few piles for Tim to collect when he got home. It took about two hours to do this, and during that time Devin and Bryce played in the sand box and the water table. I left the area and made a circuit around the house collecting the torn shingles from the roof. When I came back around, Bryce was sitting inside the water table, soaked to his belly button, and Devin was dribbling wet sand on his head!

I picked Bryce up and tried to hold him away from me, but he’s too heavy! Actually my shirt front getting soaked felt good as I was sweaty from all the raking I did! I got both boys inside to find each were poopy. I changed their dipes and dumped the poo in the toilet. I pushed down the handle to flush…and nothing happened. The poo is stuck in the toilet and I was too flustered to rememver that dumping a bucket of water in there would work. (I have one full of rain water outside and I could also have gone out to the pond.)

I deposited the dipes in the dry pail and washed my hands with some already wet wipes. I went back upstairs and put lotion on my hands thinking a beer would go down real well about now. I pulled one out, twisted off the cap and learned that freshly lotioned hands do not mix with cold beer. The bottle slipped through my finger to thud and spill all over the floor. It would have been bitter icing on my already sour cake if Bryce had waddled in there to splash happily in my spilt beer. Thankfully he was occupied elsewhere!

As I twisted the cap on the last beer in the fridge, I sat down in my comfy recliner and then realized how sweaty I was and how dirty the boys were and none of us could bathe!

The power came back on late Tuesday morning and Tim came home that night, mighty happy that I was able to get a shower in that day! 

Devin did something that made me want to scream a few days before my day from heck. It had rained the previous day. We were outside and he came out of his little house holding Hunter’s Gameboy, exclaiming that he had found it. As he was walking toward me I was telling him how that was close, it being outside during the rain fall and how his house had kept it from getting wet. Devin walked by the water table and said, Wet? Like this? And he dunked the electronic, $100 piece of equipment into the water!! I jumped up and said, No, no! Not like that!! He pulled out and said, Oh, sorry, mama, wiping it on his shirt. His reaction was sweet, but the Gameboy and the game inside it was soggy toast.

Update on Hunter and the bully. I wrote up a quick note and gave it to the bus driver when she brought Hunter home. It said what I had learned and asked her to call me. His teacher wrote in the notebook to call the transportation director and said now that she, the teacher, knows who the boy is, she’d keep an eye out. The transportation director called and said it had been taken care of and Hunter told me yesterday that the boy is now sitting at the front of the bus.

The boys and I just came inside from cleaning my van. I ran errands today and messed up their nap schedule, so they were wide awake and played while I cleaned out the garbage, toys and dirt my van collects like my boys collect grime in their ears. Devin helped spray and wipe down the windows and dashboard…and the seats…and the floor…and Bryce went back and forth between us and the back yard. I had the two side doors and the back open to let in air. It’s about 75 degrees out there and I had the volume turned up on some music that made Devin want to dance!

While I was finishing up on one side of the van, vacuuming up dirt, small toys and old lollipops (yeah, I need to clean more often) unbeknownst to me, Bryce was on the other, coloring the side of the seat, back of the front seat and carpet with blue chalk! I suppose it did add some flare to the boring grey of my vans interior. I’d rather it be chalk than crayon or permanent marker. We’ve been there and done that!

I actually have a reason to clean out my van. Tim is heading up to our hometown area on a pleasure trip. Honestly, I wasn’t too keen on him disappearing again for four days after having been gone so much on business recently. However, I can’t really complain because I disappear myself for a time, but I’d rather not be alone again anymore with three kids and two dogs. We compromised by him taking Devin. They are leaving in the AM tomorrow (Thursday) and going to stay with friends. I know Devin will be staying with his grandpa at one point and my parents at another while Tim goes hunting with his mom and out with friends he worked with while we lived in Michigan. It’s supposed to be pretty warm up there so a ride on the boat might be warrented. They’ll be back sometime Sunday.

While they’re gone I’ll be loading up Tim’s truck with box after box of toys and clothes for Goodwill. I may get Caleb to come stay with Bryce while Hunter and I go to the movie. We may visit with another mama of a boy on the spectrum, but she has other children and a hectic schedule. Other than that, not much going on around here!

Thanks for reading all of that!

Love to all,

Yo

Co-sleeping, bed sharing and breast feeding.

2008-09-08T08:55:00.000-04:00

Summary There has been much controversy over whether infants should co-sleep or bedshare with an adult caregiver and over whether such practises increase the risk of SIDS or fatal accident. However, despite opposition from medical authorities or the police, many western parents are increasingly adopting night-time infant caregiving patterns that include some co-sleeping, especially by those mothers who choose to breast feed. This review will show that the relationships between infant sleep patterns, infant sleeping arrangements and development both in the short and long term, whether having positive or negative outcomes, is anything but simple and the traditional habit of labelling one sleeping arrangement as being superior to another without an awareness of family, social and ethnic context is not only wrong but possibly harmful. We will show that there are many good reasons to insist that the definitions of different types of co-sleeping and bedsharing be recognised and distinguished. We will examine the conceptual issues related to the biological functions of mother–infant co-sleeping, bedsharing and what relationship each has to SIDS. At very least, we hope that the studies and data described in this paper, which show that co-sleeping at least in the form of roomsharing especially with an actively breast feeding mother saves lives, is a powerful reason why the simplistic, scientifically inaccurate and misleading statement ‘never sleep with your baby’ needs to be rescinded, wherever and whenever it is published. James J. McKenna and Thomas McDade

Read Why Babies Should Never Sleep Alone

A brief update.

2008-09-07T16:11:00.000-04:00

OK. Not so brief!

Well...it's been so long since I've done one of these. I know I'm not remembering all the things I want to share!

First thing I'll talk about is Hunter entering the fourth grade!!

He started August 21st. He's no longer at the elementary school. He is in the building that use to run his summer autism program when he was in preschool. But they've moved on to one of the closed schools and the building became the Intermediate School. Fourth and fifth graders go there, about 250 kids in that building. 500 in the K-3 behind them. Both schools share the same buses, but the schools don't start the same to prevent over crowding on the bus. The elementary school starts at 9:20. Hunter's school starts at 7:30 which means the bus picks him up at 6:30. A wake up call at 5:45! Ugh, that's an early morning. Tim's alarm doesn't go off until 7:00, but with us walking around upstairs he's been getting up too.

Even with everything packed the night before and clothes layed out ready to wear, Hunter still barely makes it out the door in time. I still can't trust him to do it on his own. He gets easily distracted and he must use the toilet before he goes to prevent accidents during the day (#2, not #1).

He brought home a notice requesting that all fourth grade students bring a second pair of tennis shoes to school on Friday's. They have recess right before gym and wet and muddy shoes are not allowed on the gym floor. For families needing assistance with this, there is financial help available. Fortunately we aren't one of those families, but we are a family with a 10 year old who still cannot tie his own shoes. I showed Hunter that letter and told him he had four days to learn how to tie his shoes. I'm embarassed to admit he doesn't know how to do it, but it's frustrating for both of us. The letter must have changed his attitude about it because he listened and followed my examples without too many problems. He can do it now but he's very slow. He didn't have to use his new shoes this past Friday because it didn't rain.

This year he doesn't have to wait until 12:45 to have lunch, but, unlike last year, this year he has to go outside and walk across the bus parking lot to the elementary school for lunch. The intermediate building doesn't have a cafeteria. They also have to walk double the distance to the playground for recess.

His teacher is actually a sub, who will be around for an undetermined time, no one is able to say anything for sure. Three weeks before school started I sent an email to his teacher requesting a time to come to the school and meet her and have Hunter see his classroom and where he'd be sitting. I thought this was especially important since he was in a completely different classroom. I didn't hear back from the teacher and was told the way to contact her was only by email.

Finally I was told I could go to the school after 12:00 P.M. the day before the first day and the teacher would be there. A teacher was there, but not the teacher I thought it would be. This teacher knew Hunter. She had subbed for his classroom last year and filled in for the music teacher when she retired and hadn't been replaced in time for the next school year. She let Hunter choose his seat, although he's still close enough for her to keep his attention on task. She's also the first teacher to use the communication notebook on the first day!

So far it seems all is going well. He is working hard and when I quized him on the words of his first spelling test, he didn't get a single one wrong! His homework every night this week has been math. He did have trouble determining when an estimate and an exact number should be used, but that'll come.

Devin starts gymnastics on the 9th! I am so looking forward to it. The gym opened up this spring, but I didn't know about it until I saw a flyer. Their building is hidden by a longer building that houses three different businesses. You can't see it unless you're looking for it. There is one group that is younger than he is, for toddlers Bryce's age. Devin is called a Mini-Light. Tim isn't keen on his son being a gymnast, but for now it's a good way for Devin to run and tumble!

His imagination continues to wow me. He is Buzz Lightyear, he's Superman, he's Super DEVIN! I'm thinking of making him a Super Devin costume for Halloween. I was really bummed, Karyn, that the Superman PJ's you passed on to us didn't come with the cape! I see the two Velcro spots on the shoulders! Where's the cape?? :P He's always "cooking" me pancakes and cupcakes, offering me pop and chocolate milk (after he shakes it up real good). He loves to color and draw. He wants to play outside all the time. Our yard hasn't been covered in so many toys or seen nearly this much use since we moved into this house! If I'm not careful, he's running out the back door in his PJ's or even just a diaper. The sandbox is usually is first stop. I've rinsed him off so many times in one day I lost count.

Yes, he's still in diapers. He isn't showing any interest at all in using the potty. I'm thinking of just getting him some underwear and see what he does when he pees and it goes right down his leg.

He's been getting up sometimes right before Hunter catches the bus at 6:30. You'd think he'd be ready to take a nap come afternoon, but although he stays in his room for the two hours I ask of him, he hasn't been snoozing like Bryce is next door.

We have them on a schedule now, something that I should have been doing a long time ago! LOL All three of the boys are in their bedrooms by 8:30. Hunter doesn't have to turn off his light until 9:00, though. No more running, no more screaming, no more crashing into each other. Come 8:30 it's just Tim and I and it is soooo very nice. Getting up at 6 to make sure Hunter is up and ready to catch the bus at 6:30 leaves me ready for bed by 10 or 10:30 anyway, but Tim and I are both enjoying adult conversation in a quiet house without interuption.

Five out of seven nights Devin is sleeping from 8:30 until he gets himself up or I get him up at 7:30. Bryce not so much. For four days in a row he was sleeping through the night. But he gave us false hope, the brat! It's been a week or more noow he's been up once a night, but no more than that. Sometimes that once is about 11:30 and not really affecting my sleep and then he's down until I wake him with Dev at 7:30. Now and then he fusses quietly and drifts back to sleep without me seeing to him, but most of the time I respond because he gets worked up. The first time I ignored him he woke Devin up and I had TWO crying babies. So if B doesn't start to settle down on his own, I'll go up there and rub his back, but most of the time I end up nursing him back to sleep.

Bryce has quite a mouth full of teeth! He eats everything in sight, even old cereal or popcorn in the cushions. That really grosses Hunter out. He's not always being passed by Devin as they run after each other around the kitchen island. Bryce is running, too! He's a master of the stairs now, although if climbing with a toy he sometimes gets distracted. He fell down about six stairs and gave himself a bloody lip.

He's not saying just da-da anymore, but ma-ma is coming out of his mouth more and more! Sometimes after one hug, he'll give another and another and another until he waddles away after some distraction. He's climbing up on everything. I arrived at the table one day to find Bryce standing on it and Devin climbing up to join him. Devin was not happy with me at all for allowing Bryce even that slim amount of time on the table while giving him, Devin, none.

Tim and I are hanging in there. We're trying to get our date nights going again, but our sitters keep falling through! If we had some family living down here.... Maybe if we stopped going north every few months someone might decide that living in NE Ohio might not be so bad....

If I save this to write more another time, I might not get back to it for days. Maybe not for another week!

Hope everyone is well. Write me when you can. How about now??

Yo

Oak Island, N.C. once again!

2008-09-07T14:33:00.001-04:00

Hi all.

Yes. We've been back from Oak Island for awhile now, but here I am, finally telling you all about it!

The drive down there was pretty uneventful. My boys are seasoned travelers already! It wasn't until we got there that we ran into trouble. Our friends, Meg and Joe, are the ones that reserve the beach house every year. They were not told about the construction going on down the length of the street in front of the house. Maybe the rental property people didn't think the work crew would be in front of our house yet. Actually, they weren't. They had stopped digging in front of the space between our beach house and the one to the left of it. However, they did leave a huge pile of pipes in front of the house, leaving us nowhere to park.

The rental property people told Meg they had no idea that construction was going on in front of the house. They wouldn't take Meg's word for it, they had to send someone out there to see for themselves. We eventually got the OK to park in front of the public access two houses down, with a guarantee the police wouldn't give us all a ticket for parking there overnight.

Come Monday morning, a construction worker came to the house and apologized and got the pipes out of there. That's when we learned that the rental property company did indeed know that construction would be going on during the week of our vacation. It was only Monday that the heavy equipment was in front of the house. Overall it wasn't that much of a problem...for those who did't want to sleep in! The equipment made a heck of a lot of noise at 7:30 in the morning. A vacationer across the road let his unhappiness be heard.

It was pretty warm there, mid 80's the entire time, but not nearly as uncomfortable as last year. We also had one rainy day, Wednesday. It was a good down day. We did some shopping and had brought the Wii along for the kids to play.

We went on crab walks with flash lights and glow sticks. We didn't see any jellyfish on the beach this year. After the rainy day on Wednesday, the beach looked completely different! Before then, there was a long, shallow trench of water the kids could play in. It was as warm as a bath tub! We cleaned out the rocks in the stretch in front of the house and Dev and B splashed in it and Meg's son, Stevie, floated with a mask and snorkel, watching the little bait fish swimming in and out of his still fingers. He became part fish that week! LOL

Last year I didn't get much beach time as Bryce was only a few months old. When he went down for his naps I'd take the monitor back down to the beach with me. I did that again this year, but Bryce just needed short time outs in the shade and he was good to go for awhile again. We'd put him under the cow print shade at the top of the beach or under the cover of a beach umbrella, secured in the sand around an area dug out and walled up. It was quite the kiddie pool which I neglected to take pictures of. I didn't want to risk water and sand on my camera. I meant to get a waterproof disposable, but forgot. :(

Hunter behaved the same as last year. He mostly stood in the surf, no deeper than mid shin. He had his toys and did his thing. He did stay longer on the beach this time around. Like Stevie, Devin wanted to be a fish, too! He kept telling me he was swimming as he crawled around in the surf on the sand. He went out a couple times with his dad, but I could tell he was more comfortable on his own two feet at the shore line.

Some of you may not know it, but I don't really like to float out there in the ocean, not being able to see what's under me, but I did it. One of those times I did, a jelly fish stung me. My hubby says he didn't see anything. He was behind me and could seeif something was there, but it felt like the back of my leg, below the knee, was being poked by a needle. I started swimming to shore but kept getting poked. I finally swatted at whatever it was with my hand and I think the force of my hand in the water loosened whatever it was. An area the size of a quarter was red and when that faded there were tiny, dark red spots. Tim says it was probably the spine of a fish.

On another day Tim and I were throwing a football back and forth on the beach. He tossed it out to Joe but didn't quite make it to him. As the ball floated there I saw what I assumed was a small shark surface and then disappeared. Tim assured me that it was just a fish checking it out, nothing to worry about. On the way home though, he said yes, it was a shark. He didn't want to scare me out of the water!

For $40.00 one day we rented a two person kayak. Oh my goodness my body just did a shake remembering all the jelly fish we saw! It was quite a sight. They were as dark as blood in the center, with a paler red underneath. They were easy to spot and I was very helpful telling Tim which way to go steer back there! With that surf, I didn't want any getting splashed into my lap! While floating out there I was also reminded of seeing the rays jumping out of the water like a flat stone skipping across the surface. We were fine, nothing happened to us, until my hubby failed at keeping us straight coming in and a wave flipped us! LOL

I told Tim I didn't want to spend every day at the beach, that I wanted to do something else. So I took the initiative and reserved us some seats on a charter boat that promised we'd see lots of dolphins and other sea life.

It was about a 30 minute drive and we boarded the boat and headed out to sea. It was an hour and a half tour, an hour of which was travel out to the open sea and back. All of us had good sea legs, but Hunter lost his seat to a lady who had to sit down pretty quick. She was looking kind of green! She didn't move the entire trip.

We met up with a shrimp boat that was owned by the same company. We followed slowly behind it while it brought the shrimp nets up. We could see the shrimp in the net and watched as some floated loose of the bunch and were snatched up in the claws of the birds that squawked and hovered all around us. Other shrimp were made meals of by the dolphins swimming under the water. Some dolphins even jumped for us! At the end of that the crew of the boat we were on brought aboard other sea creatures and had dead samples of even more, including a Man-of-War, the most dangerous jelly fish out there! They sold preserved specimens in mason jars, but, uh, no thank you!

Meg and Joe had brought a baby sitter with them, so we got a couple adult night outs. Just dinner out and time away from the kids.

The way home was opposite of the way down. We left earlier than Meg and Joe because Tim had to be back, clothes washed and bags packed to catch a plane to MN the next morning. Instead of caravaning like we did on the way down, we let the GPS lead the way. When we stopped for lunch Tim took a closer look at our planned route and was shocked to see the computer was sending us toward Washington D.C.! With some adjustments and a new route thru the back twisty, hilly roads of beautiful West Virginia, we made it home two hours later than planned and a small bag full of pukey clothes. Bryce had a bit of car sickness. Even in the front seat my tummy was doing some flips.

Overall it was a good vacation. There have been quite a few times where all of us have wanted to be back there again!

A shot of skepticism about vaccines won't hurt a bit

2008-09-03T12:04:00.000-04:00

Questioning in itself is not a bad thing, especially since the Internet has ignited an information explosion, some of it inaccurate. It does, however, reflect a larger crisis of confidence in public health officials and policy, which has developed partly because so many new, seemingly unnecessary vaccines have been added to the schedule and because no one can explain what causes, how to prevent or how to treat the new childhood disorders: asthma, allergies, attention deficit disorder and autism. - Julie Deardorff Health and fitness reporter for the Chicago Tribune August 31, 2008

Read the full article here.

Have some time to be fully shocked and upset? Then read this.

15 Years Already??

2008-08-24T08:11:00.000-04:00

On August 2nd, the boys and I traveled one more time this busy summer to my hometown in Northern Michigan to attend my high school class reunion. It was intended to be a quick trip where we'd arrive the night before, I'd leave the boys with my parents the next, go to the reunion and head back to Ohio the next day.
A 10 year reunion didn't come together five years ago. It was attempted but fell apart two years ago. This time my classmate Cindy put it all together mostly on her own. She created a website using http://www.classcreator.com/ that kept us informed and created profiles for each of us that signed in.

When Cindy announced the event, to be held at a Great Wolf Lodge, back in April, I was going for sure. Then I got sentimental about my recently divorced sister in Georgia, remembering the summers past that I intended to visit her but was either pregnant, nursing a newborn, or the timing just wasn't right. My boys were older now, seasoned long distance car travelers already, so I told my hubby what I'd like to do and he was all for it. However, with gas prices at just below $4.00 a gallon, he told me to make a choice; go to my class reunion or go to Georgia.

Oooohhhh, the desicion! I was torn. It would be great to see old friends I hadn't seen in many years, some being lost for the full fifteen, but I was already in periodic contact with the people I held the closest since that parting in 1993. Although I was curious how some people would be, I decided to visit my sister. I hadn't been to Georgia since her wedding in 1995 and could look forward to a well planned schedule proposed by my sister (with no pencil space to spare!) and her two children. (See my blog entry, We're Back From Georgia! to read how hard Karyn ran us! :P)

Obviously I went to my class reunion anyway, so what happened?

Well, my hubby was in charge of a major project at his job. He had a lot of preperation to do, simulations to perform, kinks to work out. With us going to the beach in North Carolina again this year (which we've already returned from but I haven't written about yet) he was running out of time. He called me from work on the Wednesday before the class reunion and told me that he'd be working through the weekend and to go on up north and attend.
He didn't have to tell me twice!

So the boys and I headed up that Friday. We got there about 7:00 and took over my parent's house once more. I headed to the city in an empty van the next day and did some shopping by myself, enjoying the time alone. I did want my boys there when I saw the caurosel and another mom pushing a double stroller...but only for the amount of time it took to walk by!

The reunion was set to start at 6:00. When I arrived I was surprised at how many people were already there! If I hadn't decided back in the spring to visit my sister in Georgia, I would have made a day of it at Great Wolf like many of the people attending did. We were given a package deal with havig the event there. Rooms were reserved at discounted prices that included tickets to the indoor waterpark the resort is known for. However, I had only bought my ticket two days before the event and missed the lower rate deadline. I also didn't have a care provider for three boys lined up to stay with them in the room we would have shared. I actually didn't think anything of it until I got there and saw the waterpark through the glass walls on the second floor and heard of the fun other children had, and were still having. Oh, well.

There was an open bar and a lot of mingling, although you could see invisible lines drawn, outlining cliques of the past reunited. I'm guilty of it myself. When I arrived I focused on the group of girls I spent my time with the most. A large meal was provided with more talk and the intermittant flashing of cameras. Time flew by and before I knew it, it was 10:30 and I had a 45 minute drive back to the house. I said my goodbyes and left the room with a smile on my face.
I had been the only person there without a significant other!

Out of 52 graduates, only 17 of us actually attended, one is not in the picture below. Some people said weren't coming because they'd be on their honeymoon or currently lived in Japan...what excuses! LOL

2008-07-29T08:55:00.000-04:00

Vaccination is a subject that elicits emotional responses from both those promoting forced use of multiple vaccines and those defending the human right to informed consent to vaccination. It involves a personal examination of what we know, fear, believe and value because what we choose to do can profoundly affect the health and lives of those we love the most.

Please read more from Barbara Loe Fisher, President of the NVIC, in her blog entry called Vaccination, Ignorance, Prejudice & Greed at http://www.vaccineawakening.blogspot.com/.

Thank you.

We're back from Michigan!

2008-07-22T15:25:00.000-04:00

Hello again, everyone!

Wow. The last 3 weeks just flew by!

We started off with the excitement of having Karyn and the kids coming to our house, staying the night and caravaning up to our home town. We considered riding all in one van with our car top carrier for the luggage, but I wanted to visit my sister in a different town and Karyn wanted to go other places as well. We decided to follow each other for the 8 hour drive north.

We arrived all at once and flooded my parents house with suitcases, toys, seven more mouths to feed and one dog! The parents were thrilled, though. Our parents had called and emailed both Karyn and I in the weeks before our arrival, telling us how eager and excited they were about our visit. We were thrilled ourselves. We've been traveling to Michigan for most of the month of July for a few years now. The party we have for our summer birthdays has become a bash that we send invitations to extended family members to come now. This year, however, we were bummed when four of the young party goers who attended last year didn't come this time! :(

Karyn and I were thrilled with the party this year. It was a Luau theme with hanging fish, themed dishes and cups, leis for all and flowers in the girls' hair. We had a ring toss game and would have even done the Limbo had we not been enjoying the company of family and friends and forgot. The kids made fish sun catchers out of used CD's and took home summer themed sand art (which I did later and thought it was pretty cool!) There were flower tattoos for the girls and pirates for the boys. I think Karyn gave one to all who let her! LOL

My boys and I traveled a bit NW to visit my sister Amanda and her three beautiful daughters Rayne, Randi and Emma. They welcomed a new addition to their family back in June. Landon Jamie Allen was born June 7th. After three girls Amanda and hubby Jamie were thrilled when their surprise baby was the boy they had been wishing for!

Rayne hasn't gotten so tall and with her long dark hair and beautiful eyes, she looks older than the 8 years that she is. If you visited my website a couple months back you may have read the alert about six year old Randi. Her mom had to rush her to Grand Rapids because that little angel was in kidney failure. After first being diagnosed with Lupus, the doctor's now think her condition was a one time thing and are weaning her off the medications she's been on. She's gained some weight since I saw her over Christmas, but her cheeks aren't chubby, they are puffy from the meds and once she's off of them her face should return to normal.

Once silent baby Emma, who will be 2 in September, was pretty vocal during our visits. Especially when either Devin or Bryce wanted the toy she was playing with. With her curly black hair and chubby thighs, I just want to take her home with me!

Landon was thrown a welcome party that almost wasn't. It was the idea of a co-worker of Amanda's. She sent out the invites and was planning it. Their was no mention of it being a potluck and everyone assumed, as I think was right, that there would be finger foods or other snacks there. When we arrived, however, there was only a cake and a punch bowl! The host and her two friends had brought nothing else.

Family members left the gathering and returned with food for all of the 20 or so people who showed up. I'm sure there were some words exchanged and overheard by the hostesses and they were probably embarrassed and upset. They behaved immaturely (early 20's I believe) and left with the cake! If there hadn't been punch in the bowl, they probably would have taken that, too!

It's always wonderful to see Amanda. She's had a pretty rough time of it but seems to have come up on top. Her daughters are beautiful and I can't wait to watch Landon grow!

Back at my dad's we ate just about every evening meal outside and ended the day at the camp fire. The kids enjoyed sitting there with us and even roasted their own hot dogs as well as ate too many S'mores!

Our summer wasn't as involved as last year or my week in GA - Karyn. Put down that pencil! Seriously, she did a good job researching what we could do together and where we could go to get the most out of our time together without spending a lot of money.

It only cost us gas to go to a park with lake access. It wasn't one of the warmer days so we didn't pack any swimsuits but we did bring towels because we were there with kids and water is like a magnet with them! Kyler and Bryce got the most wet. There was no stopping B from walking into that water once he started! There was one special picture I wanted to share with you all, placed in the center of the home page of my web site, but Karyn was the photographer on that one and said she would send it to me before she left for a two day trip to the beach and she FORGOT!! :P

The furthest we traveled was to a museum about 45 minutes away. The plan was to stay there for a bit, have an early dinner and watch Karyn float away in a hot air balloon ride she was given for her birthday. Unfortunately, the weather wasn't right that day, or any day the rest of the time we were there. Either it was too windy, raining and not her backup day but someone else's. She'll have to try again next year. The main attraction at the museum were pictures made out of lights and colored glass. There were also some more interesting things there for kids and adults. See the picture slide show for more.

The last place we went to was a discovery center. It had all kinds of neat things to do and see. I talk more about it under the pictures I took.

We attended a local festival that benefited a nursing and retirement home. There was a big garage sale, music and games for the kids. There were also vendor's there selling things homemade like bags and scarves to someone pushing Pampered Chef. There was one particular man who's slogan was something like, 'You spend it, we destroy it.' What he did was take state quarters and cut out the designs on one of the sides. Karyn bought a key chain of a Michigan quarter where the lower and upper peninsulas were cut out and everything else left. So what you saw was the state of Michigan cut out in the middle of the coin! He had just about every state there and could make them into necklaces as well.

Since I had the stroller and in it Karyn's wallet, she didn't get it at first. Later, after we dropped off the kids to run in the sprinklers with the parents and me headed to the store, she asked to go back so she could buy that key chain...and flirt with an unmarried man with no kids beside her! LOL :P

My parents have a good sized, fenced in yard. Like at home Devin can come and go as much as he pleases. All the kids did, and so did Kit! They had the sprinkler to run thru, a slip and slide to zoom down, squirt guns, bats and balls and even hula hoops! Nothing but fun and a little cousin rivalry going on. Devin and Kyler had their moments and although we had to separate them quite a few times, no blood flowed like in GA. There were actually quite a few really good moments!

Devin learned how to ride a tricycle while we were there! Hunter did ride a bike, but after a couple falls he was frustrated and upset and would not try again. K'ryn is a master on her bike now and it won't be long before Kyler loses those training wheels!

There was an incident the night my parents attended an event out and it was just Karyn, the kids and I. I don't make spaghetti too often at my house so we were cooking some up with garlic toast and I had the idea of putting Hunter's fake roaches (which he got with a toy plate of spaghetti) in his real spaghetti. Hunter loves the humor that grosses people out so I thought it would be a hit...but it bombed.

There we were sitting at the picnic table, everyone mowing down on yummy spaghetti. Here comes Hunter's plate, served by his Aunt Karyn, no sauce, just butter, Parmesan cheese...and three fake (freshly washed) roaches.

When he picked up one of the bugs and we all went, 'Ewwww!', he did crack a smile. Then he put it back down on the plate, stood up and walked away. Oh...so not what I had anticipated!

I found him closed up in the bedroom and told him it had been a prank and one that obviously wasn't funny to him. He was upset and told me that it wasn't funny and that he could have eaten the toy and been poisoned. I explained that both Aunt Karyn and I were watching him closely and would never have let him actually eat the thing. I said we were going for the icky and funny fact of finding such a disgusting, but fake, bug in his spaghetti dinner. I think I made myself understood, but he didn't come back outside.

We took one of the pontoon's from my dad's old marina business out. It was a cloudy and a bit of a windy day, but it never rained on us and the temperature was comfortable off the bigger lake we crossed. It was a nice leisurely cruise where we ate a picnic lunch and did some fishing. Once again, my SISTER HAS THOSE PICTURES! :P The first fish I caught...maybe I don't want to share a pic! LOL It was a bait fish!! Kyler caught the biggest bass and Hunter caught a good sized and beautiful sun fish!

For awhile there the worms kept the younger boys occupied and then it was the fish we caught and kept in a spare cooler to release once we were back at the marina. The kids got to take a turn at steering the boat if they wanted and Bryce fought his life jacket for awhile. Kit didn't act like the dog that she is. She didn't want to sit on the floor of the boat but up on the seats, preferably on the lap of someone with a blanket!

And then there was another incident.

As you all know, Hunter carries around a variety of small items, not necessarily toys. One of these that day in his over sized sweatshirt pocket was a large thimble. He likes to use it like a cup sometimes. This particular time his refreshment of choice was his own saliva. At first it was funny and a bit gross to see him put his own bubbly spit into the thimble, show it off to everyone and then drink it. But he kept doing it over and over and over again, holding it up to his grandma's face in the wind of the boat on an already windy day. He would also put the spit in his hands and it would string between his spread fingers. Seeing that made my stomach flip actually and I told him to put it away or it was mine. I repeated myself several times before giving his stomach a smack with the back of my hand to convey how serious I was. I pocketed the thimble and he frowned at me. He does not like having one of his small toys removed from his person. I told him I was going to hold onto it for five minutes only and that when I gave it back he was to put it into his pocket and it was to stay there for the rest of the boat trip. After the five minutes I did give it back and he did put it into his pocket. I noticed he kept his hands in there alot after that.

He actually does that quite often, not knowing when enough is enough and it's time to stop. His grandma wasn't laughing at him anymore but he didn't pick up on those cues or else he didn't understand them. This is something I'm going to work on with him with and possibly put it in next years IEP.

Oh - I forgot to talk about going strawberry picking. I would of remembered had my camera been the one to take the pictures, but, once again they are on my SISTER's camera and she hasn't sent me anything! (Is she scowling at me yet??) One of the first days there we went out to an orchard and both kids and adults picked strawberries. Bryce was eating them right on the spot! Aunt Tiffany was so happy with her recent purchase of a white shirt with a go green type saying on the front. She shouldn't have gotten so close to a toddler on uneven ground with strawberries all over his hands! She got a perfect little red hand print and a smear on her lower back! LOL Later the kids mashed the strawberries and Kathy made strawberry jam she sent us all home with. (It turned out great, Kath!)

Karyn and I were quite the crafting couple there for awhile! I had brought up material and thread with me to make a baby quilt for Landon, but as I looked through Kathy's many books, I found a more personal design I liked and tweaked it to my own needs. I suggested to Karyn the idea of making a wall hanging for the parents with a couple pictures of the kids to remember the summer of 2008. We put our heads together and we were quilting queens! Phew! See the slide show for pictures!

Another thing came to my attention on one of the last days we were there. We had gone to Kathy's place of employment so a coworker could meet the kids. As we were leaving, K'ryn pointed out that Hunter had taken a pen and was leaving with it. She used the word steal. Hunter became upset, held up his hand in that, 'Talk to the hand', way we all know, and then put his forehead to hers and pushed her over backwards. I've seen him do the head thing before, but he pushed K'ryn back so far, I thought she'd break her back! We had driven separately there because of car seats so I spoke in private about what he had done. I brought up the pen first and then talked of what he did in detail with K'ryn, how he hurt her back bending her backwards so far. I expressed how important it was to use his words when he was angry and not to ever force someone in any way like that again. K'ryn later told her mom that Hunter had done that to her before, so here's another addition to my personal To Do list and definitely one to mention at the IEP meeting.

We had plans on going up to the bridge and into the city but Kath got an emergency call and that trip was cancelled. We'll have to do it next year.

When left on Friday and arrived back here in Ohio in time to watch Tim place softball. It was so hot! On Saturday I packed up Hunter and Tim packed up his bags. We took him to the airport to catch a flight to WI Sunday morning and later that day I left Dev and B with a friend and took Hunter to his summer camp. He seemed OK while we were there and I stayed longer than I had in the past. When it was time to go he got upset and started rubbing at his eyes and taking deep breaths. I saw one tear fall and that broke my heart! I reminded him of all the fun he was going to have and that he wanted to be there. I mentioned that he'd get a week away without any annoying little brothers and he cracked a small smile. The boy that he did some things with last summer was in his cabin again...and so were the two that had some behavior problems. There are four adults in each cabin; two that have been there the past two years and two new ones. One of the new guys wasn't really new to the experience, just new to the cabin. He's one of the older counselors with a background in behavior. When he saw me leaving he offered Hunter a piece of gum and asked him if he still liked Yu-Gi-Oh (that was Hunter's thing last year, that cartoon has a card game and Hunter had some with him). I loved that man at that moment because he was a stranger to Hunter and I but he had taken the time to read about Hunter before he meant him and that makes that man special in my eyes.

It's just Dev, B and me this week! I tried to watch a movie last night but Bryce was a stinker but today I can see why. He has his bottom two eye teeth coming in and the top two haven't finished yet and he still has some molars that look like they still have room to grow. Poor little guy! Both the boys slept with me at my parents house and the first two nights with Tim gone Devin has come back. Since he stayed in his own bed the night his dad was here, maybe him going back to his bed when his dad returns won't be a problem. I better try before that night arrives! Until then, I don't mind them drooling on my pillow!

Take care!

Yo

I hope Hunter learned a lesson this week...

2008-06-28T23:09:00.000-04:00

Hi all!

It hasn't been too much of an excitng week around here. It rained a lot and it was only above 80 two times, so on those day we went to the spray playground as it is being called. Hunter could stay there all day but Devin and Bryce can only last an hour or so. Then I get them dried off and into some clothes and we go to the playground next to it for about thirty minutes. Glad it's free because we don't spend too much time there at once!

This week the Amish crew that clean houses came over. Tim bought me a 2 hour slot for Mother's Day. I wasn't too keen on all the chemicals, but I knew I'd never deep clean as good as these ladies would do. They said they'd be moving furniture and washing baseboards!! We left them to their work with the house windows open so the place could air out.

Hunter's bedroom has been a mess for so long now. I told him that four woman were coming to deep clean our house and I wanted his bedroom to be one of the rooms that got some attention. Tim and I looked behind and under things to make sure there wasn't any disgusting surprises, most of you know what I mean, for the ladies, but there wasn't. Every day that went by I told Hunter to clean up his room. He didn't do it and he still didn't do it and he had only an hour left when Tim said enough and took a big black garbage bag into Hunter's room and tossed everything but the books I could save into that bag and out to the garbage can it went.

Hunter hovered by and I knew he wanted to say something. I had to tell him to speak up but all he did was reach out and grab something here and snatch something there. I thought, I hoped, he would get upset, but all he did was watch and listen. Maybe in his silence it was hitting home and we won't have to play that scene again.

I did get a return call from the DAN! doc I mentioned in my last update. To make a long stroy short the woman was rude. She pretty much told me I wasn't commited to making my son well and that I was looking for a quick fix. Therefore, I will be looking for a new DAN! doctor. I did take Hunter to see a gastro doc who told me what I already knew, but I just wanted to make sure. He recommended an enema, but Hunter had to endure those a few years back and I'd rather not go through that again. I picked up a root beer flavored laxitive to help clean up any blockage up there and bought him some fiber crackers. If he's still having problems after our return from Michigan, the doc will look deeper. If he still is messing his underwear, I will probably have to keep him home from his summer camp this year.

Are boys born to it? Is it in their genes?? Devin has seen a few scenes of a couple older kid/adult shows and movies, but is that still too much??? He is continuously shooting me and starting to wrestle with Bryce. He does have some cute moves though where he jumps up and down into a spread legged position and holds his hands like he's doing karate. I just hope I can keep him tame so he doesn't hurt anyone.

Bryce has come into the monkey stage of toddler hood. He is climbing on to everything! When walking across the room he has to sway over to a toy and step on it and down before carrying on his way. With us hovering nearby he's climbed the stairs and gone part way down them. He's more interested in going up right now than down. We were at an indoor playground this week and I looked up and he had climbed up the slide and was happily standing at the top with a new view he hasn't seen before!

He's almost running but if he gets going to fast he falls on his knees. He tries to eat everything I give him, but he can't contain the urge to throw most of it on to the floor. Devin on the other hand...I don't see where he gets all his energy with just two bites at each meal!

Tomorrow my sister Karyn and her wonderfuly behaved children :) will be arriving. They'll probably get here in time for dinner and Monday morning we'll be on our way to take over our parent's house in Northern Michigan. Ready or not, dad, here we come! We'll be there through the 18th, but I think Karyn is leaving the day before.

So everyone have a great next couple weeks and look for an update and a ton of pictures around the 20th (which is my wedding anniversary. Yikes!)

XXOO

Yo

What do you do to beat the heat?

2008-06-26T22:23:00.000-04:00

That's the question Nature's Child Wholesome Goods for Mothers & Babies is asking their readers. If you share your answer with them, your name is put into a drawing and you could win a bumGenius 3.0 Starter Kit! Wowzers! You could get 18 diapers, a diaper sprayer, a dozen cloth wipes and a bottle of bumGenius Odor Remover!

bumGenius, otherwise known as BG in the cloth diaper world, is a one size pockt diaper that was recently redone to include, among other things, two inserts instead of one. In my opinion, BG is the closest thing to disposeables out there. Pre-stuffed, they go on as quick as a disposable, secured with a strong Velcro type fastner called Aplix.

I want to win just for that diaper sprayer! Every time I clean up a poopy cloth diaper I tell myself to just get a sprayer already! I haven't seen them for sale for less than $35.00. They are similar to what some of you may have at your kitchen sink, but these obviously hook up to your toilet and you spray the diaper somewhat clean into the toilet and into the wetbag or diaper pail it goes!

You gotta have cloth wipes if you use cloth diapers. It doesn't make any sense to reuse a diaper but not the wipes. Besides, it can get pretty annoying to have to seperate icky disposeable wipes from a cloth diaper. I know because switching to cloth wipes was the last thing I did.

I haven't used an odor remover, but with cleaning both cloth diapers and Hunter's dirty underwear, I should invest in some!

So, tell Nature's Child what your family does to beat the heat. A name is randomly drawn on August 10th. If you win, you can see first hand how easy it is to use cloth diapers and realize how much money you save by not buying disposeables and what about Mother Earth? Not adding more plastic and human waste to a landfill is a big plus for me!

We're back from Georgia!

2008-06-18T22:01:00.000-04:00

My boys and I had a great time with my sister and her kids. I'm not going to go into too much detail (yeah, right) because you can read about and see what we did using the Pictures in a Slide Show link on my main page.

We headed out at 6:30 A.M. last Saturday, June 7th. The ride down went unbelievably well. You might have thought I was traveling with older kids and not a one and almost three year old! When Bryce got fussy, he was easily satisfied with a snack or a sippy. If we didn't have a DVD player he may have been more of a handful, but the drive down was uneventful...except for one little thing.

The last time we traveled a long distance both boys were in their cloth diapers and both boys had poopy diapers, one creating two stinky surprises. I have what's called a wet bag, a place where you store wet and dirty cloth diapers, but it's not a zipper top only a draw string, so with those three dirty diapers in there, my van got a little stinky. I decided to buy some disposeables and use them during the 735 mile trip south (with an hour long lunch, we made it there in 13 hours).

We were somewhere near Lexington, KY and passing some orange construction signs when Devin, still in his onsie PJ's and a disposeable diaper, says to me, 'What happened to my diaper?' I look back at him and he's holding his left leg up and pointing down and I see a big glob of poop out of the diaper and on his leg and car seat! Ack! By then we had entered the construction zone and we were going barely 10 MPH. I told Dev not to touch the poo and try to keep his leg up and I looked for an exit but there wasn't one ahead and even if there was, it would take me forever to get there at that pace. I pulled over and cleaned both Devin and his car seat up, all the while leaving the van running with the air conditioning on.

When Devin asked me that now memorable question, my van had just beeped at me, alerting me to the low fuel level. I don't know how long it took me to clean up the stinky mess, but when I got back in behind the wheel, that gas needle was almost on empty! I don't know if it was actualy construction or rubber necking, but traffic speed had picked up and I made it to an exit and coasted as much as I could to a gas station. I did not need to be running out of gas at the halfway point!

Six hours later we were greeted eagerly by my beautiful biggest sister and her giggling children and so began our week long stay in Northern Georgia!

Karyn planned for just about every minute of every day! If we weren't on a big field trip, we were on smaller outings or swimming at indoor water parks (because K'ryn didn't want us to have too much Georgia sun too soon) or just playing in the sprinkler and water squirters at the house. Between my sister and I we took quite a few photographs to remind us of this busy but much enjoyed and loved week together. I hadn't been to Georgia since her wedding back in 1995!

With two boys close to the same age in the house, there was bound to be trouble. Devn and Kyler were at each others throats sometimes, but other times they were the sweet angels we knew they could be. Both Karyn and I had moments where we had to count to 10 and remind ourselves that we love our children and that we wanted to have them. LOL

Hunter and K'ryn had some moments and although I heard Hunter sounding impatient at times, I never heard K'ryn get mad at him. I know she had motive to be. She asked me if I would talk to Hunter about not putting stickers on the faces of her friends in photographs on her bedroom wall. I definately did talk to him because that involves a lack of respect. Karyn told me on the phone earlier today that K'ryn found the letters H, U and N written in ink on the ceiling of their van. Karyn wasn't worried about it and told K'ryn it wasn't a big deal and I don't really care that the back windows of my van, and for some time the back outside of my van, had stickers all over it, but I do care that Hunter wrote on somebody else's van. I did talk to him about that.

Bryce was the best behaved of them all! I think I have Karyn's agreement on that one! :P He did make a mess when he dumped the cats water bowl all over the floor and got mad at us as we fished out some cat food from his mouth. He also made one heck of a racket when he pulled all the metal bowls out of the cupboard. Other than that, he was a happy, agreeable baby, even while being in the van as much as he was and taking his naps in strollers or on my chest in a swimming pool!

There was one short stretch in there where both Dev and B must have caught a bug. They both threw up a little bit and Dev had a bit of a fever and was ornery, but they both were fine and activities only delayed.

Devin continued his odd sleeping behavior at his aunt's house. I slept mostly on the bed (Kylers room) with Bryce and Devin on the air mattress next to us. It was a double size mattress, but many mornings Devin was on the floor and sometimes part way under the bed! On the morning we returned to Ohio, I was woken by a muffled voice calling for me and asking for help. Devin had found himself not just under the bed, but all the way across it and next to the wall. Even on my belly and part way under the bed with my arm stretched, I had to coax Dev to scoot toward my voice so I could get a hold of him and help him out! I put him back in the middle of the bed with his pillow and blanket, and the little stinker was back to sleep in minutes. Bryce didn't make a sound. I was awake and looked at the time. It was just before 5:00 A.M. I decided to finish up my packing and load the van, leaving for home earlier than planned.

Our return trip was actually delayed by a day. The plan was to return on Saturday, but the weather had other idea's. If I had left at that time, almost my entire drive north would have been in rain and thunderstorms. All the way from Georgia to Southern Ohio was nothing but inclement weather. I talked to Tim, and even though we'd be getting home the evening of Father's Day, he was fine with that. He didn't want us driving in the rain all that way either. Karyn, the kids and I had no complaints ourselves!

Karyn and the kids are heading to Northern Michigan on the 30th. We've since decided that they will come here and stay the night and in the morning we will caravan to our hometown and arrive at the grandparents house all at once! We thought about carpooling, but we each have other places to be so decided just to follow each other. Less than two weeks away and we'll all be together again! Any of you ever try to take five kids on a field trip? LOL It was fun!

Thanks for reading, now go see the pictures!

Oh, wait. Come back. I had a realization this past week that Karyn helped me to see. I've shared with you all about Hunter and his poo accidents. I didn't realize how often he was having them until now, when school is out. Whatever room he is in, it's smelly. Today he went through four pairs of underwear.

K'ryn had climbed a rock wall successfully and Hunter wanted to give it a try. He didn't make it very far, but he tried! I knew he wasn't going to make it very far because he has such low muscle tone. There's a medical term for it, a condition some kids with autism have, but I don't remember the name. Karyn and I were talking about it when it came to us that maybe that is why he's having these poo accidents. Sorry if this is too much info, but the anus is, after all, just a muscle.

I have a message in to the DAN! Doctor in hopes to gt a referral to someone who can help us with this. I had to leave a message and haven't heard anything back yet because this doctor is actually a psychologist and does the DAN! protocol on the weekends. I'm hoping it won't take until then to check her messages.

Thanks for reading.

Love to all,

Yo

I did something to B I didn't want to do!

2008-06-04T10:14:00.000-04:00

Hello to everyone on this rainy but comfortable Wednesday.

Today is Hunter’s Fun Day at school. He told me about kick ball and a target throwing game and dropping balls in buckets. He also reminded me that the PTO is providing a free lunch for them. It looks like the rain has stopped though. When he boarded the bus it was coming down pretty good, but now it’s ceased but the ground of course is wet. Since we live 15 miles out of town it could still be raining there or maybe it didn’t rain at all. No rain! Tim just replied to my email asking that and he said it’s dry!

Yesterday Hunter had a walking field trip to McDonald’s. He planned his menu and counted out the money he needed. Afterward they walked to the park and played for a bit before making the walk back to the school. He complained that it was a mile long walk. It was a nice 76 or so yesterday; perfect weather for a walk!

He scored a 100% on his last reading achievement test, which reminds me I still haven’t posted his latest report card for those of you who are interested. It will be under Hunter in School when I remember.

In a couple weeks we should get the scores for his big 3rd grade tests in math and reading!

The due date for the application for his summer residence camp scheduled for the end of July was June 1st. The past two summers we applied he was accepted, but there are limited slots. This year I didn’t get it into the mail until two weeks ago, so I’m keeping my fingers crossed there is still room for him. If he doesn’t get in I think I’ll be more upset than he will be, maybe. He has talked about it a little bit, so I think he might be looking forward to it.

Devin is always on the go, often too busy to stop and take a nap unless we’re in the van. He and Knight are both enjoying the free range the fenced in back yard provides for them. Rain or shine, you can’t stop Dev from going outside! Hunter’s friend Jonathon has been coming over a lot this week and Devin just loves him and often gets upset when it’s time for him to go home. Jonathon stayed the night and I thought for sure Dev was going to insist on sleeping downstairs with them, but he went into his own room to watch Thomas and continued the fun the next morning until Jonathon went home.

I swear he’s grown over night! I thought for sure some of these 2T clothes I have would still fit him, but even without the fluffy bum, he’s too big for them! He hasn’t been eating very well during sit down meals, but he has access to snacks pretty much anytime, so he definitely isn’t going hungry. If he is, he’ll come up and tell me so. I love hearing the sound of his voice.

Bryce is having some growing pains. It seems he has sprouted up over night as well, but not as quietly as Devin. He is getting his top eye teeth and molars, so I’ve been trying to help him with that. His face is still a bit chubby but we can see muscle in his thighs! Devin is no longer the only one going in circles around the kitchen island. Although slower, Bryce is right there in his brother’s wake!

I cut his hair. All those curls...snip, snip, they are gone. I kept two curls, taped to a card where the stylist spelled the name of the town wrong. What a difference a hair cut makes, but, my last baby's first haircut has happened!

We’ll be leaving Tim and the dogs behind early Saturday morning and heading to Georgia to spend a week with my sister Karyn. With gas prices I almost didn’t do it, but now that I’m not pregnant or nursing around the clock, it is time! So…I won’t be going to my 15 year class reunion in August. This is the first time some of you have heard this, but although I am curious to see how my classmates turned out, the people I’d really like to see I already do spend time with, or try to spend time with!, when I’m up north. The other people I’d love to get together with live too far away or have already said they aren’t going to attend.

I haven’t been posting much because I have two very bossy kings of the mountain to serve and when I’m not attending to them I’m trying to be crafty. It took me much longer than planned to finish that baby quilt for my new nephew.

I told Dev we would go to the library after I was done here and now that Bryce came and stole my mouse pad, I smell something that needs immediate attention!

Thanks for reading and write when you can! I’ll write again after the 15th, with a lot of pictures to share! See the calendar at the bottom of my home page to learn what we’ll be doing while there!

Love to all,

Yolanda

Children on the specturm being berated in the classroom

2008-06-02T16:53:00.000-04:00

It's a story that's getting attention around the nation. A teacher is accused of voting a child out of her classroom. Tuesday, the outraged mother spoke to CBS 12 and to CBS The Early Show.

Alex Barton: the 5 year-old autistic boy's day in kindergarten put to a vote. His mother, Melissa Barton, says, "He came to me and said, "Mommy, 14 kids voted me out of my class."

Read the full story here.

NEW ALBANY, Ind. (WAVE) - A kindergarten teacher from New Albany has been suspended after she was apparently caught on tape berating a 5-year-old student for several minutes in front of the class. The boy's parents sent him to school one day in April with the tape recorder in his pocket after the boy complained for months that his teacher was mean to him.

Read the full story here.

The first article I read caught my attention, but then the second one has me worried. Hunter doesn't have the behavior problems these younger kids reportedly have, but in his silence there is plenty of ammunition for his peers to use.

One is how he talks. He doesn't stutter, but his sentecnes are so choppy and he pauses in the middle of them as he gathers his thoughts, opening himself to taunts.

Another is his stimming and comfort behavior. He still walks on his tip toes and flaps his fingers when interested or excited. He carries around small items, picking string from his socks and is always scanning the floor for rubber bands or other odd things. He often looks to be dancing in place, back and forth on his tip toes with strange things in his fingers. He's older now and it looks weird from a distance.

The most important one is his not using the toilet properly. I've picked him up from the school for messing his underwear three times and twice he was sent home with his underwear wrapped in two plastic bags with a note from the nurse. One time the accident even dirtied the back of his pants and down the leg. He didn't go to the nurse. It was another student who pointed it out to the substitute teacher....

Yes, kids will be mean. Don't be sending me messages saying that it's all part of life and going to school. Teachers already have so much training and certifications to do and Iunderstand that being in a room full of other peoples' kids is work often unappreciated. More and more childen these days are entering school with some sort of label and the teacher who has that child should be required to take a class in how best to work with the child and how to deal with any behavioral issues. Talking down to them and reprimanding them in front of their peers, asking OTHER CHILDREN what should be done with the child in question, is absolutely unacceptable. Kids on the spectrum don't care about other people's opinions, so trying to embarass them into cooperation isn't going to solve the problem.

It's a lot of extra work for teachers to do, but think about the parents. The parents will be with this child for the rest of their lives. Teacher's have them, what, 180 days, give or take some, a year? Help the parents out by knowing who's going to be in your class the coming year. If they have IEP's, please READ the IEP before you meet the child and learn what you can about any diagnosis and maybe - shocker - meet with the parents before the year begins. I haven't seen my son's file in a few years, but I know it's chuck full of evaluations and reports going back to age 18 months when he was found to be Speech and Language Impaired. Tucked among those stapled stacks is a letter I wrote before every new school year to the teacher that talks about how Hunter is doing in certain area's, his ups and downs, what he likes and doesn't like. Can you imagine how upsetting it is to learn that, after taking the time and emotion to write about your child on paper in ways a stranger can understand, a person who will see him more hours in a day than you will, just to find out she hasn't read the letter? Hasn't even read the current IEP??

I'm upset to read about these two cases, but I can't honestly say I'm surprised. I'm a member of a few boards that talk about ASD kids and classrooms and I just have to hang my head and be thankful that Hunter is on the higher end of that multi-level rainbow.

My baby days may be done...

2008-06-01T23:52:00.000-04:00

but video's like this make me want to have more and more! Life is indeed a miracle. I wish every baby born could share in the love my boys are surrounded in.

Disposable diapers are HOT! Cool off your baby with cloth!

2008-05-31T00:51:00.000-04:00

Summer is almost here, and with it comes higher temperatures.

Disposable diapers, like anything lined with non-breathable plastics, are HOT! In fact, according to the Archives of Disease in Childhood, disposable diapers can lead to a total breakdown of normal cooling mechanisms; something which has been linked to the rising infertility rates in males.

The summer heat can also contribute to diaper rashes. According to the Journal of Pediatrics, 54% of one-month old babies using disposable diapers had rashes, with 16% being severe rashes.

Diaper rashes are caused by a number of elements, but a hot, dirty diaper is one of the most common causes.

Cloth diapers are much cooler than disposable diapers, and necessitate more frequent changes; keeping your baby cool and dry for these hot summer months.

My suggestions for keeping baby cool and dry this summer?

Look for a fitted diaper - they don't require diaper pins or a Snappi, and are ideal for families with active summer schedules. They are made with organic cotton, soft and stretchy fleece and knits and 100% custom milled cotton.
If you aren't afraid to learn a few cloth diaper folds, you can hardly get cooler or more economical than prefold diapers (PF's). Comfortably soft and absorbent, Green Mountain Diaper PF's are the perfect trim, stand alone cloth diaper as summer heats up!
Don't forget the diaper covers! The trimmest, coolest diaper cover is the simple, yet efficient, Bummis Super Whisper Wrap. Made from a very lightweight, breathable, waterproof nylon, this diaper cover is BREATHABLE. Waterproof, yet breathable - THAT is simply smart.

With all the cloth diaper choices for keeping baby's most sensitive areas cool and rash free this summer, there is no need to turn to the paper pulp and plastic disposable diapers. Today's cloth diapers are soft, plush, and absorbent without chemicals, but best of all, they will keep baby's skin healthy as the heat rages on.

For more info on this subject, see my cloth diapering page on my home site.

I'm a new Aunt!

2008-05-25T10:51:00.000-04:00

I am very happy to announce the birth of my nephew, Grady James, born to BIL Jamie and his beautiful wife, Sarah, in MD.

The perfect baby boy was born 27 hours after Sarah first began feeling contractions early in the morning.

He weighed 6.12 pounds and is 19 and 3/4 inches long. I'm told he's a super nurser and a screamer!

Welcome to the world, Grady! I can't wait to meet you!

I made something for Grady, something which I would have liked to have sent to Jamie and Sarah weeks ago but time is in short supply around here. I'll share it with all of you after the package sent Priority Mail yesterday is in their hopefully eager hands!

Pity Party at my place.

2008-05-23T10:30:00.000-04:00

Hunter is 10 and is doing very well considering the beginning of our journey. He's a year behind in school but if he understands that it doesn't seem to bother him. Academically he's doing great!
He's never gotten a test score lower than 80% and he's always gotten high marks and Satisfactories on his report card. This past term his printing has finally been good enough to get an Honor Roll award he's been deserving since he began grade school. Here he is with it:

Anyway - I'm close to reaching my breaking point with the things that I just can't seem to "fix", for lack of a better word, in him. One is, he is still on a schedule to remember to go poo. If he's not asked/reminded, he'll make a mess in his underwear. I've gone to the school two times to pick him up and one time Hunter "adamantly denied" writes the teacher in the notebook, that he had an accident, but apparently it could be smelled. I toss the towel he uses after his shower into the washing machine because it almost always has poop on it. Part of his routine is using the toilet before getting in the shower every night and I don't know if he forgets to wipe, thinks getting in the shower will take care of it...but obviously he's not cleaning himself well in the shower and getting the towel all icky afterward. He gets mad and frustrated if I ask him if he needs help. I offer in ways saying things like it's hard to reach your back to scrub, or difficult to balance on one foot, so let me help, but no. He gets upset and I have to leave. At least now his showers aren't 30 minutes long, sometimes at the end of which his hair isn't even wet!

He says things that just don't make any sense and come out of his mouth at inappropriate times. He says Prove it all the darn time. He asks me my likes or opinions, then he says, 'Prove it, he does something wrong, 'Prove it, he does something RIGHT, he says, 'Prove it!'. He probably got it from some cartoon show. He thinks we want to hear all about his favorite shows and I listen and show interest but I also want to hear about school and what does he think about this or about that, but he clams up. If it's not something he starts he doesn't participate unless we demand it. And his speech...he doesn't stutter but he chops his words off and pauses so much you think he's done, but he has a hard time putting words into sentences and saying what he wants to say. Except of course when he's repeating something he's read/heard. We were going over his Social Studies book for a test and if he's interested, he remembers no problem and his speech is just about perfect, but trying to talk to him, even about his cartoons, it's difficult for me to listen to him struggle to put sentences together.

He's 10 years old...it's embarassing to admit this, but I'm tying his shoes for him. Up until about six weeks ago, he was wearing shoes that velcroed. But shoe's his size aren't made that way and I joked he won't be seeing Velcro on his shoes for many, many years...but he didn't catch my meaning. He gets so frustrated when I try to show him how, saying only that he's not good at tying, that he can only untie. I tell him he has to practice, that he wasn't a pro at, fill in the blank here, in the beginning, that it took practice for him to be good at it. He sees me coming with his shoe and his shoulders drop and he goes into like a robot mode. My hubby suggested that I make it a part of his homework every night and that I only do one part of the process each night and he practices that part until he's got it down before introducing the next part. It's so wonderful to have a partner in this and I appreciate my husband so much.

Oh those darn small toys he has to carry around! It's not even toys, many times it's coins, paper clips and most recently I've been finding the tops of pencils (the erasers AND the silver part that holds the erasers) off the pencils and on the floor where Bryce has found them. Many times both my hubby and I have had to tell Hunter to put the toy in his pocket to help carry something or do something that involves both hands. He's stolen earrings and rings from me, some might never be found again, because they are small and he likes them. He knows stealing from other people and stores is wrong, but why does he think it's OK to take from me, even after I've caught him before and talked to him about it??

He's been trying to catch me naked either in the bathroom or my bedroom. When I ask him if he needs something or that I need some privacy, he does his fake laugh and walks away. We've had this discussion many times about private parts and nobody seeing them but parents and doctors, but he sighs at me and says he knows, he knows. How can I satisfy his curiosity without standing naked in front of him?? Is there a book I can give him that won't reveal too much? This concerns me for many reasons.

He thinks he's going to get in trouble, so he sneaks food and drink! I have found wrappers, empty cans, juice boxes, plastic bottles under his bed, in his desk drawer, behind toys in other rooms, inside closets. I rarely say no to him and I've told him as long as he's not eating after he brushes his teeth at night and that's it's not his dad's last pop, he can have whatever he likes, but I can still hear the pantry being open so slowly so it won't squeak and I know he's in the drawer getting a utensil out because I hear the slow, cold ring of metal being taken slowly from it's place. Sometimes at dinner if he doesn't like something I can see him looking up at me and back to his food, like he's hoping I'll notice him looking at me and that I'll tell him he doesn't have to eat it. We've learned the hard way what happens if he eats something that clashes with his tongue....

I can't get him to eat anything but what he's been eating for many years now and now he's overweight. He walks on the treadmill no problem (he gets to watch cartoons while doing it) but it's pointless if all I can get him to eat is fish sticks, chicken nuggets and grilled cheese. He does eat lettuce and carrots, but only with Ranch dressing.

Anyone have any comments or advice? With an almost three year old, a one year old, my lack of sleep with household and business obligations to fullfill, my patience has unfortunately been stretched thin and I've started to snap at Hunter when he does the same things I've talked to him about over and over again.

Great news for Hunter! Dev's imagination is blooming! No more crawling for B!

2008-05-20T18:16:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone!

The temperature is still cool around here, but the holiday weekend looks to be warmer and sunny! Since we fenced in part of our back yard I’ve moved my computer desk to the side of my sun room so I can see out the windows. Devin is inside at the moment, but the evidence of his fun yesterday is still in the tree! Tim and I attended a dinner that marked the beginning of week long meetings and more meetings for Tim. The past two years he’s just packed an overnight bag and stayed in a hotel close to the location instead of driving the hour there and back again. We had our sitter come over yesterday and he had all three boys at once! They went outside at one point and now the big blue and white ball is being held tight in the tree, so hard to get that the bat Caleb used to knock it out is now also caught up in the branches!

It didn’t bother Dev at all that Tim and I were leaving, he likes Caleb that much! Devin was downstairs when Caleb arrived. When he came upstairs he looked around said, ‘Where’d Caleb go?’, then he saw Caleb and said, ‘There he is!’, and then ran and tackled him! This was the first time Caleb had all three. He’s watched Dev and B when Hunter and I went to the movie and saw Iron Man and when we went to Hunter’s Spring Concert and then just Hunter and Dev when B was a bit younger and I left. We only stayed out until 9:00, wanting to make it an early night because Tim knew that tonight would be a late night with him actually staying over at the same hotel as the out of state company employees. However, Bryce had a bad night. He woke often and he’s not quiet when he does! Tim was still half asleep when he headed out this morning.

The wonderful news this week is that Hunter made the honor roll! He has been so close every year, but it’s been his printing that holds him back each time. I’m not happy with his penmanship, but his teacher must have seen something to give him that extra point or so! On this subject I’m wondering if I shouldn’t be looking for a new OT. I like his current one. She’s been working with Hunter for many years now, but Tim was telling me of a woman he knows who’s son’s handwriting was so bad that his mom got him an OT and now his printing is neat and proper. I can’t imagine what the difference could besides Hunter’s lack of interest and sore hand muscles.

Hunter’s new favorite thing to say is, ‘Prove it’, and it’s driving me insane! He’s not even using the term properly. He asked me if I liked a pine tree or some other tree better and I said I liked the pine tree because they don’t lose their needles during the winter and animals can shelter underneath. He got in my face and said, ‘Prove it’. What? You’re asking me what I like, my personal opinion, so you don’t say, ‘Prove it’. Can you guess his response to that? It was another, ‘Prove it’, this time with more enthusiasm.

He’s still struggling with his speech. He’s not exactly stuttering, but he’s tripping over what words to use and pausing in the middle of his sentence, and the entire time he’s swaying back and forth on his tip toes, shaking whatever small toy he’s chosen to carry around. He’s tried my patience many times by leaving his small magnetic balls on the floor and he keeps pulling the tabs off the tops of pop cans and the erasers from pencils, playing with them and then leaving them on the floor. But he is doing excellent in school, he is interacting with kids his age and he is communicating with me, so although it’s hard to see him struggling, stimming and not remembering there’s a baby in the house, I am so thankful for how far he’s come!

Devin loves that he can go outside pretty much anytime he wants to now, but keep your shoes on, kid! He takes his sandals off and runs barefoot or he takes his shoes off and plays just in socks. It doesn’t matter to him! He is full of words and observations and makes sure I see everything he sees, that I listen to hear what he is hearing and if I share a forkful of something with him, he takes the fork and shares a forkful with me!

I can’t believe his imagination! I remember getting Hunter to pretend to feed his stuffed puppy a cheese ball being a huge event (the same day we taught him to sign more). Devin needs no help whatsoever! ‘It’s a cracker, it’s a car’, and, ‘No, it’s a plane!’ Then I have Hunter on the other side saying, ‘It’s NOT a plane, Devin, it’s a LETTER!’ They go back and forth like that with Dev adding some choppy chatter that Hunter might be glad that he can’t understand right now!

Devin is fascinated with trains right now and absolutely loves the Thomas the Train DVD I bought him. I think it’s terribly boring and kind of scary that these trains have mouths, but they don’t actually open and move when the train’s are talking. He’s been going down every night without much problem because he gets to watch his train movie. He walks around saying choo, choo and all aboard, telling me to holler stop and when I do, he makes a sound that is a pretty good imitation of a trains air brakes!

He is such a great helper in giving and doing things for Bryce, but he is two and is therefore very possessive of his trains and toy cars. If he hears Bryce waking up first, he climbs up on the bed with him and tells him that I’m coming. He shares his bath time bubbles with him and I think Devin stopped having a fit when I rinse his hair because Bryce doesn’t do it. Dev started that suddenly before Bryce began taking baths with him, but now that they are together he doesn’t do it anymore.

Bryce is speeding up! He’s not quite as wobbly nor is he as bow legged now that he’s been walking non stop for a couple weeks now. Only if he’s tired or crying does he crawl. He also doesn’t need me to nurse him to sleep for naps. He’s following Devin in that area; he just collapses wherever! He loves burying his head in a pillow, so I keep one on the floor in his room and in the play room and he’ll roll all over that with his bum up in the air.

He’s getting top molars and a fourth front bottom tooth, so that might explain the recent restless nights. One morning he was either making up for the lack of night time sleep or he was going thru a growth spurt, because he took a four and a half hour nap! I kept returning to make sure he was still breathing. He was always in a different position when I checked on him, and he was always still sleeping soundly! When I heard him stir he was all smiles after that little cat nap!

I think I will be getting Bryce a haircut this week. I don’t want to, but he is looking shaggy and I like to keep my guys looking neat and having easy go hair. Maybe.

Hope you all are well. Write me soon!

XOXO

Yo

Happy 1st Birthday Bryce Baby!

2008-05-14T16:32:00.000-04:00

One year ago today, at 4:50 in the afternoon, Bryce Robert was born. He was 8 lbs. and a single ounce, 20 inches long. We are so thankful to have him in our lives. He makes us smile and laugh and continues to amaze us. The miracle of life is indeed precious.

Reuseable grocery bags. I was doing it part time, but pledge to use them every time.

2008-05-14T13:32:00.000-04:00

Can I have your pledge to do the same?

My sister gave me a large red reusable shopping bag for my birthday. I've also picked up four cloth bags from my local Wal-Mart. Sometimes I forget to put them back in my van and end up using the plastic ones at the registers, but now I'm going to make the effort of getting some more and putting the ones I have already back into my van to use each time I shop, wherever I shop.

The reusable shopping bags I've seen in both stores and online are made of strong, durable, lightweight and water resistant polypropylene. They are rated for over 30 pounds and can easily replace three to four of regular plastic grocery bags. I like the heavy duty one Tiffany got me, but they don't have an online store (yet, Tiff?). I believe they were called Earth Bags and come in different sizes and with different handle options.

Why should you use reusable shopping bags? Listen to this:

Experts estimate that 500 billion to 1 trillion plastic bags are consumed and discarded annually worldwide—more than a million per minute.

The facts:

Plastic bags aren’t biodegradable. They actually go through a process called photodegradation—breaking down into smaller and smaller toxic particles that contaminate both soil and water and end up entering the food chain where animals accidentally ingest them.

According to the Environmental Protection Agency, more than 380 billion plastic bags are used in the United States every year. Of those, approximately 100 billion are plastic shopping bags, which cost retailers about $4 billion annually.

According to the Food Marketing Institute (FMI), the average American makes 2.3 trips to the grocery store each week, walking away with five to 10 bags each time (not hard to do if you're feeding a family of five like I am!). That's between 600 and 1,200 bags per shopper each year. Or 40 billion grocery bags each year!

The production of plastic bags requires petroleum and often natural gas, both non-renewable resources that increase our dependency on foreign suppliers. Additionally, prospecting and drilling for these resources contributes to the destruction of fragile habitats and ecosystems around the world.

Hundreds of thousands of sea turtles, whales and other marine mammals die every year from eating discarded plastic bags mistaken for food. Turtles think the bags are jellyfish, their primary food source. Once swallowed, plastic bags choke animals or block their intestines. On land, many cows, goats and other animals suffer a similar fate to marine life when they accidentally ingest plastic bags while foraging for food.

Collection, hauling and disposal of plastic bag waste create an additional environmental impact. An estimated 8 billion pounds of plastic bags, wraps and sacks enter the waste stream every year in the US alone, putting an unnecessary burden on our diminishing landfill space and causing air pollution if incinerated.

Are you a visual learner? Then watch this.

Here's one of the Kings of the Mountain!

2008-05-12T07:59:00.000-04:00

Yes, it's Devin, my almost three year old! He enjoys co-Kingship of Mt. Laundry with one year old Bryce. This is about four loads of clean clothes on my couch. And yes, he is naked under that sleeper. I'm hoping to potty train him...just not on my clean laundry!

Right at this moment - 9:13 a.m., we're getting new siding!! Here is a before look of our house, taken some time last year:

Check back in a few days to see the new look!

After the first day of work, here is the result:

They say they'll get it done tomorrow!

It was raining yesterday, so I wasn't able to get a picture. The new siding is on! When we get the red shutters and a new door, I'll post a new pic! Please excuse the weeds. Our weed wacker isn't working but I better go pull those out by hand because Bryce's first birthday party is Saturday!

Hunter wants to pick and chose, Devin can go outside anytime, Bryce is walking!

2008-05-08T13:12:00.000-04:00

No blog this week. I had typed it all out just to have blogger.com lose it. I don't have the patience or the time to re-write it. I'm going to go back to writing it in Word first and then pasting it here.

My plan is always to keep my Updates short, but you know I never really do!

Until next week then. Hope you enjoy/ed the pictures!

Yo

Hunter's arguing and denying; Devin is full of energy; Is Bryce walking yet?

2008-04-20T23:23:00.000-04:00

Hello everyone.

Spring has sprung and it’s about time! The past few days have been gorgeous, but it rained last night and although it’s pretty cloudy out there now, it hasn’t rained yet.

A lot has been happening around here, but of course I did a lousy job remembering the more important and funny things. I count on my updates to remind me when I’m old and grey how it used to be and I’m not even keeping track of all the great things happening around here! I have a ton of pictures to share with you, so I’ll download them from my camera in a bit and that’ll help me remember. A side note here – I would have a ton of pictures for you, but I can’t get the pictures off my cell phone. I can see them in my cell phone, but when I plug the card into the computer, they are frustratingly missing!

One thing Hunter said this week that got us laughing was when we were at the playland in McDonald’s. He had asked us if we saw where Devin went inside the many tubes and areas that look like half bubbles. Tim responded something like that Devin had joined the majority and Hunter looked at him and said, ‘In English, please.’ LOL

Hunter brought home his report card on Friday. I haven’t entered the information yet on the Hunter in School page, but I’ll get to it eventually. Both today and yesterday Hunter did some practice questions for his 3rd Grade Achievement Tests. The reading one is tomorrow. He is a very good reader and I expect him to do well, but sometimes the questions asked are confusing to him, especially those that ask what someone else is feeling or why someone else will do whatever. The Ohio Department of Education has provided select questions in each area from the past three years of testing for students on their website. I had forgotten that and planned on reading a short story myself and then having Hunter read it and then asking him questions about it, but then it hit me that there was a website that did just that. So think of him tomorrow (Monday)!

Wednesday is his big math test. He didn’t do so well on his practice test, although it seems one question Hunter had the right answer marked, but the teacher marked it wrong. He said they didn’t go over it together, they just turned it in and there isn’t evidence of another answer being erased. I’m going to ask her about that .

Hunter had some friends over this weekend and they spent three straight hours outside. Devin was out there with them and even Tim was out there mowing the lawn and doing some other clean up work. Bryce was napping part of it and it was so nice to have the house to myself. I didn’t clean, I didn’t sew, I didn’t surf my message boards but I read a book! It didn’t last long enough, but it was great.

I’m mad at my hubby for cutting down a bush that is close to his grill instead of just trimming it back. I don’t know what it’s called, but it blooms yellow flowers in the spring. But not this spring!

Hunter has been a pain in my tush. If I ask him if he did something when we both know the answer is yes, he denies it and asks me if I have proof. I try to help him get coordinating outfits ready for school, but he doesn’t want my help and argues with me later that it’s OK to wear clothes that don’t match or when I comment on his shirt being backwards or inside out. He tells me that it’s fine, there’s nothing wrong with what he’s wearing, even that he likes it that way. I’m hoping now that his grandpa made a comment about Hunter’s shirt being inside out he’ll pay closer attention and it won’t happen again.

He is great with his brothers, but he doesn’t always understand when he needs to intervene. Bryce found one of Hunter’s small toys and choked on it a bit and Hunter was sitting right next to him and didn’t say anything (we have spoken about Bryce and small toys) and we were outside when Devin took off toward the road and Hunter just watched him go.

I jinxed myself. Devin had gone five nights of staying in his bed all night long, then I went and talked about it to a couple people, and now he’s back to waking and crying until we respond or wandering to one of the couches to be found there in the morning. He is an outdoor boy in either play or work. He’s getting his timing down while playing baseball and is remembering which way to run to first base! He’s a champ when jumping on our trampoline and I no longer have to spot him as he maneuvers up our small climbing wall to the slide.

We finally picked up some landscaping brick to finish the flower beds I began before I got pregnant with Devin. He helped me carry each brick from the tractor trailer to a temporary spot and helped move the rocks up into the trailer. He tried very hard to pick them up on his own, but he accepted help when offered. I’m switching out the circle of rocks around my trees with the brick and would like to make a rock garden around my wishing well. If you have any design ideas, please share them with me!

Knight is going to get back in shape with Devin around! I won’t be feeling my house shake anymore, we just go outside and I let them run around together or we go out to the pond with a bumper. Soon though I’ll just be able to open the back door and let them loose. Tim is going to install a fence that encloses the playground area and then some more with an extended corner for the dogs to do their business. Tim trained Knight to poo in tall grass, so that’ll work with him, but Kit doesn’t give a darn. I’m not really keen on having the dogs romp in the same area as my children’s playground, but it’s hard sometimes to go outside as often as Devin wants to with Bryce. It’ll be better when he starts walking, but for now he’s either on my hip or in the play pen.

No, Bryce isn’t walking yet, but he’s trying! He’s gone four steps on his own so far! Before we know it, before DEVIN knows it, Bryce will be chasing him down and tackling him! He’s still waking often during the night, just like Devin was.

Tim wants me to get Bryce a hair cut. I took a picture of his curls for you to see. I don’t want to cut them off! I want to put his hair in just one pony tail…oh, no. No! I’m not serious, but I would like to see how curly his hair gets. Hunter had curls, too. I’ll try to dig out a picture of him before his first hair cut and post it under the ‘Random picture of the boys’ I have at the bottom of my home page.

That’s it for now. I’ll post this tonight but won’t get to the pictures until tomorrow. Have a great week!

Yo

Nature is so COOL!

2008-04-12T08:47:00.000-04:00

I found this on another blog, who admitted to copying it from someone else, who probably did the same thing because it's just to amazing not to pass on.

A sliced carrot looks like the human eye The pupil, iris and radiating lines look just like the human eye…and YES science now shows that carrots greatly enhance blood flow to and function of the eyes.

A tomato has four chambers and is red. The heart is red and has four chambers. All of the research shows tomatoes are indeed pure heart and blood food.

Grapes hang in a cluster that has the shape of the heart. Each grape looks like a blood cell and all of the research today shows that grapes are also profound heart and blood vitalizing food.

A walnut looks like a little brain, a left and right hemisphere, upper cerebrums and lower cerebellums. Even the wrinkles or folds are on the nut just like the neo-cortex. We now know that walnuts help develop over 3 dozen neuron-transmitters for brain function.

Kidney beans actually heal and help maintain kidney function and yes, they look exactly like the human kidneys.

Celery, bok choy, rhubarb and more look just like bones. These foods specifically target bone strength. Bones are 23% sodium and these foods are 23% sodium. If you don’t have enough sodium in your diet the body pulls it from the bones, making them weak. These foods replenish the skeletal needs of the body.

Eggplant, avocadoes and pears target the health and function of the womb and cervix of the female - they look just like these organs. Today’s research shows that when a woman eats 1 avocado a week, it balances hormones, sheds unwanted birth weight and prevents cervical cancers. And how profound is this? .. It takes exactly 9 months to grow an avocado from blossom to ripened fruit. There are over 14,000 photolytic chemical constituents of nutrition in each one of these foods (modern science has only studied and named about 141 of them).

Figs are full of seeds and hang in twos when they grow. Figs increase the mobility of male sperm and increase the numbers of sperm well to overcome male sterility.

Sweet potatoes look like the pancreas and actually balance the glycemic index of diabetics.

Olives assist the health and function of the ovaries.

Grapefruits, oranges , and other citrus fruits look just like the mammary glands of the female and actually assist the health of the breasts and the movement of lymph in and out of the breasts.

Onions look like body cells. Today’s research shows that onions help clear waste materials from all of the body cells They even produce tears which wash the epithelial layers of the eyes.