ONE LOOOONG WEEK...CONTINUED

Last Thursday I made the third trip in a week to a certain medical center, but this time it wasn't for me. Wednesday night C started complaining of a sore throat, which wouldn't have been a huge deal if nana hadn't contracted strep a few days prior. So C missed school Thursday so we could head off to the medical center, again, since they have a walk-in clinic. Now normally I would take the boys to their pediatrician, and I called the office first thing Thursday morning. But they didn't have any openings until Monday. Monday! Freaking hell, the whole town must be sick. Obviously if C had strep I couldn't wait until Monday, so off to the medical center we went...

All of the medical center offices I was in Monday and Tuesday had toys in the waiting room. I knew it would be a long wait to be seen in the walk-in clinic, but I figured that office would also have toys, so I didn't bring anything with me. I'm sure you can guess where I'm going with this: not a single toy in sight in that waiting room. And the boys were not in any mood to sit nicely in a chair. They wanted to run around and play. They traded chairs every two seconds. They tickled each other. Then they tried biting each other's fingers on purpose. Finally a lady pointed out to me that there was a very small box of kids books behind a chair in a corner. The books kept them occupied, although they seemed to think they needed a new book every two seconds. And for some reason, IJ seemed to think that the guy sitting next to the box was the Keeper of the Books. The guy didn't seem to mind, even though he was reading his own book, and played along. So when IJ was done with a book, he would hand it to the guy, then the guy would rifle through the box and give him a new one. It was pretty cute, and I'm glad the guy was nice about it.

Forever and a day later, we were finally called in. The verdict: no strep throat. But the boys have been sick with colds for a while (seems like ever since C started preschool), so the doctor diagnosed sinusitis. So C and IJ are both on antibiotics (which will also take care of any strep germs that maybe weren't presenting themselves), so now hopefully they'll finally kick their stuffy noses. Cause the snot has been flying here.

On Friday we got our first significant snowfall, a couple of inches that have since melted. I think that usually by this time we should have a lot more snow, but that doesn't bother me any. I don't really enjoy the snow and cold. Particularly the cold. I was born in Arizona, in the nice hot desert. My father was in the Air Force and they closed the base where we lived, and he actually picked to be sent to the base up here when I was in first grade (the base here eventually closed and my father took early retirement). So it's my father's fault that I live in the land of snow and cold. But there are a lot of good things about living in the U.P. that cancel out the cold part, so Yoopers we will stay. :)

C is a different story, though. He has been asking me for weeks when it would snow and when winter would come. I do not know how I produced this snow loving child. He obviously gets that from his daddy. :) So when he looked out the window Friday morning he was thrilled. "We can make snowmen and snowballs and have a snowball fight and build an igloo!" I hated telling him that he couldn't go out and play in it yet, first of all since he was still sick, and second of all since I haven't been able to get out shopping and get him new boots, snowpants, and gloves (IJ is all set with hand-me-downs). So R brought both boys a snowball before he left for work, and told them to throw it at me. Which of course they did since they listen to everything daddy tells them. :) Then of course I took them downstairs to attack nana and get her all wet. Hehe, that was fun.

snow covered bushes

more of our snow covered bushes

Cheyenne and Sasha went crazy playing in the snow, running around and around our deck and leaping at each other. You would think they'd never seen snow before. (I took these through a foggy door window)

Sasha butt :)

weighed down power lines

Sunday C got to sing with his preschool class at the church service (C's school is at a church), but I will save that for a post on it's own since I have some video to share.

So now I'm finally caught up! :)

GRANDPARENT'S DAY

Happy Grandparent's Day to all you grandparents out there. Truthfully I didn't even remember it was Grandparent's Day until I looked at the calander today and it was listed. They don't seem to make as big a deal out of it as Mother's Day and Father's Day. So, since I didn't remember about it until today, the kids made nana and papa some nice handmade cards (and handmade gifts are always the best ones of course ;) .

Here's C's card. See the three little people on the front of the card? (Click the picture to enlarge it) He drew himself with nana and papa. Except this is the first time that I have ever seen him draw anything like that. Usually he just draws a bunch of scribbles. These people had heads and legs and arms that I could see. I'm pretty excited. I've been waiting for him to draw recognizeable things for soooooo long! On the inside of the card I helped him to spell out the words "Happy Grandparent's Day". It was his idea to write it on the inside; he actually started with the "H" and the "A" on his own before he asked me to help him. He's getting pretty good at the letters. C also wrote his name on the inside of his card.

Here's IJ's card for nana and papa. He did a really good job on the inside, using lots of different colors. The marks he made on the words on the cover of the card was him trying to write letters like C was. Soon, IJ, soon. :)

Coming soon: a post about the first day of preschool. There were tears, but it was good. :)

SASHA, SASHA, SASHA

Well, I was just a little annoyed with Sasha today since I found chew marks on another one of my shoes, so I thought I'd share a video of Sasha being funny. Because she was not very funny today.

Anyways, nana was brushing her fur, but when she tried to brush her belly Sasha would kick her back legs like crazy. I got a kick out of it. (hehehe ;)

PUPPIES AND POOLS

I've had just a lovely day today. Sasha (our black lab puppy) has been really driving me insane lately. Today was really bad though. She not only chewed one of my new sandals in half, but she totally mutilated one of the kids' library books. Then she stuck her face in the diaper bag that was on the floor and got out IJ's old binkie, and then chewed the nipple part off and chewed in half the pacifier attatcher (that clips it to the baby's clothes). She had to dig down all the way to the bottom of the bag to get it. Now, IJ doesn't use a binkie anymore of course, but we do plan to have one more child. I would have liked to use the attatcher again. :( And I get to visit the library on Monday with checkbook in hand. Lovely. What happened to my cute little puppy that was so calm and I had to carry up and down the stairs because she was scared to do it? Who would sleep in a little warm lump in my lap? Now it's "NO!" every two minutes. Yesterday she was running around full force outside and slammed right into IJ, sending him flying onto the ground where he scraped up his leg. Aaaaarrrrrrgh!! :( All is good now though, since I'm watching the nascar race at Daytona. Superspeedways are awesome. :)

Anyways, Sasha's not really what I was gonna write about today. A couple of days ago, R brought home a ten foot pool for the boys. He got it at Menards where he works, and because of his discount and that it was on sale, he got it for $40 when it was normally $60. Pretty nifty. :) C and IJ were pretty excited about it, and were ready to play in the pool before it was even filled up all the way.

A couple of days later when the pool water had warmed up some, we finally let the boys get in and play. It was still pretty cold, so they didn't last very long, but they didn't want to wait any longer.

Yesterday, the pool was nice and warm (it was sunny and 80 outside), so nana and papa got in with the boys. I was not planning on getting in, and was standing fully clothed next to the pool watching. Somehow I ended up getting soaked, because someone had to throw water at me (I do believe I have nana to thank for that). Of course, I had to retaliate, so I jumped right in and me and nana went at it. We both ended up pretty soaked. :) Then I tried to jump on the snow tube we were using as a boat for the boys. I landed on the tube, but the force sent me right over the edge and onto the ground! Nana and papa just stood there and watched it happen, laughing. They will pay. :) It was funny, at one point when all of us adults were having a ball in the pool, the boys had gotten out and were sitting in the van eating some cookies they had found. Hmm, I wonder who we bought this pool for? ;)

Here's a little clip of the boys splashing in the icy pool water on the first day:

Also, here's the flickr set with all our new pool pics. :)

FATHER'S DAY A LITTLE EARLY

Tuesday at playgroup C and IJ made daddy and papa Father's Day presents. They made can insulaters with puffy sports stickers, letters and numbers. C put just about every number he could find on daddy's. He threw a huge tantrum though (yippee, a tantrum at playgroup:( ) because he wanted to put the letters for daddy's name on his way, while mommy was trying to show him how to make the word. After he calmed down, we got those letters on there. :)

presents for daddy: IJ's is the blue one, C's the red one

the back of daddy's; see all the numbers on C's?

presents for papa: C's on the left, IJ's on the right

the back of papa's

R and papa got their presents on tuesday instead of waiting until Sunday because Sunday we'll be on vacation! Woo hoo! :) Father's Day Sunday we'll be downstate in Brooklyn, MI at the nascar race! This is the first race that R and I have ever been to, and the first for the boys, too. Auntie's going too. That's going to be R's big Father's Day present. :) We leave early Friday morning, so if you don't hear from me, you'll know where I'll be. :)

NEED A YES?

Nana was having a talk with C about his "no" attitude after he threw a tantrum (C has been very grumpy the past few days, saying no to everything he's asked to do, whining and complaining, just being a bad little boy). They got on the topic of needing to say "yes" and not "no" when he's asked to do something. C figured out his own way of getting "yeses" to come out of his mouth. So if you need a yes to come out of your mouth sometime, here's how to get one, according to C:

"I open my head, I put my brain out, I put the yes in, I put my brain back in, and I put my head back on. Then a hundred yeses will come out of my mouth!!"

YARD SALE EXTRAVAGANZA

Hoo boy, do I love a good yard sale. Sure, you have to pick through a lot of junk to find the good stuff, but when you do it's always cheap. I love finding good stuff for not a lot of money. Which is why I had been looking forward to Saturday for a while. Saturday was our area's annual yard sale day, where there are tons of sales at the same time. And they make a whole huge deal of it, with lots of places selling refreshments and food, and a sale headquarters with maps and the addresses of all the sales including what they were selling. Saturday morning nana and I packed up the boys and headed off to find some bargains.

And boy did we ever. We spent hardly any money and brought home a crapload of stuff. The deal of the day went to the roller skates for IJ that we found--for 5 cents. Yes, you read that right. 5 cents. I had been hoping to find a pair of skates for IJ because he has been showing interest when C is skating. They are the exact same kind as C's, the Fisher-Price adjustable ones. I got C's last year at the yard sales for $5(which I thought was a great deal), so I figured that the people meant dollars and accidentally wrote cents. I checked the skates out before I bought them and everything worked fine. I bring them up to the lady--5 cents. I just couldn't believe it. I still can't believe it! 5 cents!! :D

We also met some really nice people along the way. At one sale I found these cute Dr. Pepper baby bottles (R pretty much only drinks Dr. Pepper). I was just going to buy one since IJ is getting close to being off bottles (but we do want to have another child). I went up to pay for the bottle and was telling the lady about R's Dr. Pepper obsession, when she told me just to go ahead and take them all (there were four). I thought that was pretty nice. Then at another sale, IJ found this Buzz Lightyear action figure that he really liked. The only problem was that there was only one, and IJ didn't want to share with C. C started getting mad, and we tried to get him to pick out another toy but he wouldn't have it; he wanted Buzz Lightyear too. All of a sudden the lady running this sale asked, "Are you going to buy that Buzz Lightyear?" I answered yes, and then out of thin air this lady produced a HUGE talking Buzz Lightyear action figure and said we could have them both for the price of one. This lady saved the day! :) Nana and I also met a 7 months pregnant woman having her first child, and I think we scared her with IJ's 11 lb 2 oz birth story. :) She exclaimed to her husband: "Can you believe this woman birthed that baby?!"

The only dissapointment of the day was missing out on buying two little boys bikes complete with training wheels because they had already been sold. This was at the pregnant woman's place (I think they were selling their nephew's old stuff). What made it even worse, though, was that this lady actually just lives a street over from me, but I didn't recognize the street name until I looked at where it was on the map. As a result, that was one of the last sales we went to, when we could have gone there first and probably would have gotten those bikes. Oh well, you can't win them all I guess. :)

Some of our yard sale finds (including the 5 cent roller skates!)

Doctor scrubs! :)

THE THINGS NANA TEACHES THAT BOY, 2

Nana recently taught C a song that goes like this (nana, let me know if I got all these words right):

How dry I am

How wet I'll be

If I don't find

The bathroom key

It's too late now

It's on the floor

My playtex pants

Won't hold no more.

C can sing it all by himself, word for word, and then they both giggle and giggle. Yep, I gotta go kick nana's butt. :)

And by the way, tomorrow is C's preschool screening. I'm freaking out already... :) I'll let you all know how it goes...

THE THINGS NANA TEACHES THAT BOY...part 1 :)

NO MORE SUPER IJ...

…because I had to make a trip to the emergency room Saturday night. My crazy little boy decided to climb up on the arm of nana’s bench and then jump down into the armchair next to it. Only he didn’t land well and came up screaming and holding up his left arm. I held him for a while thinking that maybe he just bumped it, but when I tried to get him to use the arm, he would scream every time I touched it. So nana and I threw on some shoes to take IJ to the hospital. Of course he had to make his flying leap right before bedtime, and nana and I weren’t really thinking about our attire, so we ended up going right in our styling high-water leg pajamas. And nana wasn’t wearing a bra. We looked great. ;)

We were in the emergency room FOREVER. I don’t know what it is about our hospital, but they are so slow. Every time I’ve been there it’s always for hours. When IJ had his nursemaid’s elbow in Green Bay, we were in and out of the ER in about 45 minutes. And it was the exact same stuff that we did Saturday night: register, doctor consultation, x-rays, doctor’s findings, at-home instructions. Except Saturday night we were in the ER for two and a half hours. And it was well past IJ’s bedtime, and he was in pain. And that ER was not that busy! I’m still really annoyed about it. They would take so long in between the times they came into the room that IJ would fall asleep, but as soon as he fell asleep that’s when someone would come in and want to do this or that to him again. IJ did a lot of screaming at the top of his lungs. :(

Their findings weren’t that great either. The doctor thought it might be nursemaid’s elbow again, so he did the arm manipulation, and said he thought he felt a pop. He wasn’t sure, so he ordered x-rays. We waited a long time for the results of the x-rays. But before anyone even told us the results and nurse guy came in and started putting a sling on IJ’s arm, and showing us how to do it and all this and that. Um, great, but what’s wrong with his arm? So he says “Hold on, I’ll get your at home instructions.” Okay. Then the doctor comes back in. He says that it might be a strain and that he didn’t see anything on the x-ray, but that he could possibly still have a fracture, and that the radiologists would look at the x-rays the next day. He told us to sling IJ’s arm for a couple of days and give him Tylenol, but that if he wasn’t using his arm on Monday to make an appointment with our doctor. Uh huh. That was a really definitive answer.

Well, I never heard anything from those radiologists, but IJ is using his arm again. We kept it in the sling Sunday and Monday (well except for a couple of hours Sunday night, and then Sasha managed to chew a big hole in it), and took it off of him last night. At first he didn’t want to put weight on the arm, but now he’s using it a bunch and doesn’t seem to be in any pain. So I’m sure he probably doesn’t have a fracture. But I still made him a doctor’s appointment for tomorrow; I just want to be sure his arm is healing the way it is supposed to and there’s not anything else hidden going on.

But one thing is for sure: no more super IJ jumping!!

*UPDATE* I took IJ to the doctor today and she said that he's moving his arm in all the ways he is supposed to, and he's not in any pain. So whatever it was, it seems to be healed now. He's fine! :)