Catching up on late summer....

Wow! It haws been over a month. I keep thinking about updating this 'journal' of sorts and then, well, I get busy. It has been pushed off and pushed off and I am at the point of almost abandoning the thing just because it'll be too much of a pain in the keester to get caught up.

So, forgive me if I miss a bunch of the month. I'll start with today and see how much I can remember.

Today is, well, GREAT now. We had one huge enormous scare however. We went to stake conference and actually made it on time. That's huge accomplishment number one for the day. The kids were sitting there quite nicely. T started getting ready for his church nap as soon as we were seated. This is classic T. If it's not interesting enough for him, he zonks out. I used to let him lie down on my lap. Then, I realized I was pretty much condoning his behavior. So now, if he wants to use me as a pillow he gets my super squishy arm. That just wasn't cutting it today and he just leaned forward and pretty much used his own lap as his pillow. I kept thinking, "I don't know how this kid can fall asleep like that."

So conference was going fine. We had no discipline problems. There was quite a bit of speaking from the pulpit on the subject of adversity and how to handle it. I found myself thinking, "I know dang well I can handle anything." It sounds a little self righteous. Experience has shown me, however, that we really do manage to handle what is thrown in front of us.

Then there was an intermediary hymn. I guess it was loud enough by the end to wake T up. He seemed really disoriented and kept crying out that he was in pain. Luckily, we were by a door and so I grabbed him and took him out. He was still really out of it. But I attributed it to him just waking up. T is our kid who sleepwalks all the time and will be completely zonked out with wide open eyes. He looked kind of pasty so I felt his forehead and asked if he was going to throw up. He said he might and so I shipped him into the bathroom and went back to tell DH to check on him. Not a minute late DH comes back with T over his shoulder. He motions for me to get his keys and then says to look at his lips. They are on the purple side. T hasn't been breathing so well. No wonder he was disoriented. DH tells me he's taking him straight to the hospital. Shaking, I hand him the keys and then go to sit with the kids. M gets scared and starts to tear up and I am unable to focus. After several minutes of this I take the kids and start the walk home. I just wanted to be by a phone so I could find out how my kiddo was. You see, after T's horrible asthma attack that left him in the hospital for 4 days, I am a little edgy. It doesn't help that DH's cousin also died from an attack. The genes are just not hot for this.

Fortunately, by the time DH got to the hospital, color was returning to T and he was more alert. We are thinking that he constricted his airways when he was napping all hunched over. He's taking it easy for the rest of the day. And I'm remembering that although I can handle what is placed before me, well, I really don't want to make it any harder than it is.

In the end, T is fine and the kids and I got a nice walk home in beautiful weather.

SCHOOL

The kids are thrilled to be back in school. M really likes her teacher. She seems nice enough. She has all sorts of buddies in her class and I love that. This is the first year her best friend has been in her class and so far so good. She starts school orchestra next week. That could prove to be interesting since they are going to be learning from T's sight reading book. She still wants to do it even though it will be way to easy.

T is happy with his teacher. We walked in to meet her and she tells us how she has heard all about him and that she's sorry his real name, instead of his nickname, is on his desk. He hasn't been too thrilled about more homework. He did have a nice Utah map assignment this past week. He made Utah out of a giant brownie. Enormous gum drops made up the major mountains. By the time I got there to see it in the afternoon, he had turned many of the mountains into plateaus.

D is thrilled to be in his class. We have never had his teacher, but so far she seems like a good match. He is loving multiplication. We had a few card pulling issues for chit chatting but that isn't the end of the world. He has friends in his class and seems to be adjusting quite well. He and T are both having a bit of a had time seeing their play time disappear. I told them that it isn't just that they are busy. Their friends are often busy now too and not home to play. It's hard growing up!

S's teacher is the perfect teacher for her. She's happy to have one of her favorite friends from K in her class. We switched her meds because the Kapvay turned out to not be on our insurance :( and we thought maybe just clonidine would do the trick. Whether it was connected or not, she ended up with hives hives and more hives. They would show up one place to later pop up in another. I just didn't think it was the clonidine because clonidine is the major ingredient in Kapvay. Well, after a psych visit this week and some more Kapvay samples we are hiveless. I guess we'll be forking over the dinero once the samples are gone. S seems to be liking school. She loves having lunch at school. It's the highlight of each day.

C started her little joyschoolish preschool this past week. She loved putting on a backpack for the adventure. It would help if I could remember where I stashed her supplies. I just know they are in a safe place... but where that is I do not know. Speaking of C, she has been into cutting lately. She gave herself some very long bangs. Thankfully, she didn't cut them to her head.

Since school has started it seems like I have been at the school just about every day. Both D and T have had appliance checkups (on different days of course). I took S to the doctor to make sure her hives were nothing contagious. T got glass in his foot and had take him to school late one day after taking him to the doc's to have it flushed out. I worked the vision screening one morning. One day I had a third grade meeting about homework. That's six visits to school and they've only been in school for nine days.

What else has happened? M has been practicing like crazy. She has been working the hard parts of the Bach Double. Then her teacher gave her Grieg's 'In the Hall of the Mountain King', Brahms' 'Hungarian Dance', and Chopin's 'Funeral March'. I was really excited for her to play the Grieg piece. I always thought it was really fun to play. She's getting to the point where she plays 'real' music. T added the Chopin as well. The bad news is that her teacher is expecting her to put in a good hour and a half a day practicing and well, M is 11 and even though she did it all summer, I am not expecting that of her now. She's a busy little girl who needs to get some sleep in if she is ever going to get around to growing. Of course I want her to play well. She likes playing well. There is only so much sacrifice that can be made. She's been getting up to practice by about 6:15am. Speaking of music, I have decided to practice the piano more. I got this little bug under my skin to play Beethoven's 'Moonlight Sonata'. I have no clue why that piece was the one, but it was. I mentioned it to someone and voila that person had the music. Awesome. The book that it came in has a gazillion other fabulous pieces. So I have been practicing away. I'll never be a fabulous player because I taught myself to play. Still, it's really relaxing to just sit down and work on things. Anyway, maybe I'll become a decent player eventually. Of course, the problem is that our piano sounds like an old guitar and to have it redone would be a couple of thousand dollars. Bummer. But for now, I will just keep playing it.

T had a surprise from his swim team. He got moved up not just one team, but two. I was really surprised. There are older kids on this level (who are much better swimmers) who swim on high school teams. His practices have been made longer. That's a bummer. They are 1 1/2 hour until November and then 1 hour 45 min. As long as he still loves it. If he stops loving it then almost 2 hours a day will be too much. I was bummed to see that the state meet conflicts with Joshua's birthday. DH said something about how we knew eventually this would happen. It's about choosing between the living and the dead. Then, this week I found out that the first day of the meet is the mile and there's no way T will be doing that one. So maybe we'll be flying home early.

What else? I'm sure there is plenty more I am missing. Oh, I am on day 73 of no wheat. I've almost broken it a few times, but then decided I'm on too good of a roll. Maybe I'm done with the stuff. This month I decided to try tossing dairy as well. So I'm pretty much trying to eat no added sugars, no wheat, super limited corn or potatoes, and no dairy. And it's still not really working. I'm still remaining a chunky monkey. The good news is that when I did no sugars and wheat over a year ago I had great dental visits. Then, I started eating wheat and sugar but still flossed 2-3 times a day. My teeth were all icky at the next appointment. I kind of was frustrated with flossing after the last time. I mean, really, it didn't work anyway. I went in this time and they said there was almost nothing to clean. Hmm... I went form flossing 15-20 times a week to 4-5 times a week and my teeth got MUCH better. So even if I stay a chunky monkey, I'll be a chunky monkey with my teeth.

I started a ballet class. That has been so much fun. One day we had a sub and she said something to another lady and me to think someone was pushing us from behind. So, for some reason I decided to really jump. We're talking a big giant huge leap. I jump up in the air, get something closer to the splits than I have done in almost 2 decades and then realize, "Crap, I have to come down from here and land on ONE leg." It was totally a slow motion thing. I landed and ended up falling down. But boy did it feel good to soar! Of course the landing brought me back to the reality that I am old. Bummer. It stinks to get old sometimes.

And now we might just be caught up here. I need to get to my picture blog and catch things up there. I'm so far behind.