Nothing Is Worth More Than This Day

New Blog Address

2011-12-20T22:17:00.000-06:00

I've decided to move my blog to a new address. You can now read the adventures of the Villines family on my new blog, "Dancing in the Minefields" at www.dancingintheminefields.com

Nola’s 1st Haircut

2011-09-06T21:50:00.001-05:00

Nola’s hair has been driving me crazy lately. The front got too long and the back was about 1000 different lengths. I finally decided it was time for her first haircut. Here’s the before:

There’s a new place in Fayetteville called Pigtails & Crewcuts.

It’s the only kids’ salon in the area, so I thought I’d give it a try since this is a special occasion. We got there and there was a 30 minute wait. We spent a little time outside enjoying the wonderfully cool temperatures. After a while, we went back inside and the kids played with the train table. Caleb spent a little time playing Angry Birds on my phone too. Rudy joined us between his staff meeting and band practice.

When it was finally Nola’s turn, she chose the police car chair. She didn’t like the cape, but she was easily distracted by some animal crackers. The stylist did a great job and evened her hair out really well.

I was pleased with the outcome:

While we were there, Caleb got a little updated ‘do as well. He chose the airplane chair and enjoyed watching 2 boys play a video game while he got his haircut.

After the haircuts, we walked over to Lenny’s Subs for dinner, then came home for a walk. I was so glad Nola did so well for her first haircut!

HUGE milestone!

2011-09-02T20:04:00.001-05:00

This morning, right after Rudy left for school, Nola went to the door and said,

“Bye-bye, DaDa”

I almost passed out from sheer excitement! She had never put 2 words together before. Big stuff, people…big stuff.

On a related note, she imitated the word “fumble” one afternoon this week when the boys were playing backyard football. Now, we think she’s calling footballs “fumbles”. She says, “fuh-buh”, which could be football or fumble, but she says it with the same intonation that Rudy used when he yelled, “fumble” out in the backyard.

Her new teachers are reporting to us everyday that they just love having her in class. They tell us that she is really funny. She dances and loves music time. She no longer cries when I drop her off in the mornings. She really seems happy there, which – of course – makes me happy.

As far as being funny… the new joke is for us (Rudy, especially) to ask her, “Can I have a kiss?” She says, “No!” and turns her head away. We respond by making a big deal (oh, man! come on!) and she laughs and laughs like it’s the funniest thing ever!

I can’t imagine life without my girl. She’s wearing us out with her pre-2 tantrums, but we love her more than life itself. She makes up for the fits with her kisses, hugs and grins.

Filling Buckets

2011-09-02T19:36:00.001-05:00

We had a good 3rd week of school. Everyone stayed well! We were excited because Rudy got an extra night at home on Tuesday since he didn’t have band practice. Wednesday night was the first night of Wednesday Night Live. Caleb started going to the K-2 Buzz class and I started a women’s study called The Frazzled Female. Appropriate, right?

The week ended with a wonderfully happy surprise! Caleb was chosen by his teacher as his class bucket-filler for the month of August!!! Our school is doing an initiative this year focusing on positive behaviors. We are basing it on the book, How Full Is Your Bucket? The book explains to kids that when our “bucket” is full, we are happy; when our bucket is empty, we are sad. The book teaches kids to fill others’ buckets by doing nice things and using nice words. It also teaches kids to avoid dipping in others’ buckets by doing actions that hurt others.

The kids (and adults) get recognized for positive behaviors. Last week, Caleb got a “bucket note” from Mrs. Becky in the office for bringing in a lunchbox that was left on the playground. Then, earlier this week, he got a note for picking up trash on the playground without being asked. Finally, his teacher gave him a note for helping in the classroom. He was SO excited because his playground note was read on the morning “mouncements” (announcements). All of his notes are displayed in the hallway.

So, this afternoon, I opened his school folder and found a letter from Mrs. Christian saying that Caleb had been chosen as the bucket-filler of the month from his classroom. I got tears in my eyes when I read these words:

“We are proud to announce that your child has been chosen as the classroom bucket filler for this month because they had more bucket filling actions than any other student in their class. We want to recognize their actions by taking their picture and posting it on our website as well as submitting their picture to the paper to possibly be published in an upcoming feature.”

My bucket is overflowing! I am so proud of my awesome little boy who chooses to make good choices at school. He shows God’s love to other people with the choices that he makes more often than not. He’s growing up and showing responsibility. I could not be prouder of him if he won a Nobel Prize.

Really? Already?

2011-08-28T22:34:00.001-05:00

Last week was great at work. My intern started on Monday and I really like her. I think she’s going to be great. My scheduling wasn’t as complicated as it has been in the past and there were only a couple of minor shifts that needed to be made. Things were really rocking along. I took off Wednesday for Nola’s appointment, which I hated to do in the 2nd week of school, but it was a matter of priorities. Thursday was good, but I was really tired. I felt run-down all day, but chalked it up to lots of interrupted sleep with the kids both having nighttime coughs. I got a lot done at work, then went to Weight Watchers and came home. By the time I got home, I was ready to just crawl in the bed. I ate dinner, then sat outside watching Rudy play with the kids for a little bit. I started feeling nauseous so I came inside because I thought it was from the heat. Rudy took the kids to the park so they could burn off some energy and I could have some quiet time. I fell asleep in the chair. Before the night was over, I was SICK. I managed to get a stomach virus that knocked me out for 2 days. I had to call in sick to work on Friday. We had planned to go to Frisco Festival and have dinner with Nana, but that didn’t happen either. (The boys did go Saturday night, though.)

It’s now Sunday night and I haven’t left the house since Thursday evening. Rudy has gotten a milder case of the virus and has been in bed all day today while I’ve fought off a headache and fatigue just enough to take care of the kids and do a couple of loads of laundry. Nola had a mild case too, with a few gross diapers, but no throwing up. Caleb has been the superstar of our group (KNOCK ON WOOD) and has been so incredibly patient and well-behaved. He was so worried about me on Thursday night when I got sick. It was very sweet. We’re all planning to go back to school tomorrow…back into the germ pool. UGH! I can’t believe we’ve started this junk already! I was determined this was going to be a better year for us with illnesses. We aren’t off to a very good start!

The Strong Not-So-Silent Type

2011-08-28T22:19:00.001-05:00

Thanks to the wonder of the internet and its networking, I have been blessed to be in a circle of parents who are weathering the ups and downs of raising kids together. Many of these parents are women who I know from various points in my life. Some of them I haven’t seen in over 20 years, but the sounding board and advice seeking nature of Facebook allows us to help each other even when we sometimes don’t know there’s someone out there who can help us. I truly believe that God uses our technological developments to intersect our lives when they need to be intersected. Such an intersection happened to me in the past couple of months that has been a true blessing.

I’ve posted on this blog a couple of times about my concern regarding Nola’s slow speech development. I even talked about her evaluation this summer. We had just finished the evaluation and I was pretty sure that therapy was the next step on our journey when one of my sorority sisters read my evaluation post and contacted me to tell me that she might have someone who could give me some advice. Her mom works on a multidisciplinary team that evaluates kids from birth to three. Emily said that she had mentioned our situation to her mom and her co-workers at a dinner party and they offered to see her. I was absolutely blown away by her thoughtfulness to bring up our situation and by their willingness to help. At the time, I thought we were on a pretty straight path, so I told Emily that I wanted to give therapy a shot for a little while and see what happened, but that if we didn’t see expected progress pretty quickly that I would get back with her. As things turned out, we didn’t end up qualifying for therapy outright and I made the decision to wait.

One night at dinner, I did a little evaluating of my own and realized that Nola doesn’t make some of the vowel sounds that she should. My SLP intuition combined with my maternal instinct just kept nagging at me. I completely and totally trusted the evaluation results that I got at Imagine. The SLP who evaluated her was great and I didn’t doubt her findings at all. But…I had the opportunity to have Nola seen by someone who truly specializes in the 0-3 population and could tell me if she needed to be assessed in other areas to encourage her speech development. I mentioned it to Rudy and we agreed that I needed to contact Emily. I did and she put me in contact with her mom. (I’m not giving names or specifics because these kind and wonderful women did this service for me out of the generosity of their hearts and did not charge me anything to do it. As much as I’d like to shout my appreciation from the rooftops, I certainly don’t want to get them in any kind of trouble.)

When I was on the phone with her, she asked me a lot of questions and I gave her a brief run-down of Nola’s situation and history with her ears, etc. She told me that she and the SLP on the team were going to be in Northwest Arkansas on Wednesday (8/24) and that they would visit with me and meet Nola that morning. I didn’t even hesitate. I took a half day off work and made plans to be there. It turned out that Emily’s mom didn’t get to come due to change of circumstance, but the SLP did come and we spent almost an hour with her.

Of course, Nola clammed up when we got in the room with a stranger and didn’t do much talking. Fortunately, I had thought to shoot a little video that morning while we were eating breakfast so that the SLP would be able to see her real communication skills. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a whole lot to that either because she was so focused on eating her grapes. But – she did talk a little bit and because I’m a pretty reliable and informed reporter, we were able to work through it.

The conclusion was exactly what I hoped for. More than likely, Nola’s chronic ear troubles are at the root of the speech delay, which is pretty minor. She has lots of word approximations – just not a lot of sounds in them. If we can keep her ears dry this year (wouldn’t THAT be a miracle in itself?), she’ll likely be able to catch up. (She does have a cough/cold (lingering now for over 2 weeks!), but so far no ear drainage.) Our goal is to have her caught up within 6 months – by the time she’s 2. If not, I’m supposed to contact the SLP again.

Here’s the funny part: I’m supposed to stop telling her to “say” things. How hard is that for an SLP??? I’m supposed to continue to provide a language-rich environment (which we do naturally), but not try to make her talk. I am supposed to accept her approximations and attempts, build on them and respond appropriately (which I do naturally). I just can’t use the word, “say” (as in, “say more” or “say please” or “say up”). The hardest part is stopping myself from trying to get her to say things that she’s said before that I thought were cute or surprisingly well-articulated (as in, “say hey you guys”).

Why can’t I try to get her to say stuff? Well…it seems that Nola is a bit of strong-willed girl. She’s pretty much only going to say what she wants to say and doesn’t really care if it impresses me that she says what I want her to say. What we’ve noticed in the last couple of weeks is that if she does something new and we make a big deal out of it, she usually gets mad. (For instance, her daycare teacher told her she was “shakin’ it” and Nola stopped dancing, through herself on the ground and scowled/glared at the teacher. Attitude much???) So, if we hear her say something cute like “hey you guys” or “oh, man” or “lemonade” and then ask her to repeat it, she might not ever say it again…just because we want her to. For just that reason, she’s not a very good candidate for therapy at this point. I see a LOT of reverse psychology in our future.

Since the evaluation on Wednesday, I’ve heard lots and lots of words. Just by accepting her approximations, I think she feels more free to try to talk. She’s imitating more words and then sometimes using them again. The greatest thing I’ve seen lately is that she’s starting to try to sing. This morning, she was trying to sing itsy-bitsy spider. I couldn’t tell what she was saying or pick up the tune, but I knew she was singing and I figured it out by the hand motions. It was awesome. She also does “no more monkeys jumping on the bed” complete with shaking her finger. Her dancing has gotten hilarious, though we (of course) would never mention it to her! She shakes those hips back and forth like nobody’s business!

So, my mind is at ease. We’ll do what we know will help her. We’ll continue on our path and watch those ears very closely. I’ll pray that she catches up quickly, but know that we have a plan if she doesn’t and I’ll trust that God has a plan bigger than mine for this little pigtailed cutie:

One Week Down

2011-08-20T15:45:00.001-05:00

Thanks so much to everyone who offered words of encouragement after Caleb’s rough day last week. Just so you all know – I am not worried about him one iota. He will be just fine. It’s just a rough transition. We are learning a new process and new roles and that’s to be expected. It will be fun to look back at that post when he graduates and smile about his first week of kindergarten.

Thursday and Friday were great. I had kindergarten recess duty on Thursday and that was the only time I saw Caleb during the day. When I went into the cafeteria to get the K’s, I saw that Caleb was drinking chocolate milk. I had sent his lunch in his lunchbox and knew he didn’t have any money in his account, so I asked him how he got milk. He said, “I asked for it.” Sure enough, he had asked one of the cafeteria staff for some milk and they gave it to him…for 50 cents. After recess, I went straight to my computer and put some money in his lunch account. That afternoon, I told him that when he takes his lunch, he only gets what’s in his lunchbox. I never thought about the fact that he wouldn’t know that. He had never had to take a lunch before. He told me that he drank all of his Capri Sun and was still thirsty. That afternoon, we bought a new water bottle for him to take to school, so that he can get water if he drinks all of his Capri Sun. When I saw him after school, he was proud to tell me that he stayed on green all day. We left right after school to buy some new inserts for his shoes, that water bottle that I mentioned and a quick stop by the bank.

Friday was show & tell day & Caleb was so excited! He took his Junior Razorback lanyard and pass that had come in the mail on Thursday. He couldn’t wait to tell his class that his LaLa and Pops had gotten him a membership to Junior Razorbacks and that he will get to go on the field before a Razorback game. He was also excited because he was going to get a tray in the cafeteria. Pizza Friday! I went in the cafeteria to say hi and found that all he had was chocolate milk, his water bottle and one piece of pizza. He said he didn’t like the other stuff they had (green beans, cucumber slices and nectarines). I told him that *just this one time* I would go get him something from my lunchbox so he wouldn’t be starving in the afternoon. I grabbed some applesauce and a rice krispie treat (his usual afternoon snack) and took it to him. I sat with him while he ate. He said, “Mama, I have to tell you something in your ear.” I bent over and he whispered, “That girl sometimes talks in Spanish.” I smiled big and told him that was pretty cool.

After school, Jan spent the night at our house. We had delicious grilled chicken and then went out for frozen yogurt and a drive. As I write this – Nola is napping and the rest of the family is bowling.

With that, we have one week of school behind us. Just over 170 days to go…

Caleb and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day

2011-08-17T20:19:00.001-05:00

Yesterday after school Caleb said his 2nd day of school was great and that he “ended up” on green, but he almost got a yellow card for not cleaning up when he was supposed to. We had a little chat last night about the fact that if he gets in trouble at school, he is automatically in trouble at home. He now knows our expectations - yellow isn't okay, but it isn't the end of the world - red and orange are unacceptable. We use a color system at home as well and if he gets yellow at school, he gets yellow at home. Same goes for red. We have consequences attached to the colors and he knows what they are. He assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem. He even went so far as to say that he “definitely” doesn’t want to ever be on red or orange!

In his classroom, green is for good choices, yellow is for a warning, red is for bad choices and orange is when you have to go to the principal’s office.

I posted about it on Facebook last night and his teacher replied that he was “far away from yellow.” She said that some kids at his table had thrown trash on the floor and she told them that it was against the rules. I told her that I didn’t really think she would have trouble with Caleb because he’s such a pleaser.

He proved me wrong.

I ate lunch with him today because my schedule allowed it. I’ll only do that occasionally, but it was nice to have the option. We were sitting at the table eating and I noticed that he was really quiet. He finally looked up at me with big tears in his eyes and said, “I got yellow today.” I tried to keep my cool and asked him why. He explained (with a little coaxing) that he had gotten in trouble for throwing rocks on the playground. We talked about why that was a bad choice and he admitted that he knew it was wrong, but said that someone else was doing it too. Of course, that launched the explanation of why we don’t do something just because someone else does.

After lunch, I e-mailed his teacher and told her that he had fessed up. She said that he and his friend were “showering” the other kids with rocks (pea gravel) to keep them from going into a certain area of the playground. My jaw must’ve fallen to the ground when I read that. She told me not to worry because it’s all new and he’s trying to figure it out. Yeah…but he knows better than to throw rocks. It’s not like it was okay to throw them at daycare and all of a sudden it’s okay at kindergarten. I assured her that I would follow up on it at home and he would have consequences. I also told her that I forgot to mention that he’s not only a pleaser, but he’s also a follower (much to my dismay).

So, Caleb was moved to yellow at home and grounded from all electronics (TV, Wii, etc). Rudy told him that he was going to take him swimming, but he just couldn’t since he had made a bad choice at school. He has now apologized about 25 times and has promised repeatedly that he won’t ever throw rocks again and he’ll try very hard to stay on green.

To top it all off, he smacked his head on the metal tray of the whiteboard in the classroom this afternoon and had to go get an ice pack from the nurse. He has a bruise on his forehead.

Yesterday afternoon after school, we were in my room and I had to leave for just a minute. I told him to stay in the room and I’d be right back. When I got back, he wasn’t there. Turned out he went to the bathroom, but didn't know where the one nearest my room was, so he went to the one outside of the cafeteria. I spent almost 5 minutes in a near panic searching for him. I could just imagine him going out to the playground without an adult because it's so tempting to him. We've now had a talk about how it's not okay to leave my room without telling me. Next week, he’ll start going to after school care on Mondays and Wednesdays. I have meetings after school every Monday and I’ll be working in my room on Wednesdays until it’s time to go to Bible study at church.

Learning the rules of “big school” has been tough on the little man the last few days. He’ll get there and he’ll be just fine, but he’s really struggling. He LOVES school and I even overheard him playing school in my room this afternoon, but the rules of the game have changed. The expectations have increased. At the end of every day he is exhausted and hungry. I wonder if it would be easier for him if he wasn’t in my building, but I don’t think it would be. I just think I might not realize how tough the transition has been for him.

And another thing…

I made it to day 3 of kindergarten before I got choked up. No tears, just a lump in my throat. We were pulling into the parking lot this morning and Caleb said, “I think I can go to my room by myself.” When we got in the door, he looked at me and said, “You stay here. I can go to class by myself.” Whew. I didn’t fight it, just let him go. I did check to make sure he got there, though.

Look Out, Kindergarten!

2011-08-15T22:47:00.001-05:00

Last Tuesday was Caleb’s kindergarten orientation. He wasn’t really sure what to think about it at first and got a little teary and clingy when we got ready to leave his classroom for the parent meeting. His teacher said that by the time we got to the cafeteria, he was doing just fine. He stayed in his classroom to meet all of his classmates and his teacher, Mrs. Christian. We were excited to find out that one of his friends from daycare, Stephen, is in his class this year. (Yay for familiar faces!) Caleb will go to Reagan, where I work, for kindergarten. I’m excited about that because it means that we’ll be together for this transition. He’s in a place where I know he’s safe and loved and I’ll get to see him from time-to-time during the day.

At the end of orientation, I was in the library helping out with the self-contained students who just happened to be touring the building with Caleb’s class. I was so blessed to be in the room at that time. The media specialist asked the kids to say their name and their favorite thing in the world. Caleb told his name and then said, “this school.” I about melted into the floor. It was just so sweet. After orientation, we took him out to dinner to celebrate!

Last night, our bedtime stories were all about school. The last one we read was The Kissing Hand – a beautiful story about a young raccoon going to school for the first time. His mother kisses his hand to ease his fears about being scared and lonely. At the end, Caleb kissed mine and Rudy’s hands and we kissed his back. It was one of the best moments I’ve ever experienced.

This morning, Caleb had our special day pancakes (we put sprinkles on them).

Once we were all ready to go, we took a few pictures to help us remember the big day!

We dropped Nola off at daycare and when we got back in the car, Caleb said, “Look out, kindergarten, here I come!” I nearly spit my drink all over the windshield.

When we got to school a little before 7:15, there was already a crowd at the front door. We went in and put my bags in my room, then went back out front for a few more pictures. The doors were unlocked, so I was able to get some pictures without all of the extra people in them. Caleb was surprisingly patient with me while I took them.)

After our pictures, we were ready to go to class. I know this picture below is fuzzy, but I couldn’t pass it up. Walking to kindergarten with that “imagine” sign…come on – too perfect.

Caleb was excited to get to his classroom, hang up his backpack and find Stephen. He immediately went to the table where Stephen was playing with Legos and started playing. I snapped one quick picture of them and then one of Caleb and Mrs. Christian.

I was really fortunate to be able to see Caleb a lot today. I spent my day helping with the five new kindergarten students in the self-contained classroom. It just so happened that they had music and PE with Mrs. Christian’s class, so I got to be with Caleb in those classes as well. I made sure to keep my distance and didn’t let him distract me from my purpose there, but there was no reason to pretend I didn’t know him either. He enjoyed dancing in PE and singing in music. He leaned over to me in music class with a big grin on his face and said, “I am having so much fun!” I also had kindergarten recess duty, so I was outside for that too. I loved watching his face in the cafeteria when he discovered that Rudy had drawn a smiley face on his napkin. You would’ve thought he’d won the lottery!

At the end of the day, Caleb hung out in my room watching PBS kids and having a snack while I wrapped up my work for the day. We came home and had spaghetti for supper and then hung out outside for a while. I had to go to Target to buy Caleb a new lunchbox because the handle on his already broke.

After school, we called LaLa to tell her about his day and this evening we called Grandma. Caleb was bewildered about why everyone wanted to talk to him today. I told him it was a very special day when a kiddo starts school.

I asked Caleb his favorite part of the day and he said, “Mrs. Christian.” Rudy asked him later and he said, “recess.” I think both of those are perfectly good answers for the first day of kindergarten.

Cowboy Up

2011-08-15T21:25:00.001-05:00

I’m not sure what got into Caleb this weekend, but he decided to Cowboy Up. I couldn’t help myself. I had to take pictures. I’m going to miss these days when he’s too cool for playing dress-up…

Nola @ 18 months

2011-08-14T22:08:00.001-05:00

Nola turned 18 months old on July 27th. Here's what she's up to these days...

At her well visit on 8/4/11, she weighed 26 lbs, 14.5 oz (79th percentile) and was 31.5” tall (40th percentile). She had head circumference of 48.25 cm. She didn’t need any shots!
Nola eats all table food now. She’ll eat almost anything except for most kinds of meat. She loves sandwich meat and hot dogs, but won’t eat hamburger meat, or the other meat that we eat. Her favorites are broccoli, applesauce, pancakes, mac & cheese, spaghetti and anything sweet. She drinks 2% milk, juice and water. She also loves to take a big drink of whatever we have – coke, tea, etc.
She wears size 5 diapers, 18-24 month clothes and size 5 shoes.
She walks, runs, jumps, crawls and pretty much moves however she wants to. Gross motor is definitely a strength for her! She has no fear and will climb on things, go down slides and LOVES to be in the pool or any other kind of water.
Nola signs “more” and “please.” She loves to give kisses and recently learned to give big bear hugs.

She still sucks her thumb, especially when she’s tired or upset. She is attached to her yellow blanket. We have two – one at home and one at daycare. On the first day of daycare, the teacher told me that the only problem they had was after nap when she was supposed to put her blanket in her cubby. Well, that started blankie rehab at our house. We now let her have it only in her bed. That was tough at first, but now she’s okay with it. She’ll still sneak it if she can get by with it, but she doesn’t scream anymore when we leave it there and get her out of her bed.

Nola now has lots of teeth – including some molars!
Of course, speech is still our big concern. Nola is definitely delayed in that area. I posted previously about how she was going to get therapy, but that ended up not being the case. After the therapist who evaluated her got all of the results together, she called me and told me that her scores on two of the three tests were in the average range. The third one was definitely below average, but the therapist didn’t have enough hard evidence to really warrant therapy. I know that’s hard to understand, but I also know how it works and I didn’t have a problem with it. I really thought that starting daycare would boost her communication skills and it wouldn’t be that big of a problem. I started her on Omega-3 and DHA supplements and then she started daycare. Her language has exploded. She tries to say everything we say. She imitates like a parrot, but it’s all unintelligible. She imitates the intonation of everything and will carry on a conversation complete with facial expressions and hand gestures, but we usually have no idea what she’s saying. She only produces a few sounds (mostly m, b, k, g, n) and a few vowels. She calls everything “mama”. She can change the intonation of “mama” a million different ways to mean a million different things. Occasionally, she’ll imitate something so perfectly that it catches us off-guard. She has copied Caleb saying “Hey, you guys!” by saying, “Ay, oo gah!” She also says “ah, mah” for “aw, man!” She grunts when we ask her what a dog says and she says “kakak” for quack-quack. Sometimes she’ll say “ow” for meow. Her other words: bow, go, baa (bath), no, dada, bubbo (bubble), muh (milk), mo (more), ha (hot), ka (car), uh-oh, bahbah (backpack), buh-bub (Caleb), bah (ball), uh (up), eh-oh (hello), ah (hi). None of these are very consistent. Some days she’ll do it and some days she won’t. She has quite an opinion about repeating things when we ask her to. The good news is that she seems to understand everything we say to her. She can follow directions and point to things when we name them. She’s learning body parts and her vocabulary is growing. I’m planning to call this week to get her reevaluated for speech. We may have to take her to Children’s in LR to get her evaluated, but we’ll do whatever we need to do to get her up to speed. I’ll update here as we go through the process.

The Last Days of Summer

2011-08-14T21:20:00.001-05:00

Technically, summer still lasts for another month, but things are winding down around here. School starts tomorrow. We made the most of our last days of summer:

Saturday (7/30) – Rudy and I spent the day shopping in Branson and then came home (without the kids) for a date night. We had dinner at Café Rue Orleans in Fayetteville and then went to see Horrible Bosses. It was so much fun to have adult conversation and see a grown-up movie in the theater!

Sunday (7/31) – I drove to Hot Springs to spend a few days there with the kids while Rudy started summer band. The kids and I stayed with Mom and MrL. It was unbelievably hot (over 100* every day). We stayed inside as much as possible!

Wednesday (8/3) – The kids and I said our goodbyes to Lala and Pops and drove over to Sherwood to spend the day with Memmie and Poppie. They rode over to Little Rock with us so I could get Nola a napmat for her new daycare. We enjoyed visiting with them!

Thursday (8/4) – I took Nola to her 18-month checkup with Dr. Schaefer. (more in a separate post) After that, we met the boys for lunch and then took both kids to the new daycare. Caleb went there for a week while I was in meetings. Nola cried when we dropped her off, but apparently calmed down pretty quickly. Caleb wasn’t too keen on going to new place where he didn’t know anyone, but he handled it pretty well. While they were at daycare on Thursday, I got my hair cut and colored. Rudy had band that night, so the kids and I were on our own. We met Caleb’s friend Isabel and her mom and brother at JumpZone. The kids had a great time playing and Kristie and I enjoyed getting to know each other a little better. Afterwards, we had dinner at Bariola’s. By the time we got home, the kids were worn out!

Friday (8/5) – Rudy took Nola to her last day of Gymboree. The kids would’ve gone to daycare, but it was closed for promotion preparation. We had a lazy day at home for the most part, but ran some errands and played as well.

Saturday (8/6) – We wanted to do something fun to celebrate our last weekend of freedom, but it was SO HOT (106*!!!), so we needed to do something indoors. We decided to go to Fast Lanes to bowl. It was a lot of fun. Caleb used the ramp and the bumpers, so he did pretty well. After bowling, the boys rode the go karts. Nola and I wandered around until it was their turn.

Nola pulled my wristlet and phone out of my purse and strolled through the place like this:

Oh. My.

Sunday (8/7) – AAAGGGHHH! The last day of freedom!!! We spent the morning at church, had lunch at the new Five Guys burgers and then had a usual Sunday afternoon. Rudy took the kids to Tanyard Creek in the evening while I met my old friend Leslie for dinner at Las Fajitas.

This past week, Rudy and I have had meetings every day. The kids have gone to daycare. Nola still fusses at me when I drop her off, but she’s settling in well. She has one teacher that she has really taken to. That makes me happy. I know she’s doing well when I’m not with her. Every day when we pick her up, we hear what a great day she’s had and how much fun she is. Caleb did well there too, but he’s ready to get the show on the road and go to his real school.

On a not-so-happy note, after 3 days of daycare, Nola got her first cold. She has coughed and had a runny nose like crazy. On Thursday night at 11:30, I sent Rudy to WalMart to buy some Vicks Vaporub. I read the craziest thing online about putting it on her feet and covering them with socks. I was very doubtful, but gave it a try and was shocked that she was asleep – not coughing – in a matter of minutes. I don’t know why it works, I just know it works. She smells like I remember my Papa smelling, which makes me smile and laugh, but she’s not coughing, so I’m happy.

Branson (yes, really)

2011-08-01T23:40:00.002-05:00

Last spring, Mom called and asked if we would like to book a trip to Branson with them at the end of the summer. I’m not a big Branson person. I’m not interested in the shows and the town is a little, well, um -- conservative for me. The only restaurant that we ever really liked there has closed down. But – I do love the outlet malls and I do love to take the kids to Silver Dollar City, so I decided that it sounded like a great way to wrap up the summer. It seemed so far away at the time. Well, the time went by quickly as always and sure enough, before we knew it, the trip had arrived. We stayed at a fabulous resort complex called Marriott Vacation Resorts. It was absolutely wonderful. (Thanks, Jenn!!!) It had 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms. Caleb slept in the king bed with Lala and Pops. The other bedroom had 2 queen beds, so Nola slept in one of them bolstered by pillows and Rudy and I got the other one. It worked out perfectly.

Our trip started last Tuesday (7/26). Our condo was right by the amazing pool. Caleb wasted no time getting in the pool and Nola followed right along behind him. They both love the water. Because I’m still recovering from my Novasure procedure, I wasn’t able to get in the pool with them, which was a bummer. It was so HOT and all I wanted to do was get in the water! Rudy graciously offered to plan and cook our meals for us. The first night, he grilled whole chickens and stuffed peppers that he had prepared before we left home. We had the peach delight dessert that I brought.

On Wednesday, we braved the soaring temperatures and went to Silver Dollar City. With our season passes and some coupons that we had, it only cost us an additional $30 for Mom and Mr. L to go with us. Because they were with us, we got to do some things that we don’t usually do. Rudy and I actually got to ride the Wildfire and the Powderkeg…twice…while they took the kids on the train ride and to the new Half Dollar Holler. It was a fun day and we were TIRED when it was over. (Scroll over pictures for descriptions.)

Here’s a (sideways) video of Caleb dancing in the creek to the cajun band. That child is a mess.

Wednesday night, the kids swam and we had burgers for dinner. Then, we took advantage of the resort activities menu and joined in the fun of making s’mores at the firepit. It was really cool that they had all of these things you could choose from to do. That was the only one we were able to participate in and it was so much fun.

Thursday was our shopping day. The boys went to Springfield to the big Bass Pro Shop and out for a BBQ lunch. Mom, Nola and I hit the outlet malls looking for deals! Nola’s ready to move up to 24 month clothes and we were hoping to find some things for her to carry her over until the weather gets cooler. We didn’t have much luck. They already had winter sweaters in the stores! It was 102 degrees outside!!! We did find a few things for Caleb’s back-to-school clothes and a couple of things for each of us. We had lunch at Panera and then took Nola back to the condo to nap with the boys while Mom and I finished making our rounds. We really enjoyed our day. When we got back, the boys and Nola were in the pool. We joined them poolside for a while and then came in for dinner. Rudy grilled steaks for us that night. He was quite the chef! We spent the rest of the night getting our stuff together for our trip home on Friday.

Friday morning, we loaded up the cars. The kids went to Hot Springs with Lala and Pops. Rudy and I did a little kid-free shopping and then drove home in a very quiet car. I didn’t have to fish anything out of the backseat floorboard, figure out why the DVD wasn’t working, clean up any spills or calm any crying and nobody once had to pull over on the side of the road to go to the bathroom.

Two Wheels

2011-08-01T22:38:00.002-05:00

July 18, 2011
Caleb decided that he was ready for his daddy to take the training wheels off of his old bike so he could learn to ride without them. His new bike is still a little bit too tall for him, so we thought we’d start with the shorter one. I had just gotten Nola to sleep when Rudy came inside to get me. Sure enough, Caleb was riding on two wheels! I ran inside to get the video camera!

While he was riding, I also managed to catch this blooper. Caleb wants me to send it to America’s Funniest Videos. It just might win us $10,000!

It’s been an eventful summer for this little guy. He lost his first tooth, learned to ride his bike, learned to ride on a tube in the lake and gained a lot of independence. He’s growing up in a lot of ways!
Ready…
Set…
Go!

Pomp and Circumstance

2011-07-23T22:59:00.002-05:00

Caleb graduated from preschool on Friday night. It was an adorable program and he loved being with his friends.

After the ceremony, the daycare provided a spaghetti supper for the families. At each table, there were 2 white balloons and a red balloon. The parents wrote our hopes for our children on the white balloons. The red balloons represented the kids.

Then we tied the 3 balloons together and we went outside where the kids released them. It was pretty sweet.

We have been so blessed to have Caleb’s pre-k teacher, Ms. Elizabeth, since he was started at CCCC when he was two. Caleb loves her and we are so grateful that she has helped to prepare him for school and life!

Here’s our favorite graduate:

I Wanna Be Sedated

2011-07-23T22:43:00.002-05:00

Oh, what a week this has been!

Monday started at 7:40 with a trip to the endodontist, where I found out that I needed a root canal. Caleb had graduation practice at 9:00. Rudy had a doctor appointment at 9:30. Nola’s language evaluation was at 1:00.

On Tuesday, the boys went to Silver Dollar City. Nola and I stayed home because it was so hot and there’s really not much that she can do there besides ride in the stroller. I didn’t want her to be that hot without any chance to ride things that would help cool her off. It would’ve just been miserable. Caleb is big enough this year to ride all but 2 of the big rides. He didn’t like the Powderkeg, but he did like the Thunderation. He’s going to be a roller coaster rider, just like his Mama and Daddy.

Wednesday was my root canal day. I was so nervous, but so ready to get it done and get the weeks of tooth pain over with! My appointment was at 1:00 and that’s about the last thing I remember from that day. I was knocked out from that point forward. I do remember the numbing shot into the hard palate of my mouth that almost made me come out of my skin. It’s still sore now as I write this 3 days later! I slept the rest of the day, thanks to some ibuprofen and vicodin.

Thursday, I had my one work obligation of the summer. The SLPs got together at Reagan for a day of professional development. It was good to see everyone, but I don’t want to use my brain that much again until August 8th. (Truth be told, I really don’t want to start using it again then either.)

Friday morning, I had an appointment for a gynecological procedure called Novasure. (I won’t go into details about why I had it or what it does, but you can click the link if you really want to know.) I was so nervous about it, but once I got my pre-procedure meds, I was ready to go. It’s amazing what modern medicine can do. Since then, I’ve spent the better part of 48 hours sleeping with the help of some pain meds. The recovery hasn’t been too bad – just some cramping and I’m incredibly tired. I hope to be back on my feet for most of tomorrow.

Friday night was Caleb’s preschool graduation, which was a little bit of a stretch for me since I was coming off of sedatives. It was great, though. The next post will be all about little man’s cap and gown ceremony!

Nola’s Not Talking…Yet

2011-07-23T22:03:00.001-05:00

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while or you know us personally, you know that Nola’s ears have been a source of difficulty for her (and us) since she was a tiny infant. She had tubes put in when she was only 5 months old – the earliest our ENT would put them in. Even after the tubes were put in, she continued to have infections and fluid. Her ears drained fluid repeatedly throughout the fall, winter and spring. For a while, we were at the ENT’s office to have them suctioned about every other week.

As a speech path, I’ve been concerned about Nola’s speech and language development. She doesn’t have enough words and she continues to rely on whining/yelling and pointing to get what she wants. She’ll occasionally take our hands to show us things, but most often she either gets mad or just gives up. We’ve taught her to sign “more”, but she has to be reminded after she starts whining. She has always seemed to understand what we’re saying, but she just isn’t saying what she should be. I told myself not to be too concerned until she got closer to 18 months, but that nagging feeling just kept telling me to be proactive.

I had to take her to the doctor in June because she was tugging at her ears right before we were supposed to go to St. Louis. Dr. Schaefer was out of town, so we saw Dr. Scherer. He looked at her ears and told me that it wasn’t an ear problem, but she was teething instead. Afterwards, I told him I was concerned about her speech development and asked if he would write a referral for a hearing and speech evaluation. (I wanted the hearing eval to rule that out before we did the speech eval.) He agreed and put the orders in her chart. I immediately called the ENT’s office to schedule an evaluation with the audiologist and started the process of getting scheduled for evaluation at a therapy clinic.

In the meantime, I decided to ramp up my at-home therapy. We started making a greater effort to teach her words and “make” her say things instead of giving in to whining and yelling. Everybody got on board – even Caleb. It was so cute watching him try to get her to say things and trying to teach her words.

Of course, everyone’s response is always, “Well, she’s the baby. Everyone probably talks for her. She doesn’t have to talk.” That just burns me up. I’m smarter than that. We don’t talk for her and we don’t let anyone else talk for her. Granted – as the 2nd child, we haven’t been able to spend as much one-on-one time with her, playing and reading every single day like we did with Caleb. But…it’s not like we’ve neglected her. It’s not like we don’t talk to her or talk about everything we’re doing all the time. I talk to her just like I talked to Caleb. “Look, Nola, there’s an apple. Yummy apples. The apple is red. Can you say apple?” “Oh, my goodness. I see cows. Cows say ‘moo’. Those cows are big and little. They are eating grass.” Sometimes it’s exhausting how much I talk to her about everything – just trying to teach her language.

Nola’s hearing evaluation was on July 15th. She did amazing! The audiologist, Lori, said that her right tube is still in and working perfectly. Her left tube is probably coming out, but her ear function is still good. She passed the tympanogram with no problems. We went into the booth for the sound field testing and she knocked that out of the park too. She responded to every single sound. Just to be on the safe side, Lori did an OAE and there were no problems there either. The verdict: Nola can hear. Hallelujah!

The next step was one that I’m much more familiar with. I made an appointment for her language evaluation at Imagine Pediatric Therapies. I chose Imagine because I have heard nothing but good things about it and I have known some wonderful therapists who have worked there. We went in on Monday afternoon (7/18) to meet with Mrs. Andrea. She was so welcoming and Nola took to her immediately. We spent a long time talking and she asked me lots and lots of questions from the Receptive-Expressive Emergent Language Test and we worked through the Preschool Language Scale together. Nola was much more interested in emptying out my purse and her diaper bag, playing with all of the toys and exploring the room than anything else.

She did what was asked of her, though, and I think we got a good picture of her communication skills. Her scores are very split between the tests. She scored very high on the PLS and much, much lower on the REEL. I know the scores don’t mean much to anyone but me and any other SLP who might read this, but here they are: PLS Receptive = 91, PLS Expressive = 92, REEL Receptive 88, REEL Expressive = 76. That 76 put a major lump in my throat. I never dreamed it would be that low. Actually, the 88 was a little heartbreaking too. I really thought her receptive skills were at or above age expectancy. Andrea wants to do one more test, but Nola definitely qualifies for therapy.

I’m not sure when therapy will start. It will definitely be as soon as possible. I’m ready to see if someone other than her family can convince her that talking really is beneficial. A lot of people have asked why I don’t just do her therapy myself. The honest answer is that when things are hard for kids, they tend to learn better from other people than they do from their parents. I’ve tried all of my therapy tricks and they haven’t worked. It’s time to turn this over to someone who specializes in younger kids.

It took a while for this to sink in. My sweet baby girl is delayed. I never dreamed I’d be typing those words. I never dreamed I’d have a child who didn’t talk. I mean, seriously…what are the chances of that? And, now, I worry about what we’re looking at. Is it simply a language delay because of her chronic ear problems or is it something more? I worry about apraxia and I worry that it could be a part of a bigger problem that I don’t even have a name for. However, I know that no matter what comes our way, we’ll handle it just fine. God won’t give us more than we can handle – even if He trusts us more than we trust ourselves. And, I know this for sure…this little bundle of sass and sweetness will get her point across, regardless of how she has to do it.

Spiro

2011-07-19T21:17:00.002-05:00

After church on Sunday, we went to Spiro for a little visit with Grandma and Grandpa Morris. Janice was there as well and we were glad to see her too. We had pizza and homemade apple pie and had a great visit.

Friends with Boats

2011-07-19T01:28:00.002-05:00

We’ve been really fortunate to be invited to go out on Beaver Lake with friends twice this summer. The first time was with my friend Kerrie and her family. This past Saturday (7/16), we went out with the Adlers. We’ve known Josh and Stephanie since college and recently reconnected with them through Rudy’s fraternity reunions. They have a son who is Caleb’s age, another who is a little older and a brand new baby. We had a great time on Saturday, boating, watching the kids ride the tube and kneeboard and swimming in the lake. Nola particularly liked floating in her life jacket and eating animal crackers on the boat. She is such a water baby! After we boated, we went back to their house for dinner on their deck, overlooking the lake. It was enough to give Rudy boat fever and get him talking about “someday” when we can go out there with our own boat. I say, why have a boat when you have friends with boats???

Sticky Icky Week

2011-07-19T00:54:00.002-05:00

Monday (7/11) was a busy day for us. Caleb went to Sticky Icky camp in the morning at Imagine Studios. Nola and I picked him up at 11:30 and met Stacy and her kids at Mellow Mushroom for lunch. (My review: thumbs way down.) After lunch, we made a quick Target trip & came home for Nola’s nap. While Nola was napping, Caleb and I made lemonade popsicles and Shrinky Dinks. Caleb was fascinated by both, but then decided to try on my rainboots with this swimsuit & goggles. That was, um, interesting...

After nap, we met my friend Becky and her son Ethan for some pool time, then came home for dinner. After dinner, we made shaving cream bags (ziploc bag with shaving cream and food coloring). That activity didn’t last long, so I decided to make a bean tub for the kids to play in. I put 2 bags of dry pinto beans in a plastic tub, buried some small toys and let the kids dig around in it. They played for 30 minutes without a fuss, then played some more.

Tuesday (7/12) was not a very good day. It started off okay. Caleb went to camp. Nola and I ran some errands. That’s when it turned sour. I needed to run one last quick errand before we picked Caleb up, so we dashed into Gordman’s, looking for a swim shirt for Caleb. He has been asking for one for weeks. Nola was tired of running errands and getting pretty grumpy. I tried putting her in the shopping cart seat and she screamed like I was killing her, so I carried her for a while. When I stopped to look at something, I sat her down in the basket part of the cart and told her to sit down. I turned my head for a split second and felt the cart move. When I turned back around, she was bent over the end of the cart and flipped out, landing on her head on the concrete floor. It probably took me half a second to scoop her up. I checked her over and didn’t find any blood or obvious injury. She was screaming at the top of her lungs, of course. I carried her back out to the car and got her somewhat calmed down. I drove (very shakily) to get Caleb. When we got there, one of the other moms that I know was picking up her daughter. I told her what had happened and she helped me reason that I needed to call the pediatrician’s office to find out what to do. When we got out to the car, I called and the nurse told me I needed to take her to the ER. Panicked, I left Rudy a message to call me and headed for the hospital. After we checked in, I noticed that Rudy had called, so I called him back. I told him what had happened and that I’d let him know when we were finished. We were taken back to a room and I had to tell the story multiple times, feeling guiltier and guiltier about my huge mistake every time. Caleb made certain to let the staff know it was my fault, which he had heard me tell Rudy on the phone. The nurse and the nurse practitioner looked Nola over carefully, asked me lots of questions and then told me that she was going to be just fine. She showed no signs of concussion or other brain injury. I was instructed to take her home and watch her closely for 24 hours. As we left the hospital, I praised God for her safety and knew that I had learned a lesson that I’ll never forget – use the seatbelts in the shopping cart, even if the child doesn’t like it.
After lunch, I turned a movie on for Caleb and we spent the afternoon recuperating from our terrifying morning. Poor Caleb was bored out of his mind, but he was patient and did a good job entertaining himself for the most part.

Wednesday (7/13) was a much better day. Caleb had camp. When Nola and I picked him up, we took him to get a haircut and then went to lunch. It was raining for the first time in a long time, so the temperatures were bearable. After lunch, we had a rainy day inside – watching movies & being lazy. Wednesday night, we had dinner at Catfish Hole with the band camp staff.

Thursday (7/14), Nola and I went to Gymboree before we picked up Caleb.

Rudy had a short day on Friday and knew that I needed some time to get some things done by myself, so he took the kids for the afternoon. That morning, I had taken Nola for a hearing evaluation (a separate post about that to come). In the afternoon, I went to Hobby Lobby to get some things I needed for some projects I’ve been working on and then came home to work on the projects. I got some things framed and even did some scrapbooking. Rudy took the kids to Tanyard Creek to splash and play. The report I got was that Caleb became an expert crawdad catcher and Nola picked up every rock in the creek. They brought home pizza and we played outside for a while before bedtime. Once the kids were in bed, I worked some more on scrapbooking. I got all of 2009 finished, closing out another album! Now, I’m only a year and a half behind. Yikes!

Post Vacation Post

2011-07-19T00:19:00.002-05:00

We came home from St. Louis on Wednesday (7/6). On Thursday, Nola and I started going to Gymboree. Caleb and I went when he was a toddler and I really wanted a chance for Nola and I to have that time together too. She seems to really like it. She’s definitely a mover and shaker. I am worn out by the time it’s finished. She is on the move the whole time we’re there – climbing and crawling and throwing balls all over the place.

On Friday morning, Rudy and I went to a funeral. We managed a last minute babysitter so that we could go pay our respects to Janet and her family. That evening, we made our first ever trip to Beaver Lake. My friend and colleague, Kerrie and her family had us over for BBQ and boating. Caleb LOVED getting to ride on the tube with Kerrie’s son, Luke. He and Rudy also rode the waverunner. Nola really enjoys being in the water. She’s pretty fearless. After we boated, everyone (except for me) swam for a while and then we went inside for dessert and the boys played Rock Band. It was a great night with a wonderful family!

Saturday (7/9), I got to spend the evening and night scrapbooking with my dear friend Stacy. We love to go to the late night crops at Signed Sealed Delivered. It’s such a productive moms’ night out! We’re going back at the end of the month to a pajama party crop.

Sunday (7/10) was the first day of U of A Jr High Music Camp. Rudy was asked to conduct a band this year, so his time commitment wasn’t quite as much as previous years. He still had to be there Sunday, though. It was so crazy hot that the only thing I could do with the kids was put them in water. I filled up the kiddie pool, turned on the sprinkler and turned them loose. They had a great time splashing and playing and I got a little sun while we were out there.

St. Louis 2011 ~ Sunday-Tuesday

2011-07-18T23:41:00.003-05:00

After our late night at the Arch on Saturday, we had a lazy morning on Sunday. Jerry and Sherry had offered to watch the kids while Rudy and I went out, so we decided to take them up on it. (They might have disowned us if we hadn’t!) We were going to go to dinner and a movie, but I suggested that we go to Six Flags. We used to have season passes before Caleb was born and I hadn’t been since then. After lunch, we hopped in the car and headed for Eureka. We got a few minutes from the house and I realized that if we bought our tickets online we would save about $20, so we turned around and went back. As I got on the computer to buy the tickets, Rudy was watching TV and saw a weather advisory for St. Louis County. There were ugly storms brewing in the Eureka area, but he watched for a little while and determined that they would be gone by the time we got there. I hit “purchase,” spent $100 and off we went. The closer we got to Eureka, the darker the sky got. We did a memory lane drive through Fenton to kill some time while the storm passed over. When we got to Eureka, it was raining, but not pouring, so we went on in the park. Those $100 tickets were nonrefundable after all. It rained…and rained…and rained some more. There was thunder and lightning and all of the rides were shut down. We did manage to ride the carousel 3 times…because it was covered and out of the rain. After a while, it became blatantly obvious that this storm was not going to pass over, clear up or plain ol’ quit. We finally decided to tuck our tails, cut our losses and go out to dinner. So…after 3 rides on the carousel at approximately $15 per person per ride, we left Six Flags. Not our best adventure…

We went to dinner at one of our favorite local restaurants, Lazy River Grill. Yum. Deelicious! We enjoyed being in familiar surroundings, visiting with each other (without wiping children’s mouths, taking anyone to the bathroom or reminding anyone to please be careful and lean over their plate). After dinner, we decided to head on back to Florissant, pick up anyone interested and go get frozen custard. That’s just what we did…and Fritz’s was wonderful.

Monday was actually the 4th of July! Rudy and I took the kids to the Mills (mall) for a while. Both kids LOVED the aquarium at Cabela’s.

Caleb tried out a bat at an electronic batting cage and then on this crazy trampoline thing…

We got both of the kids some new Crocs and had a late lunch at Chevy’s, which was supposed to be quick and just a snack, but it took them 45 minutes to bring our food. Nola was exhausted, so Rudy ended up taking her out in the mall to walk and then I switched places with him.

By the time we got back to Jerry and Sherry’s it was almost time to eat dinner. The boys squeezed in a little fireless fireworks time in the driveway…

…and Little Miss Firecracker walked the runway for a few pictures.

After dinner, we went to the Florissant fireworks. It was a great show!

Caleb acting silly…

Our whole crew…

Jerry and Nola watching (and laughing at) fireworks…

Tuesday was our zoo day! The temperatures dropped a little and we were able to enjoy a great day at the St. Louis Zoo! The kids loved seeing the animals and our friend Jenny joined us to catch up on each others’ lives.

Click here to see Caleb grow up taking pictures with the frog statues at the children’s zoo:

Petting animals at the children’s zoo:

Caleb up close and personal with an elephant and a zebra:

Nola up close and personal with a chimp:

Jenny and Caleb petting stingrays:

Jenny and the kiddos:

After the zoo, we went back to the house to give Nola a chance to take a nap and everyone a chance to freshen up. We had dinner at our all-time favorite restaurant, Cunetto House of Pasta. Nola was a grump, so it was a little stressful. Sherry graciously volunteered to take her outside to walk around so that Rudy and I could finish our meals in peace. (Maybe next year we shouldn’t try to do the zoo and a nice dinner on the same day.) Afterward, we spent some time outside of Cunetto, letting our dinners settle and playing with the kids.

Sherry, Jerry, Rebecca & Jared with Nola and Caleb:

It was a great ending to yet another great trip!

St. Louis 2011 ~ Friday & Saturday

2011-07-12T22:41:00.003-05:00

Every year, we look forward to our trip to St. Louis. Rudy starts getting all nostalgic and we both start planning every activity and meal. Our first stop on Friday (7/1) was in our old neighborhood – Glenn Brooke Woods. We were excited to see and catch up with our friends Jen and Broc and their kids. The kids played and we visited and got all caught up on the latest happenings in the neighborhood. It was wonderful to see our sweet friends and they even treated us to dinner. I was awful and didn’t get a single good picture. I was too busy chasing kids and talking!

We left the Browns’ house and headed north to Florissant. We got to Jerry and Sherry’s house and felt like we were at home. We let the kids stay up waaaay past their bedtimes while they got reacquainted with their great aunt and uncle who love them as though they were their very own grandkids.

Saturday, we had a lazy morning, then went to the neighborhood pool (which is much more awesome than ours) and had fun splashing and playing in the water for a while. When we got back to the house, we had burgers and hot dogs. After our late lunch, we loaded up for our trip downtown. We’ve spent some portion of the 4th of July weekend at the Arch 10 out of the last 13 years. The group that goes with us changes a little every year, but we are always there with Jerry and Sherry. It’s always unbearably hot. It’s always crowded. There’s always a chance of rain (and we’ve gotten rained on several times). But…there’s always a great fireworks show. There’s usually a great concert (Best = Hootie & the Blowfish, Worst = Cyndi Lauper). There’s always a fabulous opportunity for people-watching. There’s always overpriced fair food and cold lemonade.

We’ve taken babies (sometimes not so intelligently) and we’ve taken grandparents. We’ve taken Caleb every single year of his life – and Nola too, for that matter. This year was no exception to the rules. It was over 100 degrees when we got down there. I wasn’t sure how we were going to make it. We had water-spraying fans, lots of water to drink and we took turns taking the kids into the shade.

At one point, I took Caleb to look for the kids’ area. We walked all the way around the Arch and back. He was excited to see the flooded river. By the time we got back to our seats, I was starting to feel sick from the heat. I was glad to see that some shaded space had come available and our crew had moved into it. It made all the difference in the world. We were joined this year by Rudy’s uncle Doug and aunt Lisa, as well as our friend Joy and her kids. We thoroughly enjoyed the Steve Miller Band concert, which was the reason we chose to go on the 2nd instead of the 4th. Nola entertained us with her dancing throughout the concert. After the concert, we enjoyed the fireworks. Caleb was able to watch it without covering his ears (or eyes) and Nola sat in my lap for most of it. She would laugh when the sky would light up and would even sometimes cry when they fizzled out. Both kids were sound asleep by the time we got out of the city traffic.

African Safari Camp

2011-07-12T21:09:00.002-05:00

Since the kids were both going to be home all summer, I decided to sign Caleb up for some 1/2 day camps. The first one was held at Trike Theatre and it was called African Safari. Caleb LOVES all things related to animals, so I knew he would be all about that part, but I wasn’t so sure about the performance stuff. (Anyone remember Jitterbugs?) Caleb’s just not a stage performing kind of guy. One of my friends from work was teaching the art part of the camp and she assured me that he would be okay, so I signed him up. The first day, he was a little disappointed to find out that going to camp did not mean the same thing as going to deer camp or camping in the backyard. Once we got past that initial disappointment, though, he ended up really liking it. He was excited to go every day, but couldn’t ever really tell me what they did when I asked him. He did talk about snakes and frogs (big shocker) and that he had made some stuff.
Friday was showcase day. After frantically running around the house to pack for vacation, Rudy, Nola and I got there just as it was beginning. I loved watching Caleb be part of the group as they went through the exercises of “unpacking the actor’s suitcase” and warming up their bodies.

They did a safari train exercise

and then struck a variety of poses at the teacher’s direction. When they were told to hold a pose like their favorite safari animal, Caleb first chose a frog, then his next one was a gorilla, complete with beating on his chest.
The final pose was to pretend they were on a safari: . After the drama part, they did their dance performances. The first group was slow music and the danced with scarves. Caleb was in the fast group and got to dance with maracas:
When it was all over, the kids got a safari hat to take home. They also got to take home their journals and their art work. Caleb made a curled-up snake and a decorated pillow case. Here’s our happy camper showing off his hat and artwork:

Rodeo of the Ozarks

2011-07-06T23:39:00.002-05:00

Rudy and I decided to take Caleb to the Rodeo of the Ozarks this year because he loves animals so much. After the big tooth pull at dinner on Wednesday night (6/29), we left Nola with Kathy and went to Springdale. Now, rodeos aren’t exactly my cup of tea and I sure didn’t know what the scores meant or what was going on, but it was entertaining to watch the people and it was pretty amazing to see what some of the rodeo cowboys (and girls) were able to do with those animals.
In classic Caleb fashion, he asked us that morning, “Is this my first rodeo?” Rudy and I thought that was hilarious since we both say, “This ain’t my first rodeo” often.
We watched most of the rodeo, but we also did a little walking around too.

Caleb tried on a hat

got his boots dusty

and bought a lasso to rope his daddy

He talked all night about the “bullcows” and told Rudy to pretend to be a bullcow so he could rope him.

I love this picture of him showing off his new grin…

After the rodeo, there was an Easton Corbin concert. We stayed for a few songs, but it was late and we were ready to get home. Caleb was exhausted and fell asleep in the car. The next morning, he woke up ready to play with his new lasso.

Snaggletooth

2011-07-06T23:07:00.002-05:00

When Rudy and I were in Florida, Mom sent me a text telling me that Caleb had a loose tooth. I couldn’t believe it! I didn’t expect him to start losing teeth until he was in school. Sure enough, that tooth got looser and looser over the next couple of weeks. We checked it every now and then, but it seemed like it was hanging in there for a while.
On Wednesday night (6/29), Kathy and Heather were at the house because Kathy was going to babysit Nola while we went to the rodeo. We sat down to eat spaghetti and Caleb started saying that his tooth hurt. I looked in his mouth and that poor tooth was bleeding like crazy. Rudy and I swooped him up and took him into our bathroom to investigate the situation without everyone having to watch Caleb bleed while they ate. Rudy stood Caleb on the bathroom counter and started wiggling that tooth. The more he wiggled, the more Caleb cried and yelled. Rudy and I both thought about the old tie-a-string-to-a-doorknob trick, but neither of us have fond memories of that, so we opted not to do it.

After much wailing and wiggling of teeth (tooth, really), Caleb was finally free of his loose tooth. We rolled up a wet paper towel for him to bite on to stop the bleeding and then made a big to-do about the big event.

I mean, really – how cute is this little snaggletooth?!?

The best part of this whole story is that now Caleb has that missing tooth lisp. Rudy and I have tried not to make a big deal out of it, but it is so stinking cute when he says, “My name ith Caleb Villineth” and asks if we can “thee if another tooth is looth yet.”
So, what about the Tooth Fairy, you ask? Well, Rudy and I talked about it. We decided to stick with our plan of not pretending that tooth fairies and Santas are real. We told Caleb that people might ask him about the T.F., but that wasn’t something we believe in in our family. We don’t tell other people they are wrong, we just don’t believe it for ourselves. He insists that (just like Santa Claus), the fairy is quite real and we are just too dumb to know the truth. I’m not arguing with him about it, but he’ll never be able to say I didn’t tell him the truth. I’m not sure how he justifies the fact that the TF didn’t come to our house that night. Instead, we offered him a “Tooth Treat” of his choosing. I expected him to want a toy or something of that nature, but instead, he asked to go swimming as his treat. His daddy gladly obliged.
I’m still trying to decide what to do with that first lost tooth. I’m checking some fun websites for ideas. I’ll let you know what I come up with…

Sprinkler Fun

2011-06-30T23:16:00.002-05:00

Aunt Harolyn got the kids this fun sprinkler this summer, so we got it out last week to try it for the first time. The kids loved it and the flowerbeds got watered at the same time. I’d call that a win-win situation!

Oklahoma Weekend

2011-06-30T23:10:00.002-05:00

The Friday night after VBS, we had a great time swimming with our friends, the Sharplesses. They stayed afterwards for a cookout and we enjoyed their company. I enjoyed it so much that I completely forgot to take any pictures, but here’s a link to the ones that Sheila posted.

Saturday morning, we drove over to Owasso to see Jan and Bill. Caleb got to play with Gabe and they even got out the slip & slide to try to escape the ridiculous heat that we’ve had this June.

After the slip & slide fun, the boys all went to Bass Pro Shop while Jan & I stayed home for Nola’s naptime. Bill’s son, Tyler and his wife Andrea joined us for dinner. They have an adorable little boy named Will who is just a few months older than Nola. Here’s Jan holding both of the little ones.

On Sunday, Bill and Rudy played golf. Jan and I spent the morning playing with the kids and then took them to lunch. When the golfers came home, we gathered up our things and headed for home to get ready for another summer week.

Pandamania VBS

2011-06-30T22:47:00.002-05:00

We had an amazing VBS during the week of June 20-24th. We had 500 kids in the sanctuary every day praising God and learning how He is WILD about us! I gotta’ tell you, there is not much that is as awesome as seeing that whole sanctuary filled up with kids. Big stuff was happening in this building last week.

The kids were challenged to bring food for the food pantry as their VBS mission project. This is all I could fit in my camera angle on Friday. The steps were just covered in cans and boxes!

I volunteered to help with VBS this year for the first time because I knew for sure that we would be in town for all of it. I was a group leader (basically a chaperone) every day except for Thursday, which was my day to have major dental work done. (ugh)
Caleb was excited about VBS because he remember how much fun it was last year. I watched him with a mixed emotions. He was so reserved and wouldn’t sing or do the motions to the songs. He sat entranced and quiet through the opening and closing sessions. Later, I realized that he was just taking it all in. He was too shy to act silly like some of the other kids, but he didn’t miss a beat. He’s been talking all week about the stories and he loves to sing the songs. I bought the CD so that he could listen to it at night when he goes to sleep. He asks for it every night now. I’ve had it in the car a few times too and I can’t get enough of hearing him try to sing along with those songs. It makes me smile from ear to ear. The only thing better than hearing my child sing praise songs is seeing my child pray. If that doesn’t warm my heart, nothing will:

Here is Caleb with his crew leaders and in the opening session on Friday:

This is Mrs. Tracy (AKA “Mania Molly”), who Caleb adores. I think he actually has a crush on her. When he sees her, he lights up and she is so awesome to give him special attention and hugs. We love Mrs. Tracy!

It was an awesome week. I’m sure glad that God is WILD about us!

Easing Back Into Reality

2011-06-30T22:16:00.002-05:00

When we got back to Hot Springs on Friday evening, Caleb came running out to greet us with the biggest hugs ever. He nearly suffocated me by squeezing so hard. That lasted about 2 minutes and he was off and running again – chasing lizards, following in Pops’ shadow and peeing off the porch (one of his favorite things to do at the lake). Nola was glad to see us, but held a little bit of a grudge before she finally warmed up to me. She made sure I knew that she was officially LaLa & Pops’ girl after spending so much time with them.

We eased ourselves back into parenthood with an extra day in Hot Springs. Mr. L. bought a tube for Caleb this summer since he’s finally big enough to ride one and he’s now had 2 years of swimming lessons. (That’s something he did while we were in Florida.) We decided to spend Saturday on the lake. A few pictures from our fun in the sun…

Captain Caleb:

Nola and LaLa and Pops

Caleb tubing with Daddy and Mama (Yep – I got in the tube.)

Nola loved to stand at the front of the boat and watch the water

Swimming Practice (he eventually got brave enough to take off the life jacket)

After we boated, we had a good old Southern shrimp boil and then sat around and watched the kids play while we visited. These two silly monkeys put on LaLa’s old glasses.

By the time we got ready to come home on Sunday morning, Mom had washed all of our laundry. (Hallelujah for her laundry addiction!) We loaded up the car to the gills and hit the road. Nola (as usual) fell asleep 30 minutes before we pulled in the driveway. Caleb watched movies all the way home. Summer was definitely off to a good start.

Perdido Key

2011-06-21T22:43:00.002-05:00

Monday (6/13), Rudy and I got up and the crack of dawn, kissed the kids goodbye and left them with LaLa and Pops for the week. Destination: Perdido Key, FL!
While we drove, we listened to a John Grisham audiobook. I paused it as we went through Southeast Arkansas to show Rudy (for the millionth time) the landmarks of my childhood that you can see from Hwy 65.

We made it to Perdido around 4:30, checked in at our condo and unloaded the car. We smiled as we opened the blinds of our balcony to find this view waiting for us:

We were hungry and ready for some seafood, so we freshened up and went to dinner. We ate shrimp (me) and oysters (Rudy) from the Oyster Bar at the Flora-Bama on Monday night. Nothing fancy, but perfect gulf seafood for road-weary travelers. Would you look at the size of that shrimp? The view from our barstools wasn’t so bad either.

It was open mic night at the Bama, so we stuck around and listened to some good and not-so-good entertainment. You just never know what’s going to happen in that place and there was some fabulous people-watching!
When we got back to the condo, I was long overdue to put my toes in the sand. Sometime during that late night walk on the beach, I was able to exhale. I realized how much stress I had been carrying and how tense I was. The sound of those ocean waves and feel of that warm, white sand underfoot was overwhelmingly cathartic. I sat on a chair on the beach and wondered at the magnitude and perfection of it.
Tuesday morning, we got up and made a quick trip into town for some groceries and breakfast. As we were pulling into the parking lot, we saw the Blue Angels fly overhead as they were practicing. After we got back to the condo, Rudy went out and set up our canopy on the beach while I packed our beach bags and put on my swimsuit. I spent the afternoon alternating every 15-20 minutes between these two views:

Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, right?
We had dinner at a place called The Original Point, where Rudy had soft-shelled crab and I had yet another plate of shrimp. Afterwards, we went back to the Bama for some more entertainment and another great night of people-watching. We LOVED the guy singing that night.
Wednesday was our day to get out and see more of the area. We drove all the way into Gulf Shores and back. We had lunch at Brian’s PoBoys – a roadside food truck - and it was wonderful! After lunch, we went back out on the beach for a while. Because it was our first trip without kids since we became parents, we splurged and went on a parasail ride. We had to ride on a banana float pulled behind a jet ski out to the parasail boat. Once we were on the boat, we got all strapped into our harnesses and off we went. We were up about 600 feet, which is an amazing view and it is so peaceful. Before they reeled us back in, the boat driver dipped us into the water a couple of times, which was pretty awesome. We don’t have any pictures of it. They wouldn’t let us take our camera out there and it would’ve cost us $30 to have them take pictures. You’ll just have to trust me on it.
I spent the rest of the afternoon on the beach, which is something I’d like to be able to say more often…

Wednesday night, we had an amazing dinner at Louisiana Lagniappe, where I ate some ridiculously good stuffed shrimp. Rudy and I both agreed that it was as good (maybe better?) than anything we’ve ever eaten in New Orleans. For real. After dinner, we were miserably stuffed. We drove out to LuLu’s in Gulf Shores just to see what it was all about. It was a fun place, but waaaay touristy. It was definitely our early night on the vacation.
Thursday was our last day. We planned to lay on the beach literally all day. When we woke up to clouds and thunder, I was not a happy camper. The thunder and rain passed mid-morning, but it stayed cloudy almost all day. By golly, we were on the beach, though! It was almost cold for a good part of the day. I stayed under the canopy with my cover-up on and a towel over my legs. Once the clouds began to break up a little, it warmed up and we enjoyed our day. I certainly didn’t need to get in the water to cool off very often.
We went to dinner that night at Fisherman’s Corner. The food was delicious and we’ll definitely go back there sometime. We decided to spend our 3rd night out of 4 enjoying the crowd at the Bama, and what a crowd it was! The place was packed and it was so much fun! We laughed and sang and danced and had a great time until Rudy pretty much had to make me leave. I know he was dreading making a 9 hour drive after a late night. We couldn’t resist one more walk on the beach that night. It’s a hard thing to savor for 3 days and then leave it.

Friday morning came pretty early and we were on the road. We were ready to see the kids, though. We managed to bring Caleb a t-shirt and a starfish and brought Nola a little purse that says Orange Beach on it with a crab.
Our trip was wonderful. It was much-needed time away together. It was much needed relaxation and saltwater and sand and sunshine and seafood. We celebrated our 12th anniversary in style. Hopefully, we won’t have to wait quite so long to do it again.

And, for the record, we are now big fans of Perdido Key. We highly recommend it to anyone looking for a place to go with or without kids. It’s a great location – close enough to the touristy places, but they aren’t in your face. They cater to visitors, but not in a bumper boats and putt-putt golf kind of way. We’ll be going back there as soon as we can.

Two Little Monkeys Jumping On A Bed

2011-06-21T21:33:00.002-05:00

Some of our friends told us that the key to getting both of the kids to sleep through the night was to put them in bed together. We were assured that it would work like a charm. They would soothe each other and go right to sleep, not waking up until we were ready for them to wake up the next morning. Well, we tried it. Here’s what happened:

It started out great. Aren’t they sweet and snuggly?

That lasted about 30 seconds and then things went downhill fast.

They are now back in their respective beds…asleep.

Sweet Summertime!

2011-06-21T21:06:00.002-05:00

Cue the Jimmy Buffett tunes, pour me a glass of lemonade and pass the SPF 30 – it’s finally summer! After a ridiculous 10 snow days this year put my last day of work at June 8th, summer couldn’t get here fast enough.
I left the kids in daycare until Friday, the 10th, because I had some things that needed to be done. Rudy was still working until noon on Saturday (he had a crazy band thing!). I took the kids in on Thursday and rushed to the hospital only to find out that the mammogram that I thought was scheduled for Thursday was actually scheduled for Friday. I was also supposed to have had a hair appointment on Thursday, but the stylist cancelled it because she was sick. Hmmm…things were not off to a rousing start. I took advantage of the free time and went shopping for our trip to Florida. I bought myself some clothes and stocked us up for a few days away from home. Friday was much more productive. I had my first mammogram (not as bad as I expected, but still…) and went for a scheduled visit with my doctor. After that, I had a wonderful outdoor lunch all by myself and then moseyed over to the spa for a mani/pedi & brow wax. I had a gift certificate from Christmas for $100. My bill? $100. That’s a beautiful thing. After that, I started to panic about the state of my hair right before vacation. I did some asking around and found a great person to color my hair at the last minute. Whew – maintenance is difficult at 34!

On Saturday, Rudy worked in the morning, then met us for Caleb’s last T-ball game. Caleb got to play first base and did a great job! I spent Saturday evening doing some heavy duty packing. I managed to get pretty much everything packed so that we could load up and go on Sunday.

Sunday morning I had to meet someone at church at 9:45 to get some information, then we were on the road! The car was loaded to the gills, but we were headed down the mountain. We stopped in Alma to eat lunch and then cruised on down the highway to Hot Springs. LaLa and Pops were waiting for us when we got there. Caleb jumped out of the car literally squealing with excitement! We spent the afternoon on the lake trying out the new tube that Pops bought for Caleb. Jimmy and Kim came over by boat to watch Caleb’s first try on the tube. He LOVED it. First, he rode with Rudy and then it was my turn. I wasn’t so sure about it, but I’ll do things for my kids that I wouldn’t do otherwise. Caleb and I rode the tube all the way to Aunt Harolyn’s house! When we got there, we swam for a while in her pool. Nola loved the pool. She may be my waterbaby after all. She’s definitely going to be the more adventurous of the two kids! We boated back home, had dinner and went to bed pretty early.
It was the beginning of a wonderfully sweet summertime…

A 5-year-old’s World

2011-06-07T22:44:00.002-05:00

Sometimes I would like to see the world through Caleb’s eyes. It’s all about the next adventure. It’s all about running and playing and avoiding bedtime. It’s all about him.
At five, Caleb is obsessed with all things creepy-crawly. Basically, if I won’t allow it in the house, he LOVES it. He would spend all day hunting for bugs, lizards, frogs & toads. And, oh, when he catches them…those poor little guys. He caught a toad this past weekend. Rudy made him let it go in the yard after 24 hours. I’m pretty sure that toad is in therapy somewhere (physical and mental). Right this minute, there is a wet/dry habitat box on my back porch with 6 baby frogs hopping in it. The previous inhabitant was a salamander and a variety of beetles and spiders. Caleb says he wants to be a scientist when he grows up – the kind that studies bugs and animals. We’ve learned some new words: entomologist, zoologist and biologist. He doesn’t think he wants to be a veterinarian, though. They don’t get to work on spiders and bugs. I’m pretty sure we’re not going to be able to avoid a lengthy trip through the insectarium this year when we visit the zoo. A couple of weeks ago, I looked out the window as I was putting laundry away and saw this big box turtle crawling through our front yard. We took Caleb outside immediately and he was so excited you would’ve thought Disneyworld had dropped in our front yard. He looked at it, picked it up, giggled and then helped Rudy take it to a safe spot in an empty lot. He talked about that turtle all weekend.

At five, Caleb is learning letters and numbers and logic and language. He likes to write, but gets frustrated when we try to get him to sound out the words that he wants to put on paper. He doesn’t really get math concepts, but I think that’s partially because I’m really bad at teaching them. He can color beautifully, putting to ease my (very slight) worries of fine motor difficulties from a couple of years ago. He loves books and I feel the greatest guilt when I have to tell him that we can’t stop and read a book right now. He also likes to ask for books to keep from having to go to bed. (He’s 5, right?)
At five, Caleb’s imagination is growing by leaps and bounds. He pretends with his toys. He pretends when he’s playing alone. I love to “eavesdrop” on those moments. One night, he decided that he wanted to make a campfire like Pops makes at deer camp. He stacked some wood in the middle of the backyard, then gathered some rocks to make a circle around the wood. He got a couple of chairs and put them by the fire. That wasn’t quite enough, so he took his red bucket, turned it upside down and pretended that he had a campfire, just like at deer camp.

At five, Caleb is still a worrier. He gets it honest. He’s naturally anxious. I worry about his worry. I’ve talked to my wonderful sister-in-law who is a psychologist and she assures me that he is okay. We try to help him relax. We give him time to survey the situation before expecting him to join in. We don’t scold him for being reserved. We do scold him for being ridiculous about it though – especially when we know he is putting on a show of it, like pretending to be scared just so someone will sleep in his bed with him. We do scold him for being whiny. I can’t stand whiny kids. Sometimes Caleb is whiny. We’re working on it. Any suggestions?
At five, Caleb loves his sister. He loves his Daddy. He loves his Mama. He loves his grandparents and his friends. He is a sweet, sweet boy…most of the time. We do occasionally catch him giving Nola a little extra shove at the end of a hug. We also see him give her hugs when he thinks nobody’s watching.
At five, Caleb is wonderful. He loves t-ball, football, bugs, animals, playing, anything with wheels, his family, his friends, the swimming pool, bizzert (dessert) and the ice cream truck. He loves his behavior sticker chart that earns him nightly choices like playing Wii or a dollar for his bank. He is pretty much a great kid…and I think I’d say that even if I wasn’t his mom.

Dancing Queen

2011-06-07T22:07:00.002-05:00

Check out this girl’s smooth moves…

Dancing while Caleb plays Just Dance Kids on the Wii…

Hand, Foot & Mouth

2011-06-07T21:48:00.002-05:00

As I mentioned in a previous post, I drove down to Hot Springs on Thursday, 5/26 for an interview. It was a quick overnight trip and I drove back home on Friday. We were planning a trip to Tulsa to see Jan & Bill for Memorial Day weekend. I was on the phone talking to my mom – almost to Fayetteville – when I got an incoming call from a number I didn’t recognize. I let it go to voicemail. When I got off the phone with Mom, I checked the message. It was the kids’ daycare. Nola was running a fever of 101.9 and they needed someone to come get her. Ugh…

By this time I was in Fayetteville, so I called Rudy and told him that I would pick the kids up up & meet him at home. My plan was to bring Caleb home and then take Nola to convenient care. The boys packed and left for Tulsa while I took Nola to Wellquest. There was a 2 1/2 hour wait, so I decided to try out the new walk-in clinic in town. Lo and behold – we were the only people there. (Seriously, the doctor was playing solitaire when we walked past him on our way to the exam room.) I figured that was either because they were brand new and people didn’t know about them yet or they were awful. Either way, I needed someone to take a look at Nola and find out why she had spiked a fever. I suspected hand, foot & mouth virus because we had some friends over for dinner the week before and their daughter started showing symptoms 2 days later. I mentioned it to the doctor, but he didn’t see anything to base the diagnosis on. He looked in her mouth and her throat was a mess. Strep swab was negative, but there was no way her throat felt good. He called it a bacterial infection, prescribed good ol’ amoxicillin and sent us on our way.

I started her on the amoxicillin that night. She obviously didn’t feel well. The fever hung on through the night, but was much lower the next morning. We spent Saturday snuggled up in the big chair in the living room. She napped on my chest while I watched more TV than I’ve watched in months.
She still felt pretty miserable, but the fever gradually went away. By mid-afternoon, red spots were starting to show up on her body. By 5:30, they were turning into blisters. Yep, she definitely had it. Full-blown hand, foot & mouth.

The worst blisters were on her left thumb – the one that she sucks. Our pediatrician had told me previously that our best bet for her to stop thumb-sucking was to contract HFM. Secretly, I was kind of giddy about the idea of that working. Not that I wanted her to have to suffer the awfulness of HFM, but I was really hoping there would be a good payoff in the end.

By bedtime, she was miserable. By 12:30, I gave up and put her in bed with me. Neither of us got much sleep. The worst part of HFM is that there is absolutely no medicine for it. It’s viral & just has to run its course. I gave her tylenol for the pain, but it didn’t seem to help.

On Sunday, we went back to convenient care. This time, I went to Mercy. We waited and waited and waited to see a doctor. Nola wore her sunglasses in the waiting room so she could be incognito. She would’ve been mortified if any of the kids from her class had seen her with those blisters on her hands and face!

Once we finally got back to the room, we waited a while longer for the doctor. Nola was tired. It was naptime. She really didn’t want anything to do with that room or me for that matter. She screamed and screamed and threw a tantrum like I haven’t ever seen her throw. I’m pretty sure it all started because I told her she couldn’t put her diaper bag in the medical waste trash can. Eventually, the doctor came in. She took a look at Nola’s blisters, listened to the information that I shared and said, “Yeah, she has a really bad case of HFM. Really bad.” She took her off the amoxicillin & said to just ride it out. I asked about returning to daycare and she wrote a note saying she could go back when she was 24 hours fever-free and eating/drinking normally. Well, we were already at both of those milestones, so technically she was in the clear.

We went home & both of us took a much-needed nap. After nap, we played and watched some more TV. She was obviously feeling better as long as the tylenol was controlling her pain. She even discovered her bellybutton. (She’s now obsessed with bellybuttons. If you’re around her, I highly recommend tucking in your shirt.)

This is what Nola’s thumb looked like by Sunday night. Heartbreaking. It was about 50% larger than the other one and the blisters were so large that you couldn’t really tell where one stopped and the next one started. They were beginning to break and become open sores. It was not fun.

The boys came home on Monday and we made the decision that Nola could not go back to daycare on Tuesday after the Memorial Day break. My mom offered to come up and keep her. We were concerned about sending her out with open sores that couldn’t be bandaged. She could get any kind of infection in those sores and we couldn’t stomach the thought. So, Mom kept her home Tuesday and Wednesday.

On Wednesday night, I did something I never thought I’d do. I gave Nola a pacifier. She was having such a hard time sleeping because she wanted to suck her thumb, but it hurt. I remembered that I happened to have 2 pacifiers in the cabinet, so I gave her one. After a few seconds, she calmed herself right down and went to sleep. A lightbulb went off in my mind! Maybe…just maybe, she would take to the pacifier and stop sucking her thumb after all. Then, once I knew she didn’t miss that thumb anymore, I could instate paci rehab and we’d be done with it all! My evil plan was foiled. The paci served its purpose for one night. As I type this, Nola is in her bed, sound asleep, thumb firmly planted in her mouth. Can’t say I didn’t try!

She still had her boo-boo on Thursday (and was quite happy to show it to everyone who would look at it). She really liked for people to blow on it and then she would try to do the same, but usually ended up blowing a raspberry at it. Mom offered to take her home with her for the weekend. As much as I hated to be away from her for that long, I decided it was for the best. So, they packed up and headed for Hot Springs on Thursday morning. Mom reported frequently on her improvement and Nola had a blast being the center of attention at LaLa’s house.

We met Mom and Mr L in Ft. Smith on Sunday for lunch and brought Nola home with us. We were so glad to have her home, but most of all we were glad to see HFM go away!

May 22, 2011

2011-06-06T22:22:00.002-05:00

It started out as a beautiful Sunday. Rudy and I were celebrating our 12th anniversary. We went to church and then we were treated to lunch by our sweet friends, the Sharpless family. After lunch, we went to Fayetteville so Caleb could spend his Toys R Us gift certificate and the portion of his birthday money that he were allowing him to spend instead of save. (Seriously, the child does not need any more toys!) He picked out Just Dance 2 for the Wii and a wet/dry outdoor habitat to keep frogs and lizards and all sorts of creepy crawlies in…outside. We came home and took a little nap.
After my nap, I got up and freshened up for my surprise dinner date with Rudy. He had reserved a babysitter and had plans to take me to our favorite no kids restaurant, Crabby’s. We enjoyed a nice meal and uninterrupted conversation.
After dinner, we stopped to get some ice cream and then thought we’d go for a drive. We started out toward War Eagle Mill to see how high the flood waters were still standing and just look around. We hadn’t been on the road too long when I got a text saying that we were under a tornado warning. WARNING – not watch. I told Rudy to turn around and head for home, then texted the babysitter and told her that we were headed home and if she heard the sirens she should take the kids into the laundry room. We high-tailed it home.
On our way home, I read the first of many Facebook messages that would be posted about an F5 tornado that devastated a large portion of Joplin, Missouri. One of my friends was posting about her son and grandchildren who rode out the storm in his truck in the parking lot of a convenience store and escaped with minor injuries. Her daughter’s college apartment suffered major damage. A former co-worker who lives in Joplin on the weekends with her new husband lost her home and was displaced to a hotel with no running water or electricity. A hospital was demolished. A WalMart, an Academy Sports and a Home Depot were flattened. Thousands of people lost their homes, their cars, their businesses and churches. Most importantly, 142 people died. Within one minute, a sleepy Midwestern Sunday evening turned into a devastated town with walking wounded, little-to-no resources and more anguish than anyone should ever have to bear.
An hour away, we were under a tornado warning.
When we got home, we sent the babysitter out the door immediately so she could get home before the storm hit. As she was getting into her car, we saw a neighborhood cat go by with a baby rabbit that it had caught. (This is the same cat that has killed a robin in our yard and then knocked the eggs out of the nest.) We thought the rabbit was dead, but when the cat put it on the ground, it took off. Rudy went over to help rescue the rabbit. When he was finally able to get the cat away from it, he got the rabbit and brought it back over to our side of the street, where he was going to take it to an empty lot and let it go. But - the rabbit had a broken back leg and when it caught its breath from being chased, it freaked out and tried to bite Rudy. He jumped and dropped the rabbit…on the sidewalk. It wiggled for about a minute and then died right there in front of us. Unfortunately, Caleb watched the whole thing. I spent the next 15-20 minutes consoling him. He was so distraught that the bunny had died. He even told me that he didn’t like that cat – the same cat that he told me he loved the day before and has called “my buddy” for a year and a half.
About the time he calmed down, the storm hit. We had put Nola to bed already, but we were keeping a close eye on the weather (remember that tornado warning?). I got busy cleaning everything out of the laundry room that I could move. Then I put all of the things that I’d really rather not lose (my laptop, external hard drive, camera case) in the dryer. Caleb also put his ZhuZhu pets in there. (Everyone has their own sense of what’s valuable, right?)

Everyone seems to want to know why I put our stuff in the dryer. Here’s my logic…if we should happen to get hit by a tornado, the dryer is the closest thing we have in our house to a safe. Granted, the door could come open and everything would go flying. Granted, the dryer could get crushed like a tin can. But…on the off chance that we just got tumbled around a little or maybe just had a little structural damage, the contents of the dryer would probably be less harmed than if they were just sitting out in the house somewhere. They aren’t likely to get wet or crushed or broken. If we had enough damage for the dryer to be destroyed, I’d just be happy that my family survived. But…if something as simple as putting those things in the dryer could give me access to all of our family photos and my camera, I’d be silly not to do it.
I put blankets on the floor and got Nola’s diaper bag and my purse. I made sure everyone had on full clothes and shoes. When the sirens went off, I got Nola out of her bed and took her and Caleb into the laundry room. We put our bike helmets on to protect our heads in case of flying debris.We stayed in there for a while and Rudy stayed in the living room, watching the weather reports on TV. Finally, the sirens went off and we got the “all clear.” We put the kids to bed and started getting ready for bed. Just as we put our heads on the pillows, the phone rang with our weather warning. We were in the line of fire again. Shoes, bra and pants on. (Wouldn’t want to be one of those people on the news that wishes they had put their bra and pants on before the storm hit, right?) This time, we managed to transport both kids to the laundry room without ever waking them up. I laid Caleb on the blankets on the floor and he slept soundly. I held Nola in my lap and she never even stopped sucking her thumb. The kids and I sat in the dark for what seemed like forever while Rudy watched the weather guys on TV. I was uneasy the whole time, but when he came in the laundry room and put on his helmet with a somber look on his face, I got extremely nervous. Actually, I got downright scared. Rudy got down on his knees on a blanket and covered Caleb’s body with his. I became a shell around Nola and we held each other’s hands. I prayed that God would protect us. I didn’t give one thought to our things or to our home. I just prayed that he would protect our little family, hunkered in that laundry room – the only place in our house without windows or exterior walls that would hold the four of us. We could hear the hail pounding our roof and the wind howling. The peacefulness of our sleeping children did little to calm our nerves. Finally and suddenly, the hail stopped. The winds died down. Rudy took a deep breath and went to the living room to see what the radar was showing. He came back in and told me that we were in the clear. I quietly thanked God and put my babies back to bed. They never knew they were in harm’s way. That’s the way I wanted it to be.
It was an eventful anniversary – not exactly what we had planned. But we were grateful to have survived it and to still be next to each other as we drifted off to sleep, knowing that our lives could have taken a major turn in that laundry room. I praised God for giving us the opportunity to weather another storm together.

Grand Slam Birthday Party!

2011-06-06T21:43:00.002-05:00

Before we went to Caleb’s birthday party, Mom, Mr. L., Jan and Bill came to the house to give him their gifts. (We asked for no gifts at the party.) Caleb was thrilled to get a new “big boy” bike from LaLa and Pops. He also loved the bow/arrow set, water gun and bug vacuum that he got from Grandma and Bill. (Yes, he usually has to wear a helmet on the bike!)

We hosted Caleb’s 5th birthday party at the NWA Naturals Game on Friday, May 6th. We invited 3 friends and his cousin, Gabe to join us. We let Caleb choose his guests and he chose 2 boys from his class and his t-ball team (Michael and Conner) as well as his daycare teacher and her son (Kaleb). We weren’t about to try to take all of those boys without an adult, so we paid for a parent to come with them. The kids got a ticket to the game, a wristband for the kids’ zone, a hot dog/chips combo and an ice cream. We were even able to use the ice cream as the birthday dessert and didn’t have to mess with a cake or cupcakes. At the end of the night, the boys got to be on the scoreboard screen, which they loved. The kids had a fabulous time and the adults were completely worn out when it was over. I’m not sure any of us actually saw any of the game, but the entertainment was the 5 little boys running like banshees all over the place, having the times of their lives! Here are a few pictures from the party. (The rest are on Shutterfly…)

Kaleb, Conner, Michael, Caleb & Gabe

Playing in the kids’ zone:

Hanging out with Strike!

On the big screen:

My birthday boy and me!

Caleb’s 5th Birthday

2011-06-06T21:25:00.002-05:00

As hard as it is for me to fathom, my sweet Caleb turned 5 on May 2nd. I am so proud of the little boy that he has become and I am so very grateful to have to opportunity to walk beside him as he learns about life.

We celebrated Caleb’s official birthday by sending cookies for snack at his school.

We also had one of his favorite meals – spaghetti – for supper and then topped the day off with chocolate cake for dessert.

Rudy and I gave him a Razor scooter for his birthday, because he had outgrown his Radio Flyer one. We also got him a new bug box with a magnifying glass and a DVD of Charlotte’s Web.

Would somebody please tell me when he got big enough to ride something like this?!?

Stuff We Did in May

2011-06-04T23:35:00.002-05:00

That’s right - I went another month without blogging. Here’s the synopsis…
May 1 ~ Usually, we would’ve gone out for our annual BBQ dinner on May 1st, but we decided to go a little early this year and went over the weekend. That evening, I was a little sentimental about my sweet boy turning 5 the next day and made this collage to celebrate him.
May 2 ~ Caleb’s 5th birthday! Of course, this warrants its very own post. We took cookies to daycare to celebrate and then had a spaghetti supper and chocolate cake at home. We gave Caleb a Razor scooter for his birthday and he loved it!

May 4 ~ Nola spent her morning catching up on current events while the rest of us got ready to go to school:

May 6 ~ I got these beautiful flowers at school with a sweet note from Rudy telling me what a wonderful mother I am. I loved them!

That evening, we celebrated Caleb’s birthday in style at the Naturals baseball game. We took 5 boys, 2 toddlers and 12 adults to the game and had a blast!

May 7 ~ Mom and Mr. L went to Caleb’s T-Ball game and spent the day/night with us.

May 8 ~ Mother’s Day. I spent the day quietly being lazy and enjoying it to the fullest! Caleb went home with Mom and Mr. L. for the week. Rudy took Nola to convenient care because she had some congestion and her eyes were goopy. We thought he was taking her as a preventative measure so that we would have a note for daycare saying that she didn’t have pink eye, just allergies or a cold. Just as I sat down to blog, he called me to say that she DID have pink eye and would have to stay home. Ugh. We started immediately looking for someone who could watch her, since I have no sick days left and he had a concert coming up. We couldn’t find anyone, so he stayed with her. This whole sick day mess has been awful this year!

May 10 ~ I had a job interview for a supervisory position in my school district. I won’t go into details, but I applied for a few jobs this spring that would give me the opportunity to use the admin degree that I worked really hard for. Apparently, it’s not my time, because I didn’t get any of the jobs. I’m trying to focus on the fact that God has a plan for me and maybe He knows that it will be important for me to be with Caleb for his kindergarten year. As hard as the rejection has been, I know that my time will come. Patience is not my strength.

May 11 ~ We went to a going away party in Fayetteville for a band staff member. While we were there, Nola discovered a basket of Build-A-Bear clothes. She pulled out 2 sparkly purses, put one on each arm, said “bye-bye” and walked to the door. She is so sassy!

May 13-15 ~ We went to Hot Springs to spend the weekend. My Memmie was in the hospital in North Little Rock and I wanted to go see her. Rudy and I left the kids with Mom and Mr. L. and spent Saturday with Memmie, Poppie and Uncle Ron at the hospital. It was a tough day – so hard to see someone who has been such a source of strength for me all my life struggling to be strong for herself. It turned out that her calcium levels had gotten way too high and caused her to be confused and lethargic. The hospital was able to get her leveled out and she’s now home, feisty as ever. While the guys went down to get some coffee, I had a chance to just sit and hold her hand, talk and pray.

After that quick trip to the middle of the state, things got really crazy at work. I buckled down and started cranking out reports, paperwork and billing like a mad woman. I snapped this picture one evening as I was catching my breath at my desk, well after the kids had gone home.

As I write this, there are 2 more days of school left and I’m still cranking out paperwork. Almost done, though…

May 17 ~ We may need to put a lock on the pantry door:

May 18 ~ The Villines kids had a rough week at daycare. When Rudy picked Nola up on Tuesday, he was given an incident report to sign. Apparently, another child tried to take a toy from Nola and she bit him. While it just horrified me to think that she had bitten another child and we were going to be “those parents” with “that kid” in the class, I had to laugh at the fact that the incident report said that the workers had disciplined her by telling her to “use her words.” She only has two words – mama and cracker. Which one of those would have been most appropriate in that situation? As if that weren’t enough, when Rudy picked Caleb up on Wednesday, Caleb only had 2 of his 5 behavior sticks left in his cup. Caleb almost always has all 5 and has never had less than 4. Rudy gave him the what-for about it at school and I made him sit down with me after dinner and help write an apology letter to his teacher…

May 19 (and every day since then) ~ Caleb had 5 sticks in his cup.

May 21 ~ Caleb’s t-ball game was cancelled due to the fields being wet from all of the rain we’ve had. We had a good family Saturday and had some guests over for dinner. One of Rudy’s co-workers, Chris, and his family came over. Rudy grilled an amazing dinner for us. Chris has a daughter who is just a little bit younger than Nola. It was fun to watch the two of them play around each other. Caleb was enamored with little Sara Kate and she thought he was pretty funny too.
Also – here is a picture of Nola’s new shoes. They are Tiny TOMS and they are ridiculously cute. I love my TOMS and I love their “one-for-one” giving. But, mostly, these are just plain adorable…
May 22 ~ HAPPY 12TH ANNIVERSARY TO RUDY AND ME! This day honestly deserves its very own post. It was quite eventful. Until I get that post written, I’ll just say it started out great and ended up very eventful. It involved friends, a trip to Fayetteville, a surprise date, tornadic weather and a dead rabbit. If that’s not a teaser, I don’t know what is!

May 24 ~ Was supposed to be my last day of school. But, does anyone remember Snowpocalypse 2011? And, so we added 10 days to the end of the year. It was a bummer to not be getting out of school, but these two went to daycare looking awfully cute anyway:

Throughout the day, we kept hearing reports that the weather was going to get bad that night. We were told to prepare for the worst storms we’d seen this year with a high likelihood of tornadoes. I’m not typically scared of bad weather. I've always had a healthy respect for the power of weather, but I know that we have a solid home and have always felt pretty comfortable in the safety of that shelter. The weather reports that day were enough to truly scare me. Rudy and I waivered back and forth about going to a friend’s house with a basement. I have friends who got hotel rooms in a place with a storm shelter. Many, many people in our area left their homes and went somewhere with a basement. After a lot of thought and debate, we decided to ride out the storm at home. I kicked into high gear and prepared our laundry room to be the safest place in our house. I was nervous all night as we watched the storms roll in on the weather reports. Miraculously, we were spared. The storms did produce tornadoes in Oklahoma and south of us in Arkansas, but our area only had severe thunderstorms. Our friend Chad was in town and spent the night with us. I’m sure he thought I was crazy because I was so nervous, but I was being a protective mother bear and I don’t apologize for that one bit.

May 26 ~ I drove to Hot Springs for another interview. It was oddly quiet in my car as I drove those 3 1/2 hours by myself for the first time in a very long time.

May 27 ~ I had my interview in the morning and drove home in the afternoon. I was passing through Fayetteville when Rudy called and said that Nola needed to be picked up from daycare because she had a fever. Ugh. More about that in a separate post.

May 29 ~ Nola figured out how to answer the question, “Where’s your bellybutton?”

Whew – no wonder I’m tired!!! Just reading through all of that made me need a nap!

Easter 2011

2011-05-09T01:08:00.001-05:00

When did this kid get so tall and skinny?

It was a cold, rainy Easter weekend in Northwest Arkansas, but we celebrated our risen Christ just as though the sun had been shining. I love the renewal of Easter and the pageantry of everyone getting dressed up for the celebration of the day. Of course, Easter is not all about dresses and new shoes and eggs, but the “fanciness” of the day makes it stand out all that much more. It makes us take notice. It makes it not just another Sunday…because it is so far from being mundane.

Our church has a community Easter egg hunt on the Saturday before Easter. This year, it was held inside because the eggs (and the kids) would’ve floated if we had taken them outside. Even though we celebrate the sacred parts of Easter most, the church still has an Easter Bunny available for pictures. We don’t really do the whole Easter Bunny story at our house (or Santa either, for that matter), but I don’t have a problem at all with the kids having their picture taken with him. I wasn’t sure how Nola would do, but she was fully intrigued by him.

After we had our turn to take a picture, she kept going back over and just standing in front of him. Sometimes she would get tickled about it and just laugh out loud.

The kids ate cupcakes and cookies and all sorts of sweet stuff, then they separated them into age groups and let them pick up eggs in the hallways. That worked out great for the kids because they didn’t have to worry about the little ones and big ones getting in each others’ way. But – it caused a bit of a problem for this mom who had one in one hallway and another in a whole different hallway! I ended up going with Nola, since it was her first egg “hunt”. My friend Sheila took pictures of Caleb, but I don’t have them yet to share. Here’s Nola’s adventure:

When it was over, we took our baskets and headed home…

When we got home, Caleb and I dyed some eggs and made our bunny cake that turned out really ugly, but it tasted really good.

Sunday morning, we got the kids dressed in their Easter clothes and went to church. We had a nice service and then went to lunch. I tried so hard to get a good picture of them, but it was quite difficult. Here’s the best I could do…

After lunch we came home to rest and then gave the kids their Easter baskets. We scaled down the baskets this year. Each of them got a movie and a snack, some bubbles and the candy that had been given to them by their grandparents. Caleb’s favorite thing was his Super Mario fruit snacks. Nola liked the bubbles best. I filled the extra space in the baskets with Easter stuffed animals from years past.

T-Ball

2011-05-09T00:38:00.001-05:00

We gave Caleb the choice of playing either t-ball or soccer this year. Much to my appreciation, he chose t-ball. I signed him up to play in the Bentonville league, because I’ve heard from reputable sources that they have a better program than Rogers. Because we live in Bentonville School District, we were able to choose.

Caleb was assigned to the Cubs, which nearly killed Rudy and I since we are life-long Cardinals fans. But, I have to admit, he looks pretty stinking cute in his uniform, even if it is blue instead of red.
The first practice was on April 5th. We weren’t sure what to expect, but felt okay about it since we already knew 2 of the kids on his team from daycare. Caleb loved it from the very first minute. Rudy has been working with him in the backyard and that practice paid off, because Caleb threw and ran and hit the ball like a t-ball pro! Of course, the kids have no idea how to actually play the game, but they are pretty cute while they are learning. Here are a few pictures of the first practice:

And, of course, after the first practice comes the first game. Caleb’s first game was April 9th. I could’ve just keeled over when I saw him in his uniform for the first time.

He loved the game. They all get to bat and nobody gets out and nobody takes score. It’s just about learning the fundamentals and how to actually play without everyone swarming the ball all over the field.

Aunt Kathy came out to see Caleb’s big debut.

And, of course, his Mama and Daddy were proud of him!

Ready, Set, Walk!

2011-05-09T00:09:00.001-05:00

On the afternoon of Friday, April 1st, we were sitting in the living room, trying to decide where to go for dinner. Nola was playing in the floor. I didn’t think too much about it when she crawled over and pulled herself up to standing by holding onto the coffee table. She’s been doing that for months. I did take notice, though, when she decided to let go. She stood there for a few seconds before she put her hand back on the table. Rudy was closest to her, so I suggested that he see if she would walk to him. He did and – lo and behold - if she didn’t let go of that table and take a couple of steps! We spent the next half-hour having her walk back and forth between us, laughing and enjoying the moment. Here’s some video of her first afternoon of walking:

Nola right after taking her first steps on 4/1/11

Stuff We Did in April

2011-05-08T22:36:00.002-05:00

April 1 ~ Nola suddenly started walking! Of course, that deserves its own post. More on that later.

April 4 ~ The daycare called me because Caleb had a suspicious rash that they thought was chicken pox. I picked him up, took him straight to the doctor, got a diagnosis of post-viral rash and took him straight back to daycare. While I was there, they told me that Nola had been having diarrhea. I chalked it up to the antibiotic that she was on for her ears. Later that night, I booked a trip for just Rudy and I in Florida this summer! Yeah!!!

April 5 ~ Nola got sent home from daycare with fever and more diarrhea. Turns out she had rotavirus. Yuck. My mom came to the rescue and drove up to stay with us since Nola couldn’t go to daycare.

That night was also Caleb’s first t-ball practice. That also deserves its own post. Again…more on that later.

April 7 ~ Mom left after packing and taking 365 pieces of Nola’s outgrown clothes to consignment.

April 8 ~ My friend Sheila and I took our preschoolers (Caleb and Ansley) to see Seussical the Musical at Bentonville High School. It was so cute and the kids loved it – even though they were totally exhausted by the time it was over.

April 9 ~ Caleb’s 1st t-ball game. Awesome.

April 11th ~ Ugh. Benchmark testing week. Ugh.

April 12th ~ Crazy Hair Day for Caleb at daycare.

April 15th ~ Stacy and I drove to Frisco, TX after school for our girls’ weekend.

April 16th ~ We started our day with a trip to Sam Moon and Cheesecake Factory and ended it with a 7 hour concert at Cowboys Stadium. We saw Uncle Kracker, Billy Currington, Zac Brown Band and Kenny Chesney.

April 19th ~ Caleb’s kindergarten screening at Reagan.

April 22nd ~ Tornado sirens sent us to the laundry room wearing bike helmets. The tornado passed just a few miles from our house. While we were in there (trying to keep the mood light to keep the kids from being scared), Caleb asked if we could pray about it…so we did.

That was the beginning of a very long week of nothing but rain, rain, rain.

April 23rd ~ We went to the church Easter egg hunt. Caleb and I dyed eggs and made our Easter cake. It wasn’t pretty, but it tasted pretty good.

April 24th ~ Easter Sunday – a rainy day, but we celebrated anyway! A separate Easter post to come…
April 25th ~ Nola ran a fever at school, so Rudy left to take her home. The rain caused lots of roads in Northwest Arkansas to flood. It was a difficult drive home from school for Caleb and me. By the time we went to bed, Caleb was running a fever too.

April 26th ~ Rudy stayed home with both kids. We watched the TV closely again for tornado warnings. It was a horrible week with lots of severe weather.

April 27th ~ Mom came up to take care of the kids again so that Rudy could go back to work. Caleb had been on the couch with fever for a day and a half. When she got here, he perked up like magic. He told me that night that LaLa made him feel better. I agree.

April 28th ~ Mom and I took the kids to Gravette for a photo session with Kim Durham of KD Photography. I’m still waiting for the final result, but the sneak preview that I got looks wonderful!

Stuff We Did in March

2011-05-08T21:44:00.002-05:00

Holy Moly – It’s worse than I thought. I haven’t updated what we’ve been doing since the first of March. Here goes nothing (thanks to backtracking through my Facebook posts)…

March 13th ~ Caleb went to LaLa & Pops’ house for the week because we had so much on our evening calendars that it seemed like a good time for him to go for a visit.

March 15th ~ Nola started running a fever at daycare and I had to go get her. She ended up having a respiratory infection and an ear infection. I took her to the ENT to get her ears suctioned…again.

March 16th ~ Caleb’s fish, Ronnie died. We went through the classic 80’s sitcom dilemma of whether or not to replace him with a look-alike and decided against it. When I told him, he was fine. After a day or two, though, it because a major issue. He wouldn’t sleep in his bed because he missed Ronnie. He sobbed one night because he didn’t get to say goodbye to Ronnie. He told me that he had prayed that Ronnie would come back to life and he didn’t understand why it didn’t happen. Ronnie was soon replaced with a goldfish named Swimmy. All is well in the tank again.

March 17th ~ Caleb and my parents went to the St. Patrick’s Day parade in Hot Springs. These showed up on my phone via text:

March 19th ~ I met my parents to bring Caleb home. We sang Justin Bieber’s song “Baby” about 25 times between Waldron and Rogers.

March 19th ~ Rudy and I cringed when we found out that Caleb was playing on the Cubs t-ball team. I nearly killed our Cardinals fan hearts.

March 20-27 ~ SPRING BREAK!!!

March 20 ~ I spent hours sorting through the kids’ outgrown stuff to sell/consign/give away. We have a lot of outgrown stuff! We spent some time in the afternoon walking the trail at Compton Gardens.

March 21 ~ I spent the day in Branson with my friend Stacy. We shopped ‘til we dropped and then some.

March 22 ~ One of Caleb’s friends came over for the day. I decided for absolutely sure that 2 kids is plenty for me.

March 23 ~ We all packed up and went to Hot Springs for the rest of the week. Yay!!!

March 24 ~ Rudy and I had a date day while the kids stayed with my mom. We went to Oaklawn & out for a fabulous dinner.

March 25 ~ Rudy went to deer camp to help out with some work & stayed for the rest of the weekend.

March 26 ~ Aunt Harolyn had us all over for a family dinner. It was fun to see the Caleb and Maddox playing together & we enjoyed catching up with our whole family!

March 27 ~ Came home to get ready to go back to school. The end of spring break is always sad.

March 29 ~ Caleb: “Thunder is good. It scares away the lightning.” I love the logic of a 4 year old.

March 31 ~ Caleb at bedtime: “My heart beats happy.” I admit that I got a little choked up at that one.

Case In Point

2011-05-08T16:35:00.002-05:00

Seconds after I posted about it being 56 days since I last blogged, the phone rang. Rudy was calling to tell me that Nola’s diagnosis from the walk-in clinic is pink eye and a yeast infection. I put aside the idea of blogging and started trying to figure out what in the world we’re going to do tomorrow since I have 2 conferences and Rudy has a concert this week to prepare for. It’s always something.

56 Days

2011-05-08T14:33:00.001-05:00

That's how long it's been since I posted. 56 days. I haven't felt much like writing, nor have I had the time. Lots of things have happened that I meant to post about, but didn't. Recently, I've found myself thinking about how much I miss it, though. So, here I sit on Mother's Day with the keyboard and my thoughts. But, gracious...where do I start? I could start with now, say that the last month and a half have been busy and not even try to update, but I don't want to miss documenting the events of the last 56 days. I'll be as concise as I can, but it's been a busy spring. The next few posts will tell why.

Anxiety and Gratitude

2011-03-13T00:44:00.004-06:00

“In the midst of my anxieties, Your comforts delight my soul.” ~ Psalm 94:19

This has been my favorite Bible verse for as long as I can remember. I claimed it in high school, when my anxieties were much different than they are today, but real all the same. Now my teenage anxieties of boys, friends and social gaffes have been replaced by raising children, maintaining a marriage and household, world events and a career. And, yet, the same God who comforted me then comforts me now. The same sense of peace envelops me when I hear the familiar hymns of my childhood. The same tears spill over when I sense the amazing grace of forgiveness. The same joy bubbles up when I realize that I am safe in the hands of the omnipotent Father. The same amazement fills my senses when I feel the presence of God in my daily life.

I am not perfect – far from it – but I am forgiven. I am repeatedly forgiven by a patient and loving God through nothing but pure grace. I have moments of anger that sometimes turn into days and weeks of resentment. I speak words and think thoughts of impurity, jealousy, judgment, greed and unkindness. I am short on temper and patience. I speak my mind and say too much when no words are needed. I am not good at hiding my feelings and I’ve never been good at pretending when it comes to emotions. I don’t pray enough and I rarely spend time in my Bible. I am not the example of Christianity that I should be for others. But I am forgiven. I know my God and I know my Savior and I know that my conscience is the Spirit. I begin each day renewed and try again to do better. Every day I fail and every morning I begin again. He asks nothing more than that.

When my anxieties are high, I find great comfort in listening to music that directs my thoughts to God. (When I was in labor with Caleb, I repeatedly listened to ‘Tis So Sweet to Trust In Jesus.) A few weeks ago, I was driving to work with the anxiety of the previous day and the coming day heavy on my mind. I wanted to hear those comforting messages through song, so I turned to the local Christian radio station. The kids were in the backseat, jabbering away, but my ears could not believe the words I heard. The morning host was reading from a book called One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. The passage that she read was this,

"For years, I have pulled the covers up over my head, dreading to begin another day I’d be bound to just wreck… Yesterday morning, the morning before, all these mornings, I wake to the discontent of life in my skin… To the wrestle to get it all done, the relentless anxiety that I am failing. Always, the failing. I yell at children, fester with bitterness, forget doctor appointments, lose library books, live selfishly, skip prayer, complain, go to bed too late, neglect cleaning the toilets. I live tired. Afraid. Anxious. Weary. Years, I feel it in the veins, the pulsing of ruptured hopes. Would I ever be enough, find enough, do enough?

I found myself wiping away tears as I listened to these words. I could have written those words (though not as eloquently). How many mornings have I wanted to pull the covers over my head because the daunting task of just making it through the day was too much to think about? “The wrestle to get it all done” – Amen. “I live tired. Afraid. Anxious. Weary.” – Amen and Amen. I couldn’t scramble fast enough when I got to work to try to find out just where this passage came from. I read about the book, read about the author and read the reviews. I knew I had to read the rest. I was called to read the rest. I downloaded it when I got home from work and began reading it that night. The heart-wrenching story of the author’s childhood brought a flood of all-too-personal emotions.

At the end of the first chapter, she is talking to her brother-in-law, who has just lost the second of his two sons to a vicious childhood disease. She says that she would like to “write this story differently.” And, there, in the depth of his grief, this father tells her that, “…maybe you don’t want to change the story, because you don’t know what a different ending holds.” Wow. Just wow. How many times have I asked why God would let something happen the way it happens? How many times have I wondered what His purpose could possibly be? Now I understand a little better. He knows how the story ends. He knows how the storyline needs to play out for the ending to be what it should be. Just wow.

The following night, I read the second chapter. It was the story of how she came to terms with her anxiety, anger and feeling of being consumed with the daily tasks of life. What I learned in that chapter has changed my life. She talked about the concept of eucharisteo – being grateful, giving thanks. The fact that giving thanks is “the evidence of our acceptance of whatever He gives.” The author begins the task of finding 1000 things to be grateful for and in that challenge finds unbelievable joy. As I read her words it became obvious to me that my challenge would be to find something to be thankful for in every situation. Some might call it a silver lining. It is not an easy task, but even in my weak attempts, I have been able to find joy in things that I would never have been able to see as joyful had I not looked at it through these words.

Despite this new way of trying to look at things, I don’t jump out of bed in the mornings, excited about the challenges ahead. I’m not there yet. I may never be, but I don’t dread the days. I am not grateful for the piles of laundry, but I’m grateful for the people who make them and for the amenities to take care of them. I’m not grateful for the bills, but for the fact that I don’t have to work 2 jobs to pay them. I’m not grateful for stresses at work, but for the fact that work is one of my stressors when so many people are unemployed. It is a simple way of looking at things, but a difficult one as well. Our human nature is to see the rain and not the rainbow.

This is a video trailer for the book. The author’s dramatic voice is a little cheesy, but the words and images are so powerful.

(I’m continuing to read the book now. I also enjoy the videos for each chapter that can be found at the InCourage book club site.)

Anxieties absolutely still exist. Just this week, a tremendous earthquake shook Japan, causing horrible damage. As I write this, the news is covering the possibility of meltdown at the nuclear reactors in that area. There is unrest throughout the world, specifically in the Middle East. Our own country’s military is still in Afghanistan and Iraq in a war that I cannot support. (Though I do support the men and women who are willing to serve in our country’s military.) Our economy is horrendous and gas prices are the highest I can remember at $3.45 per gallon. Our government is at odds with itself, as partisan politics are hindering progress and rational thinking. Our education system is practically in ruins, with more emphasis on test results than on educating children. In our state, we are experiencing earthquakes, tornadoes, unheard of blizzards and unexplainable mass deaths of birds and fish. There are gangs, drugs, unwanted children, women forced into prostitution, violence, poverty and unspeakable crimes. Yes, there is plenty to be anxious about.

Recent events have made me (and lots of other people) wonder about God’s timing. I know we’re not supposed to try to guess. There’s no point in that after all. With each new event, I can’t help but wonder, though. Matthew 24:4-8 says, “⁴ Jesus told them, “Don’t let anyone mislead you, ⁵ for many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am the Messiah.’ They will deceive many. ⁶ And you will hear of wars and threats of wars, but don’t panic. Yes, these things must take place, but the end won’t follow immediately. ⁷ Nation will go to war against nation, and kingdom against kingdom. There will be famines and earthquakes in many parts of the world. ⁸ But all this is only the first of the birth pains, with more to come.” Sounds familiar, right? Famines? Earthquakes? Wars? Oh, boy…more to come.

The scripture goes on to say, “⁹ “Then you will be arrested, persecuted, and killed. You will be hated all over the world because you are my followers. ¹⁰ And many will turn away from me and betray and hate each other. ¹¹ And many false prophets will appear and will deceive many people. ¹² Sin will be rampant everywhere, and the love of many will grow cold. ¹³ But the one who endures to the end will be saved. ¹⁴ And the Good News about the Kingdom will be preached throughout the whole world, so that all nations will hear it; and then the end will come.” Well, goodness, that whole part about being arrested, persecuted and killed sounds fun. The part about hated all over the world sounds fun too...and a little familiar these days. Sin rampant everywhere? Yeah, I think we have that covered. I’d say if the earth isn’t feeling birth pains now, she’s sure getting warmed up (global warming pun only partially intended). And yet, I remember that “³⁶ “No one knows the day or hour when these things will happen, not even the angels in heaven or the Son himself. Only the Father knows.”

For now, we watch and wait with lingering anxiety. We try to protect our children both from the potential danger and from the fear of it. We hold them an extra moment longer when we have to leave them and we always kiss them goodnight because we don’t know what the next moment will hold. We watch and wait with lingering anxiety and we try, try, try to be grateful in all things so that we might experience the true joy and comforts of the salvation that we do not deserve.

Make It Work, People

2011-03-12T22:35:00.002-06:00

Project Runway is one of my favorite shows. I’m not sure why. I like what I consider fashion, but I’m not obsessed with it and my idea of fashion tends to differ vastly from the judges’ opinions on the show. The drama on the “reality” show is awesome and the diva personalities of the designers range from maddening to likable to blah. My favorite part of the show is watching Tim Gunn do his thing as the consultant to the designers. Some of his catchphrases have made their way into my vernacular. My two favorites are “carry on” and “make it work.”

“Make it work” has kind of been a theme for our household for a while now. Between sick kids, some rough patches at work, a hectic schedule and the general ups and downs of family life, some days I feel like we are doing all we can to make it work.

This week has been a pretty good one. We have successfully made it work despite some bumps in the road. We went to church on Sunday, then out to lunch at Einstein’s. The boys made a trip to Academy to get some equipment to start preparing for t-ball, which starts in just a couple of weeks. While they were gone, I got the urge to take some pictures. Nola was my model as usual and despite the fact that she wasn’t very interested in the idea, I managed to get some pretty good shots, including this one:
Wednesday was by far the hardest day of the week for me. Rudy had class, so I picked the kids up at daycare with full intentions of spending the evening at church. I had talked to our children’s ministry director about starting a playgroup on Wednesday nights and this week was supposed to be the first night. Nola and I were there, but nobody else showed up. I sent Caleb to the 4 year old class and then sat in the room with Nola for 45 minutes but nobody else came. I was disappointed, but realized that the announcement had only gone out earlier that week and maybe other people couldn’t come on such short notice. After that, I picked up Caleb and got ready for dinner at church before the Ash Wednesday service. I managed to get a highchair to our table while carrying Nola and guiding Caleb through the crowd. Once our stuff was settled, I maneuvered through the buffet line to get baked potatoes for myself and Nola and chicken nuggets for Caleb. We sat down and I got Caleb started eating while I cut up food for a very impatient and hungry Nola. I had forgotten to bring a bag for her, so we were without a bib, a sippy cup or any extra diapers. I managed to feed her bits of food to keep her occupied, but realized that I was becoming more and more stressed with every passing minute. It was just too hard to manage feeding both of them and myself from a baked potato bar. I finally gave up and as I was gathering our things and picking up the mess that Nola had made on the floor, she began to cry. By the time I got her out of there, she was in full meltdown. People were staring at me, but nobody offered to help. I couldn’t get out of there fast enough. I made the difficult decision to throw in the towel and skip the Ash Wednesday service. I had really wanted to go to that and share that experience with Caleb, but there was just no way. I needed to get home. I drove home with tears in my eyes, feeling frustrated and disheartened that I hadn’t been able to “make it work.”

On Thursday, I made it to work and realized that I had forgotten my workout pants. I ran to WalMart at lunch and bought a pair of pants and some other things that I needed and then went back to work. After work, I went into the bathroom to change clothes. Once I was fully dressed, I realized that I had also forgotten my shoes. I was bound and determined not to skip my workout, so I went (in my socks) to the Shoe Dept and bought some new shoes. I met Leola for our workout and we tried 3 different rooms before we could find a place where our DVDs would work. We were rocking and rolling along for about 30 minutes when I realized that my toes were quickly going numb. The new shoes were not working for me. We stopped our workout a little early and when I got ready to leave, I realized I didn’t have my keys. I retraced my steps and found my keys in the first room that we had tried. By that time, I needed to get to church for my board meeting. The meeting was short and sweet as usual and then I came home at 7:00 – 12 hours after I left – understanding a little better what my ADHD students must feel like every day.

Friday afternoon, I went to the Rhea Lana consignment sale with Stacy and got some great clothes for Nola at a good price. Then I ran in Hobby Lobby to get the supplies to make Caleb’s birthday invitations before picking the kids up from daycare. I fed both of them pancakes for supper, we took a walk around the neighborhood and then I put Nola to bed. Caleb and I snuggled in my bed watching a movie and then went to sleep before Rudy got home from his work obligation.

We didn’t have much to do today until our pictures for the church directory late this afternoon. We got all dressed up and the kids did great while we took the pictures. Unfortunately, they didn’t turn out good at all. We had trouble even choosing one that we weren’t embarrassed to put in the directory. We certainly didn’t buy any of them, which was a disappointment, since we haven’t had family pictures taken since Caleb was a baby. After our pictures, we decided to go out to eat. Rudy suggested Shogun because he thought Caleb would like watching the guy cook our food and do all of that crazy stuff they do while they cook. It was a mild disaster. Caleb didn’t like the food. Nola made a royal mess between trying to eat noodles with her hands and spitting out everything else. Rudy and I spent all of our time taking care of the two of them and barely tasted our food. We couldn’t wait to get home.

Tomorrow, I’m taking Caleb to meet Mom and Mr. L. for his week in Hot Springs. He’s staying with them while Rudy has meetings 3 nights this week and class on the only remaining night. We’ll meet them again on Friday or Saturday to get him back. Spring Break starts on Friday at 2:45. Hallelujah!
And so we Make It Work…and Carry On.

Happy Fat Tuesday!

2011-03-08T21:04:00.002-06:00

This year I decided to celebrate Not-So-Fat Tuesday. I passed up the King Cake in the teacher's lounge, worked my tail off at Zumba and then came home to make a reduced calorie version of Shrimp & Crawfish Creole. I'm not much of a cook, and I even have trouble following a recipe, but it turned out pretty good. I've never posted a recipe before, but I've been asked to share it, so here goes...

Ingredients:
- 1 lb raw shrimp (peeled & deveined, w/o tails) {I bought a 14 oz bag with tails, b/c I wasn't about to pay the price for fresh seafood at this time of year.}
- 1 lb crawfish tail meat {It kills me to use the bagged frozen crawfish from Vietnam, but that's all I can get around here when they aren't in season and I'm sure not going to peel enough of them to get a whole pound of tail meat.}
- 1 onion, 1 bell pepper, 1 stalk of celery (all chopped) {the Holy Trinity of Cajun recipes}
- 1/2 c parsley (chopped)
- 1/2 c green onions (chopped)
- 6 oz can of tomato paste
- 2 (14 oz) cans of tomato sauce
- 1/2 c butter substitute (we use smart balance & you could probably get by with using a little less)
- 2 garlic cloves
- brown rice

Directions:
1. Sauté onion, bell pepper, celery, garlic & butter substitute until golden
2. Add meat. Cover & cook on medium heat until the shrimp are pink
3. Add tomato sauce & paste. Cook about 30-40 minutes on low-med heat.
5. Add parsley & green onions. Cook 5 minutes.
6. Serve over brown rice.

It made 8 cups - not counting the rice. In case you're wondering, each 1 cup serving was 6 WW PointsPlus points. The rice was 6 points per cup. Not too shabby for a 12 point dinner!

Laissez bon temps rouler!

Birthday Babies

2011-03-05T00:00:00.001-06:00

I just realized that I haven’t posted my favorite picture of Nola from her birthday.
And just for good measure, let’s see how sweet her brother was on his first birthday too…

The Week from…

2011-03-04T23:30:00.001-06:00

The 2 weeks (give or take a few days) in February of being snowed in and not being able to be in the germ pool of school were glorious for us. Everyone got well – even Nola. We were all healthy and doing great until the night of the 16th. The only way I know to even explain this is on a day-by-day basis. It’s unbelievable even to me – and I lived it.

Wednesday, 2/16 – Rudy went to class and came home around 9:00 as usual. He usually sleeps on the couch when he gets home late because he likes to relax and watch TV before he can go to sleep. He woke up during the night with chills and fever. He finally got back to sleep and felt a little better when he woke up, so he went to work.

Thursday, 2/17 – Rudy still wasn’t feeling great, so he went to the walk-in clinic. The doctor there diagnosed him with a sinus infection, wrote him a prescription for an antibiotic and sent him on his way. He came home feeling awful, but knew it was a sinus infection, so he stayed in the mix with the family that night.

Friday, 2/18 – I woke up around 4 AM because my throat hurt so bad I couldn’t breathe well. I took my temperature, but didn’t have a fever. I looked in my throat and didn’t see white pockets, so I ate a cough drop and went back to bed. I woke up still feeling the sore throat, but went to work because I didn’t have fever. (I have NO sick days left this year.) I pushed through my day at work and felt a little worse as the day went on. By 2:00, I was miserable. That’s when the chills set in. I went to the school nurse and didn’t have a fever, but I knew something was wrong, so I left work about 20 minutes early and went to the walk-in clinic. After I told the nurse all of my symptoms, the doctor came in and asked me, “Do you have strep or the flu?” I told him I hoped I didn’t have either one and I really didn’t want to be tested for either one because those swabs freak me out. He looked in my throat and told me that he didn’t even need to swab me. I had strep throat. He wrote my prescriptions and sent me on my way. I picked up my meds and came home to crawl under the covers. I hurt from head to toe and back again and thought I was going to freeze to death. I texted Rudy to tell him what was going on and he said he would take the kids to the boat show so that the house would be quiet. I fell asleep and barely remember anything until Saturday. I remember them coming in and I remember hearing Rudy and Nola coughing, but I was too sick to do anything about it. Plus – I sure didn’t want to give anyone else strep. So, I stayed in bed.

Saturday, 2/19 – I only got out of bed to go to the bathroom. Rudy was supposed to have gone to do a volunteer music program at the library in Fayetteville, but he called and cancelled because he didn’t feel well. Kathy was going to come over and watch the kids, but he cancelled that too. I listened to him coughing and noticed that it was getting worse, but there was nothing I could do to help him.

Sunday, 2/20 – I woke up feeling like a new person. I was still tired and weak, but I was able to walk and talk, which was a huge improvement. Rudy and Caleb went to church because Rudy was scheduled to play his trumpet. When they got home from church, Rudy was feeling awful. He mentioned going to the doctor on Monday, but I encouraged him to go ahead and go on Sunday. He did and texted me from the clinic to tell me that he had the flu. I got the bed ready for him and as soon as he walked in the door, he was quarantined to the bedroom.

This is what our kitchen counter looked like on Sunday afternoon…

Monday, 2/21 – I went to work and took the kids to daycare. They called me around noon to tell me that Nola had a fever. It was less than 100*, so I didn’t go get her. I left school as soon as I could and picked them up. I took both of them to the pediatric clinic. We saw Dr. Schaefer and he wrote prescriptions for both kids to prevent them from getting the flu. When we left there, we went to eat and then to WalMart to get the medicines and some groceries. By the time we got home, it was bedtime for the kids. Rudy was still in the bed with the flu.

Tuesday, 2/22 – The kids and I went to school as usual. Nola was still coughing her head off, but didn’t have fever over 100*, so I took her. We made it through the day and I picked the kids up as soon as possible. Caleb was a real trooper and entertained himself very well while I tended to Nola, made sure Rudy had what he needed and did the usual household things that need to be done. I called my mom to tell her that we were going to need some help because Nola was getting worse and Rudy wasn’t getting any better. She offered to come on Wednesday. I called Jan to see if she could come to watch Nola until my mom got here and she agreed to, but couldn’t come until Wednesday morning. Shortly after that, my mom called back and said that she was already an hour outside of Hot Springs and headed our way. I called Jan back to tell her that she didn’t need to come. Mom got to our house at 11:15 Tuesday night. I swear she was wearing invisible angel wings.

Wednesday, 2/23 – Mom stayed home with Nola. Rudy stayed quarantined in the bedroom. Caleb and I went to school. I came home to a hot meal, a clean house and the peace of mind that Nola had been taken care of all day without worry. It was glorious.

Thursday, 2/24 – Rudy tried to go to work, but only made it 1/2 the day before he couldn’t go any further. Mom kept Nola. Caleb and I did our usual thing. Again, I came home to a hot meal, a clean house and peace of mind. Still glorious.

Friday, 2/25 was a repeat of Thursday, except I had told Mom that I would pick up dinner. It ended up that I picked her and Nola up and they rode with me to Sam’s. After that, we went in a consignment shop and then to get Caleb from school. We stopped at PF Chang’s to get some take-out and Steak & Shake to get food for the kids. We came home and ate, then spent the rest of the night visiting and catching up.

Saturday, 2/26 – I stayed up into the early hours of the morning planning Caleb’s birthday party and decompressing my mind from the week. Mom had told me that I could sleep in on Saturday, so I was planning to do that. She woke me up at 4 AM to tell me that she had gotten sick during the night and had to go home. We scrambled to get her things in the car and I prayed that she would make it safely before going back to sleep. She called when she got home to tell me that she was okay. We spent the rest of the day being lazy and trying to recuperate from our manic week.

Sunday, 2/27 – Rudy was feeling a little better, but still not great, so we stayed home from church. Nola was still coughing and I was just exhausted. Caleb was still being a trooper. I took him with me to WalMart to get some groceries. We came home and I made dinner before getting ready for the week.

Monday, 2/28 – Amazingly, everybody went where they were supposed to go and stayed there all day. I had a meeting until 4:00 and then went to Weight Watchers, where I found out that I’ve lost 12 lbs since January 10th!! Rudy picked up the kids and I met them at home, then we all went out to dinner.

Tuesday, 3/1 – I picked the kids up from daycare and took them to the park. Rudy went back to the walk-in clinic to get some cough medicine so he can sleep. He found out that he has an irregular heartbeat and has to see a doctor about it. The doctor at the clinic told him it’s nothing to worry about, but that he should have it checked out sometime. We’re taking both parts of that advice.

Now it’s Friday night. The rest of the week has been pretty normal. Nola is still coughing. Rudy is still coughing, but has good cough medicine so he can sleep. I’m doing fine and staying very busy at work. I have an intern this semester, so I’m not having to bring home as much paperwork, which is nice. Rudy took Caleb to meet Jan last night and he is spending the weekend in Tulsa with her and Bill. Nola and I are hanging out tomorrow at home while Rudy has to work. Fayetteville is having a make up snow day tomorrow. School on a Saturday! I’m looking forward to getting Caleb home, then we’ll turn around and it’ll be spring break. I can’t wait…

Snowpocalypse 2011

2011-03-04T22:22:00.001-06:00

After Nola’s birthday party on the 29th, Caleb went home to Hot Springs with LaLa and Pops. We’d had it planned for a while because Rudy had a very busy week ahead with 3 concerts and a night of class. He was going to be gone Monday-Thursday, so we asked my parents if Caleb could stay with them so that I didn’t have to pretend to be a single mom for a whole week. All went as planned until…

We went to work on Monday and kept hearing forecasts of snow. Actually, the local news forecast showed a 110% chance of snow with a high temperature of 13 degrees. As a preventative measure, I drove out to get Rudy’s grandmother to stay with us. The last time we had a major snowstorm, her power went out for a while. We didn’t want to take the chance of her being stranded in her house without power, so we had her stay at our house. We wondered how much we would have, but you just never know if we’ll actually get what’s forecasted, so we didn’t worry too much. We woke up Tuesday morning (Feb 1) to a blanket of snow. It was the biggest, most beautiful snowfall I’ve ever seen. I watched out the window as those giant flakes fluttered to the ground all day. Caleb had left a junior-sized soccer ball in the backyard and I watched it gradually disappear under the blanket of white. We ended up with about 7 inches of snow on top of a layer of ice. Rudy was able to get his grandmother home on Wednesday, but it was slow-going. We were out of school for the rest of the week. The roads were slick and no matter how hard we tried, Rudy couldn’t safely get out of Northwest Arkansas to get Caleb until Saturday. We were so sad that our little man couldn’t be here to enjoy sledding and playing in the snow like he loves to do. When they got home, they couldn’t wait to get out on the snow. Here are some pictures of their adventure (scroll over for description):

By the weekend, things were pretty clear. We were able to get out and about, but still had to watch for slick spots on the roads. We went to church on Sunday and then out to lunch with some friends. We watched the Super Bowl on Sunday night while getting ready to go back to school on Monday. (I was in the minority of viewers, because I loved the Black Eyed Peas’ halftime show.) We went to school on Monday and Tuesday, hearing forecasts of another possible 2-5 inches of snow on Wednesday. Everyone was expecting to go to school, because there was no ice forecasted. I woke up at my usual time, checked Twitter, saw that school was closed and went back to sleep. Rudy let me sleep in and when I woke up at 9:00, I was dumbstruck. By that time, there was already a massive amount on top of the snow that was still on the grass from the previous snowfall. The forecasters were WRONG. We did not end up getting 2-5 inches. We got 18-20 inches of new snow. It snowed all day like crazy. Rudy couldn’t stand it and decided to go out and shovel the driveway. While he was out there, he took some pictures. Here’s what it looked like at our house on February 9th:

Caleb REALLY wanted to help his daddy shovel the driveway. We almost lost him out there in the deep, deep snow!

We decided to take advantage of all of that fluffy white stuff and make some snow ice cream. Caleb thought that was the coolest thing ever (pardon the pun)…

The good thing about this snowstorm was that it was followed by some really warm days, so it didn’t stick around for long. The boys got to do a little more sledding, but the roads were clear within a couple of days. I even managed to get a day of scrapbooking in on Saturday with Stacy before going on a pre-Valentine’s date on Saturday night with Rudy. By the time we went back to school on the following Monday, we were sick of snow. We ended up missing 10 days of school (so far) this year for snow. That means that we’re getting out in June instead of May. That’s a disappointment, but I loved those snow days. We all hung out together and made some memories that will last forever. But – really – we’re okay with no more snow this year.

Nola @ 12 Months (and a little beyond…)

2011-03-04T22:15:00.001-06:00

Yes, Ms. Nola turned TWELVE months old on January 27th!
Here's what she's up to these days...

Nola went to the doctor on February 14th for her well visit. She weighed 23 lbs (75.55 percentile) was 28.5” tall (24.1 percentile) and had a head circumference of 47 cm. She got her 2nd flu shot, a chicken pox shot, an MMR shot and a pneumonia shot at that appointment too.
When she turned 12 months, she was still taking bottles when she woke up. Shortly after that, on February 10th, we decided to start “bottle rehab.” We boxed up all of her bottles and replaced them with sippy cups. Day one was not fun. After that, she started to get the hang of it. By the 13th, she was completely fine with it. We donated all of her bottles to Loving Choices. God willing, there will never be bottles in our house again – at least not for our own children.
We were going to switch to sippy cups and milk at the same time, but our well visit got pushed back a couple weeks due to the snow. I wasn’t comfortable making the formula to milk switch without her doctor’s okay, so we did that after our visit. Since February 15th, she hasn’t had any formula at all. She drinks only whole milk. We give her milk in the mornings when she wakes up and she drinks it at lunch at daycare. Otherwise, she’s drinking water or juice or diluted juice from sippy cups at all of her meals and snacks.
Speaking of meals and snacks…the girl LOVES to eat. She will eat pretty much anything we give her. Bananas continue to be her absolute favorite food. She gets so excited when she sees us with one. She starts clapping her hands together (her sign for “more”) and grinning. She also loves yogurt, cheese, bread, pancakes, turkey, chicken, salmon, pizza toppings, spaghetti, soup (with the broth strained out), cooked carrots and the toddler ravioli meals from Gerber. She’ll pretty much eat anything that we eat as long as it’s not spicy. She (of course) LOVES sweets. When we give her a bite of something that she really likes, she says, “mmm” and grins and claps. If it’s something really good and she’s never had it before, she might even laugh.
Nola still wears size 4 diapers. She can still wear some of her 12 month clothes. Her 18 month clothes aren’t as snug, but they are usually too long. When she tries to crawl in her 18 month PJ’s, she gets tangled up in the legs because they are too long. She wears size 3 shoes.
Just recently, Nola has started walking while holding onto our hands. She’ll even walk holding one hand, but it’s slow going and she won’t do it for long. She would much rather crawl. We’ve seen her let go of the furniture that she’s holding onto once or twice, but she’s not quite ready to take a step yet. She is starting to get a little braver though. She has gone from cruising the furniture to walking while holding on to the wall.
She has started pointing lately at anything and everything. She usually points and says, “ga” or “da”. We try to label what she points to, but sometimes we have no idea what exactly that might be.
As for words – she’s not very consistent. (I still blame that on the persistent fluid in her ears.) She said “mama” very clearly on 2/12 – right after she gave me one of her big kisses that seems like she’s going to take a bite out of whomever she is kissing. I nearly melted to the floor when she did it. She still says “mama” sometimes, but usually, she says, “mamamama.” She has also said “dada”. She said it today when she saw Rudy after school and I’m pretty sure that’s the first time she’s done that where we knew for sure that she was actually calling him “dada”. We think she’s calling Caleb “ba” or “bab.” She does it somewhat consistently, but she says that syllable so often that we’re not completely sure. She will imitate “uh-oh”, but she says “uh-uh” instead. She gets the intonation, just not the syllable change. She also babbles with conversational intonation and she plays with sound a lot, repeating sound patterns and sing-song babbling as though she’s carrying on a conversation with herself. She’ll imitate a few syllables like “kah” when we say “quack quack”, but she doesn’t spontaneously say any other words.
What she lacks in words, she makes up for in gestures. She signs “more” by clapping. (She only does it for food, though. I guess technically that would mean that she’s signing “eat” by clapping, right?) She waves any time she hears the words “bye-bye” and she usually blows kisses when we ask her to by opening her mouth and patting it with her hand. When she’s doing something she knows she’s not supposed to do and I say her name with a stern tone, she looks up at me and smiles while shaking her head. I have to try really hard not to laugh because it’s pretty cute. Sometimes when we are talking to her, she’ll raise her eyebrows up and nod like she’s really agreeing with everything we’re saying. I’ve tried to get video of these things, but she clams up every time I get the camera out.
She still sucks her thumb. A lot. Pretty much any time I pick her up, she puts her thumb in her mouth and she always does it when she’s tired or if something upsets her. I asked the pediatrician if there is anything I can do about it and he said it’s too early to worry about it. Everyone always comments about how cute it is and I just cringe.
Nola now has 7 teeth – 4 on the top and 3 on the bottom. That 4th bottom one should be coming through any day now.
Nola moved up to the toddler room at daycare on February 14th. She’s now a “Busy Bee.” One of her daycare workers was also Caleb’s daycare worker when he was 18 months. Nola is the only child in the class that doesn’t walk. In the class, she sits in a little chair at a table for her meals and sleeps on a cot instead of in a crib. Apparently, she’s doing pretty well with it. She usually sleeps anywhere from an hour to 2 hours at naptime. The girls in her class tell us that she eats pretty much everything they give her and hasn’t had trouble at the table at all.

Let’s see how our sweet girl has grown this year…

And, here’s what I got when I TRIED to take her 12 month picture:

Apparently, she wasn’t in the mood to model.

Nola’s Birthday Party

2011-03-04T20:49:00.002-06:00

We celebrated Nola’s first birthday with a small party at our house on January 29th. Mom and Mr. L. were already here after taking care of Nola while she was sick. We were joined by Jan & Bill, Nana and Aunt Kathy. We decided not to try to do anything really fancy this year, since Nola isn’t really a social butterfly at age 1. We don’t have any close friends who have toddlers, so it seemed like a family party would be just the right thing. Rudy and Mr. L. smoked a ham that morning and we served that with rolls, fruit, veggies and chips. Of course, we had to have cake! I decided we’d celebrate our little girl with little cakes, so I ordered petit fours with “N” and “1” on them in colors to match the plates and napkins that I found. We were pleasantly surprised that it was sunny and warm enough for us to have lunch outside. Here are some photos of Nola’s big event (scroll over for description):

Nola’s First Birthday

2011-02-01T00:25:00.001-06:00

I can’t believe Baby Girl is one. This year has absolutely flown by in a blur of milestones and co-pays. Yet, here we are in 2011 and she’s one year old. Ridiculous, I tell you.

Since Nola’s birthday fell on a weekday this year, we had her party on the 29th. That doesn’t mean that we let the actual day go by unnoticed, though. The days building up to the 27th were another string of sick days for Nola. She had fever and congestion and general sickness on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday of that week. Just when we would think she was getting better, we’d find out that she had fever again. After a couple of days of Rudy staying home with her, we decided to call for back up. My mom and Mr. L. came up on Wednesday and spent the night with us. They were here to watch Nola on Thursday and Friday so that she didn’t have to go to daycare. They got to spend the whole day with her on her birthday.

When Rudy and I got home from work on Thursday, we got cleaned up and ready to go out to dinner. We all went to Carrabba’s, which is where we had dinner the night before Nola was born. When we got home, we let Nola have her very own birthday cake. I put a plastic tablecloth on the floor and put the cake in front of her. She wasn’t so sure what to think at first, but once she got a taste of the icing, she was a little more convinced that it was okay. She actually didn’t end up eating much of it at all, but made a royal mess anyway.

Here’s the basic sequence of events:

And a couple of other shots that I just think are too funny not to post:

Finally, Lala put her in the tub and tried to get all of that frosting out of her hair since Pops thought it would be funny to try to get her to play peek-a-boo while she was covered in frosting. And, of course – she doesn’t cover her eyes when she plays peek-a-boo…she puts her hands on the sides of her head.

Nola @ 11 Months

2011-01-22T00:07:00.002-06:00

I didn’t write Nola’s 10 month post. I didn’t have time. Things would happen and I would think, “that’s something I need to remember for her monthly post.” I don’t remember those things now. But, I do know what she’s doing now that she wasn’t doing at 9 months and here it is…

Nola turned ELEVEN months old on December 27th! (Yes, I realize that we’re a week from her turning one. Cut me some slack. I’m doing the best I can.)
Here's what she's up to these days...

Nola went to the doctor on December 20th for well visit. She weighed 22 lbs, 1 oz, (80.08 percentile) was 28” tall 34.18 percentile) and had a head circumference of 46 cm. She got her flu shot at that appointment too.
She still takes 8 oz bottles when she wakes up. She still eats some jar baby food, but really prefers to eat table food that is cut or mashed up. She loves bananas and will bite off the ends of those if we hold them up for her. She also eats anything we put on her high chair tray, especially fruits and noodles. She eats finger foods at daycare too, though it makes me nervous.
Nola wears size 4 diapers and 12 month clothes. The clothes are starting to get pretty small, though. We’ll be moving up to 18 months clothes soon.
Nola can crawl like lightning. She cruises furniture and can walk while pushing things like her baby doll stroller or a chair. She will walk if we hold her hands, but doesn’t really like to. She’d rather crawl.
Rudy holds Nola and asks her if she wants to “go.” She points forward and says something along the lines of “ga” or “uh” and he runs across the room with her. She giggles hysterically and they do it all over again.
Nola’s babbling comes and goes. I think it’s because of her ears, but I don’t have any proof of that. When she babbles, she has this sweet little tiny voice that just melts me. More often than not, though, she just yells and throaty “aaggghhh” that’s not nearly as cute. She always does this when people take things from her and when she doesn’t like things. She waves bye-bye, blows kisses, covers the sides of her head to play peek-a-boo, signs “more” when she’s cued while eating, dances when she hears music, shakes her head (and grins) when we tell her no and nods her head when we do. Nola cracks us up by making what we call her “grumpy face.” She looks at people like she is so angry at them, then she raises her eyebrows and grins. It’s the silliest thing I’ve ever seen.

Peek-a-boo (sort of):

Look at all of that hair. I took these after Nola’s bath one night when her hair was fluffy and curly. I know she’s going to curse my genetics someday for these curls, but they are awfully cute now.

Yes, she’s still sucking her thumb. That thumb is going to be the death of me. Nola’s speech path mom doesn’t like the idea of her sucking her thumb.

Nola has 6 teeth – 4 on the top and 2 on the bottom. So far, she’s gotten really sick each time she’s cut a tooth.
She still sleeps really well at home, but some days doesn’t nap at all at daycare. We can’t figure out why or what to do to get her to sleep. She’s moving up to another classroom in February and will have to nap on a cot instead of in a crib. We’ll see if that is helpful or not.

Snow Days

2011-01-21T16:14:00.002-06:00

We had a couple of snow days last week, but there really wasn’t enough snow to play in and it didn’t stick around very long. When the weatherman started calling for big snow this week, everyone got pretty excited. Sure enough, school was closed on Thursday and Friday this week (1/20, 21). Despite the potentially bad roads, Rudy and Caleb could not be contained Thursday morning. I held my breath as they walked out the door and told them to have fun sledding. Rudy took the pocket camera with him and took some pictures and video of their great adventure…

The boys came home exhausted. Caleb took an actual nap and woke up recharged and ready to go. He wanted to share the snow fun with Nola, so I bundled her up and we all went outside for a little bit.

Nola wasn’t impressed with the snow. She loved riding in the sled for about 5 minutes, then she touched the actual snow. She did not like it one bit. The girl and I went right inside and got out of all of those wet clothes. We are definitely not snow people. Those boys, though…

Buzzy and Ronnie

2011-01-21T03:17:00.002-06:00

We got Caleb’s first pet for Christmas. (Well, the first pet he can remember having.) He wanted a pet so badly and we’ve sworn off anything with fur. I refuse to have anything of the reptile group, so we decided to get a fish. Rudy and Caleb went to the pet store to pick out the perfect fish. Caleb chose a beautiful turquoise betta fish and named it Buzzy. (We have no idea why he chose that name.)
The boys set up the tank and got it all ready. Caleb picked out a fake plant and a sunken ship that he calls a submarine to decorate the tank.

The water had to condition for 24 hours and then it was time to let the little fella’ swim…

Buzzy lasted less than 48 hours. We bought him on the 21st and woke up to find him waterlogged on the 23rd. Caleb took it better than I expected. He just asked if he could get another one. Rudy thinks that watching all those wild animal shows on TV have conditioned him to the cycle of life. Maybe. Or maybe he just wasn’t all that attached. Who knows?

The boys went back to the pet store and found out that contrary to what the previous salesperson told Rudy, bettas aren’t supposed to have filters in their tanks. Cause of death: Buzzy literally wore himself out. He swam himself to death trying to escape the pull of the filter. Read this again to make sure you understand: Our fish swam himself to death. Seriously.

The other possible cause of the problem could have been the water temperature. Just to be on the safe side, Rudy bought a little heater for the tank and removed the filter.

Buzzy’s replacement is named Ronnie. We’re pretty sure he’s named after Pops, but Caleb hasn’t fessed up to that little evidence of hero worship. Ronnie looks almost identical to Buzzy, but he’s not as wavy. Ronnie is a little on the lazy side. He hangs out by the heater a lot and seems to prefer floating over swimming. Ronnie is going to fit in just fine around here.