Dear neglected blog

It was a busy, busy summer. Maybe one day I can bring myself to post about it. I'm already knee deep into the new school year. My piano studio is busier than I've ever been. I have 18 half hour slots filled (some of those are students who are taking an hour, so I don't have 18 students).

Dean is in Kindergarten. He lost his first tooth and broke his arm today on the play ground. 3 weeks into school and he already has a break. Sheesh. He seems to be doing pretty well otherwise and is adjusting pretty well to the new routine.

Walter started Pre-K with our beloved Ms. Ellen (Dean's first teacher at Little Saints). So far it's going well. We carpool with another kid in his class who lives in Melissa as well and they've become little friends. Most of the time he is cute and good and loving, but he's having a hard time figuring out how to handle his frustration with people he knows well (ie us). He's bit Edward pretty hard a couple of times for wrecking his stuff or unplugging the computer while he's on, and if he is not happy with a consequence we've given or a request we've made, he'll often pull out the, "I hate you!" and "You're not nice!" or "You're naughty!" It's a rough phase, but we'll make it through I'm sure.

Edward is such a happy guy. He is my big helper (though his help often results in me needing to do a little more work) around the house and gets in sooo much trouble for mischief. He is constantly unplugging our phones, appliances, TV, etc. He loves to pull things out of drawers and loves stickers and markers right now.  He has had some weird tummy bug for the past week and you'd never know by his behavior. Such a good little guy. He has tons of words and a few short sentences. He's getting pretty good at repeating us. One of my favorites is his adaptation of Ninjago. Instead of yelling, "NinjaGO!", he yells, "DaddyGO!" haha. Daddy is still his favorite/most frequent word. He knows lots of the alphabet and my favorite letter is W because he calls it "bubbleyou". Often when he says the boys' names he runs them together like they're one word. "DeananWa-wer". Very cute. He just wants to be one of the big kids.

Matt is working hard. After getting a loan for our van earlier this year and not selling our Rav for what we wanted, we decided to keep the Rav for Matt and just pay off our loan. We know it's a great car and well taken care of, so we're willing to pay our asking price. Now we're just really watching our budget and trying our best to stick to a plan so we don't have to use my piano money for our living expenses at all. Then it can all go into savings first for a new piano, and then just for our savings and peace of mind. Our garden did ok this year but not great. We're still figuring out the right soil composition to do well. We had it tested and everything was WAY high except nitrogen which was essentially nonexistent. Our best produce by far were the cantaloupe. These were our largest and smallest cantaloupes.

When I was at my parents' in Snowflake over the 24th of July, I was dizzy the whole time. At first I thought it was just the elevation change. Then I started noticing other weird things like I was RAVENOUS if I didn't eat every few hours and very irritable if I didn't get food. I told my sisters I thought I must be pregnant. They went out and bought me a test, and sure enough, I am! Baby #4 is due March 20th. I'm kind of hoping to deliver on the 21st since it's my mom and my brother's birthdays. Wouldn't that be cool to have 3 generations? We'll find out next month if it's another boy or the first girl. Only time will tell. =) We'll be happy either way. Here I am at my traditional 12 week photo. I'm technically 12 week, 6 days in this.

 

When it rains it pours...

The last two weeks were a real challenge. Some of the hardest I can remember as a mom. Two weeks ago Matt left for CA on a work trip and after dropping him at the airport I took Dean to the doctor. He'd been complaining for three days of his stomach hurting and he had a bit of a cough. They didn't seem too concerned with his cough and she was going to chalk his stomach pain up to constipation even though she couldn't feel any hard lumps. I asked her to do a strep swab even though his throat wasn't red. She did and he was positive for strep. So he started antibiotics. The only problem was that he started getting worse rather than better. His symptoms were erratic; he would seem normal with a cough and then a few hours later he was moaning and groaning and lethargic. He'd take 3-4 hour naps in the afternoon and then wake up feeling fine again. His fever came and went. It was all very confusing. I kept thinking he was getting better and then he'd start declining again.  He is a very dramatic sick person too, so it was hard to tell how bad he was really feeling.

On Monday night Edward took a bite out of a mushroom in our yard. I'd already put Dean to bed for the night by 6 because he was feeling so bad. I called Matt, panicked, and he told me to pack up all the kids and take him to the hospital. I was not about to do that. I went to one of our neighbor's and asked if she could come to our house and stay with Dean and Walt while I took Ed to the hospital. They recommended trying to get him to throw it up and to call the poison control first. She came over while I was on the phone with poison control. They told me to just watch him and that he probably hadn't eaten enough to do major damage. Maybe just have some stomach irritation. Our neighbor went home. Matt was still very concerned and felt helpless since he was two states away. He still thought I should go in. I put him to bed and he never threw up even, so I was relieved.

Friday rolled around and instead of coming home, Matt flew to UT to pick up a new van for us.  It was very random. My sister-in-law's mother who lives in WA heard that I was looking for a very specific van in a specific price range. She told me her friend in UT was selling her van since her husband just passed away a month ago. She linked me to the friend's daughter's page with the pictures of the van. We were on the phone with the lady within a few hours and were committed to buy the van. The work trip was perfect because it allowed us to pick it up without having to pay for a ticket out there. Matt drove the twenty hours home.

Meanwhile, here at the house, by Friday Edward started getting really sick. I took him in to the doctor and he was diagnosed with croup. More medicine. More sick kids.  Humidifiers. It was all very stressful taking care of it all by myself. And Dean still wasn't getting better.  He woke up screaming at 1:30 on Sat morning saying his ears hurt. He had a fever also. Luckily I knew where some ear drops were and gave him those and ibuprofen and he went right back to sleep. Just as I was getting back to sleep, Edward woke up with his croupy cough. I went up. I held him, rocked him, tried to have him sleep on me. It wasn't working. I laid him back in bed and he was calm as long as I stay, but had a crazy coughing/crying attack if I tried to leave. So I slept next to his crib on the floor from about 2-6am with my arm inside the slat of his crib. He'd wake up periodically and I"d put my hand on his back and he'd go back to sleep.

Matt wanted me to take Dean into the hospital for his ears and fever since he wasn't getting any better on the antibiotics he was one. I was going on nothing at this point and I point blank refused. I couldn't conceive of taking all three kids into the ER, one with croup and one with a mystery illness. It just wasn't happening. I borrowed some essential oils from the neighbor who I'd asked for help from earlier that week. They seemed to work for his ears, but he was still not getting better otherwise. On Sat. night Dean fell asleep by 5 and woke up at 8 ready for some food. He ate some dinner and read some books. I let Walter wait up too since Matt was nearly home. I felt like the heavens opened and angels were singing we he pulled up at 9:30pm with our new van.

On Sunday Walter and I woke up sick. I was scheduled to teach in RS, and I felt well enough to do that since I was in the early stages.  Matt stayed home with the three sick boys while I just went into the last hour of church.  On Monday I felt worse. By Tues. this week Dean STILL wasn't getting better so I took him in again. She still was saying, "Well, maybe the stomach pain is from constipation" and I wanted to shout at her. Luckily, when she listened to his lungs, she said there were a lot of crackles so she wanted him to take an X-ray to see if he had pneumonia. No pneumonia, but they said it was probably Bronchitis. So they gave him a nebulizer  breathing treatment there and headed off to Target pharmacy for the 3rd time in two weeks. Within a day he seemed much better, so I am so glad I finally went back in!

We were scheduled to go back and check his lungs on Friday. He got a clean bill of health, but while we were there, I asked the doctor to check Edward's ears since he'd been pulling them. I figured it might be teething since he has 4 teeth coming in, but no, it was an ear infection. Back to Target and more meds. My ears were filled with pressure by this point and I felt like crap. Two weeks of too much sickness. But Sat. rolled around and I woke up feeling only mostly alive rather than mostly dead and went for a much needed run after Dean woke up but before Walter and Edward woke up. I did three miles and it was nice and overcast, so I came back, got Edward, and went for two more.  We're mostly on the mend now, but boy! It was a horrible way to start Summer vacation! Hopefully from here on out we'll just get better and can enjoy our neighborhood pool and have friends come over and play!

Easter

Grandma Waterman sent us some super cute cookie cutters for Easter and I made cookies for Dean's preschool Easter party. I think that they're probably the cutest cookies I've ever made.

We died 18 eggs. 9 a piece. Walter's fingers were super colored. My sugar scrub plus dawn dish soap got most of it off.

While Walter was dying his eggs, Dean made some toy weapons on cardboard.

On the Saturday before Easter Sunday, the Easter bunny stopped by early that morning. The kids went hunting for the eggs we dyed and some plastic eggs with candy and quarters inside.

I was reassuring Walter that he'd find an egg with quarters as well.

March recap

Dean really wanted a captain america shield after playing at his friend Zach's who had one. It was basically just a frisbee and the captain America symbol and I thought I could do something better cheaper. So we started a project with a carboard box and colored duck tape. The white actually glows in the dark. It turned out cooler than I expected. Not perfect, but I'm not a perfectionist, so it was a.ok. by me.

Here he is giving his fierce face.

In front of the newly built garden boxes.

Ready for flight.

Edward wanted to get in on the gardening. 

The boys loved doing superhero tricks off of the ladder with the trapeze bar.

Last November Dean bought this castle with every bit of his own money. I tried talking him out of it, but he really wanted it. They played with it for about a week then we put it up in his closet. We got it out again in March and they enjoyed coloring it again. He also made art to hang up inside.

 If you can't tell, March is one of the best months to play outside here, so that's where we spent a lot of our time. 

Here's Dean before his Texas Hoedown at Preschool. They sang cute patriotic songs and put on a cute little western program. They got to eat cornbread and chili afterward.

Edward got his first big boy hair cut. So handsome.

His cocked grin was a product of teething.

February recap

Dean and Walter looooove "little legos". Uncle Neil got them each a set at Christmas and legos are seriously the only toy they play with. They have caused many a tiffs, but they have also provided many hours of entertainment.

The boys also got really into sticks for awhile there. They loved riding bikes over to "the climbing tree" (a pecan tree at the primary school) to find sticks to play with.

I don't have photoshop on this computer and my desktop is dead.  Though washed out, this picture shows my not yet 1 year old climbing up to the playhouse. He figured out how to climb down the stairs and slide down as well. Hasn't fallen out yet. =)

Matt started the process of ripping up some of our tiny yard to build some garden boxes.

This was my day for teaching Walter's "preschool". T is for trains (we had numbered cars), transportation, towers, and tasting. The only other kid this semester was Hayden. 

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