March 17, 2010

I may or may not have dressed my children like this for St. Patrick's Day

I totally forgot that it was St. Patrick's day today when I woke up and helped Brian get ready for school. He picked out his clothes, and I can tell you it was not green. Then I got the baby dressed, her clothes had a little green in them, but not on purpose. Emily picked out her own clothes, and only by accident was her skirt green. I forgot to wear my green shirt. I took Emily to school and headed to the office. I shortly remembered that is was St. Patrick's Day, and was sad that I forgot to wear green. It wasn't until I picked Brian up from school that I realized the full impact of missing this important green day. He was so sad that he had not worn his perfectly green bug shirt. All the other kids had worn their green shirts. Mrs. Halter had given him a shamrock sticker to try to help.

Does it count if I dressed them in green on March 18th?

A Loose Tooth

I could echo this post by my friend Lara about how it feels when your baby suddenly becomes a boy. It didn't just happen overnight, it didn't happen this morning when Brian discovered that his first tooth was loose. But really how did this happen?

Busy Saturday and Mental Health Sunday

Here was yesterdays schedule which I hope will justify why I am sitting here in my recliner blogging, instead of being at church.

7:00am Get up, clean kitchen

8:45am Shower

9:30am Make up, make up Gymnastics class, Eddie and Brian went to the shooting range

10:30am Head to Duck Duck Goose Consignment sale to buy hair bows

11:30am Go downtown to pick up milk

12:00pm Lunch

12:30-2:30pm Cook casserole for baby shower, and make 7-layer dip

3:00pm Baby Shower

3:45pm Meet Jenna to go to Rhea Lana Consignment sale

4:30-7:30pm Shopping

8:00pm Meet Eddie and the kids for the Picasso's PTA Sale

9:00pm Go home and collapse in bed

This was Brian's class project for display at the Picasso Art Sale at the PTA's annual fundraiser.

Plus daylight savings time started today, so I lost an hour and could just not justify dragging sleeping kids out of bed...ya know what they say about letting sleeping dogs lie. Also, maybe subconsciously, it would have been Danielle's first day of nursery, and I am just not ready for that.

Another Milestone

My baby is 18 months today.

She is now old enough to go to nursery at church on Sunday. But I don't want her to go. She still only has a few words; mama, dada, utoh, mine, no, hi, Brian, and doggy. She will sign bath, water, milk, more, please, cold and hot. She is really not sure how to play, and sometimes her siblings model the wrong behavior, so she seems like she is a little bully. She pushes the big kids and then they laugh and she does it more. I think we need to teach her how to play better with others, especially when they are her own age. She wants to be just like her older siblings--copies what they do, tries to be a gymnast like Emily, and idolizes her big brother, I hope their special bond continues for a lifetime.

SPRING: The Good, The Bad and The Ulgy

Spring has arrived and with that comes blooming flowers and trees, and green grass.
I saw the first couple of pear trees starting to bloom as I was driving around today, ours will follow in about a week, they are a little slower.

However, it also includes Spring storms complete with thunderstorms, hail and tornadoes. Tonight was the first storm of the season. Emily, Danielle and I went to a make-up class at River City Gymnastics. We had missed class on Monday because I was recovering from being up all night with the deathly stomach virus that I got from Brian. Eddie took Brian to the Webleos den meeting with him.

Class had just started when the announcement was made about tornadoes, and to take cover. Everyone in the gym was led to foam pit for safety. Eddie called to make sure we were alright, they were sitting in the library at church. There were tons of people sitting in the pit waiting for the storm to pass. We spent almost the entire hour in the foam pit. So much for the makeup class tonight, I guess we will try again on Saturday.

Fire In The Hole

I took Brian to Joylynn's birthday party today at The Painted Pig. It was a fun party and the kids had a great time selecting their piece, and painting it. Brian immediately picked out a dog, and did a great job painting it.

I love how cute this is, and how creative Brian is getting, one ear is black, one brown and he has blue eyes.

Eddie called while I was at the party to tell me about a fire in the backyard. Wow, I miss all the fun stuff! When I left, I smelled lighter fluid in the backyard, and figured someone was getting ready to grill.

Eddie was in the bathroom, when the neighbor from behind us came knocking on our front door to tell us about the fire. Apparently, the kids had started the grass in their yard on fire messing around, and the wind was blowing in our direction. When Eddie walked outside, our next door neighbors grass was on fire, and the fence and it caught the woodpile on fire too. Behind us, the flames were as high as the roof. Eddie and our new neighbor, John got the hoses and started putting out the flames as the fire department had not arrived.

Scary! I am glad that I missed it. My girls watched safely from the deck as daddy battled the flames. Once again, I feel blessed that we were home and able to protect our property. No one was hurt, and the damage was minimal.

Clean-Up--Isle 5

Brian has been having some behavior problems at school this past week including being on red twice (mostly for silly things) and I wanted to get to the bottom of things. I thought Eddie should go to school and have lunch with him, perhaps he needed some additional attention.


Eddie called me to confirm the time and went through the Chick-fil-a drive thru to pick up lunch. He arrived at the school a few minutes late because he had to wait in the drive thru, because they had not started serving lunch. Brian eats super early, at 10:30 so the Kindergartens can have the playground to themselves.


Eddie walked into the cafeteria to find Brian cleaning up his own vomit, and being told by the aid to go get more paper towels. He told Brian to go sit down and then proceeded to clean up for him. Then another aid told Eddie that he didn't need to clean up that "they had someone to do that." Weird...they didn't have someone before Eddie arrived. Eddie checked him out in the office, collected his belongings from his classroom and took our sick son, covered in vomit home. Then he called me.


I was beyond upset. Brian is my baby, and I was scared, hurt and mad all at the same time. I made two hysterical calls to his teacher and the principal, Ms. Carter. A few hours past and I finally received a call from the principal. We met her in her office 15 minutes later. She had investigated the situation and assured us that there is a policy in place for handling sick children, and that this happens everyday. Obviously, today policy was not followed!! I believe that Ms. Bealer the aid, who also helped in Brian's classroom, was punishing Brian for something. She had worked at the school for several years, and obviously was aware of the policy and for some reason did not follow it today.


We were assured by the principal that Brian would be in a safe and secure environment and to send him back to school. Personally, I wanted the aid out of Brian's classroom, and no longer supervising him in the cafeteria or on the playground. I did not figure that would happen, so I asked for an apology. I assured Ms. Carter that Eddie and I would be dropping by frequently.


After reflecting on this incident for a few days, I now see this as a blessing. I felt prompted to check things out at school and figure out what was going on. We were in the right place at the right time. If Eddie had not walked in when he did, we may never have gotten the truth and found out there was a potential problem at school.


**Update: Ms. Bealer has not been back to school since this incident. She has been "sick." I hope she continues to be "sick" until school is out in June.