Playing in the snow

Several week ago, we actually got enough snow that the kids could play in it. Julia is a true winter baby and LOVES playing in the snow. Jude likes it for about 5 minutes, then is ready to go back in.

Julia decided that she was going to take her sled down the slide. I think she was trying to give me grey hairs. Then Daddy came out and HELPED HER!!

Jude's favorite part was eating the snow, so we just brought in a big bowl of snow!!

My little fish

Julia continues to be a little fish. I signed her up for swim lessons at the YMCA. Since this is a different place than we had gone to before, I was not sure what class to put her in. I put her in one and within minutes for the first class, the instructor said she needed to move up a class level.

Julia loved the swim lessons, as usual. The instructor even had her jump off the diving board and swim to the side of the pool all by herself and without the help of any flotation device. The diving board scared her, but she did it once.

She is a great swimming and can swim all over the pool. The only issue she has is that she cannot figure out how to tread water. Something to work on I guess.

It was water safety day, and the instructor was teaching Julia why you wear a lifejacket when in a boat. Right after this picture was taken, the instructor flipped the boat over!

My gymnast!

Julia started taking gymnastics at the local YMCA in January. These classes are MUCH different that the ones we took at our old place. These classes are much more advanced in teaching gymnastics. It was a bit of a learning curve for Julia, but she caught on quickly. Hopefully, this will help her be more coordinated than her clumsy mother!

Yes, they have the kids doing flips on the high bar (or whatever it is called)


Doing her bridge. This is where I noticed the most improvement. At the start of the session, she could not even get her shoulders off the ground. Now she can get her whole body, including her head off the ground. She still cannot hold it for a 10 count, but I am very impressed at the improvement.


Julia does really well at the balance beam. The first couple of classes she was scared of being that high, but soon got over that and has been doing great.

Helping with laundry

This week Julia wanted to help me do laundry, so I was teaching how to do it properly. I explained about sorting by color and how to set and start the dryer.

Now Julia no longer waits for me to help with the laundry. She empties the dryer into the clothes basket, gets the wet clothes out of the washer (or has her brother do it), puts the wet clothes in the dryer, adds the fabric softener sheet and starts the dryer. She then re-loads the washer with the clothes she sorted and adds the soap. She just needs me to turn it on.

I had to document this with pictures. Now if I could just get her to neatly fold it and put the laundry away, I would be set!

"Yum, yum"

Long story shortened, the kids like to play "shopping", by emptying out my pantry and putting it in their play kitchen. Yesterday, I had Julia put all the food back away in the pantry before we left for preschool. Jude and I get back home and I go about cleaning the house. At one point I walk into the living room and Jude says "Yum, Yum mommy". I look and see this:

I guess the powdered sugar spilled in their shopping cart and Jude was eating it by the fistful!!

He had it all over his face, shirt, pants and on the floor! I just could not get mad at him. And I had to get pictures before I cleaned up the mess.

Handprint embroidery

A couple of weeks ago I finished the handprint embroidery that I had been practicing for. I LOVE how it turned out. I think I will have to do it again in a few years to see just how much it has changed.

Here it is. I know it needs ironed and I need a bigger mat for it, but I was just testing it out.

Jude thought that he needed to be in the picture too!

Hello?

I know I have been lacking in the posting. I am not sure anyone still even reads this blog.

I am trying to do better.

I hope to have some pictures to post in the next couple of days.

Raising a giant

My baby girl turned FIVE 2 weeks ago. I am not sure how it is possible that she is five, but somehow it happened.

I took her to the doctor's yesterday for her 5 year check-up and to get the rest of the shots she needed to be able to enroll in kindergarten in the fall.

She weighed 47 pounds and was 47 inches tall. That put her way off the top of the charts for height and at the top of the charts for weight. I think I am raising a giant! The dr. was not concerned since she is proportional. I am tall and I come from a family that is really tall, so the height was not unexpected.

I looked at her record book and saw that she grew FIVE INCHES in the past year!! She also got 3 vaccinations. I think people in the next county heard her scream, but she recovered fine and got ice cream on the way home.

My first hand embroidery projects

As most of you know, I love to crochet and do other crafts. I saw something on Pinterest that I really wanted to do. It was embroidery outlines of all the hands of our household (parents and kids). I really wanted to do this, but I have never embroidered before. I have quilted and done cross-stitch, so I figured I could pick it up pretty easily. Before I did the handprints, I thought I should do a practice piece or two. I found a small embroidery kit on clearance at Jo-Ann's and also pick-up a book on embroidery that had the stitch explanations and patterns.

I finished the small kit and on larger pattern out of the book. The larger pattern is about 5x7. They are not the best, but I am still pleased. I don't think I will do anything with the larger project, but it was great practice.

The smaller kit:

The larger project:

I am now starting on the handprints. I am really liking how they are turning out. I will post a picture when I am finished.

My babies!

WOW! Posting three days in a row!

Today is once again just going to be a short picture post. Two pictures of my babies. They are growing up so fast!

Just chillin'

I walked into Jude's room one day to find this:

I guess he was comfortable!!

Happy New Year!!

Happy 2012!! I hope I will be better about blogging this year! Hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season!

More doctors!!!

I have seen more than my share of doctors lately!

I have been to the doctor's office a couple times in the last month or so. I have been having more anxiety lately, so the dr put me on a medication. After 3 weeks on it, I developed a bad reaction to it. After going off it I started having crippling anxiety and major panic attacks that would last for hours! I was shaking like a crack addict in need of a fix and was itching EVERYWHERE. Went back to the dr. and she switched my meds around and I am having some relief from the anxiety. It is not completely gone yet, and I still have some mild panic attacks, but it is way better than it was. I go back to the dr in a couple of weeks and I will she how she tweaks my meds.

THEN... I had to take Julia to the dr this morning. She has been having several potty accidents and holding herself a lot. She was not complaining of pain, but I suspected a bladder infection. My mommy instincts were right and she has an UTI. So meds for her too!

I am soooo sick of doctors and hope the hospitals take payments, because I have about $1000.00 in medical bills right now. That is WITH insurance!! Here is to hoping for a better year in 2012!

Finally healthy

Julia is all better and Jude's allergies are starting to be controlled. I am so tired of doctors and hospitals. I have not even seen the hospital bills yet and I know it will not be pretty.

Now, if we can just stay this way all winter!!

Two more ER visits!

Only this time it was Julia who was in the ER! Let me just say that my kids have the weirdest medical issues and always seem to confuse doctors, especially Julia.

Last Monday, Julia started complaining that her leg hurt at about 5pm. She also started to refuse to walk on it. I did not think too much of it, she is always bouncing and jumping around, I just figured she bumped it. After an hour or two she was starting to whine and cry about it hurting, especially when her hip was moved. By this time we figured out her pain was coming from her hip area. We thought that she must have pulled a muscle. After a couple more hours she is screaming in pain and refuses to move her leg at all. At this point, I don't think it is a pulled muscle and start to worry that something serious is wrong. We pack Julia up and take her to the ER. I thought about taking her to Children's right away, but it is 30-45 minutes away, and the local hospital is only 5 minutes away.

The local hospital is busy. We sit in the waiting room for over an hour waiting to even get an exam room. All the while, Julia is whining with occasional bouts of screaming and sleeping.

Once we finally see a doctor, he is convinced she has a condition that normally happens to pre-teens in where the ball of the femur breaks off at the growth plate. He orders x-rays to confirm this. Of course Julia screamed through the x-rays because we had to move her leg around. I am pretty sure people in the next county heard her! Oddly enough the x-rays show no evidence of a break at the growth plate. The dr. decides to send the x-rays off for a second opinion. During this time, they do give Julia some Motrin for the pain. It does not help, but she finally cries herself to sleep. The second opinion of the x-rays also come back clear. So now the dr. is stumped and he decides to call Children's Hospital for help. The doctors at Children's tell him the possibilities of what it could be and the test that need to be run. The local doc explains this to us, but says that don't have the equipment to run these tests on a child, so it is probably best just to take her to Children's, especially since they would have to treat her there anyway.

So after 5 hours at the local ER, we pack Julia up and I drive her to the Children's ER. Luckily, they are not too busy and were expecting her. We quickly see a doctor who explains what they think it is. They need bloodwork and another set of x-rays. They decide that they need to get Julia's pain under control before they even attempted x-rays again. They start an IV to get blood and to give Julia some Morphine and Motrin. They Morphine makes her a little spacey and slow, but it dulls the pain.

The bloodwork shows no infection and the x-rays are clear so they want an ultrasound of her hip to see if she has a pocket of fluid surrounding it. Julia does well for the ultrasound and even I can see that there is definitely a big pocket of fluid around her hip joint.

The Orthopedist was working on another case, so we had to wait awhile before he could talk to us. The good news was that nothing was broken and there is no infection. It was something called Transit Synovitis. Doctors don't know what causes it, but it happens in kids Julia's age, usually about a week after an Upper Respiratory Infection (a cold), and it will go away on it's own within a couple of days. They bad news it that it is very painful until then. He gave us some prescriptions for pain meds and sent us home.

Of all the possibilities that could have been wrong, I think we lucked out. They others would have involved a hospital stay and surgery.

By Wednesday morning she was already up and running around on it. Unfortunately by Wednesday evening she was complaining that her OTHER hip now hurt and by that night she was screaming in pain again. It had the same symptoms as the other hip, so we know what it was. I just felt awful because there was nothing I could do to take the pain away. The pain meds were not helping.

Everything I was told and everything I read only talked about ONE hip/joint being affected. I was not prepared for her other hip to get it to. I called the ortho dr. on Thursday morning to ask about it. He was surprised that her other hip was now affected. He did say it was very unusual, but not completely unheard of. Just keep an eye on her and bring her in if she starts running a temperature or any other joint becomes affected.

Luckily, by Friday she was better other than mild pain. She limped slightly most of the weekend and complained of just mild pain. No other joints became affected.

Geesh! My kids come up with the strangest aliments!

Julia' Hat

Got Julia's hat finished about a week ago. I was going to make it all purple, but Julia said I needed to add pink to the bottom. I think it needs a crocheted flower at the gather, so I will do that soon.

Julia likes to make silly faces for the camera.....

Cleaning, cleaning, cleaning!!!!

I have been cleaning almost non-stop for days now! The entire house smells like bleach and my washing machine has not stopped running in four days.

Basically I am doing Spring cleaning in the fall. In an effort to get Jude's allergies under control everything in the house is is getting washed, scrubbed, dusted, bleached, etc.. I even had Jerry bring over his Dyson vacuum. Even after just vacuuming with my vacuum, the Dyson still swept up THREE canisters full for dust/dirt!! I really think a Dyson vacuum needs to move up the list from a "someday luxury" to a "necessity", especially with Jude's allergies.

After today the entire upstairs will have been scrubbed completely! That includes windows washed, curtains washed, everything dusted-including baseboards, furniture moved and swept under, beds completely stripped and washed, etc. The curtains in Jude's room will not go back up.

I still need to rent a carpet shampooer and shampoo all the carpets. We will also be removing the carpet in Jude's room and replacing it with hardwood flooring.

Another ER visit

Spent a couple hours in the ER last night/this morning with Jude. He was perfectly fine last night when he went to bed. At about 11:30pm he started that Croupy cough. After a few minutes I see that he is really struggling to breathe. He is having severe strider and retraction and cannot catch his breath. In the MANY times he has had Croup (I think this makes #7), I have never seen him this bad, especially that quickly. I was actually pretty frightened, and if you know me, I don't get worked up over medical stuff very easily.

After about 15-20 minutes of watching Jude struggling to breathe without any improvement and him crying because he is freaked that he cannot breathe, I decided to pack Jude up and take him to the ER. Luckily, we now live about 2 miles from a hospital.

Once at the hospital, I became even more frightened by the reaction of the hospital staff. I noticed several other people in the ER waiting room as I walked to the registration desk. As the tech at the registration desk is taking our information, the triage nurse hears Jude and pokes her head out. She takes one look at Jude and disappears into the ER. About 20 seconds later she comes out and says to skip the registration and there is already a room ready for Jude. Once in the room, about 5 doctors and nurses descend on Jude within less than a minute. Those two things are what really freaked me out. Since when can you skip registration and go straight to the head of the line? AND I have never received that fast of care at an ER!

Jude quickly got a nebulizer treatment with three separate meds in it. He also got an oral steroid, which he promptly vomited back up, so then he got a steroid shot. About halfway through the nebulizer treatments, he could finally breathe again and he calmed down. After about 10 minutes he was back to smiling and flirting with his nurse. The nurse commented on how the change in him was night and day.

After about 2 hours in the ER (most of which was making sure his chest x-ray was clear and that his oxygen levels stayed stable), we finally went home. I had Jude sleep in our bed, so I could keep a close eye on him.

Today he is still Croupy and his breathing is still raspy, but at least he can breathe. Hoping tonight is not as bad!

Jude's new hat

I decided to crochet Jude a fun winter hat. I combined three different patterns, plus made a few of my own design changes and this is what I came up with! A Dino hat! Jude loves it. I braided several strings of yarn at the bottom of the ear flaps, so I can tie the hat on him.

We saw the "Cho-Choo"!

About a week ago, we all, including Mimi and Bapa, went to see and ride on Thomas the Tank Engine! Jude absolutely loves "cho-choo's". He thought this was GREAT!