Missing Corn & Missing Teeth

The kids had a good start to their week.  Our friends from Awana had a Fall Party at their house complete with a candy corn relay, a race to make a scarecrow, bobbing for apples, plus lots of food and dessert!  They have so much fun at this friend's house because they basically have the run of the upstairs and there are many, many toys.

A few days later, we went to the Health Museum in Houston for a CC field trip.  The museums here often have a free afternoon once a month so that everyone has the opportunity to visit the museums (which can be quite expensive).  This particular museum has a free afternoon every week!  I hadn't realized it or we probably would have visited earlier.  It was small, basically there were only two rooms for the kids to go in, but both rooms were incredibly interactive.  The first room was the human body.  They got to crawl through a colon.  The had a "Texas-sized heart" that was beating with blood flow lights.  The favorite part of this room, though, was the ear section.  They had a sound proof booth in which the kids could go in, scream at the top of their lungs, and it would measure the decibels.

Caroline in a colon.

The other room in the museum was all about how people didn't let physical disabilities overcome them.  They had a girl without legs and her ski-sled.  They had a wheelchair that made music.  There was a section that you could make a walking cane for a blind person that had electric sensors.  It was a neat section.

We left before traffic got too bad and met up with Todd for a dinner out.  We went to Sweet Tomatoes, one of our favorite places.  And just like every time we go, I made Henry cry.  It is a salad buffet place, and towards the end of the meal, Henry had his salad plate in front of him that was nearly empty, he had a mostly empty soup bowl, a bread plate, and he was in the process of eating his ice cream.  I mistakenly believed he was done with his salad plate, so I handed it to the server.  As soon as the server left, Henry's eyes just welled up with tears.  He hadn't finished his corn....  His corn.  Every time I do this to him.  I just don't learn.  Poor kid.

For Awana on Friday the kids dressed up for Character Quest which just so happens to fall right around the Halloween holiday.  Josiah and I found a good deal at Goodwill last week on a $5 blazer.  He was very happy to get a "suit" back into his life.  He's our little Alex P. Keaton.  He went as James Madison.  Caroline went as a butterfly.  Henry had the hardest time figuring out who he wanted to be, but finally decided on Johnny Appleseed.  Henry originally wanted to be Abraham Lincoln, but when he saw the fake beards I bought, he said they made him nauseous, so that was the end of ole Abe.  For Johnny, he had a aluminum foil "pot" hat and a bag of seeds, but he refused to put a picture of an apple on his bag or the word, "seeds," to help people know who he was.  Apparently that wouldn't be authentic.  "Seeds."

Butterfly

Johnny

James

I was supposed to work at Awana that night, but decided, instead, to spend my morning at the hospital.  I woke up just fine.  At 8:15 a.m. my stomach started hurting.  Not long after I lost my breakfast in the trash can, which followed with intense abdominal pain.  It was so sudden and so incredibly strong and sharp and dull and intense.  I tried to look up appendix, but couldn't even focus long enough to read the little webpage because of the pain.  Josiah had already called Todd at work and he was on his way home, but, thinking I was going to die from a burst appendix, I called for an ambulance.  They arrived before Todd, checked me out and loaded me up in the back and took me to the hospital.  They had the sheriff's deputy that drives our neighborhood watch the kids for the few minutes before Todd arrived.  I thought that surely with how quickly they took me that it must be my appendix.  Morphine did nothing for the pain.  At the ER, they tried more morphine and another drug which didn't even touch the pain.  They sent me for a CAT scan and discovered the cause.  The doctor said (as I'm throwing up in a little hospital bucket), it was a kidney stone.  I spoke into my bucket, "That's it?!!"  My first thought was, that's embarassing, I'm strong like ox, how could I not handle this?  However, as the male doctor told me, the pain of a kidney stone is worse than childbirth.  But the pain was in my abdomen, not my back.  They gave me a medicine for that specific problem and finally, finally, the pain subsided.  So, Todd packed me up and all the kids, got my five medicines, and brought us all home, with me, a bit more humble. 

Saturday was more of a quiet day.  I looked at Caroline's mouth in the morning and told her that her tooth was so loose, she could probably just pluck it right out.  She said that she would wait for it to come out on its own.  Then that afternoon, I was talking with her and noticed a hole.  I looked in her mouth and her tooth was gone.  She had no idea where it was, either.  She wasn't too excited about it, but I cannot get out of her as to why.  She was excited this morning to see the Tooth Owl with a new message: "Whoooo lost a tooth?  I don't know, because there was no tooth in here.  Please give this [quarters] to Caroline anyway."

So that was our week.  And next week is sure to be far less dramatic in the medical department.

Driving Miss M.

Last Sunday morning, we drove Todd and one of his coworkers, Miss. M., to the airport for a conference.  You never quite know how the kids will react to new people.  They can be shy, friendly, hyper, or, in this particular case, quite talkative.  As our guest sat in the car, the door closed, and the kids proceeded to tell her their entire medical histories.  Josiah started, "I was in the NICU and then when I got out I had to go back to the hospital..."  "Caroline knocked her teeth out on our bunk beds.  She had surgery on her neck in Virginia and came home with a bandage around her neck.  She had a scar that came off in a trolley in Delaware."  Henry added, "I've been to the hospital only three times, but I've been to Urgent Care like 2000 times."

This short drive had all the kids enamored by Miss. M.  When it was time to pick them back up at the airport just two days later, the kids had made her several cards, Josiah bathed and dressed in his finest, even asking how to fold a handkerchief for his pocket.

Caroline wanted braids to look her best.

Josiah even asked me if he could take a selfie with her.  "Uh, no.  That would be inappropriate."  Henry stayed true to himself and didn't feel the need to impress anyone.  He wore his typical t-shirt and athletic shorts and his card to her had a list of U.S. Presidents.

Josiah also packed up a bag full of chips in case Miss. M. was hungry from her flight.  She kindly chose a bag to take home with her.  Driving along, we kept hearing a lot of chip eating from the back of the car.  So, we called back, "Hey, are you eating more than one bag of chips?"  Yeah.  They were all on their third bag.  Apparently, Caroline was using this as a taste-testing opportunity.  She discovered, after opening, that she did not like regular Doritos, Cool Ranch Doritos, or BBQ flavored Lays, so she ate her plain yellow bag of Lays.  This is just one of the many reasons we have to vacuum our car out nearly every weekend.

At CC this week, Henry was still having a bit of respect issues going on.  I wish I had his confidence as a kid, but sometimes he pushes the envelope and steps into the overly confident, not-so-respectful kind of kid.  We are dealing with the same sort of issues at home (with all the kids at different times, this just happens to be Henry's time).  He has been speaking disrespectfully, but he plays it off as "it was a joke."  We've struggled with how to discipline it because nothing appears to be working.  At CC, I decided that he would clean up his classroom every week for his tutor.  He now is responsible for wiping down all the tables in the room and vacuuming the floor.  He needs to respect his tutor and her classroom, and his fellow students, so he is going to serve her this way.  We shall see how it goes.

At Robotics class, the kids built robots that could climb a string.  It was pretty cool what they build in the 90 minutes they are there.  Next week they're building Battle-bots again, so the boys are really excited about that.  They love the fighting of the battle-bots.

Josiah had a Ninja birthday party this past weekend.  They had ninja games, ninja obstacle courses, ninja trampoline fun, ninja breaking foam boards, everything ninja.  For three hours, he had a great time running around with all the kids.  We get in the car and he says, "You know who my favorite person at the party was?"  Who?  "Lola."  Their dog.  Josiah would love, love a dog.  Of course, when he came home from the party, Caroline wouldn't go near Josiah because she kept saying he smelled.  Too much time with Lola maybe?

We have another busy week ahead with a Fall Party and a field trip to the Health Museum planned.  One day we'll have a week of school where we just do school all day and nothing else.  I'm not sure when it'll be, but some day.  

The Sickness Code

This has been a tough week for all of us.  On Monday, Caroline kept whining about her tooth and upon closer inspection, she has a very loose tooth on the bottom.  It certainly caught me off guard as I couldn't remember when the boys started losing their teeth.  The boys were always excited about it and would play with their teeth a lot.  Caroline, not so much.  Her loose tooth scares her and she doesn't like having it AT ALL.  I have a feeling by next week, we'll have a picture of a even more toothless Caroline.

Tuesday, Henry woke up, ate breakfast, then said he didn't feel well.  I had just taken his temperature right next to the kitchen sink (99.4), when he throws up all over the floor.  Turn your head to the side!  Aim for the sink!  He was pretty much out for the day although he seemed to be feeling a lot better after clearing out his breakfast.  Even his fever went away quickly after that.

By Wednesday I wasn't feeling well, and by Thursday I felt like death warmed over.  The kids were super helpful and it may have encouraged them a little that if I stayed in bed, they would have the day off of school.  They devised a clapping code so I could communicate to them from bed and they'd come running.
One clap - Josiah would come.
Two claps - Henry would come.
Three claps - Caroline would come.
Four claps - all of them would come
Five claps - all of them would leave
Six claps - was for community (???)
Caroline poured me a bowl of Cheerios.  Josiah made hot dogs for lunch (with my help turning on the gas burner...).  They were all pretty proud of themselves, and I was, too.  I was very grateful that they've come to an age in which they are super helpful when it is needed.

Josiah cooking hot dogs.  He never stopped flipping them and shaking the pan.  He liked cooking them so much that he noticed his hot dog was "rubbery."  Been in the pan too long, there?

Josiah made a camoflague shirt at the beginning of the week.  We were reading about the British red coats and how they wised up at one point and flipped their coats inside out and covered them in mud so they wouldn't be such a direct target.  So, Josiah collected leaves outside and hammered them into a white shirt.  You were supposed to see a leaf pattern on the shirt.  I think all we got was a green hammerhead pattern, but he did have fun pounding those leaves.

At CC, our science experiment was about force and inertia.  The kids each got a plastic cup of water attached to a string.  Most kids were swinging their cups around as far from their bodies as their little arms would allow.  And then there's Henry swinging his cup:



Both boys were really happy to go back to robotics this week.  They thought it was a one-time class, so they were really happy to have it continue.  This time they made robots that had a bigger gear connected to the engine so that it gave the robot more power.  (I think the opposite would have given the robot more speed.  Or I could have that all mixed up, because Caroline and I were in the library part for most of robotics.)

Josiah got to go to the store with Todd.  Todd let him get things I wouldn't buy.

And the boys had a great weekend at their friend's birthday party.  It was a water-themed party.  They had water balloon pinatas, which was the coolest way to do a "pinata"  - no running for candy, just a wet splat.  Water squirter fights and water balloon fights.  I took some pictures, and then stayed with the other adults on their deck, nice and dry.  They had a lot of fun.  The only issue we had was that Henry didn't want to take his shoes off the whole time, so when it was all over, his shoes were soaking wet.  And we only buy our kids one pair of shoes at a time right now.  They seem to be growing so much lately and with their wide feet, it's just too much money! So, he went to church this morning with soaking wet shoes.

We're still having our teacher work day tomorrow and then I'm hoping that we all feel better the remainder of the week!

Giant Bibles

On Monday, Caroline wasn't feeling well.  She had a cold, so she had been feeling pretty blah all day.  In the evening, she sat beside me and drew the cutest picture of she and I together.  There was a sky above us with the sun shining.  A rope under us to catch us if we fell.  She wrote the words: Caroline, Mommy, and love.  It was a very sweet thing.  She was finishing up her drawing of me, when she looked up with a curiosity and asked, "How many lines do you have on your forehead?"  Thanks... We call those wisdom marks, sweetie.

Caroline wasn't feeling a whole lot better the next day, either, but she did perk up when a package arrived from Grandad and Nana.  She said, "It's a princess!  I got a princess!"  The boys were equally excited to get Transformers.

I have decided that this will be my second and final year of teaching WAM 3's at church.  It is the music program on Wednesday nights and last year I helped out with the 3-year-olds and ended up having to lead it the second half of the year when the other two teachers jumped ship.  This year I thought I could help out again.  It seemed like a better idea than just sitting around while our kids were in their classes.  You know, be useful.  Well, we have been learning a song about being a friend of God's in our music time.  One little child in our class was more interested in running around the room, kicking the walls, sitting on other children's heads, and otherwise terrorizing the classroom.  Since he was in my room that evening, I was the one always going after him.  His sweet 3-year-old face looked up at me and articulated in an angry, indignant voice, "Get away from me!  You're not my friend!  Get away!"  So, we are in October and I'm counting down to May as we speak.

The boys began a robotics class this week.  It is an 8-week course and they make robots out of Legos.  The first day, the leader said they would be making robot dogs.  The boys were put on a team together and they built their "dog," which they had to fight against other "dogs" to see which team could knock the other team's robot off the table (the robots ran by remote control - just forward and backward for today).  They had a lot of fun, which relieved some fear that I had over-scheduled them by adding this class.  While the boys were in their class, Caroline and her pal, Ezra, were playing games on the library's computers.  They had a lot of fun together and declared themselves to be best friend's forever.

Henry and Josiah's robot dog.

Josiah's shirt came in at Awana.  Once you get to third grade, you graduate from the vests and get t-shirts.  He was pretty happy to get his.  He came home with a patch to attach to it, but told me that I can't iron it because "the shirt melts." 

This was such a busy week, that by Saturday we were all pretty exhausted.  However, we had promised the kids we would go see the new Lego Ninjago movie, so we went Saturday morning.  I made it through the first 15 minutes before Pavlov's dog hit me and I was pretty much out for the remainder of the movie.  The kids ate lots of popcorn and enjoyed the movie, so that was all good.  The rest of the day we had cranky, argumentative kids, so we all had a bit of alone time in our rooms, parents included.

The week ended with First Grade Bible Presentation at church.  Since they can presumably all read now, our church gave all the first graders their own Bibles.  The ones they gave them this year happened to be quite large with big print inside.  All I could think of when I saw the size of the print was that they'd be great for now while they're learning to read, and again when they're much older and need to return to large print books.  Henry came in at the end of big church with all the first graders holding their gigantic Bibles.  We spotted him right away, but he was scanning the crowd for us.  It was pretty sweet to see him smile big and wave when he saw us.  We felt the love, but then when we picked him up after church, he was cranky again and didn't want to pose for a picture.  You're going to stand there and hold your giant Bible and like it!

And that was our week.  I think we're all still pretty exhausted.  We have one more week, before we're going to take a day or two off.  We've been going strong in school since the beginning of August without any breaks, so I think we're all feeling it.

Happy Birthday, Todd!

Monday morning we had friends come over so their mom could go to an ultrasound appointment.  Her oldest loves to bake, a fact Josiah remembered after tasting one of her cupcakes at karate one day many months ago.  So, Josiah pulled out a box of sugar cookie mix and asked her if she'd like to make cookies.  She said she could try it, though she'd never made cookies from a box before.  She's 10.  She not only made cookies, but she showed Josiah how to knead the dough and then let the two littles help her make icing.  I had never known how to make an icing that hardens, so I was paying attention just like everyone else.  By the time they had to go home, we encouraged their mom to let us "watch" them again, so we could get a few more baking/cooking lessons in.  See, these homeschool kids, they're pretty special. :)

We had the opportunity to go to a play in Houston this week, Click-Clack Moo, Cows That Type, based off of a children's book.  Making it into the city, finding the theater, and parking was enough for me to feel it was a successful journey.  The kids did enjoy the play, though.  That evening, Todd was asking the kids lots of questions about how they liked it and Henry mentioned that he liked it, though he thought there would be real animals acting in it.  Caroline said she liked the songs, especially the one with the disco ball (which made it's appearance into one of Todd's birthday cards later in the week).
Before the play, while we were waiting on the wrong side of the theater, the boys balanced themselves on the bike racks.  Caroline gave it a try, spun herself around and hit her lip on the metal bar.  She's had a little purple bump on her lip since.  I think our kids just need to wear mouth guards until they're 18 and are responsible for their own teeth.

I took the kids to the grocery store one afternoon to get Todd some guacamole for his birthday.  (These are the types of gifts you get at his age.  Super exciting stuff.)  The cashier gave the kids "Buddy Bucks," which is always exciting (not so much) because you put a "buck" in the machine, the wheel spins, you hit a big red button to stop the wheel, and see how many points you get.  The most common point value you get is 2.  The prizes are a pencil pouch for 300 points and a bubble wand for 500 points.  This cashier gave the kids three bucks each which can take a good 15 minutes to go through.  This is also one of the reasons we do not frequent this particular grocery store.  If only it weren't for their homemade guacamole that is so, so good.  I digress.  Caroline put her second Buddy Buck in the machine, let it spin for a good while, slammed that red button down, and it landed on Instant Winner.  Now, if you have ever seen the Publisher's Clearinghouse Commercials and see the excitement in some of the winners, that was Caroline.  She was jumping up and down, shaking her fist in the air, saying very loudly, "I'm an instant winner!  I'm an instant winner!  That is so exciting!!"  You could not help but smile at the scene.  She had no idea what she'd won, she just knew she had.  It ended up being a sticker book with the grocery store mascot on all the stickers. 

Todd had a milestone birthday this year.  Henry made an attempt at making a card for every year of Todd's life.  He fell short, but he made a great effort.

Caroline's cards were the cutest.  A picture of Todd in one and a picture of she and Todd dancing under a disco ball on the other.


Josiah wrote and sung Todd a song about how charming he was.  In the song, Josiah called Todd a "fox" which is the meaning of "Todd."  He apologized later if he offended Todd for calling him a fox.  I told Josiah that Todd could handle it.

Todd got an American flag as well as a Swiss Army knife as his gifts.  When he showed the kids all the attachments of the Swiss Army knife, Josiah asked if he could have one as well.  It's not 1950 son.  Maybe if we were a camping family, we'd consider it, but not under the current circumstances.  I cannot imagine how many things would get cut, or holes put in them, in the hands of either of our boys.

Caroline's face is the best - so excited for Todd to open his gifts

Poor Todd missed out on a real birthday celebration.  We spent all day getting new phones which left little time for lunch before karate, and again little time for dinner before Awana.  I didn't even get a chance to make his pumpkin bread "cake" until Saturday morning and Todd didn't even eat a bite of it until Sunday.  I think he was just trying to stretch out the celebration.  Birthday weekend.

Some things do not need to be taught.  Henry and Caroline have been going through a bickering phase.  It is amazing at just how much they can argue about.  So, at breakfast one morning, Caroline put up a barrier so she couldn't see Henry who was constantly telling her to chew with her mouth closed.  I distinctly remember putting up my own cereal box barriers as a child.  They worked fairly well, until one child smartens up and realizes they can still be bothersome to their sibling both above and around the cereal boxes.  Fortunately, that hasn't happened here, yet.