Is Bryan a Country?

I used to love watching the awesome PBS show Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego. I've decided that perhaps my students would benefit from watching it as well...

I was reminded why I love teaching 5, 6 and 7 year olds the other day. I had taken a puzzle of the United States in for the kids to do because we had been talking about where we live and I realized that they were completely clueless about the world in general. I didn't realize how clueless until I heard these statements...

Student 1: Hey, here's Texas Mrs. Hastings. I've been to Texas before. 

Me: (very excitedly) Did you visit relatives there or did you  just go on vacation? 

Student 1: No, I don't have any relatives there, I went there to eat. 

Me: Are you sure?

Student 1: Yeah, you know. Texas Roadhouse. It was really good.

Me: (burst of laughter) Has anyone else been to another state?

Student 2: I went to that one state where Chuck-E-Cheese is. 

That concluded that lesson.

Later that week...

Student 3: Mrs. Hastings, when I grow up I want to move far away.  

Me: Really? Where do you want to move to?

Student 3: The country. 

Me: Where at?

Student 3: Edgerton. 

Please keep in mind that Edgerton is literally 10 minutes from Bryan. 

I've given up on geography lessons.

Wish I would've had a camera

I was in the kitchen peeling potatoes when Grace walked in and informed me she was going to use the restroom. She went in the bathroom and shut the door. Within seconds I heard frantic screaming - MMOOOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!! AHHHHH MOOOMMMMMM!! Followed by crying and more hysteria. I thought either this girl has a spider on her or she peed or pooped before she got on the toilet. I opened the bathroom door and burst out laughing which made Grace even more angry - DON'T LAUGH AT ME MOM! Oh my word...if only I would have had a camera. She was completely folded in half in the toilet. Her shirt was wet from the toilet water and she was frantically trying to lift herself out. I helped her up and she instantly calmed down and said - I forgot to put my toilet seat on. One of my best G. Marie moments to date. :)

As for the rest of us...

At Cabela's

I told Grace she looked like a panda so she now refers to this as "panda-ing" the wall.

Grace has a new imaginary friend named Jilly (big shocker). I often hear her playing with this person and talking to her. Right now as I type she is saying "Go Jilly, go!" She likes to pretend play at home - popular ones being Kindermusik, Sunday School, follow-the-leader and cooking/baking. She usually "plays" these things with kids that are in her class. It's entertaining to say the least. She is also obsessed with matching. She has to match her outfit down to the underwear and hair ties. Last week the comment that made my day was "mom, my socks match the floor" (both were white). I wonder how many times I hear something matches every day. I should keep track one day.

Several weeks ago we got to go visit our cousin, Katie, in Findlay (she goes to college there). She had mentioned that the barn where she works had lots of baby animals. She was nice enough to show the kids all of the animals. They were amazed by it all...especially the baby goats running through the barn. The adults were amazed by the pregnant mama goats. They looked so miserable and were ridiculously out of proportion. Katie said they thought one was having twins and the other at least triplets. I hope they are out of their misery by now. :) The kids still talk about seeing the animals with Katie Jo.

Steve had his first baseball game last night. He was pretty excited to be back in baseball mode. I had to laugh because he called me from his school after changing into his baseball uniform and I could hear several teachers (both male and female) giving him cat calls as he walked down the hallway. I love that he works with people like that. It makes work way more pleasant. Minus having a kid puke all over his desk last week school is going well. He's also looking forward to this week because he thinks he can probably get some golf in. I'm just excited for the beautiful weather!

I started back to school last week. It went really well because mom watched the kids. It made for a very stress-free first week back for me. Plus I knew I had 1 week back and then spring break which helped. :)

Samuel at 4 months

The days of not being buckled in are long gone.

Safe and secure and buckled in.

And time continues to fly by. Samuel is 4 months old already and still his happy, smiley self. He has one last chest x-ray this morning and hopefully everything will come back clear. He is a very chatty little guy and very mobile. He has rolled from stomach to back and back to stomach many times now and can somehow maneuver himself off of his play mats and all over the place. He's a squirmy little one! He's starting to like toys and likes to grab onto them and shove them immediately into his mouth. I am also happy to report that the days of horrible car rides seem to be a distant memory now. He has also perfected the zerbert and is therefore soaked in slobber often. 

The amount of love you have for your kids amazes me. You'd think I'd be used to it by now but it still hits me sometimes. I could just hug them and kiss them all day - to which Grace protests "I don't want to cuddle!" Luckily Samuel still lets me although I'm sure that will pass all too quickly as well. :) Life is good!

Cough, Cough, Wheeze, Wheeze

The past 3 weeks have been filled with sickness. Grace started getting a cold 3 weeks ago which ended up in a bad ear infection again (poor girl). She went from playing and being happy to puking and being miserable within an hour. She wouldn't even talk - if you know Grace at all you know that if she's not talking she's really not feeling well. Her fever got so high that we had to throw her in the bathtub twice last Sunday night. It was a rough couple of days. She is fully recovered from that now and is back to talking around the clock. We were so happy to hear her talking again (never thought I'd say that) :)...how we love that little chatterbox. A few days after Grace started getting a cold Samuel started getting a cold. He had a stuffy nose and diarrhea. This lasted for a little over a week. He was still acting fine...sleeping well, smiling, eating well and talking. On Friday he had a low-grade fever but it went away after a few hours so I wasn't too worried. I was actually quite hopeful that he was fighting off this bug on his own. Early Saturday morning he woke up breathing really hard and wheezing. He was restless for several hours. Amazingly, he was still smiling and acting fine Saturday morning. I figured it was an ear infection or something so I called the doctor and went in. When we got to the doctor it's like someone hit the "off" switch on Samuel. He became very lethargic and did a complete 180. The doctor looked him over and called over to the hospital to tell them we were coming straight there. He wasn't sure what was wrong with him but suspected that he was dehydrated from having diarrhea. He was hopeful that getting him some fluids would perk him back up. When we got to the hospital he was hooked up to an IV and given quite a bit of fluids (no meds). It didn't make any difference and in fact he seemed worse. By Saturday night he was refusing to eat - he had a constant layer of mucus in his mouth that made him gag. I tried to suction it often but it was constantly there. Saturday night he didn't sleep much at all. The poor guy was miserable - coughing so hard that he was puking and unable to breathe. Sunday morning the doctor came in and ordered chest x-rays and blood work. The chest x-ray came back showing that he was completely full of gas but his lungs were clear. Weird. This made them think that he may have rotovirus/rotavirus. Once we got a stool sample, that came back negative as well. By this time I was getting irritated because he was getting worse. Hardly waking up. Extremely lethargic. I was getting anxious and wanted to know what was making him so sick. By Sunday evening his oxygen level was low enough that they started him on oxygen and began breathing treatments. I will take a moment here to be a little "woe is me", so bear with me (I understand that this is about Samuel and not me but...). It is not fun to see tubes on your child's face. That was a really hard time. It made it worse that Steve had already gone home for the night to be with Grace. Sunday night his fever came back and still we had no answers. Every test they had done came back negative. On Monday morning the doctor ordered another chest x-ray and ordered an antibiotic for Samuel to start getting orally. Once the x-ray came back the doctor found that Samuel had pneumonia in his right lung. Samuel immediately started receiving an antibiotic through his IV that was quite a bit more aggressive. By Monday evening he was improving drastically. He was awake a bit more and began nursing again. He slept way better Monday night. He was still having breathing treatments every 6 hours and antibiotics (through his IV) every 8. His breathing was very labored and he was having chest retractions throughout the whole ordeal and he is still having a hard time breathing even now. Tuesday was much more of the same - breathing treatments, antibiotic, oxygen. Tuesday around lunch time they decided he was doing well enough to turn off his oxygen. He held his own without it, thankfully. Wednesday morning the doctor said that his lungs sounded 90% better than they had and we were okayed to go home after he had another dose of antibiotics. We were given a prescription for Ceftin and sent on our way by Wednesday afternoon. I'll admit I was a little concerned that we didn't have Albuterol but it's going okay. His breathing is still labored and sounds crackly and he is congested and coughing, but nothing like he was before. He is back to smiling and being happy-go-lucky which makes me feel so much better. He has a check-up next week to make sure he's continuing to heal. I told him yesterday in the hospital that he's 3 months old and already giving me grey hair. He cooed and grinned at me. :) Oh how we love our little Samuel. Thank you for praying for him this past week and please continue to do so. It's going to be awhile before his health is back to normal.

Obstinacy at its best

Let me begin by saying that I don't think being obstinate is funny at all (especially when it's my kids). However I also believe that sometimes if you don't laugh you go crazy. Now here's the story:

I took the kids grocery shopping and ran some errands. I knew I was pushing it running into nap time but once you have the kids all bundled up and are already out you might as well get as much done as possible, right? Well on the way home they both fell asleep. Samuel stayed asleep in his car seat but I had to wake Grace up and take her inside. From the moment I woke her up in the van she was completely and totally unreasonable and ridiculous. Here is our conversation for the next several minutes:

Me: C'mon Grace we need to go inside.

Grace: I don't want to go inside.

(I carried her inside)

Me: Take off your coat and your shoes Marie.

Grace: I don't want to take off my coat and shoes! (from here on out the exclamation points represent what I like to call scream/cry-talking. I hope you know what I'm talking about).

(I yanked off her shoes and coat because I could see this was going downhill fast...we were beyond meltdown stage)

Me: Time to go up to bed.

Grace: I don't want to go up to bed!!

(I was becoming increasingly irritated so I threw her over my shoulder and carried her up to bed)

Me: Do you want your pigtails out? (She often complains that they hurt her head when she lays on them which is understandable)

Grace: Yes

(So I took them out)

Grace: I want my pigtails in!!!

Me: Too bad. You told me you wanted them out. Lay down and go to sleep.

Grace: I don't want to lay down, I want to sit up and CRY!!!!! (notice the amount of exclamation points)

(At this point she was being so completely ridiculous that I started laughing)

Grace: I don't want you to laugh at me!!!!!!!!

Me: It's hard not to laugh when you are being so unreasonable. I'm going downstairs so I don't have to listen to this anymore. (I then exited the room, laughing, and went downstairs)

Grace: I DON'T WANT YOU TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!!!!!!!!!!!

Holy moly. At this point I was thinking to myself, did I raise this child? What have I done? She was asleep before I even hit the bottom of the stairs and 2 hours later she was back to normal Grace. Thank God. I can only hope that someday she has a feisty little red-head just like her as payback. I think this kind of behavior must come from Steve because I was a sweet, quiet little girl that never misbehaved! :)

Samuel at 3 months

I am going to attempt to take Samuel's 3 month pictures tomorrow. I will post those later this week. Here are a couple that I took earlier this week during tummy time that I like. He has mastered rolling over from his tummy to his back although he doesn't do it every time. 

It's so fun to watch him start interacting. If he can't see us while he's doing tummy time he cranks his little head all over the place trying to find us. Too cute. :)

Samuel continues to be one of the world's easiest babies (except for car rides...more on that later). He is very quick to smile and talk. He is becoming very nosy and starting to reach for toys. He has found his hands and sucks on his fingers and fists often. Also in the past month I've had to start wearing ponytails because of little fingers that like to grab onto my hair and refuse to let go. He loves attention and being talked to and almost always rewards you with a huge grin. He continues to be a great sleeper, sleeping from 9-6, eats and then is up for the day around 8 or 9. Over the next few weeks I want to try moving his bedtime to 7 so that he gets up around 6:30 or 7 - I know it sounds crazy, but I have to go back to work in a few weeks and need to leave the house by 7:40. He used to love car rides and would fall asleep almost instantly, but those days are long gone. He still sleeps sometimes but if he is awake he is usually mad. He wants out! I have to laugh because at those times when he is crying I'll often hear Grace talking to him saying, "I know Samuel, I know, you want out to kick-kick-kick your little legs. Don't worry, we'll be home soon." He usually replies with a very ticked off scream. I can just imagine in his head he's thinking, who does this chick think she is?? I want out now! I'm sure this car issue will pass in a month or so as he continues to develop and is able to play with toys more. It is insane to think that 3 months have already passed. It has flown by, but at the same time I can't remember what life was like pre-Samuel. He is such a blessing (as are all children). :)