Uggh, Snow and Crud!

It has been an interesting week.  We had snow on Saturday and the kids really enjoyed playing in the white stuff.  Again seeing the world through your kids eyes is wonderful.  However, as I was at work, I had to experience there joy through conversation with my husband after I got home :-(  I did get to see some pictures and the kids told me all about it on Sunday.

However, being a mom with young children with the fun comes  the crud.  Our Sunday morning started off with a febrile seizure that placed us in the urgent care clinic.  Just when I thought we were through the years of back to back illness.  I had mistakenly thought that things were going great this winter with only one mild cold each.  Well just when you think it is safe to breath,,,BAME,,,croup for both of them!  So we now are faced with horrible sounding coughs, antibiotics and the worst thing in the world for children prednisone!  At some points during the day when they are hyped up from the prednisone, it is like watching the road runner!  They just bounce and run around in circles.  My son even woke me up at 2AM to tell me his Taekwondo instructor liked him.  To which I think I responded,,,”uhh, go back to sleep”

One of the other fun things about being a mom to small children is probably becoming Dr. Mom.  I have slowly realized that I can when they need to go to the doctor by some pretty gross things.  A certain smell of the breath with a temperature means ether strep or sinus infection.  The way a cough sounds can send me strait to the nebulizer and then to the doctor (hmm, I think that was more wheeze sounding then “juicy”).  I find myself asking them,,,”let me see that kleenex” after all depending on the color of the snot we may have to go see the doc.  And no none of this has anything to do with the fact that I am a nurse.  Though the fact that I am nurse may prevent me from throwing up!

We only have a few more days on meds and then I hope we are all back to normal.  Now it is time to peel my hyped up kids off the walls and attempt to practice speech and finish make up work.

New use for the stair case!

This will be a bit off the normal topic of my posts as it is not dealing with the kids, but myself and my husband.  In true New Years resolution form we have decided to eat better and exercise.  We are joining the ranks of Biggest Loser’s in the country.  Though I am not overweight but in the range I should be, I am following the diet and exercise routines to support him and to just be healthy.  By the way the range they say I should be is massive 95-130lbs!  That is a HUGE range for my height.  But oh, well here we go anyway.  So we are counting calories, weighing food and thinking about our food choices.  Really not a bad thing we both have family history’s of all the nasty diseases that come with age and weight. We have discovered some neat meals and have been enjoying experimenting in the kitchen as well as ways to “trick” our son in to eating vegetables.  He actually ate Cauliflower the other night because I told him it was a new kind of potatoes!

So eating is the easy part!  Now for the exercise.  We are following the Biggest Loser plan so we have to mix up cardio and strength exercise.  Now I do great with walking.  I can walk 2 miles in 30 min which is great.  But the strength stuff just kills me!  Especially when I have to do it at 4 Am because I have to work.  Sit ups and push ups arn’t that bad but the squats!  Nothing like hobbeling in to work for a 12 shift with sore legs!  Today though was the worst.  It is cardio day so we planned the 2 mile trek at the park.  Now living in the south we never really plan for cold days.  Especially the last few years when the winters have been so mild.  Well today is one of those “raw cold days” 35 degrees and damp feeling.  One lap around the track (1/2 mile) and we called it quits!  So we still need to work out.  Then I had a “genius” idea, lets go up and down the stairs at home for 15 minutes (we looked up stair climbing  and it would burn the correct number of calories) which we did and OH UGGH!!!!  My legs are shaking!  I think we got the best work out though because we were really huffing and puffing!  This might have to be our work out plan now for bad weather days.  Cool thing is though now I hate my stairs, at least we got a good work out without freezing or spending the money on a stair climbing machine!

NOPE I AM NOT A SOCCER MOM,,,But a Taekwondo Mom

As a young adult with out children I used to make fun of those mom’s with the soccer balls stuck all over the SUV’s.  Oh how I was not going to ever be like them.  Then my husband bought me an SUV to take little ones around in,,oh well,,,at least I am not a soccer mom!  However, I could be venturing down a much similar road.  I am now an official Taekwondo mom.  Yup, it has happened, we have started down the road of extra curricular activities!  Twice a week now I have to get our son suited up and to practice on time.  I have to make sure his dobok (uniform) is clean and put on correctly ( I am still trying to the belt right!).  He has a great time at class.  He lets out his “karate yell”, I can here him yell “yes sir” above all the other Tiny Tigers.  He has only been to two classes and the instructor has already given him a star for his disiplin (hey,,,did I have something to do with that???) and form.  I of course was so excited that my son got his first star.  In the true spirit of competitive parents I told my self “but of course he did he is perfect”!  No, honestly I was proud of him because the stuff he was being asked to do (kicks, punches, push ups, jumping jacks) he had never done before and we had been practicing.  And of course he was not perfect, but he tried hard and did better then the first time he went and I believe that is why the instructor recognized him.

One of the things about Taekwondo is it is Korean Martial Arts.  Our son has been watching exhibitions at Korean festivals and adoption days we take the kids to since he was first home.  He has always been fascinated with it and always wanted to take a class.  I had resolved to maybe just Karate as I could not find a Taekwondo class neare us.  It was my sister-in-laws idea to take her son and mine to a free class back in December.  Both our boys are truly Tiny Tigers (my 6 yr old is the a little smaller then her 4 yr old) so they were the smallest ones there.  However, they did the best.  My nephew will hopefully be joining us in Feb for the class.  If this is so all we as mom’s can say is thank goodness they wont be at the same school.  We can already in vision being called into the office!

Here is my Tiny Tiger!  Now I just need to find stickers for Taekwondo to put all over my SUV and I am all set!

School Decisions

Having a child with developmental delays means constantly thinking ahead about what to do next year.  Every decision with any child regarding education is critical, but with a delayed child it is even more so.  We have to think about what her limitations are, what her strengths are and what her needs are.  Our need for Holly is speech and her delay in this area.  Ball park guess she is now at about the 2-2.5 yr level.  Which is far better then when she was tested at 2.5 and was about 1-1.5 yrs behind.  Though the delay is the same she is now able to communicate a lot of her wants and needs.  Her moments of frustration, which would result in screaming followed shortly buy “shutting down” are almost gone.  She can now ether say the work or show me the item she wants.  She has even developed her “own sign” for things that only we understand.  WE are communicating and that has made life better for all of us.

Yesterday we had our annual meeting with the special needs preschool director, her speech therapist and the director of her pre-school as well as her teacher.  We are always so nervous about the meeting.  Some of our thoughts and fears are that they will take her out of therapy to soon.  Then there is the “cafeteria” of options we review and which one do you want to follow.  This is the nerve racking part!  What if we make the wrong decision and “mess” up her life!  Every option has as many pro’s as con’s and then you factor in the equation the state funded lottery part and then you get the nott in your stomach.  Though this plan looks good she may not be picked and then what do we do?  It is so frustrating because you walk out of the meeting feeling like you still don’t know what the plan is!  This year to add to it Holly will not be able to have the same teacher she has had for the last 3 school years.  This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it is still a concern.  We also had some real concerns about the pre-K teachers and there ability to work with Holly.  You have to maintain a level of patients with her.  If you try to push her to fast to make a decision or give you an answer (especially verbally) she will shut down an not try. 

With the meeting over we do have some defanant goals and objectives.  Manly though we have to explore the 3 different schooling options she will have.  Two of which are based on a lottery system.  Of course those are the two options we want, so we have to hope our “luck” is better then usual.  However, the two best options also mean putting her in all day school and taking her out the private Christian school she is currently attending.  We love the program and have been able to allow our son to complete Kindergarten through this program.  His kindergarten teacher is such a sweet and loving women I hate that Holly may not have her as well.  However, we have to get through pre-K first and that could be a problem.  We are now going to have a meeting with director about teacher selection for Holly next year and whom might be the best fit.  The upside to not going to private pre-K and kindergarten is more $$ for private therapy, something that has greatly helped her.  We would be able in to increase our sessions (it is all out of pocket,,but that is another rant all together!)  After all these decisions and “investigating” are done we will have yet another meeting to transition her from the special needs pre-K program to the public school system.

So back to square one,,,what are we going to do for Holly next year?  To be continued……..

Best Christmas Break Ever!

You would think that a Christmas after layoff would be horrible.  But who would have thought I would dream this the best Christmas break ever.  But I have.  As it became more and more apparent that my husband would not get a job quickly (and not for lack of trying) I picked up the overtime and we planned and planned on how to make this single income family life work.  We immediately decided to trim down on Christmas.  Plan was to make sure the kids had a good Christmas and everything else would fall into place.  And it did.  What this holiday season has meant for me was building family memories.  Things that I hope my little ones will look back on and giggle about how “goofy mom and dad were”.  Those are the memories I have and cherish as a child.

New traditions have been started in our house this year.  We played a game with a little elf that changed positions every day so the kids thought he was going back and forth to the North Pole.  With there dad home everyday we were able to sit down and eat family dinner together and enjoy our advent wreath and talking about the true meaning of Christmas.  When dad was battling traffic to get home, he sometimes didn’t make it in time for dinner,,,only for a quick goodnight.  We enjoyed looking at the lights in our neighborhood and spending time with family baking Christmas cookies.  We were able to share all the Christmas shows we enjoyed as kids with our kids (as someone was now home with them everyday to help them find it).  During there Christmas break time we have instituted a new family fun time.  Family game day.  And no there are no computers, Wii, playstations or game cubes involved.  Only the old fashioned board games we grew up on.  Sorry, Monopoly JR, Hi-Ho Cheerio, Rat Trap (what my son calls mouse trap) are some faves at this time.  We sit around the table eating pop corn laughing and playing games.  The 4 1/2 yr old still has some of her “own” rules but we go with it.

I hate to say I am sad to see the Christmas break end and the kids go back to school.  We will miss all the fun of having them around all day.  Now it will be back to the grind stone of job searching, working and the new adventure of Ty Quan Do for my son.  However, I have the wonderful memories of the last two glorious weeks with the most important people in my life.  The entire reason I wake up with a smile every day.  My family, my hubby, son and daughter!