Cleaning up the kitchen after party preparations and houseguests…

New toys to enjoy and torture sisters with…

And new ‘friends’ to hug and snuggle with. 

See more photos at Wordless Wednesday, 5 Minutes For Mom and Ordinary and Awesome!

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(Almost) Wordless Wednesday #121 – Aftermath

1. Kimberly@PrettyPinkMomma 2. Run DMT 3. Tara @ Feels Like Home 4. Julie@Momspective

5. Jenna @ Newlyweds 6. Kara @ His, Hers, and Ours. 7. Mariana @ Riding w/No Hands 8. Brandy

9. Kati 10. You're next!

Yes, pain. Remember that annoying little ovarian cyst which was diagnosed back in July? The one which I’ve scheduled surgery to remove three times since then and had to cancel all three times due to school starting and then someone always being sick?

Yeah, that cyst. Which apparently decided that the weekend of Hannah’s birthday party would be the optimal time to remind me of its existence.  Sigh. Hannah’s birthday isn’t until next weekend (the 29th) but we moved the party up so it wouldn’t interfere with everyone’s Thanksgiving weekend plans.

This particular weekend got off to a great start – I spent all day Friday straightening up the house and babyproofing (Eric is 22 months old, and I’ve realized just how UN babyproofed we’ve become now that Becca’s almost 4 years old). Mary and her two younger kids got here around 6pm – Matthew stayed at home for his first shot at getting to watch himself while Dave was working. It’s not like a house full of girlish goings-on has a lot of appeal for an almost 13-year-old boy anyway. On previous visits he usually was getting bored and then antagonizing everyone else, so I think it was a good choice. Hopefully he did ok at home by himself.

The pain started on Saturday morning, but it wasn’t too bad, so I just took it easy. We had a quiet day with the kids all playing at home – and outside, since it was a gorgeous day out, in the 60’s and sunny. In late November.  Who would’ve thunk it? 

Mary and I got Hannah’s cake baked, along with a batch of cupcakes. After dinner the pain was worse, so I took a Vicodin, which had been prescribed for the pain in July when I ended up at Urgent Care. It did help, so I was able to get through a quick shopping trip for goodie bag stuff, and staying up way, way late with Mary to decorate the cake and cupcakes.

Mary pointed out on Saturday night that I had yet to take one single picture since they’d gotten here. Which certainly isn’t like me – at all. So I quickly rectified the situation…

Mary and I made the frosting for the cake – which involved a lot of powdered sugar. And just a little bit of a mess. 

Whoops – cover your eyes, there are naked cupcakes in the house!

Tools of the trade – including a High School Musical water bottle for inspiration (one guess as to the party’s theme, lol), and caffeine to keep me awake.

After Abby’s party last spring, we had the method down for how to cover and transport the cake, thanks to several wooden chopsticks that we cut in half, and a piece of cardboard from a USPS shipping box. After this, we covered everything with tin foil until the big reveal at the party on Sunday.

The kids were all asleep during the cake decorating (thank goodness). For this trip, I put Hannah on Abby’s bottom bunk, and Becca slept on Abby’s floor, so that Mary, Emma and Eric could sleep in Hannah and Becca’s room. Emma ended up falling asleep in the recliner, however:

I’ll post pictures of the party later – I don’t have as many as I normally would since by Sunday afternoon the pain had started to overtake just about everything else. I took a Vicodin in the morning to make it through church (the girls were all singing in the choirs that morning) and then took another before the party began. I don’t know if it was the medication or the pain, but I soon started to feel nauseous and the Vicodin wasn’t hardly even touching the pain – which was getting acute. Somehow (I’m not quite sure how) I made it through the party. I know that the kids all had a good time roller skating and the cake went over very well too. By the end of the party I was a mess though.

It was then that Kristi stepped in and insisted on taking me to Urgent Care – which was by this point rather necessary. We dropped her hubby and kids off and then headed over. Thankfully Mary stepped in and was able to help Ron clean up and get everything home from the party before she had to head out for home. I am blessed to have amazing friends.

By the time Kristi and I got to Urgent Care, the pain was the worst it’s ever been. I don’t even know how to describe it except to say that after giving birth three times, one of which was with no pain medication whatsoever, this was the most pain I’d ever had in my life. Period. It was a stabbing, sharp pain in my left side that never let up, unlike contractions where you at least get a break for a few minutes in between the pains. Ugh, I know my dignity was completely gone when I couldn’t find a single comfortable way to sit, lie down or stand as I was checked in and evaluated. Thankfully they got anti-nausea drugs and pain meds into an IV for me fairly quickly. Even then, it took several doses before I could relax.

After a repeat ultrasound to check on the cyst and then a CT scan as well, I was sent home with a couple of different pain meds (Darvoset this time instead of Vicodin, since I didn’t know if that’s what made me nauseous) and instructions to call the gynecological oncologist that I saw about the cyst before FIRST THING the next day. They told me that the radiologist determined that the cyst has grown 2 cm since the ultrasound that was done in July – which wasn’t exactly reassuring.

I have to say that it takes a good friend to give up her Sunday night to drive you to Urgent Care, change puke buckets while you’re there, sit with you for hours while they do tests and get drugs into you, then drive you to the 24-hour pharmacy (across town) to fill prescriptions before taking you home – stopping twice along the way so you can throw up at the side of the road. Nope, not my best moment, but I was so thankful (and still am) that Kristi was there so Ron could stay home with the girls. They were asleep when I got home, but I know that Hannah had a fun evening playing with her birthday presents instead of having to get dragged with me to Urgent Care – which makes me one happy mommy.

So far today the pain hasn’t returned, although I’m still feeling a bit woozy from all the pain meds I got last night. I slept all night and then dozed off for a while after getting Abby and Hannah off to school this morning. Becca’s preschool is on break all week for Thanksgiving, so I didn’t have to take her there, which helped too. We’re having a low-key day of tv watching and playing on the computer – but that’s ok when it’s necessary. And today it is.

I have an appointment with the doctor next Monday afternoon and we’ll look into getting surgery scheduled, hopefully before the holidays. The doctor isn’t as concerned about the cyst as the PA at Urgent Care seemed to be – but this is what he does for a living, so I guess I trust his opinion more. He’s seen the test results and doesn’t feel that the cyst is malignant at all (which is a relief), but obviously it needs to go so that the pain won’t come back. I have no idea why I went from July until now with no pain whatsoever, or what triggered it to start again on Saturday. But at this point, I just know that I never want to experience what I did yesterday again, so I’ll do whatever I need to to get rid of the cyst.

Sorry for the long post, but I wanted to explain why I was offline all weekend. Hopefully I’ll know more after next Monday’s appointment – I’ll keep you all updated after that.

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A whirlwind of a weekend

I thought I was all prepared for conferences. We had a babysitter, courtesy of our 12-year-old niece who was staying with us all week and was dying for a chance to watch the girls. I had dinner planned out and was ready to start preparations for cooking it with plenty of time left afterward to make it to our first conference (Abby’s) at 6:15pm. Ron even had ended up with the day off so he was going to be able to come to conferences too – not always a common thing with his work schedule. Everything was falling into place.

Until I looked at the calendar, just to verify the 6:15 and 6:45 start times of the girls’ conferences – and was left staring at the times I’d written there, wondering if I was mis-reading something.

5:15 and 5:45 pm. Five o’clock – not six o’clock.

At this point it was 5:20 pm and all of the careful preparations went right out the window. I yelled to Ron that we had to leave NOW, told the girls they’d be making their own dinners (something Abby loves to do anyway) with D’s (our niece’s) help, threw on my coat and shoes and we were off to see if there was any way we could still get in to see Abby’s teacher. We just made it there in time for Hannah’s conference (phew!). And then ended up waiting around for 45 minutes afterward until Abby’s teacher was done with his – he’d pretty much been able to move everyone up a slot and then put us last – after another last-minute addition. I was extremely apologetic (not to mention embarrassed), but he was fine. I got the impression that this wasn’t the first time a parent had misjudged the time their conference started. Which makes me feel slightly less guilty about the whole thing. Just slightly though.

In any case, once we were seated in front of the girls’ teachers, everything went extremely well. Here’s a (not so) quick rundown of how each of them are doing:

Hannah is transitioning very well into first grade and being at school all day. Her teacher has no worries about how she’s handling things and remarked upon how helpful and sweet Hannah is. She’s reading (well) above her grade level and her math skills are advanced for her age as well. The teacher’s only concern is making sure as Hannah gets into the higher grades when school gets “less fun” and more challenging (once she’s not already knowing how to do most of what’s being taught), that she still enjoys school as much as she does now.

We talked about making sure that Hannah knows where and how (and when) she’s able to get onto the classroom’s computer to take Advanced Reader (AR) tests – they don’t usually start them with the whole class until January, but Hannah’s been reading AR books for months and took a few tests at the library last summer, so she’s definitely ready. And that was pretty much it – except for one question that I’d asked Hannah’s previous teacher and wanted to compare answers with her current one. You see, at home Hannah is often quite – dramatic (as I’ve mentioned here from time to time), and has been known to throw major fits when things don’t exactly go her way. Apparently at school she’s a different child however, because this year’s teacher answered exactly the same way as last year’s – in basically total disbelief that Hannah ever acts that way, because at school she’s agreeable, helpful and never has any issues or meltdowns.

Which made me kind of wish that her teacher had come with us down for picture re-takes a few weeks ago (Hannah had missed the original picture day because of being sick) – when Hannah threw a complete fit about wearing the sweater I’d brought for her to put on (having entirely forgotten that morning that it was picture re-take day and not having paid any attention to what she wore to school), was in tears about not wanting to wear the purple headband I’d brought and refusing to get her photo taken whatsoever. We had to let several other kids go ahead of us just so I could get her calmed down, and it took bribery (yes, I resorted to that in the interest of getting at least a halfway decent photo – or any photo for that matter) to finally do the trick. As you can see from the final result – she did fine once we made it through the hysterics.  Sigh…

Abby’s teacher was the one I was extremely curious to talk to – given all of her well-documented issues with ADHD and Asperger’s. We had started her on a (very) low dose of Adderall at the end of the summer, but after it came time to refill and up the dose, I noticed that at home she seemed to be doing just fine without the medication. Not wanting to medicate her unless it’s absolutely necessary, I held off with the refill and then asked her teacher if he’d noticed a difference over the past month or so.

The answer there was an emphatic yes. As in past years, her teacher has no concerns whatsoever with her academics – but where she’s struggling yet again is in the areas of focus, organization, and being able to keep track of her things and follow-along with the lessons like she needs to. The fact that the teacher holds the kids extremely accountable for their actions does help – to a point. But it’s his (and our) opinion that a lot of what Abby’s doing (or not doing) are things beyond her conscious control – that she simply is unable to ‘help it’. This fits exactly into what my own thoughts are – and we came out of the conference having come to a few decisions. First is that I’ve already filled the prescription and Abby started back on the (higher dose of) Adderall yesterday. We’ll touch base with the teacher again in a few weeks to see if that’s helping at school. And – oddly enough, Ron came out of the conference determined to talk to his own doctor about possibly going on ADD medication himself. We’ve remarked for years that Abby is ‘just like him’ – and he’s always had his own struggles with focus at work. It’s better in this job, but he’s noticed his caffeine intake increasing like crazy over the past year – which makes sense if he also suffers from ADHD, because the most common medications for it are stimulants, like caffeine. So we’ll see what comes of that. But back to Abby – she is now using the assignment sheets that were optional at the beginning of the year – but are now mandatory for some students who need them, like her. The teacher checks the sheet and initials it at the end of the day to make sure she’s gotten the assignments down correctly, and I sign the sheet when she’s done with her homework to make sure everything’s done. And part of her nightly checklist is to verify that the homework folder is where it should be (in her backpack). Getting said homework from backpack into the classroom and from there where it needs to go to be turned in is a bit more problematic – and apparently has been costing her quite a bit in fines at school when she constantly has to run out to the hallway to retrieve items from her backpack. But that’s part of the whole learning and personal responsibility experience. At some point, she has to be the one who’s responsible for her own work.

In general I feel very good about how conferences went and glad to have somewhat of a game plan where Abby’s concerned. I am quite curious as to how Becca’s doing in preschool – from what I can tell when I drop her off and pick her up she seems fine, and the conversations with her teacher are telling me that she may be a similar case to Hannah – where she’s almost a different child at school than she is at home. She does appear to be somewhat shy (which we knew) especially in large groups, and preschool is making a noticeable difference there. But she’s not attached to any particular kid to the point of ‘making friends’ or even mentioning anyone in her class by name. I guess that’ll probably come though. 

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School update and my latest ‘Mommy=fail’

See more photos at Wordless Wednesday and 5 Minutes For Mom!

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Wordless Wednesday #120 – Give me a “B-E-C-C-A”!

1. Pippa 2. Tara @ Feels Like Home 3. alexandra 4. blueviolet 5. Harriet

6. Kim Kihega 7. Frugal Fritzie 8. Mellisa 9. Alyson @ 3PsinaPod 10. Amy

11. Cathy Parker/Ladyhightower 12. mizhelle 13. Tiff@ThreePeas 14. Corey~ living and loving 15. You're next!

As we drove by the store yesterday morning, Becca got all excited and exclaimed, “There’s Smoovaway!”. It took a while (and another time or two of passing the store) before I understood exactly what she was saying and figured out that she was talking about that specific Walgreens store. But it wasn’t until I was sitting in the living room today while the television was on (and tuned to Nick Jr.) that I heard Becca saying the same thing again (“There’s Smoovaway!”), so I looked up at the television screen and noticed this:

See the Walgreens logo to the left of the store name? That’s the same one that’s on the store we’ve been passing on the way to and from D’s school.

I guess Becca now thinks that’s what the store is called – Smooth Away. I suppose it could be worse – at least it’s a product that’s not completely inappropriate to be seen during preschool programming. Then again, 3-year-olds aren’t exactly shaving yet, so I’m not sure what benefit there is to playing the ad during those shows. I know that I’m certainly not sitting glued to the commercials that come on (obviously). But Becca’s definitely paying attention.

So, I guess I’m going to have to start monitoring exactly what’s on during commercial breaks as much I do the specific shows the girls are watching – and stick more with OnDemand, DVDs and the Disney Channel, which are all (mostly) commercial-free. Or I could cut the television watching altogether, I suppose.

Hmm, let’s not go too overboard here…  LOL

So I’m curious what other parents opinions are here. What do you think about commercials for non-kid-oriented products playing during shows specifically aimed at young children? Do you limit your preschooler’s television to commercial-free programming?

PS – the mentioning of a specific store and product in this post is not to be construed as advertising or promoting them in any way. They simply happened to be part of a funny story that I wanted to share.

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Apparently we’ve had the tv on way too much lately…

Well the first thing that I’ve needed to tackle today is actually writing this post, lol. I fell asleep on the couch last night, and that always throws my schedule off. 

Raking leaves in the fall is something that I’ve been doing practically my whole life. Our house when I was a kid was in a neighborhood that had once been a wooded area, and there were over a dozen trees in our yard. I remember our backyard being literally carpeted with leaves that we had to wade through knee deep. Every weekend was spent raking and bagging and my poor mom was out there just about every day while we were in school too. Here’s an old picture that gives you the idea:

Our yard here isn’t nearly as covered when autumn comes, but we definitely have our share of leaves as well. And since our five large trees are spread out over the front, side and back yards, we pretty much have to rake – everywhere. I spent every afternoon over the past week outside raking – sometimes with the assistance of a certain little 3-year-old. But her agenda was slightly different than mine – she would rake little piles (with her plastic rake) and then jump in them. Plus she jumped in every pile that I raked – and got a little attitude whenever I started bagging the leaves, thus diminishing the piles.

Our side yard is large since we’re on a corner lot – as big as our backyard is. And even though there’s only one tree in the side yard, leaves blow from all over and end up there. It took me 3 afternoons to get it raked.

This is an ‘in progress’ photo – you can see where I’d already raked versus the area that was still left to do:

And here’s an ‘after’ photo that I’m very proud of:

The backyard was actually easier because I could simply rake everything down the hill and then bag it at the bottom. And by the time I got to the backyard, I realized that (probably due to my childhood raking experience) I actually enjoy raking leaves. It’s been a good way to enjoy the nice weather we’ve had outside, not to mention good exercise and gives me time to think.

The backyard looked like this at the beginning of the week:

And after a couple hours of raking:

Yes, someone had a very good time sliding (and sending her toy trucks) down into the pile of leaves. 

At the end of the week, I felt a big sense of accomplishment every time I looked outside and saw this:

And that’s only about half of the bags that were out there altogether!

Of course, then today it had to be windy outside (not to mention cold!) so our yard is starting to fill up with leaves again, that are blowing here from other yards. Hopefully the weather will hold and the wind will die down so that I can get out my rake and start tackling the leaves some more.

What are you tackling this week? And check out other Tackle It Tuesday posts over at 5 Minutes for Mom!

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Tackling… yep, more leaves

This week’s theme is “Autumn Beauty”, which is, of course, appropriate given the time of year. Our past week was full of fall leaves in fact – I spent all week raking and bagging just about every portion of our yard – over 40 bags total (so far anyway). Most of the raking was done while Abby and Hannah were in school, but they did help some while they were home – and of course, they (and Becca) had plenty of opportunity to jump in and roll around in the leaves to their hearts’ content.

And, of course, I’ve taken “a few” photos.    Ok, so maybe more than just a few (*grin*). But when it came down to picking just one to use as my submission for this week’s contest at I ♥ Faces, I went with the one photo that says “Autumn Beauty” to me the most – this one that I took of Hannah sitting in a leaf pile, with a touch of sunlight just kissing the top of her head. It’s so unusual to get a lot of sunny days here in Michigan in the fall, so photos like this one aren’t terribly common. That’s been one enjoyable thing about the week of weather we’ve had here over the past week – between the sun and warm temperatures, it’s been hard to believe it’s mid-November. I could definitely stand to have this kind of weather for few weeks more. 

So here is my entry:

Check out I ♥ Faces for more wonderful “Autumn Beauty” photos this week!

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I ♥ “Autumn Beauty” Faces

During the spring and summertime, we only get a glimpse of the lake waters through the leaf-filled branches of the trees in our and our neighbor’s backyards. And for most of the winter, the lake is frozen and snow-covered – which is pretty in its own right, but just not quite the same.

No, it’s in November usually, in the brief weeks between leaf and snow fall, that I happen to glance out of the kitchen window one day and suddenly realize that I can see all the way across the lake. And then I remember that this is the view that I first saw from the window when we came to live here.

And I drink up my fill of the sight enough to last me until next fall.

Hosted by Cecily and MamaGeek

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The view from my window

Here’s my question for this week:

Do you know how to swim? If so, have you ever taken formal swimming lessons?

I’ve got swimming on the mind (I know – odd in November), because we failed to sign the girls up for lessons this past summer for the first time since Abby turned 3. It’s been a strict rule of ours that they must take swimming lessons every year (which they love anyway) at least until they’re totally comfortable in the water in all situations. With a pool next door and a lake right behind us, we just don’t want to take any chances. This year though, somehow I missed the signups for lessons so I was planning to do Saturday lessons this fall, after soccer ended. The first class was on Halloween, and with 2 sick kids at the time, I missed those signups too. So now I guess we’ll wait until after the holidays and try again in January.

Be sure to check out An Island Life for other fun Aloha Friday questions and to play along!

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Aloha Friday #108

Stop, before you even think of little creepy crawly thingies – that’s not it.

No, what he’d just noticed right on the very top of Abby’s dark brown hair? One very, shall we say – light – hair. A GRAY one to be exact.

Yep, Abby has her very first gray hair – at 8 years old.

I would’ve taken a picture of it, but I didn’t have my camera with me and my phone just isn’t capable of taking decent pictures that close up. But trust me – it was gray. I examined it quite closely at the time. Since then I’ve searched the top of her head and haven’t been able to find that sole gray hair again – her hair’s very thick and it’s apparently quite well hidden. But we both saw it – there’s no denying that fact.

What kind of stress could an 8-year-old have in her life to be giving her gray hair – already?

Unfortunately for her, I think that genetics plays a much bigger role here than anything else. You see, I found my own first gray hair at age 11. And it was pointed out to me that I could’ve had them earlier and just never noticed. I’m not exactly thrilled that Abby seems to have inherited this particular trait from me – but I’m not terribly surprised either.

My mother started dyeing her hair in her early thirties. From the time I can remember, she was entirely gray underneath the dye. She finally decided about 20 years ago in her 50’s that she was finally ‘old enough’ to just let it go, and she now has the softest, most beautiful white head of hair. I’ve never seen my mom’s natural hair color except in photographs.

At age 39, my hair is also quite gray – probably more than 50% at this point. I’ve dyed it off and on, but between not having the money to get it professionally done every 6 weeks nor the time to do it myself, I think I may just give up and let it go salt-and-pepper. I hate the look, but really it’s just a vanity issue, right? I’ve always dyed it myself, but there’s so much gray in it now that the home-dyeing kits just don’t do a very good job anymore. And if I dye it once, I have to keep up with it, or the roots (remember my ‘natural’ color is very, very dark brown) look horrible after only a few weeks.

Even my ‘little’ brother has the salt-and-pepper look going on, although he keeps his hair short enough that it’s not as noticeable – and guys just tend to look more distinguished when they go gray, don’t they… Which is kind of frustrating actually. At least for me. But I think it’s time to just – let go, and learn to love my hair as it really is.

Here I am, while at BlogHer last summer – with recently-dyed hair, just styled by a professional stylist at the Suave booth:

And here I am – au natural, so to speak, this morning. Pre-shower, just as I got out of bed (although I finger-combed my hair a bit so it wouldn’t be, you know, too horrible looking):

Can’t quite see it from that angle? Well trust me, the roots are quite grown out at the moment (I haven’t dyed my hair since BlogHer). I can’t believe I’m throwing this out there for the whole Internet to see, but here’s a birds-eye view:

Yep, that’s me. One little gray hair multiplied into well, who knows how many now. A lot. But I’m refusing to let myself be embarrassed to be seen this way anymore – not only for my own sake, but for Abby’s as well. Because 30 years from now when she’s facing the same choices, I’d rather she be proud of who she is and what she’s accomplished – not worrying about whether or not her gray roots are showing.

Ugh, 8 years old! I don’t think she really even understands why Ron and I were so shocked about one little gray hair. Unfortunately she’ll figure it out – and at an earlier age than most people generally have to.

Or who knows, just maybe she’ll be a trend-setter and gray hair will be the new ‘in thing’ of the 2030’s.

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Well, she has me beat…