Thursday, January 26, 2012

Wow - the boys are GROWING!

Lots has been going on over the last couple of weeks, and I have repeatedly thought to myself, "I need to update my blog."  And I just haven't found the time!  Anyway, at last, here I am!

First, today Peyton turns 17 months old...  where has the time gone!  Wow!  Lots of chitter-chattering, trying to eat on his own, and exploring the world!  Here are some pics I've taken over the last few weeks...





Jackson has been doing REALLY good at school...  he's in the '50 word club' with one other boy in his class for recognition of all 50 sight words they work on in Kindergarten, and he's a member of the '100 club' where he and a handful of other kids can count all the way up to 100.  With all these great things going on I was bummed that we ran into a few more problems with LUNCH at school!  LOL.  After not getting to take  lunch to school for three days (per my previous post titled, "Nice try, Kid!"), Jackson returned to school the following week and first thing on Monday at lunch he threw his sandwich on the floor in the cafeteria.  The teacher sent me an email as a heads up so I was waiting for him after school in the hallway to talk about what happened.  He didn't want to tell me at first by telling me that the teacher had emailed me about a problem he had, but I made him tell me anyway.  So we talked about it and I asked him what was going to happen as per our discussion the previous week...  and he said, "I have to eat lunch in the Principals office."  And that's what we did the rest of the week. 

Thankfully, he returned to eating lunch in the cafeteria with his friends this week and we have had three great days with no problems at lunch and even eating everything in his bag!  On Friday and Monday I guess his regular teacher was out for a few days and I was a little worried that Jackson might make some poor choices with someone new in the classroom.  So both days before I dropped him off we talked about being nice and helpful to the sub and not going along with any rude behavior other kids might be doing to the sub.  Anyway, on Tuesday his regular teacher emailed to say there was a note from the sub stating that Jackson was awesome and super helpful to her while his regular teacher was away!  So Tuesday night I took Jackson on a special play date at Merle Hay Mall (see pic below) and we even stopped at Starbucks and got a cupcake as a reward for being so awesome!


Later, Jackson built a special a lego creation for me.  Can you tell what it is/says?


It says "Daddy" in legos.  Very cute!!  :-)

Well, that's all for now, Daddy is taking an Algebra class online for school and hating every minute of it so I need to get back to my homework!  Blah!  Anyway, have a good night for me and the boys...


Friday, January 13, 2012

Weight, Teeth, and Ears...

Yesterday I got some awesome news, since the end of August I have been going to a weight loss clinic and have lost 66 lbs.  The doctor said that he was so pleased with my progress that he's putting me on a PRN status and leaving it up to me on how I want to use the clinic in the future!  That was a great feeling.  Now I just need to stick with the exercise and remembering that food is not my enemy and I should be fine!  ;-)  Anyway, for the last couple of days this week I have been setting my alarm for 5:15 a.m. and getting up and exercising first thing just to get it out of the way.  BOY, have I been tired from that!!

Anyway, I went to bed about 9:30 last night and woke up to a crying Peyton at 11:30 p.m.  Remember that the dentist told me on Monday he has two top teeth coming in that haven't broken through the gums just yet.  So after giving him about 15 minutes to see if he was going to fall back asleep, I went to check on him.  He was sitting there in the crib waiting for me.  LOL.  So I changed his diaper, gave him some ibuprofen, and rocked him in the glider for a while.  After about 30 minutes I thought to myself, "I can't do this all night."  So I put little mister back in the crib and went back to bed.  Would you believe that he cried until 2:30 a.m.?  I was so torn on what to do...  do I get him and just put him in bed with me?  But every time we have done that in the past, he just perks right up and wants to move around more and more to check everything out.  I kept thinking about what our Pediatrician said about "self-soothing" and so I just let him cry it out but it broke my heart and I was up the whole time!  This is by far the longest time it has ever taken him since he was 3 months old to go back to sleep in the night.  What do others do in this situation?  Do you just put them in bed with you?  Do you let them self-sooth?  Anxious to hear your thoughts!

Morning came way to soon and when my alarm went off at 5:15 a.m. I quickly reset it for 6:30 and went back to bed!  Finally at 6:45 I got up, showered and came upstairs to get the boys up.  Jackson gets up to an alarm so when I came out of Peyton's room he was already in the bathroom and announced to me that his ear hurt.  When I tried to look in it he yelled in pain and my heart sunk thinking that it was an ear infection!  So after 8 a.m. when the doctor's office opened I called and they actually had an appointment with our normal doctor available... at 8:30 a.m.!  YIKES!  So we quickly got dressed, diaper bag packed, and FLEW all the way West Des Moines and got there at 8:33!  LOL.  The doctor confirmed that Jackson did have an ear infection!  Poor baby!  So he's on some oral drugs and ear drops and should be better early next week! 

The doctor said that Jackson was fine to go to school if he wanted, and he did, so we went from the clinic right to school.  It was really cute when I opened the door to his classroom and all of his friends saw Jackson they cheered.  Is my kid the life of the party??  At the end of the day, I had (for the third day in a row) a good report that Jackson had no check marks and ate all of his lunch!  Chores, taking toys away, and no cartoons really did the trick (for now at least)!

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Nice try, kid!

Yesterday when I picked up Jackson from school the very first thing he said was, "Daddy, I didn't have a good day again."  Remember that on Monday, Jackson got three check marks at school!  Anyway, I asked him what happened and he told me that he got two check marks, one for not listening and another one at lunch.  Now, for those who follow my blog, you know that we have had a lot of problems with lunch from the day we buried the sandwich in the sandbox to the day we simply just threw it on the floor so we didn't have to eat it...  well, would you believe little mister did a repeat of the latter?

Yep, threw the sandwich on the floor so he didn't have to eat it.  So I asked for some quiet time in the van on the way back home so I could think (and take a few deep breaths, cause boy was I pissed).  When we got home, I had Jackson get out of the van and wait for me to get Peyton settled in the house before I came back out with a city bag and handed him the rake.  "Get to work on the leaves," I said.  As he got started on some yard work, I came back in the house and made a list.  To me, taking your lunch 'that I take the time to make for you every day' to school is a privledge.  Especially when I know why he likes taking his lunch to school...  it's because he gets to be one of the first in the lunch line since he has cold lunch and he gets to bypass the entire hot lunch line and go straight to the table with his other friends who brought cold lunch.  He thinks it's a "cool" thing to get to do all that.  Anyway, that's a privledge so he would not be taking lunch to school the rest of the week, he can eat hot lunch.  Then I went and put his favorite toys away (legos, race tracks, and trains) and he won't get them back until Saturday, and... no cartoon until he has a good day at school with no check marks.  Getting 5 check marks over two days at school is NOT acceptable especially when this is not normal behavior for him at this point at school.  I know that the kids just got back from Christmas break, and I know that he just had a weekend with Nana out of his normal environment, but he's old enough to be able to pull it together and not have problems like this at school (especially hands on problems and lunch problems that we have dealt with before).

The last thing I did was emailed his teacher.  I asked her for suggestions on what to do about lunch, again!  She emailed me back and suggested that we could get more drastic and Jackson could start eating his lunch alone in the office.  So I talked to Jackson about it and we decided that if he has one more problem where he's not eating his lunch, hiding food from the teacher (yes, I found out from the email that Jackson was hiding his food on Monday), or throwing food on the floor that he will start eating in the office the very next day until the end of the school year!  We talked about how Jackson was the only person who could control and make that choice for him.  Personally, as a fat child, I will never understand him avoiding food (I know he's on ADHD medicine) because I ate food all the time!  LOL.

This morning when we got up and had breakfast, I reminded Jackson of all the things he was not getting like no cold lunch the rest of the week, no favorite toys until Saturday, and no cartoons until he had a day with no check marks AND if he came home today, tomorrow, or Friday with one more check mark he would be doing chores over at Uncle Sam's house!  I know it seems like I'm pushing hard, but since we just increased his ADHD medicine a month ago, I really think he can make better choices because Dad and I both know he's incredibly smart!

So tonight as I waited for him in the parking lot across the street from school, I was nervous!  I stopped and bought a bug juice hoping that I could reward and praise him for having a good day at school.  Finally I saw him coming across the skywalk and he made it to the van and right as he opened the door he said, "I did it, Daddy, I had a good day with no problems!"  YES!  THANK YOU GAWD!  It was hard to not want to over do it with the praise and excitement I felt but let's just say he had his bug juice, a huge snack, and dessert at dinner!  LOL. Oh, and yes he got to watch some cartoon! 

Later, I had to laugh when he asked me if he had earned back his toys yet!  So I reminded him of what we discussed the day before and how the toys were gone until Saturday.  Then he turned to me with his big blue eyes and smile and said, "Maybe I can get a treasure from the treasure box for having a good day then?"  LOL.  Nice try, kid!  ;-)

Tuesday, January 10, 2012

Peyton's First Visit to the Dentist

Yesterday I took Peyton to the dentist for his very first visit.  He has 6 teeth (that we could see) and we just wanted to make sure everything was fine and get him used to going to the dentist early!  He was SOOOO precious sitting there in the dentist chair and silly me, I didn't even think to take a picture!  The technician brushed his teeth and gums while he watched the large flat screen TV floating above him.  Then the dentist came in and looked in his mouth and guess what...  he has 3 new teeth coming in and two of them haven't even broken through the gums yet!  No wonder he's not sleeping well at night!! 

IMMORTAL World Tour

This past weekend Daniel and I took a quick trip to Denver to see the Michael Jackson IMMORTAL World Tour show by Cirque du Soleil.  We have had tickets for this show for 10 months!  It's always fun to make plans so far out in advance, but in retrospect having a quick trip right after a long holiday break probably wasn't the best idea, but we did it anyway!  So Daniel flew in town Friday evening after working the week in Chicago and two hours later we were both on a plane to Denver.  Gizmo (our long haired chihuahua) spent the weekend with some friends of ours, and the boys got a fun weekend with Nana (more on that in a bit).  So we stayed at a hotel in downtown Denver in the mall area on 16th street.  It's a fun part of town with all the stores lining the street just like an outdoor mall.  We had lunch the following day at the Hard Rock Cafe, dessert at Pinkberry, and just walked around to the different stores in the mall.  Later that night we saw the show which was AMAZING!  Regardless of what you think of Michael Jackson, he had an amazing talent with his voice and the music that he wrote.  It was a great tribute to him.


Peyton has not been sleeping well at night and so I was a little worried how he would do at Nana's house.  At her house both the boys sleep in the same room...  so I was just keeping my fingers crossed that everyone would get some good sleep over the weekend!  Sounds like things went just fine as Peyton slept all night both nights for Nana!  Jackson made some fun crafts out of construction paper for me and dad when we got home which reminded me of the fun times I had as a kid with my Nannie.

I had to laugh at Jackson yesterday when I picked him up from school.  Nana was watching Peyton for me so I went into the school to get him.  The bell rang and he came out of the classroom and we both went to his locker. There I asked him if he had a good day and he said, "Yes, I did!"  His teacher was coming down the hall towards us and I jokingly pointed towards her and said, "Is she going to agree with that if I ask her?"  And he looked down at the floor and said, "No." Then I heard from the teacher about how he had three check marks and two of those were from hands on events (pushing and hitting)!  So we both talked to Jackson about it there in the hallway and then the teacher said, "And Jackson told me that he was staying with Nana this weekend and so he wasn't in his normal routine this morning."  So I burst out laughing and told her that I was home last night and Jackson was back in routine for school this morning!  The teacher gave Jackson a funny look and he knew that he was in trouble!  Anyway, I couldn't get over him blaming poor Nana for his bad day at school! 

I hope this behavior doesn't mean my child is going to be a Republican, you know, blaming everyone else for their problems!  LOL.  I'm kidding...  after we just had the Iowa caucus' last week, how could I pass that one up?