The past two weeks have been one sickness after another. As I said in my last post, my oldest started out with the flu the week before Easter and my youngest got the flu on Easter and continued on well into the next week feeling crummy. Then came his sore throat that he's had the past several days and his wacked out breathing at night that scares me he is going to stop breathing completely in the middle of the night. Turns out he has strep. The doctor prescribed him some pills that he can't swallow, so hopefully tomorrow we can get a liquid that he can get down. He needs to be on the medication for 24 hours before he can mingle with the general public. Yes, Renee, it is truly one thing after another... I am sad I missed your presentation today.

"Do dogs have armpits?" This question came from my seven year old and it stumped me. I really don't know, do dogs have armpits? He always manages to come up with questions that I don't know the answer to. I finally figured out the reason he was asking me was because he's been sick with the flu; so if I take his temperature from his armpit... what about dogs.. do they get fevers?

My youngest has been sick since Easter and my oldest was sick before Easter... I think I'm next.

It's Bunny Day! Obviously my sleep isn't back on track... I shouldn't be up so late! In a few hours we will be off to see the rest of my family; hopefully I can put homework concerns behind me for the day... the stress is unbelievable. Being I'm a single parent, my kids will be going other places to celebrate Easter because "others" want to see them too ;o) - but I will be with my nieces, nephews, sisters, and my mom and dad.. and a bonus this year! One of my friends and her two children will be coming along; they have been visiting this weekend and since their family is far away, they will join us - the more, the merrier, right? It will all be over by this time tomorrow :o(

Lately I have been lacking anything clever to say... am I aging that fast? Or maybe I was never very clever?

Noon Room

My oldest had his first "noon room" (noon detention) yesterday and he knew it was coming because he hadn't finished his homework from last week. It was interesting to watch him ask his younger brother what the procedure is for attending a "noon room". His brother assured him that it was easy and that they would tell him where to go. I told him not to worry about the "detention" because I know how he is; he stresses out when he gets in trouble in school. I let him know that I wasn't going to be upset about it, so he relaxed a little.

He had been struggling with an assignment that he finally finished last night. He had to write a rough draft of a story that mimics Jack and the Beanstalk. I asked him to tell me his story before writing it down and he did a good job considering the trouble he's been having. I explained to him that some people have an easier time telling a story out loud than writing one down. We got out the tape recorder and I told him to start over and we would record it; that way if he had trouble remembering as he was writing it, we could replay the tape. He thought that was great, but he was a little to aware of being recorded and seemed a little nervous even after I explained nobody else would hear it. But it worked, he got his story written down without even having to replay it. We are both relieved to have this assignment behind him; maybe he can help me work on mine?

Night of Fun plus one car full of Idiots

My youngest left for the weekend, so my oldest and I thought it would be fun to go to the school carnival. I saw this as my opportunity to spend time one on one with my oldest son, which is something I rarely get to do. I bought more than enough tickets so that we could fully appreciate everything we found to do for these two hours of fun. He wasn't interested in the face-painting, which was good, because I felt it would take too much of our precious time. He won at nearly every "booth" we stopped at, so he had a bagful of gumball goodies. He won a can of pop at the ring toss and I made him win me one too :o) He saw many of his friends and they spent some time and some of their tickets to put each other in a mock jail... that seemed to be the highlight of the booths for his grade. Near the end, we realized we still had ten tickets and only about ten minutes to spend them. Not wanting to spend the last ten minutes in line to spend one ticket, we went to the pencil pull and spent our remaining tickets on pencils, some of which won him some stickers. The prizes were small... the experience was not. I fully enjoyed following one of my children around the school watching him interact with his friends. With two kids, I am often pulled in two directions, but I was able to focus... it was great.

On our way home, I had my window down and we were enjoying the nice breeze coming in. Just before we reached home, we passed a car and I happened to be facing the other way as they passed us. I heard a "pop" sound as we were passing and my son asked me what it was. I was clueless, but thought maybe one of us popped a tire. I focused on our car to see if it was driving differently when my son started laughing and pointing towards my window. I turned to see what he was laughing at... here was a paintball splattered onto the inside rim of my window. The splatters left a trail inside our car to the back passenger window. I calmly explained to my son that this wasn't very funny and how this sort of "fun" could hurt other people. The paintball landed extremely close to my head (possibly the target) and I am unsure how I would have reacted if it would have hit me... but, I imagine I might have thought I had been shot... possibly causing an accident. I wish I would have seen the car in time to gather information, but they were long gone once we realized what had happened. I am positive that we weren't their only "targets" that night and I sincerely hope their juvenile fun didn't harm anyone. I don't think I need to ellaborate on how stupid this type of thing is, because I doubt those type of people are spending their spare time reading my words.

Lesson Learned?

Before I came back to school, I had no problems sleeping at night. I knew my job started in the morning and taking care of my children was done after work (or in the middle of the night when needed), but once they were asleep I was free to go to bed without worries - aside from the usual obsessive ones. Since then, I have thrown myself into this world where anytime is a good time for schoolwork and many times studying was best done after my kids were down for the night. Bad idea... When does one sleep? Here and there and of course, it's never enough. The body needs several hours at a time to be rested and these hours shouldn't be broken up on a regular basis. I don't know what it's like to go to college without children, so I never realized what people truly meant about how hard it is... I didn't know any different. Now that I've had a little rest, I realize what I was sacrificing and how my classes were suffering rather than being better off from my extra night hours. Sleep became something I grabbed whenever I could and many times it seemed more important than the classes I was working so hard to keep up with in the middle of the night. This has been a hard lesson, I'm only hoping I don't need to be taught again.

My nine-year-old went back to school today... he's been coughing miserably since this weekend. Cough syrup helps a little, but not enough... he's still miserable. He called me when he got to school - forgot his shoes and wanted to come home because he kept coughing. His teacher and the nurse decided he should stay... It's hard to have a good day when I know he isn't.

I printed off some multiplication and cursive worksheets from abcteach today and when my seven-year-old came home from school and was whining for something to do, I pulled them out and said he could teach himself how to write cursive and do some multiplication if he wanted to... he jumped at the chance. When he would struggle, I would remind him that he didn't have to do them, they were just for fun, but he continued. Now he's doing his homework (on his own) and said he's going to work on the worksheets (which he calls his third grade homework) again after he's done with his first grade homework. :o)

My nine-year-old can't stop coughing... definately need some cough syrup here; I bought tylenol when I ran to the store and he hasn't had to take anymore of that because his fever and headache seem to be gone - should of bought cough syrup. My youngest has sickness envy again this morning and asked me why I don't care when he coughs. It didn't seem to bother him yesterday when he was allowed to play with his friends while his brother had to stay inside.

The kids played hard today (friday)... then this evening my oldest got a headache... then a fever - 102.9 yikes!

My youngest doesn't like to sleep alone, so he's been sleeping in his brother's room since I can remember. Since they both have their own rooms, the one was basically going unused.. it's the biggest bedroom to boot. So a couple weeks ago, I transformed the unused room into a playroom of sorts. A place to just hang out or jump around... we got a couple old mattresses for jumping/reading/napping and removed the bunkbed that was there... threw in a tv, vcr, old couch... the toys and books stayed and a few were added and now it's the fun room! I even like hanging out there. It's more cozy now with everything closer to the floor. I must say the mattresses were the biggest selling point for the kids... we all need to jump around more, I think. Of course, the kids wouldn't be satisfied just jumping on the mattresses; they need more air, so they climb on the couch for a good leap. At least I hear "I'm bored" a little less often now ;o)

Had conferences for the kids today; the concerns of their teachers mirror my own. It's always nice to be on the same page. My nine-year-old, I was told, has greatly improved on his spelling. :o) His strongest area is math; needs to read more, however. His behavior is good aside from over-reacting - but we're working on that. My seven-year-old just has to follow directions instead of doodling all over his work... otherwise, he's doing excellent. I told her that he's still acting up before school and not wanting to go. She finds this strange because he's fine once he's there; she gets a big kick out of him.

They didn't have school today, so they're busy splashing their energy all over the place. Tomorrow is another day off... Although these two days are for conferences, I always find it curious that we don't share the same vacations. The days they get off for vacation never seem to match the ones I get off except for the major holidays such as Christmas, Easter and the like. I don't understand how we can live in the same town/residence and have completely different minor holidays... It would be nice if they matched up better because finding daycare for 10 days (or less, but I'm not in the mood to count) a semester isn't always as easy as it sounds, especially when many others have the same problem. It's like trying to find a pair of snowpants in a clothing store in the middle of winter... next to impossible, believe me, I have tried. I'm so tired, am I even making sense?