Oh boy...where to begin

I feel like a lot has happened in the past few days and I'm just not sure where to begin so I'll just start my usual ramblings. Ethan is on steroids again. We tried to avoid it, but it was unavoidable. The good news is that his oxygen sats have never dropped this time. I do believe that his new medicine is working because they are keeping those oxygen levels up. Unfortunately, he was just having some trouble with wheezing and coughing. He was having a lot of tightening in his chest and I even had to have him have some breathing treatments in school. After a couple days of him telling his teacher that he felt like he needed a breathing treatment, I decided to go up to the school and have a talk with the teacher about his asthma. I took our small peak flow meter up there to leave in his backpack. I showed her how it works and I let Ethan demonstrate it for her. Ethan doesn't have the typical kind of asthma where you can hear the actual wheezing like some kids do. With him, he can just feel it in his chest. I didn't want her to ever wonder or question whether or not he really did need a treatment. I told her that with the peak flow meter, that would give her a tool to use to determine if he really did need a treatment or not. She was sooooo happy that I took that up there because it has really helped her. Most of the time when Ethan needs a treatment, he actually LOOKS fine and she probably wouldn't have allowed him to go to the nurse if she didn't have that there to show her that he was struggling to breathe. According to Ethan, just since I took that up there, there has only been one day that he didn't get a treatment. Hopefully, he'll be over this very quickly now that the steroids are in his system.

I had to have a heart to heart talk with Emily regarding her daily trips to the nurse's office. It is getting out of hand. I told her that I know that she has headaches. (I have to be careful with her and let her know that I believe her and trust her regarding her headaches. This is a sensitive area with her.) I said that even though she is having these headaches, they are mild enough that by the time she gets to the nurse's office to lay down, the headaches aren't that bad. The nurse tells me that Emily actually lays down and chit chats with her about whatever is going on in her life at the moment and is all smiles. I explained to her that that kind of thing just can't be allowed anymore. If her headaches aren't bad enough that she is about to be at the vomit point, then she doesn't need to be at the nurse's office. The office is going to start thinking that she is faking if she is going down there and is smiling and talking with everybody. And the truth is that she IS having headaches. They just aren't severe. We just need to reserve the nurse trips for the more severe headaches. She can just lay her head on her desk for these little ones. We talked about how I get headaches, but how I just have to deal with them and keep doing the things I need to do. I told her that I really hate it that she is getting the small headaches, but she is just going to have to learn to cope with them for right now and do the best she can. If they are mild enough to chit chat with people, then she can stay in her classroom and still do her work. I spoke with her teacher on the phone and explained this to her, too. You see, Emily has the greatest teacher in the world right now and Emily absolutely ADORES her teacher. But I did ask her teacher to practice a little "tough love" with Emily. As her teacher told me in her own words....she has the word "sucker" written on her forehead when it comes to Emily. :) I couldn't have asked for somebody better for my child. I just love her!!!!! So, regarding the nurse thing, the teacher agreed that she would not allow Emily to go down to the nurse unless it was a really bad one. I was kind of hoping that the complaints of the headaches would diminish or if they were happening for attention (God forbid) and we disallowed the nurse visits, then they would stop (I really didn't think this was the case, though). Well, the first day of no visits, Emily didn't have a headache at all. That was a great start. However, the next day Emily told me that she had two headaches and had to lay her head on her desk twice. And then the following day she had two more headaches and had to do the same thing. She still hasn't had any nurse visits, but she is still having the headaches. Plus, she had one at home, too. At least she isn't having all the nurse trips now. Her headaches, though still annoying and bothersome, are mild enough that she needs to learn some coping skills for them at this point.

We just got the kids mid-quarter progress reports this week. I am so proud to say that both of the kids are getting straight A's at this point. Ethan's grades as of right now are: Reading 94.3, Language 98.7, Spelling 102, Math 100, Social Studies 96.5, Science/Health 100. Also, I am so proud of Ethan's reading and how much he has improved this year. He has become so much more fluent in his reading and so much more confident in himself. What I love is that he is more interested in reading now, too.

Emily's grades are great, too. She has a 100 average in all of the above mentioned subjects. And of course her reading level is great. One thing I love so much is what her teacher is doing for her. Because Emily's reading level is so much above grade level, along with the normal 1st grade spelling words and high frequency words that they have to work on that week, she also gives Emily her own list of words that she has to work on. The normal 1st grade words this week were: fit, fits, hit, hits, nap, naps, sit, sits, win, wins, eat, her, this, too. Emily's extra words just for her were: contain, plane, though, material, Europe, describe, represent, exercise, region. The funny thing is that each Monday when Emily gets her words, Emily will sit down and work on them until she has mastered them completely. She is such a perfectionist that she can't stand not being able to do something perfectly.

And my final post is about our new family member. I have waited a week to post about her just to make sure that she has in fact fit in with us and that nothing was going to happen to make us have to return her. Her name is Marley. She is our house horse. :) Marley is our rescued sweetie that we got last weekend. She is a 16 month old golden lab/shepherd mix dog. We have been thinking for a while that we wanted a medium sized dog, and so we started looking around. I contacted the Animal Rescue Foundation (ARF) of Mobile and gave them my very specific criteria on what I was looking for. I did not want a puppy, but wanted a young adult of around 1-2 years old. The dog MUST be good with children, other dogs, and cats. And I wanted one with a quieter personality. The people at ARF gave me a few suggestions that they felt like would be good for our family and then we went to the website and looked at pictures. We fell in love with Marley's picture right away. The next step was to meet her in person. We went to their big adoption last weekend and met her. It was very cute. When we walked up to the cage, it was like she knew us. We took her out and walked her around for a minute. She was the only bigger dog there that wasn't really barking at the other dogs. She was very sweet and very quiet. Just to be sure that she was "the one", I wanted to walk around and look at the other dogs. Ethan wouldn't even leave the cage. He was so scared that somebody else would take her. He stood there and kept guard by her cage the entire time while Emily and I looked around. I already knew right then that we were taking Marley home. She has been here a week now and she is definitely a member of the family. Our little dog, Holly, is tolerating her even though Marley would give ANYTHING for Holly to play with her. Marley pretty much ignores our very old cat, Callie. And Marley would have ignored Jasper, our very naughty and ornery Siamese cat, too, but Jasper had other ideas. Jasper thought it would be more fun to stalk the big new dog in the yard and also harass her and even torment her and not allow her entrance onto the porch by pouncing on her when she tried to enter through the doggie door. After a couple days of this, Marley finally got smart and realized that she was much larger than that pesky cat and the chase ensued. Now, Jasper can no longer come in his own back yard to eat or sleep. We are working on getting them used to each other, but it is a challenge. The funny thing is that Jasper's new favorite place to hang out is on our roof. He has a bird's eye view of what is going on and Marley knows that he is up there. All I have to do is go in the back yard and call Jasper's name and Marley immediately looks up on the roof. It is funny.

One more thing to mention...Ethan and Emily will be seven years old in just TWO WEEKS!!!!!!!! We are having their birthday party on the day after their birthday. They are so excited. We are renting a moonwalk/slide thing for it, too. They can't wait!