week ending nov 25, 2007

Week ending Nov 25, 2007: This week we got an appointment to see Chloe’s gastroenterologist on Dec 10 and in the mean time we were supposed to be giving her Maalox 4 times a day. Well, the magnesium in the Maalox is a laxative and on just 3 doses a day, Chloe’s bowels were out of control. The doctor also said for us to take a stool sample to Labcorp and have it tested for Pylori bacteria which cause peptic ulcers. I’ll leave it to your imagination how we collected said sample without getting it contaminated with urine or toilet water, but I can tell you that waiting in line at Labcorp for an hour with a package of poo and two 4 year olds is not fun.

Alex’s humidifier gave up the ghost this week and we got a new one. Target has humidifiers shaped like various animals and even the cartoon character Sponge Bob, so Alex picked Sponge Bob. Chloe said she wanted a Sponge Bob one too, but her humidifier works just fine so she and Alex decided that they could take turns with Sponge Bob. The compromise wasn’t in any way my idea because switching humidifiers every night is more work than I’d like to do, but I’m proud that Alex was so unselfish with his new prize.

And of course this week was Thanksgiving. We went to Grammy Carole and Granddad’s house and had dinner with them and my brother’s family. The kids took turns turning the hand crank on Grammy’s apple peeler/corer/slicer to make the apple pie, they used fabric markers to decorate their own smocks each with their own photo ironed on, and they all worked together to decorate a gingerbread house. We had a wonderful meal and wonderful company and got to see Granddad’s photos from his trip to a dive resort in Bonaire. Click here for the thanksgvining pictures

week ending nov 18, 2007:

Week ending November 18, 2007: This week Alex was singing and dancing in the kitchen while there was no music playing and it got me to pondering about how adults are rarely filled with the kind of joy that kids find in everyday life. When was the last time you danced in your kitchen without musical accompaniment? This week the kids had their first visit of the year with Santa. Last year both kids wanted to talk to Santa, but Alex wouldn’t sit on Santa’s lap so he stood next to Santa for the picture. This year Chloe didn’t want to get within 6 feet of Santa and hid behind me for a while but eventually she conceded to sit next to Santa (but not on his lap) for a picture. I won’t post the picture until I send out the Christmas cards with the picture of the kids in their Christmas finery. While we were at Homestead Gardens doing our annual holiday photo shoot, a photographer named Scott Suchman from Chesapeake Life magazine asked if he could photograph the kids for use in the magazine. I said sure and Mr. Suchman promised to e-mail me if he was going to use any pictures of the kids. If you, like me, have never heard of the magazine, here’s a link: http://www.chesapeakelifemag.com/. Also this week I took the kids ice skating for the first time. Chloe asked lots of questions like if there was water under the ice or if there was a floor under it. When Alex came into the room, Chloe declared “Alex there is a floor under the ice not water, so we won’t drown!” They both enjoyed it, but Alex liked it more than Chloe. My friend Claudine came with us because I figured we needed a one-to-one adult-to-kid ratio to get the kids started and Casey has sworn off ice skating. Alex spent more time with Claudine than Chloe did, and Claudine is a better ice skating teacher than I am. They started out using the ice skating version of walkers and graduated to holding our hands or, in Alex’s case, skating by his self. It was really gratifying to see the kids face a challenge and come away from it with a feeling of accomplishment. This week Chloe’s been asking us to play the rhyming game. She is so fascinated with words that she loves to try to remember words that rhyme with words I come up with. I’m going to try to include a video from the ice rink. Click the triangle on the lower left of the picture to play the video.

week ending nov 11, 2007:

Week ending November 11, 2007: This week the kids have been much better behaved. In fact the only one in the family with bad behavior this week was me! I didn’t get enough sleep all week and one day I was really grouchy and in a quiet moment I apologized to Chloe and explained that it wasn’t her fault. She asked if a hug would make me feel better. I said “of course it will, but I’ll probably feel grouchy again later”. She said “then I’ll give you another hug later”. What a sweetie! This week Alex ate a pork chop. Because he was a late talker we had his speech evaluated when he was about 18 months old and they noticed that he wasn’t a strong chewer which indicated week muscles and was part of the reason he wasn’t talking. He was much later than Chloe accepting many foods and he has never eaten tough meats like pork chops until now. Also this week Alex saw a little girl in the grocery store and said out loud “that girl is beautiful!”. It is so sweet how kids their age say what they mean without putting on airs or trying “be cool”. I wonder how long that lasts. I already noticed that they both have started to talk about what “people” will think. Chloe got her shoes muddy one day on the way to the car and complained “Mom, I don’t want ‘people’ to see my shoes muddy”. Even Alex will say things like “people will see us playing and say ‘those kids are having fun’”. Chloe’s whopper questions this week: How does the water get in the clouds? Does the ocean get lower when the water goes to the clouds? Why does wood burn? (Had to look that one up, here’s the answer: http://science.howstuffworks.com/fire1.htm) And, why did that little peanut make Aunt Danielle so sick? The ‘peanut’ to which she refers is the peanut sized baby that was baby Aidan during Aunt Danielle’s first trimester. The picture this week is of Daddy and Alex in their favorite bonding ritual, shopping for boats on the computer (Chloe is asleep on Daddy’s lap because this was the day she got shots and had her swim lesson). Alex asks all sort of questions about the boats and is learning about different kinds of boats and together he and Daddy count the number of motors etc. Oh, and both of the kids are suddenly interested in letters and numbers. They notice letters and numbers on signs and packages and all around us and they love to talk about them. Chloe practices writing and drawing everyday without us asking her to. Her drawings are much more consistently recognizable and her repertoire of things she can draw is growing rapidly.
shower pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/constance.phelps/AidanSShower

well visit 2007

4 year well-visit: The kids are growing like weeds. Here’s what I wrote last year: “. In the past year Alex has gone from 29lb 34.5in tall to 33lb 38 in tall, and Chloe has gone from 25lb 33.5in tall to 29lb 37 in tall.” This year Alex is 37.6 lb 40.5 in, and Chloe is 33.2 lb 39.5in. So Alex has grown 1.5 in and Chloe has grown 2.5 in. Seems like more than that when I put last year’s pants on them! Chloe’s height is in the 50th percentile and her weight is in the 25th percentile and they asked me if she is eating ok. Chloe eats like it is going out of style, she just bounces it all off, Tigger-style. I guess it is pretty unusual for a kid with such big parents to be on the smaller end of the curve, but Chloe has always been on the smaller end of the curve, so it is not like there is a change. We talked to the pediatrician about Chloe walking on her toes. We’ve talked with the pediatrician about this every year since she could walk and they’ve always said that she has full range of motion in her tendons, she just chooses to walk on her toes. Well this year they said her tendons have gotten short/tight and that she will need physical therapy. I am SO not looking forward to another activity that the kids don’t want to do. Then I talked to the doctor about Chloe’s acid reflux getting worse. He said she is on a pretty high dose of Prevacid already and we should go to the gastroenterologist before we decide what to do, and in the mean time give Chloe Malox at meals. There is a surgery that can correct the problem she has with the top of her stomach, but it would of course be a last resort. I have to wonder how close we are to that since Chloe threw up the other day (and showed no other signs of illness and ate fine for the rest of the day) and last night she told us she was swallowing yucky stuff that came up into her mouth. Her reflux was under control until 2-3 weeks ago, so I hope this is just a phase. Then we talked about Alex. The doctor said kids aren’t expected to say “L’s” properly until 1st grade, so no worries there. The doctor also spent a great deal of time explaining what to do this winter as each of the asthma symptoms inevitably gets worse this winter. This willingness to take time to talk through the kids issues is why we’ve stuck with this doctor. Chloe was having trouble being patient through the discussion and kept asking for her turn to talk to the doctor. Before the appointment I’d made a list of all the things I wanted to talk about, so Chloe decided she’d make a list of what she wanted to talk about. She asked me to write “shot” and then she did her best to copy it. I made the mistake of telling her a full day in advance that she was going to get a shot. She told me over and over that she didn’t want a shot. I read her the story from last year when I got the flu shot first and then the nurse asked “who wants to go next?” and Alex said “me!”. He got his shot and said “ouch!” and then he got his Band-Aid and then said “it doesn’t hurt anymore!” Alex decided he was going to brave again this year and go first. He said he wasn’t scared, he was brave. Chloe continued to say she was scared. When the nurse arrived with the shots we found out they would each have to get FIVE shots. Alex still said he would go first. The nurse started taking the caps off the shots and Alex said “Mom, those are needles!” Poor kid had no idea what a shot was! I still made him go first and he did great through the first 3, then he started crying pretty hard with the last two. This really set Chloe off and she was crying and screaming “no!” We pulled her pants down and pinned her down and I have never heard anyone scream like that except in slasher movies. Poor kid was really terrified. All day afterward whenever she’d think about it, she’d start crying again and say, “I didn’t want to get shots, they hurt too much!” I haven’t told them yet that they have to get Hepatitis shots before we go on our cruise, and I haven’t told Chloe about physical therapy. Since we’re having so much trouble with school and swimming, I might hold off a couple weeks.

week ending nov 4, 2007:

Week ending November 4, 2007: This week has been similar to the previous weeks in that Chloe is quizzing us on all sorts of subjects, and Alex is continuing to test his limits. Since they started school both kids are quick to cry over stuff that didn’t previously bother them and Alex has been showing other signs of being stressed out, so I decided to try to take it a little easier on them and to try to keep life around here even calmer than usual. Well, that didn’t work very well. On Monday their swim instructor tried to “teach” them to hold their breath by bobbing them under the water while they were screaming “no!”. They’ll have a different instructor from now on after my conversation with the manager of the swim school. Then on Thursday we lost Chloe’s “Bunny”. She’s slept with bunny every night since she was 6 months old, so it is a BIG deal to her. We’ve looked all over and I continue to have hope that we’ll find Bunny. Chloe is occasionally sad, but hasn’t lost any sleep over it. To take it easier on the kids I’ve tried to reduce my expectations in some areas. Sure they can put their shoes, and sure there is no reason why I should have to ask them 100 times to do it, but maybe I can be less confrontational if they get distracted before getting their shoes on. Or, if they don’t want to put their shoes on, maybe I can say “do you want to put your shoes on, or do you want me to do it for you?” Well, “give them an inch and they’ll take a mile” didn’t become a proverb for nothing. Alex’s behavior this week can be summed up in his behavior at breakfast. He wanted his breakfast on the light blue plate. The light blue plate was dirty. We went back and forth about this with him sitting at the table refusing to eat breakfast for a half hour until he finally conceded that he could eat off of a different color plate. Then he didn’t want to get dressed, didn’t want to go to Sunday School, didn’t want to wash his hands, etc. It would be easy to assume that he’s just being a rotten kid, but the other night he dissolved into tears in the middle of playing a cheerfully rowdy game and he curled up in my lap and sobbed with his arms wrapped tight around my neck. I really think he’s just stressed out. He’s usually so well behaved that these last few weeks have been like alarm bells going off. Chloe’s whopper questions this week include “Why is there water in toilets?” “What about outside toilets?” “Why do trees sleep in the winter?” “How do frogs keep warm in the winter?” And my favorite “How does blood swim around inside me if it doesn’t have hands?”

halloween 2007

Halloween 2007: The kids had a wonderful time on Halloween this year. Chloe dressed up as Princess Belle from Beauty and the Beast, and Alex dressed as Buzz Lightyear from Disney’s movie “Toy Story”, Casey wore “tattoo sleeves” and a bandanna on his head (the only bandannas I could find around here were bright pink, or rainbow with unicorns and Casey was a good sport and decided rainbows were manly enough), and I was a mummy (the kids are sick of me painting their faces, so I had to paint my own). The kids were both excited to go trick-or-treating and Chloe told me she wanted to go to 55 houses and I said “how about 15?” and she decided that was ok (I’m pretty sure she doesn’t know how much bigger 55 is than 15). When it was finally time, the kids ran up to the door of the first house and said trick-or-treat and got their candy and as we were walking to the door of the second house Alex said “I LOVE this!” and kissed my hand that he was holding. We made the kids hold our hands in the street (our neighborhood doesn't have sidewalks) and when they got to each driveway they ran all the way up to the door and knocked incessantly (I kept saying “that’s enough knocking, they heard you”). Last year Alex lagged behind the whole time as he gazed around and took everything in, and this year he was much more confident and assertive. The highlight of Chloe’s evening was when we went to the house of a neighbor who got really into the Halloween spirit and they had spooky music and the person giving out candy had a scary witch latex mask. Chloe said “I’m not afraid!” and marched right up and talked to the scary witch. Afterwards Chloe said “She’s not really a witch, it’s just a costume. I talked to her and now she’s my friend.” And then Chloe repeated the story several more times because she was so proud of herself for being brave. All told we only went to about 17 houses (Chloe and I counted to make sure we got at least 15) before Chloe said she was ready to go home. At home we checked that their candy was safe and let them eat as much as they could while watching a half hour cartoon. I’m usually a stickler about limiting their sugar intake so Casey kept saying “Are you sure they can eat this much candy?” and “Have you seen how much they are eating?” I just love Halloween and no one got sick, so all’s well that end well.