Tooth fairy

Nothing like going into Colin's room after midnight when I woke up remembering Colin lost a tooth today. Hope he's not too disappointed when he wakes up...

Oh Christmas tree

Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas Tree
How temtpting are your branches

Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas Tree
You hide Lego figures so greatly

But sometimes you topple

And then I get in trouble

Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas Tree
How tempting are your branches

so much personality

thanksgiving/christmas decorating

We spent Thanksgiving in Yorktown with the mostly the whole family plus brents dad, and Robbies parents.  It was a full house.  Grandma told the kids to sit at the kitchen table to eat before everyone got there - my kids dont see the need to wait all day to eat one meal - but Joel and Norah sat right next to the pies while they ate their lunch.  They got into the brownies but just looked at the pies. Then when the rest of us were getting ready to eat, Norah saw the silverware and grabbed a spoon and knife and walked down the hall yelling "Mine!" over and over.  She stopped yelling mine when she got into the kitchen so when we looked she had taken her spoon and was going after the pies full force. 

 Joel of course didnt stop her and enjoyed every minute of it too.

 We then decorated our trees on friday.  We have our trusty fake ones this year.  Its sad when Joel yells for me to come help him fluff his tree in his room.  The kids have a small one in their room too. But we have put christmas lights outside so that satisfied the kids this year. 

 Sarah, Mary, Robbie, and my parents came over for dinner and Norah was not pleased that Grandpa took her blankets. 

 

Bladder

You learn a lot when you have kids.  But sometimes you learn stuff that you never wanted to learn about.  

A friend is almost done with school to become an ultrasound technician and needed a child to practice on for her class.  So Joel volunteered.  Colin wanted to but she needed someone younger. So Joel, Norah and I went and we got to see inside Joel's body.  He thought it was really cool.  And so did I.  It was a lot like watching a baby ultrasound and unfortunately I'm not pregnant because now would be the perfect time so I could get all the free ultrasounds I wanted :) But she checked out his kidneys and then his bladder. The picture below is his bladder.  I commented to Joel that hey look at all that pee in your bladder.  But she commented that the gray stuff  between the black blob and white stuff wasn't his pee - she called it sludge and that she hadn't seen it in children that young.  She mostly saw it in older people in their gallbladders.  Basically that big black circle is his bladder full of pee.  Its SO much smaller when the bladder is empty. But she was going to check with her professor and let me know what they said. 

So she sent a text on Monday saying that it was sludge in his bladder and started asking questions.  So I started answering and she was sending the info to her sister in law who is a urologist.  And when the urologist said that I should go see my pediatrician thats when I started really worrying.  Because when you google sludge in urinary bladder it only brings up rabbits. Go figure. I made an appointment with our pediatrician who thought I was crazy.  Imagine the conversation:  well Joel seems to be fine but a friend found sludge in his bladder so we want to check it out...." but at least she referred us to a pediatric urologist and by that time my friend had sent me the bladder picture to explain to the urologist. 

  

So we went to the childrens hospital today and saw the doctor.  She understood perfectly what I was talking about and after some tests figured out he has dysfunctional elimination syndrome where he never fully empties his bladder or bowels. He typically only poops once a week. It has always been normal for him since he was a baby. And when he poops all summer in my flower beds seems like a great thing at first.But its not.His bowels are pressing on his bladder which makes his bladder not fully empty and then causing the sludge to build up. Its funny to me that sludge is the scientific name.  He is peeing out the sludge (he's been telling me he's peeing dirt or buggers which I shouldve listened to more before this) So now we have to retrain his body so that his bladder doesn't keep making the sludge which could get into his kidneys and cause a lot of problems. Which is so much harder than it sounds.  Its like potty training on steroids and with my honey badger of a son will be difficult.  I almost panicked when she mentioned it could take two years and told her this is our very strong willed child.  But it could be worse and after all the possible horrible scenarios that I had thought of the past few days, this will seem like a breeze. 

 

 

 

 

Wedding fun

We went to a really beautiful wedding Sunday. I forgot my camera so these are all phone pictures. But it doesn't get better than 70 degrees in November at the botanical gardens. 

We really love this whole family and can't be more excited for Daniel and Tabitha.  I have to admit that as a twin I always found it annoying when people couldnt tell me apart from Sarah since I dont think we look that much alike.  But then I met Daniel and David and while they dont look exactly alike, once Daniel met Tabitha it was easy to tell them apart because Daniel was always smiling.  And David is still single if anyone is interested :) I've tried to set him up with my sister because I'd love to have him for a brother but he says I'm too old..... so maybe he's not the nice twin after all.

Norah loves her 'baby' as she calls Emeline. They are going to have so much fun growing up together. And Holly and I are going to have fun doing all the fun girly stuff with them.  

The kids had a blast on the dance floor.

Norah's first dance.  I hope she always uses her daddy to set the standard for all her future dance partners. Those guys will have to go through two protective older brothers and a very protective dad.  If anyone gets by all three of them then I'd say they would be doing pretty good. 

Another race

This morning Holly and I woke up WAY before dawn to drive to Richmond to run the Richmond half marathon.

Running is so much greater with friends. Abi had chemo yesterday and today ran a half marathon. Amazing! I haven't  seen her since college so it was fun to see her briefly. Sarah and Sam also ran it. We all started out together.

Holly, Bethany and I ran together. The others ran on ahead.  Bethany has sadly moved away so it was good to see her and catch up. It also started raining that morning and downpoured around mile 2.

 My dad sent this text last night so when it started raining a few miles from Richmond I sent him back this rainy picture saying where was the nice weather.

But it stopped raining hard after a mile I think - not sure how long it really lasted -  and ended up being a nice day for a run. And also fun that no matter how old I get my dad still wants to know details of my life. Like the start and finish line. Although he probably knew that I wouldn't remember street names so he was better off asking Sarah or reading it online.

Sarah, Sam and I are getting a lot of medals together lately.

A great day for a run and good to see great friends. 

I come home to a quiet house and a fun sign (Brent took kids to a birthday party at chuck e cheese. I think he deserves a medal for that) 

Big brothers

We finally turned Norah forward facing this week. She hates it and was complaining and I looked back and saw Joel had reached over to hold her hand. She stopped fussing and complaining while we ran several errands today. sometimes you just need a brothers hand to hold when you are getting used to something new.

And the other night I was trying to get dinner cleaned up so asked Colin if he could read books to Norah. She loves books but usually won't let you read more than one word on a page before she flips the page or  shoves the book aside saying "the end" and then getting another book. but when colin read her she let him read EVERY SINGLE WORD ON EVERY PAGE for close to an hour. 

Big brothers are the best.

Mud

 A hose, a shovel, and dirt can entertain this boy for hours.

Second Grade

Second grade is going amazing for Colin.  He is excited to go every day and doesnt usually complain about his homework. There was a day a few weeks ago where Joel had been throwing up and I told Colin he could stay home too since I didnt want him to get sick in the middle of school and he cried and begged to GO to school.  Thanfully he didnt get the stomach bug but it also showed me how much he loves school.

I had a conference with his teacher yesterday and I just love her.  I want to sit in her class each day.  She clearly loves Colin (always a great thing) but she told me the funniest story about Colin.  He had been sitting at his desk and tying his shoes and I guess had tied them together and then tried to untie them and got them even more knotted up and the knots were so tight that there wasn't any way to undo them.  The teacher tried but couldnt get them out.  After a while they gave up and Colin shuffled shuffled shuffled to the bathroom for bathroom break.  Shuffled shuffled shuffled to the cafeteria for lunch.  Shuffled shuffled shuffled to the library - and the best part about this is that he was line leader for that day! ha!  So the whole class shuffled along with him.  She finally had enough and Colin was getting really embarrassed so she told him to take off his shoes and she worked for a long time with some tool picking out the knots and finally got them done before he had to shuffle himself to PE.  He mentioned something about tying his shoe laces together but I should've pressed for more information.

But other than that he's doing great - just needs help with his handwriting which is always hard for him.  He's doing great with every other subject and scoring high on his reading tests.  And of course he takes after his mom and loves math and does great with that. 

One thing is he is getting really picky about his clothes.  He always has to tuck his shirt in really tight and has a few shirts he rotates.  He likes to look "sharp" and some mornings picking clothes to wear is hard and frustrating.  So right now I have Norah who only wants to wear a dog shirt and Colin who has to wear a certain shirt. Joel is the only one who doesnt care what he wears and just puts on what I give him.  Thats one area Joel is the easiest out of everyone!

But second grade is going so much better than I hoped.  I am praying the rest of the year goes just as well for Colin.

Laughter

She's getting so big and talking so much lately.

And she has a great belly laugh:

A video of a cat chasing a ball entertained her for hours. 

Just Cute

 

Happy Halloween

 Its amazing to me that the boy who comes home from school and changes his clothes so he can dress up like a pirate NEVER WANTS TO BE A PIRATE for halloween.  It would make life so much easier. 

 He had wanted to be a redskins football player for weeks now so we had a whole plan of him a redskins player, Joel a hokies player and Norah a cheerleader.  Colin then changed it last week to being a zombie redskins player.  Seemed appropriate for how they are playing lately.

 After school today the boys carved their pumpkins
 They were so squeamish about the pumpkin guts. Next year if Brents not home I'm painting pumpkins instead.

 Norah was in tears over the horror of cutting the pumpkins....

Just kidding. She wanted mommy to go inside with her and read books instead but I had to be outside to help the boys. 

 They didn't turn out too bad.  And that bowl of pumpkin guts is still outside.  Guess we've provided treats for all those animals in our yard tonight.

Then Brent came home and we got ready to go to a friends house.  Colin at this point changed his mind about being a zombie football player. He wanted to be a ninja.  Ok great we have several ninja costumes.  But he wanted to be an all black ninja with the black hood my parents brought back from Japan.  A little too scary for Norah so we talked him out of it if he wanted to go trick or treating. Even though colin kept claiming its not scary its a real ninja hood.  Lots of tears but then I promised to cover his face with paint to make him look like a zombie.  By this time Joel claimed the Redskins uniform and Norah refused to take her doggie shirt off so no one was in a picture taking mood.  So this is the best of  what I got. 

 I dont think people understood the whole black on his face to be a zombie - most people thought he was trying to look like RG3. 

 Then went next door to exchange candy with our neighbors. Which made norah cry again because she wanted to stay and play with her sweet little friend Liz.  Then we went with some friends to their neighborhood for dinner and trick or treating. This is only half of the kids I think we went with. After walking around their street we went in and ate four different kinds of chili while the kids tired themselves out running around. 

A fun night. Hard to believe tomorrow is November.