Happy Half Birthday!

Today was Anna's half-birthday celebration at her school, and it was so sweet I teared up at one point. The school lets each child celebrate their birthday (those, like Anna, with summer birthdays observe their half-birthdays).

And it's not your typical birthday party with a sugary cake or cupcakes and the birthday song. The whole family is invited for the celebration, which takes place almost first thing in the morning.

During attendance call, we got to see the children answer "here," "hi," "hola" and other things I didn't catch or didn't know. Then the children counted off as they sat in their circle to see how many were in attendance. When it was her turn, Anna correctly said her number of the day, "9". Then the students talked with the teacher about the calendar and what day it was yesterday and is today and what day of the month it was yesterday and is today and what year it is and also, of course, the month.

Then they said the pledge of allegiance, and Anna got to hold the flag.

For her birthday celebration, they placed a large yellow circle on the floor to represent the sun. Anna held a globe of the planet Earth and walked around the sun 3.5 times, to represent her years as it takes the Earth one year to spin around the sun. Each time she walked around the sun I said two milestones she accomplished that year. Of course, I took my best guess on the first two years and said that she crawled and walked the first year and that she started talking and feeding herself the second year (she could sit at the table and feed herself quite well when we got her at 26 months).

We also read one of her favorite books to the class and showed the class three photos (baby pic, family pic and a favorite individual pic) of her and said some things about
her such as her favorite color, favorite food and things she likes to do, family members, etc.

At the end we also left individual bags of fruit gummies for each child. They were distributed and put in backpacks at the end of the class day. And, we also made a little donation to the school's Fine Arts Fund, which is a great thing that has helped pay for some cool extras such as bringing in a Spanish teacher once a week and other other cultural learning opportunities. Yes, believe it or not, Anna is now bilingual — and Russian is not the other language! She can count almost to 10 in Spanish. I'd really like for her be able to learn Russian, too. But that ain't gonna happen around here unless I hire my Russian MOPS friend or figure out some way to teach the children some basics myself.

Romper Room?

When we arrived at my sister's house in Mississippi, the children walked into a veritable Romper Room. With all the motorcycles, roller coasters, jumpy ball castle things, slide, play tents, trucks and toy vacuums to push around, my kids didn't want to leave. Aunt Kim's is so much more fun than our house. Here are a few of the pics of them enjoying their twin cousins' stuff.

Back Home

We're home! We've been back for a bit more than a week now, and I'm only just now starting to feel like I'm caught up — mentally is where I needed it the most! The children easily fell back into their routines of daily naps, decent bedtimes and not nearly as much late afternoon fighting (thanks to the naps). Anna seems to have adjusted back into her school routine just fine (so far no behavior reports or toilet accidents).

Overall it was a good journey back, considering that the children slept on both our first and last flights. The second flight was not easy on me, as the children were a bit "active." Making it more difficult was that we'd only gotten a few hours sleep the night before.

Here are some photos of the kids on the long trek back, including one of them hanging at a children's play area at the Minneapolis airport.

My Little Helpers & Last Post For A While

Anna and Alexander have tried to fool me into pretending to be my little dish washer assistants lately, when I really know all they want is just an excuse to play in the water.

These kids love the water! Mom seemed pretty flabbergasted the other day when Alexander decided to turn on the bath water, jump in and start playing with the squirt toys. When I arrived to intervene, Anna was standing to the side of the tub trying to pour water over his head as if she was washing out the shampoo. Mom was worried about them scalding themselves. I was more worried about them slipping and getting hurt real bad. They only had the cold water on and seem to know how to adjust the temperature, whether it's at the sink or in the tub. Thank goodness at home we have this bathtub set up in which the water knobs are way up high for some strange reason.

This morning I woke up at 6:52 a.m. to the sounds of my children laughing. I thought surely they must be in their room, especially if Anna is a participant, as it has not been unheard of since we've been here for her to sleep in an hour or so later than Alexander. So, I dragged myself out of bed and found them innocently playing downstairs in the living room. At least they weren't fighting! I have learned that once Alexander decides he's up, then he's up! Anna, on the other hand, might be coaxed back to sleep if it's still way early. On other days lately, Alexander has come down the stairs by himself to play with toys or to get his milk (which would have already been poured into his cup the night before). Just yesterday, he decided to bring the carton of Cottage Cheese back into their bed, something I wasn't aware of until a couple hours later, I'd guess, when Anna decides to get up and tells me that Zander brought Cottage Cheese to bed. There's going to be a lot of retraining to do once we get home!

Anyway. this will probably be my last post until we arrive back into South Dakota next week. We leave in the morning for Mississippi, where I'm pretty sure we will not have wireless Internet connection availability (Yeah, it's Mississippi. ... OK, so I'm just joking, for all my relatives who actually read the blog!). But seriously, I don't anticipate being able to blog at least until next Monday or so.

Dress-up

Not too much new to report today, as it stormed pretty badly most of the afternoon. Strangely, and relatively speaking of course, the children were great today! Anna did get herself into trouble a couple times late in the afternoon for hitting her brother. She's been doing that a lot here.

They have been loving the Little People DVDs and sit really well for mom in her room to watch these during my outings. So, today, they received two new DVDs (including a new Little People) as part of their little Valentines, but they never got past the first one because Anna kept insisting on watching it over and over and over and over and over again. It was some Curious George short movie that was shot in the early 1980s so its graphic elements are severely lacking, and I'm pretty sure it wouldn't pass the PC or otherwise socially-acceptable test nowadays. But Anna loved it when Curious George had to go to jail for playing on the telephone and misdialing the fire department. "We're going to have to put you somewhere where you can't cause anymore trouble," that's the kind of stuff I'm referring to. Plus, the man in the big yellow hat was smoking a pipe, and George got caught puffing away and getting sick. Of course it had a happy ending and all that, so I guess it's OK for the kids to watch. I survived what I'm sure was a lot worse!

Here are a few photos taken last week. The ones with the kids in the masks were snapped on Mardi Gras day. That's how I let them celebrate the actual holiday instead of the big nighttime parade. Aren't they cute?

The dress-up photos are obvious. After being so brave in getting her stitches out last week, we got Anna a nurse kit. Here she listening to Alexander's cough with the stethoscope and also giving him a shot in his toe. Mom thinks she gives really hard shots. She likes to also take temperatures and blood pressures. I first picked out an Army outfit for Alexander (as partially seen in the nursing photos), but I promptly returned it because the quality was AWFUL. I took him back to let him pick out a better quality get-up. He had several to pick from but kept going back to the bright red fireman's outfit. It's quite big on him.

Outings

I've been trying to get Anna and Alexander out of Mom's place as much as I can. I shoot for at least once a day, if nothing else being to simply kick the balls around outside or push trucks along the sidewalk. But mostly I've actually gotten them off the grounds.

Since we've been here the children have discovered ants and lizards, and Anna has taken to calling mosquitoes "skeeters." It's not that she can't pronounce the word but rather is mimicking me. It's cute, though.

We've already visited several parks, and the last two days I've gone to the same one that's pretty close to Mom's and which we all really like. Being right on one of the two big lakes in town, it's also got a great view.

I was this close to bringing our winter coats (I know we're in south Louisiana, but it was still January when we arrived), and I'm so glad we didn't. On most days, all we have needed has been a hoodie-type jacket. Even though it was about 76 or 78 today, I was sorry I'd let the kids wear shorts. It was pretty windy, which made it feel a lot cooler than I'd expected. (Conversely, I saw on the Weather channel that it was 6 degrees in Rapid City!)

Also, looks like we're going to leave Lake Charles on Thursday to drive to southwest Mississippi, where my family is from and where many relatives still live. It's only about a 3.5 hour drive and hopefully mom can take it well. She has doctor clearance to travel. She plans to spend some time with my sister for the tail end of her recovery. The kids and I will stay two nights in Mississippi before traveling back into Louisiana on Saturday night and getting a room. We have an early Sunday morning flight back home.

Here are some pics of today's outing.

Meeting Mr. President

Former President Bill Clinton stopped by Lake Charles today (Friday), now that Louisiana's primary vote tomorrow suddenly counts, so I took the kiddos to see him. I pumped them up about our little outing, and Anna kept talking about getting pretty for the president and brushing her cheeks with my blush brush. She even did it to Alexander and, when he pulled away, said "No, you not pretty yet." I've noticed her language has started to sound more sophisticated since we've been here.

At any rate, I was glad I went but I wish he'd come in the morning. The children will not go down for a nap here and their behavior quickly deteriorates with each passing hour! We arrived early and were able to stay for 30 minutes of the speech, but at that point I felt I needed to back my double stroller through the crowd because I worried people around me were too distracted by the children. By the time I had the children strapped back into the car, people were streaming out so we didn't miss too much. I was pretty happy with our spot next to the media platform and could have pushed my way up to a better one. But with the stroller and two fidgety children I didn't want to risk making a spectacle of myself.

I was very disappointed in my photos. I zoomed too far and some were grainy. Others with a lesser zoom weren't that much better. One of these pics shows Anna covering her ears when the clapping became too loud (while Alexander enjoyed a cookie). And that's my reporter/editor friend Hector with the children.

Happy Mardi Gras!

Happy Mardi Gras!

Here are photos of Anna and Alexander at the Children's Parade (and also a few from an indoor event held just before). My good friend Pamela brought homemade Taco Soup over to mom's on Sunday and then spent the day with us. Thank goodness! I'm not sure I could have braved a parade with both of them all alone. As it turned out, Anna fell asleep almost before the parade got started. Maybe it was her meds. But Alexander loved it. At first, Pamela and I ran up to gather the tons of beads, coins, cups, candy and other trinkets. I was worried and kept looking back to make sure Alexander didn't get out of the stroller behind my back and get lost. Later, he did get out and helped us gather the goods. We found a spot at the very beginning of the parade, so it was not crowded at all.

Though today is actually Fat Tuesday, we didn't do any of the celebrations. The skies were threatening thunderstorms all day. But I managed to take the children to a park to run around a bit. I made them wear some beads and cute masks for a few photos to be posted later. When we got back to mom's I let them push trucks around outside and explore a bit. All this activity plus no nap helped them to fall asleep much more quickly tonight. But it was very tiring for me!

Mom seems to be feeling a bit better, though no drastic changes. We'll take her to see her regular doctor on Thursday for another follow-up.

Doggie Revelry

As I mentioned earlier, it's Mardi Gras season here, a perfect time for mom to get sick (hey, at least we get to make the most of our trip down to Louisiana ... may as well expose the kids early on). Though my Aunt Lou Ann had to return back to her home in Mississippi earlier Saturday, mom's well enough that the children and I can leave her alone for a couple hours or so at a time. So, later Saturday, I took the kids down to the Civic Center for the Krewe of Barkus dog parade. Though it's an annual thing, I never attended all those years I lived here. Of course, I wasn't a pet lover or a kid lover back then, either. This was so darn cute. People dressed up their doggies and let them strut in an actual parade. There were even some festive doggies who just sat along the parade route with their owners and watched their canine peers embarrass themselves.

Here are some of the most adorable photos you'll ever see.

Stitches For All

So, I return to my mom's place last Friday after about 3 hours of shopping in solitude to learn Anna had fallen on mom's kitchen floor and split open her chin. It's a mystery as to what happened. My Aunt Lou Ann said her back was turned to Anna and the next thing she knows Anna is holding her chin and there is blood. There were no toys or other obvious hazards. Anna twice later said something about falling on a balloon. There are two large punch balloons around the place, so maybe she tripped over it, it flew to the edge of the room so as not to be suspicious, she lost her balance and couldn't put her hands out in time to brace the fall. Apparently it bled for a bit and then stopped enough to be bandaged up during the wait for me to return. I thought it looked sort of nasty so we headed to the urgent care clinic.

Sure enough she ended up needing two inside stitches (which will dissolve) and five outside stitches. We'll return Wednesday to have those removed. Anna was such a little trooper! Even the nurse and doctor said some of their adult patients don't do as well. We all gave her a warning about what was to happen, how it would go down with a cover over her face and such, so that helped her to mentally prepare, I think. The doctor told her she'd get a little shot to deaden the area so that the actual stitching would not hurt, but he told her to would be OK to cry. And she did. Poor thing. The shot was pretty disgusting to watch, so I chose not to watch the stitching up. After her little cry for the shot, she laid down perfectly still and didn't twist or turn or twitch or speak. She just let the doctor do his job. I was holding her arms and hands down while the nurse held her face, most of all of which was under this sterile blanket. But she was so great, we didn't have to do much holding at all. I'm not sure I could predict the same if it had been Alexander. She even got to pick out a prize from the toy chest.

While we were at the clinic, I had the doctor listen to her breathing. She had a cough and some wheezing for a few days, and I had been treating it with children's Mucinex every 4 hours. Turns out she had a bit of bronchitis. We left with a couple of prescriptions. Looks like she'll finish that up on Tuesday but I'm not sure it's all gone, so I'll make sure he follows-up on the bronchitis.