Wrapping Things Up

Colton has learned SO many letters in kindergarten! I wouldn't call him a fluid reader yet, but he is definitely able to sound out words and string them together into sentences! So that's wonderful progress!!!

Camille's Art in the Park class wrapped up this last week-- she enjoyed making this crown and then getting to paint with her feet!  (Her instructor very carefully wrapped each kids' feet up in bubble wrap first-- don't worry, it wasn't as messy as that sounds!)

And as Kendra approaches 5th grade "graduation," her school has been conducting little interviews asking what they'll miss about Cale, so here's hers (with one of her best friends!) that was on the school TV the day I happened to be there!

This hat and shirt were another product of Camille's art class, but here we have Colton modeling them for you:

He is one cool dude.

And smiling for real!

This last Saturday, I had the chance to visit Southern Virginia University with my BFF Sarah for their annual Mom's Retreat!  I had such a great time and it was fun to get away for a little bit and get to hang out with Sarah without all our kids interrupting us all the time!

My first time visiting SVU, so that made it extra fun!

While I was gone, Craig had Ryder help him make an awesome breakfast for everyone.  He texted me this picture and wrote, "I should be a Mormon Mommy Blogger!"  Ten minutes later he texted again, "Never mind,  Ryder just burned his finger."  Ah, the stuff that doesn't make it onto the professional blogs!

Only three weeks of school left!

So Green

All the leaves have come out and it's so green and lovely I can barely stand it.  I look out my windows and it takes my breath away, I love it so much.

Sometimes, the breeze will blow just perfectly so that the branches wave gently and the leaves flutter and there is just so much movement all around that it nearly makes me dizzy.  I find my eyes flitting all over the place trying to take it all in but it's just impossible, there's just too much.  It's the same way I feel watching waves on the beach, I guess, but maybe even more so. 

Sunset pictures never really capture it, do they?  At least, not on an iPhone...

A couple weeks ago, I was walking to the bus stop with Quinn and she told me, "Mommy and Daddy say they wouldn't want to live on this street because of the noise from the freeway."  That made me laugh, because I was exACTly like her as a kid-- no family secret was safe from my big mouth!  My parents lived in fear of what I was telling the neighborhood that they were saying.  And in Quinn's case, I wasn't even offended because it's a totally legit concern.  I just told her, "The noise doesn't actually bother us because it's never quiet enough in our house to hear the freeway!"  And that's the truth.

But even if the noise was annoying, I STILL think it would be worth it for all those trees!

Busy Weekend

The Sleep Study felt very busy and like a BIG DEAL, but that was just the tip of the iceberg that was this last weekend.

Friday I had another dress rehearsal (SO MUCH STANDING), this time at UVA, which always stresses me out a bit because I've got to park and walk to the right building and all the buildings look exactly the same, so I'm always worried I'm going to park somewhere that isn't allowed and either get a ticket or get my car towed, and that I'll get lost and be late.  And being late always feels like a fate worse than death to me, but choir practice is the WORST thing to be late to-- our director runs a very tight ship in that regard.  So, yes, even though I enjoy the actual rehearsal (sore feet notwithstanding), I tend to be a bit of a wreck beforehand.

And this Friday, on top of my rehearsal, was ALSO the father-son camp out!  So Grandma and Grandpa were coming to babysit again (bless Tom and Donna for being at our beck and call all weekend!).  Craig was running around getting packed, I was trying to help, and there was just a lot of chaos involved.

But everyone got where they needed to be.  And I was NOT late.  

Just bought a new tent at Costco, and it turned out the family camping right next to them had gotten the same tent!

I *guess* this is a pretty place to camp...

My goofball sons

Colton concentrating hard on his watermelon

Gotta love a rope swing!

That's my hubby!

Watermelon + sand + weird filter = Crazy Colton!

That's Colton catching fireflies out in a field.  Craig took a video, too, and it is amazing and nostalgic.  Perfection.

The boys had a great time.  The girls had a great time with Grandma and Grandpa.  And my rehearsal was great, too, so everyone was happy, albeit tired!

The next morning I got up right away to exercise and work on getting the German translation written into my score of Brahms' Requiem.  Before I'd even finished, Craig and the boys arrived back home, which meant we had plenty of time to get me, Kendra, Craig, and Bentley all showered before...  The kids' piano recital!!!

Waiting for their turn

The whole recital crew, including our neighbors Abby and Mackenzie, standing next to Kendra

Camille enjoys refreshments with her friend, the aptly named Scarlett

Bentley and Kendra both performed wonderfully, and I was very proud of them!  Kendra played Haydn's "Surprise" Symphony and the hymn "I Stand All Amazed."  Bentley played "I Just Can't Wait to be King" from The Lion King and the theme song from Jurassic Park.

Unfortunately, I'd decided to let Colton go to a birthday party during the recital, but then the location of the recital changed to a place much further away AND it took a lot longer than I'd been picturing, so I spent a good chunk stressing out about what time I needed to leave to pick up Colton.  (I'd planned on just asking another parent to grab him for me if the recital was running over, but then there was NO cell service at this church, so that was out of the question.)  It all worked out just fine, so my stressing was pointless.  But I didn't know that until after it all worked out, did I?

And then, that evening was MY concert!  I was super excited because I have just grown to LOVE Brahms' Requiem AND because the soprano soloist was the same one we got last year and I absolutely love her, too.  She has the most incredible voice and she's super sweet, too.  As soon as we found out she was coming, me and my friend were both totally geeking out, we were so happy!

Craig and his parents and Kendra all came.  Bentley wanted to stay home, so he was our babysitter for the night.  Craig had put everyone else to bed, so Bentley didn't have to do much, but still!  This is an exciting new phase of parenting that we have been easing into-- being able to NOT have a babysitter!  Concert started at 7:30 and didn't end until after 10, so I was beat by the end. 

But very happy.  We'd had a very full weekend and everything had gone splendidly.  Now I could relax and make Craig do everything for Mother's Day.

What more could a girl ask for?

Colton's Hearing (part II)

It was over two years ago that I blogged about Colton's hearing not being great.  At the time, I was focused on his stuttering, but we also worried about his hearing.  We got him into speech therapy, which he just "graduated" from because he is totally stutter free now!  So that is exciting stuff!  His speech therapist was WONDERFUL.  I cannot sing her praises enough.

The hearing issue has been a long, dragged out process.  At the time he was tested, he had his 4-year check up coming up, so I asked them to test his ears very thoroughly, and they said he was fine.  But the doctor looked in his ears and said he had fluid in them.  She suggested we check back in again on that later.

Which of course, I never did.  (In my defense, we have terrible insurance and nothing is covered.  So I didn't really want to shell out a hundred bucks for another appointment just to look at his ears again.  It felt a little silly, especially when the doctor was saying his ears were fine.  Except for the fluid?)

Over the summer, Bentley caught swimmer's ear, so while we were at the doctor's, I had her look in Colton's ears, too.  Still had fluid.  She prescribed flo-nase or some other such thing, a nasal spray.  You can imagine how much Colton loved that.  And I couldn't tell that it did any good, so we just sort of stopped bothering with it after a short time.

Then, this winter, Colton's hearing got BAD again.  When Craig would talk to him first thing in the morning, we could tell that he couldn't understand a word that was said.  If I repeated it, then he'd get it.  I asked his speech therapist if she could test his hearing and she confirmed that he wasn't hearing stuff in the lower registers.  Once again, he had his 6-year check up on the horizon, but I was afraid I'd just get the run-around from his pediatrician again, so I felt totally stuck.

I complained about all this to my sister, and she had a brilliant suggestion: why didn't I just take him to an ENT doctor?  Skip the pediatrician as middle man!  That made perfect sense.  So I got recommendations and made an appointment.  She looked at his ears and put him on antibiotics, explained the importance of actually using the flo-nase, and also told us to use saline nasal spray, too.  She said to do all that and she'd look at him again and see if the fluid had cleared out.  We did it all for several weeks and at the next appointment, his ears were better, but there was still some fluid.  The audiologist was there to test his hearing again, and she said his hearing was fine, but there was more fluid that couldn't be seen that was making it hard for his eardrums to vibrate.  (I think this is what she said; I could be messing some of this up.)

For reasons that I still don't understand, after all that the doctor said she still didn't think he was a good candidate for tubes.  She said the antibiotics had helped a lot, and she didn't want to rush to surgery.  I give her full props for not just wanting to cut my kid open-- I'm very leery of any doctor who's knee-jerk reaction is to recommend surgery-- but I also felt like we weren't doing anything for my kid who clearly had a problem!

So then a few weeks later Colton got another ear infection.  After much internal debate, I took him back to the ENT (who miraculously had an opening-- the first appointment we made with her had to be booked a month out!) and she looked at both ears and gasped.  The one that Colton was complaining about clearly had pus in it, and she said the one that he wasn't complaining about looked like it was about to rupture!  So NOW she's ready to put tubes in and take out his adenoids.  Finally!  Let's DO something about this recurring problem!

She asked if I wanted to do a sleep study, very much leaving that decision up to me and what I thought was best.  Since Colton has been a TERRIBLE sleeper for the past three years, I said Yes.  A resounding yes, at that.  (We're going to hit our deductible anyway, so let's go whole hog!)  She explained how the sleep study works and told me the sleep center would be calling me.  She said she wanted the whole thing expedited so we could get this surgery done before he had time to develope another ear infection.

So, of course, I never heard from the sleep center.  After waiting five business days, I finally called them.  They said they had called me, but the lovely thing about cell phones is I know that's not true.  Maybe they mis-dialed?  In any case, their first opening was June 25th.  So much for hurrying the process along.  I was back to being frustrated.

Then, just a few hours after that conversation, the sleep center called again: they had a cancellation.  For that night.  Did we want it?

Now, this week is concert week, so I had dress rehearsal from 7-10.  And Craig had to cover sports at his school and fix a leaky sink at our condo.  We already had Grandma and Grandpa lined up to babysit because we had more than we could handle.  But I hated to pass up this chance...  I called Craig.  He pulled some strings at work.  We took the appointment.  I ran around packing for Colton and Craig.  Craig had a five-minute window where he stopped by the house to grab suitcases and Colton and then they headed back to his school and then on to the hotel for the sleep study. 

And Colton was GREAT for it!

A little nervous

Letting him see all the wires in the mirror

Everything is better with a stuffed animal

So. Many. Wires.

Next morning, all the wires gone and the glue washed off!

Hotel breakfast was included, so totally worth it!

Anyway, they said it should be a couple days and they'll get back to me.  Hopefully we'll be scheduling his surgery soon!  Maybe it will even help him to sleep better?

Smarter Than a Smart Phone

I love a good rain storm any day.

But I especially love a good rain storm in the spring, because it clears the pollen out of the air and lets me not get all allergic for a day or two, which makes for a lovely break.

So when I look at some dark, gathering clouds and think, "That sure looks like rain!" and I check the weather app on my phone and it assures me that it's NOT going to rain, but then an hour later the heavens split open and it pours for a good twenty minutes, so I get a pollen-free day AND I get to feel smarter than my iPhone, well, what's not to love about that?

Cale Carnival

The kids' school PTO puts on a carnival as a fundraiser each year.  Last year, Craig had to work and I wasn't going to try something so scary as taking all the kids on my own.  But then we were bored.  And I thought, They're a lot older and more manageable now.  I can do this, right?  And off we went.  And it was way cheaper than I'd thought it would be ($10 per person, but they capped it at $30 per family!  For us, that's a STEAL!).  And the kids were great and loved it.  And Craig was able to join us there!  Best of all worlds!

See Camille perched up there?

Kendra and her besties, Kinsley and Grace

So THIS year when the PTO began advertising for the carnival, I was totally excited to do it again! Craig didn't even have to work, so I figured everything would be even better this time!  I ordered our tickets early.  I planned everything all out.  I had dinner ready just a few minutes before we had to leave and told the kids we would go as soon as they were done eating.  Everything was perfect.

We were just getting our shoes on when Colton threw up. 

I was pretty sure this was a "one-and-done" deal, but obviously I couldn't test that theory by bringing him to a bouncy castle.  So Craig took the other kids, and Colton and I stayed home.  To cheer him up, I let him sit around watching as much tv as he wanted. 

So that was kind of a bummer.  The other kids had fun.  Craig got this amazing picture for me:

I usually hate these things, but this one just cracks me up!

And me, I got this lovely picture to document our evening:

I'm glad his teachers will know what a fabulous mother Colton has!