X-Country

This fall Bentley decided to join his school's cross country team.  He was a bit appalled when he realized that he was the only 8th grader on the team AND the only male, but he enjoyed the running so much he stuck with it despite feeling like the odd-man-out (or should I say, "only man out"?).  It was too hot to run outside for most of the season, so the coaches just had them run laps in the hallways which was pretty fun for the kids, honestly.  So he liked it.  The kid is a natural runner-- he never gets tired!  So this seemed like a good fit for him!

They had one meet at the end of the season with all the schools and one race for each gender.  I had to stay home with the kids who had piano lessons at that time, but Craig went and documented the whole thing very well:

All ready to go!

See him in the middle there?  To the left of the kid crouching down and wearing an orange bandana...

And they're off!

Go, Bentley, go!

Still smiling!

He finished in the top half, so we were pretty proud of him!  I guess we'll see if he's still interested enough to join the track team in the spring?

Pre-Halloween Celebrating

Halloween is upon us!

Craig-- bless his heart-- finally sat down with each kid and figured out what they wanted to be and measured them and ordered costumes on Amazon.  I just did NOT have the energy for that!

Last week the kids visited a retirement home and got to trick-or-treat there-- it was a nice thing to get to do, but it was set up a little too efficiently and the entire thing took about thirty seconds, leaving both residents and trick-or-treaters wondering what to do next?  But we all tried!

And then yesterday was our ward Halloween Party Fall Festival (who are we kidding?).  The best thing about that is that we were doing portraits in the morning, so I had a perfect reward for good behavior/threat for bad behavior.  Because anyone who is too tired to cooperate for family pictures CLEARLY needs to go to bed early and skip out on the ward party, right???  Hopefully that means we got some great pictures.  Everyone was extremely well behaved.

I put a LOT of time into trying to figure out what we should wear for portraits.  THIS is why I couldn't handle figuring out Halloween costumes, too!

Unfortunately, half my kids had been feeling sick on Friday: Colton had a nasty cough, Kendra had an ear infection, and Bentley was running a fever and said his stomach hurt.  By Saturday evening, only Bentley hadn't really recovered, so he and I stayed home and watched Mean Girls, which was a pretty enjoyable way to spend an evening.

This is the kind of thing Bentley does when he's not well

Craig and the rest of the kids came home with so much candy I really ought to make them skip trick-or-treating on the real day, but even I can't be that mean.  So we'll have a house full of candy by the end of next week.  Stop by and eat some for me!

Camille was excited for doughnuts on a string

Well organized, Elders Quorum!

So... Much... Candy...!

Only five days to go until the actual day...

Kings Dominion

Craig had the idea that we should get season passes for Kings Dominion, a somewhat local amusement park, while Camille is still free.  He figured we could start now while they've got Halloween stuff going on, but then we realized that we had plans for EVERY SINGLE SATURDAY in October.  So we picked the least busy Saturday and canceled everything and headed towards Richmond for a day of roller coasters!

These pictures are in no particular order whatsoever.  And I make no apologies for that!

Camille is driving!  ...On the wrong side of the street!

Colton, on the other hand, very carefully stuck to all the rules for actual driving.  I had no idea he knew so much!

Craig took a very long video of Colton and Camille tooling around in these little cars.  I'm not going to bother posting it here because it's a pain to upload stuff on to YouTube, but it's an oddly soothing video to watch.  It's not exciting-- it's maybe even little boring-- and yet...  I couldn't stop watching.  Sort of like that weird video of the Nautilus finding a bunch of octopus devouring a whale carcass...

Hay maze!

Watching Ryder steering this on his own was an absolute delight-- he's such a fun kid!

The "Eiffel Tower"

Camille shows how scared she is

Bentley was excited to drive

Craig texted me asking what ride we were in line for.  I didn't know how to describe it, so I just snapped a picture, but the lighting turned out kind of cool!

I mostly love how Craig is photobombing us here!

On top of the ferris wheel

We had a great time.  Ryder is our biggest daredevil, and he and Craig were the only ones willing to do the huge drop tower (biggest one I've ever seen!).  But everyone had fun, which was all I cared about.  I did wish we'd had longer because I ran out of time for some of the roller coasters I wanted to try-- so I guess it's a good thing we have season passes!  We'll be back soon!

Practical

My kids suddenly think it's awesome to put on TWO PAIRS OF PAJAMAS.  At the same time!!!  It's cute and funny.  But I can't stop thinking about how this means even more laundry for me...

On a totally unrelated note, Craig took this picture yesterday:

The name is Bond.  Peter Parker Bond.

Guess who's excited for Halloween?

Colton's Sleep Odyssey

In addition to all the other stuff in September that I already blogged about, a significant amount of time was dedicated to trying to figure out how to get Colton to sleep through the night.  As I have documented extensively here, the boy hasn't slept consistently through the night in YEARS and it was starting to take its toll on me.  We'd hoped that having his tonsils removed would help, but alas, this was not the case.  With our high end deductible met for the year and only one month left before it "started over" again, we decided it was time to bring in any and all professional help that we could find.

So Craig and I met with a shrink several times to discuss the issue.  He recommended that when Colton wake us up, we climb into bed with him and rub his back and soothe him to sleep.  We tried this for a couple weeks and, if anything, it made the problem worse. 

As we were trying this out, I also met with a sleep specialist (an MD type of doctor, not a psych type of doctor) who'd been recommended by our pediatrician.  I spent two and a half hours talking with her PA (who was brand new and being trained and not catching on too quickly, if you catch my drift) and then with the actual doctor, so it was about the longest appointment I have ever had with a medical person.  Including some of the times I've given birth!  So, points for being thorough, but MAN that was a drag.  Also, I had Theo with me, because it was the last day I was babysitting him.  Fortunately, Craig's parents had just barely returned home from a trip to Houston and were generous enough to take Camille during the appointment.  I think if I'd been trying to keep her happy in that tiny room the entire time, too, I would have died.  As it was, Theo fell asleep in my arms and slept for half the appointment and the only real trouble-maker was Colton!  Go figure.

Anyway, the sleep doctor, Dr. Yu, recommended that we come up with a program of rewards for good sleeping that were "not too easy and not too hard, not based on food, and not too expensive."  Easy peasy, right?  Fortunately, she gave me some concrete ideas of what that might look like and we finally settled on doing a sticker chart to keep track of his successes, and then a trip to the dollar store with just Mom or Dad when he accumulated three stickers.  She also said we needed to put him to bed later.  I've usually put little kids to bed at 7pm, and big kids at 8:30, but she pointed out that since he spends two hours popping out of bed and aggravating me (she referred to this as "curtain calls"), we may as well just keep him up until the time he normally falls asleep.

As a side note, during her exam, she looked in his ears and declared them to be "clean and dry."  And I almost teared up because that was the first time a doctor has EVER said that about Colton's ears!  EVERY SINGLE OTHER TIME HE'S BEEN EXAMINED there has been fluid in his ears.  Those tubes totally worked, and I was so happy to have any sort of success along this very long and tedious journey.

In conclusion, Dr. Yu said that if none of this stuff worked, she would consider medicating him.  Not permanently, she assured me.  But maybe just for a little while to get him in the habit of sleeping through the night.  I didn't love that idea.  (Still don't.)  But I will admit that I'm getting pretty desperate at this point, so I'll probably try anything.  But first, we'd need to make sure he didn't still have sleep apnea.  Dr. Yu explained that if you have breathing problems, the last thing you want to do is administer any medication that can slow down your breathing even more.  Hopefully having his tonsils removed fixed that, but we couldn't be sure without doing... another sleep study!  Colton was thrilled-- he thought the sleep study was the most fun he'd ever had and was totally hoping for another one!

They managed to squeeze us in before the end of the month, so it was all covered by insurance.  Phew!

This time around, we were doing it through UVA Hospital (last time it was with Martha Jefferson).  I have now learned that UVA is twice as expensive, but the room totally sucks.  So if you ever have to do a sleep study in Charlottesville, I cannot recommend Martha Jefferson enough!  Go with them!!!

Anyway, this time I spent the night with Colton.  He wanted it to be fair.  And Craig had scouts, so he couldn't really go anyway. 

This is...  NOT the Hilton.  UVA, you are so lame.

Back to being fully wired again!

With leg wires, too!  What fun!

The sleep study was a pain.  My in-laws came to the rescue again by babysitting AND bringing pizza for all of us, so I could focus on packing and cleaning the house.  Then I brought all the boys with me to the church (and met Craig with the pizza we hadn't eaten), dropped Bentley and Ryder off with Craig for Scouts, and took Colton with me to the hospital.  I was already exhausted!

He slept okay, but was getting over a cold and had a couple coughing fits in the night-- at 11pm and 2am.  So I got to be awake for all that.  And then they woke us up promptly at 6am and we could go home!  We had Colton shower and try to wash all paste out of his hair, and then I took him and Camille to Waffle House to reward him for doing so great.  (With Martha Jefferson, they cover the Hilton breakfast, too!  What a rip off this was!)

They told us it would be three weeks before we got the results.

In the meantime, we got to work on Dr. Yu's suggestions AND we moved Bentley into Colton's room while his bedroom was being painted. 

AND IT WORKED!  He started sleeping through the night!  It was AMAZING.  He quickly accumulated nine stickers and got three trips to the dollar store out of it!  Craig and I were in heaven!

But then I finished painting and Bentley went back to his room and (big mistake, I see now) I tried to up the ante by suggesting Colton shoot for earning a small Lego set by getting 10 stickers.  And he stopped sleeping through the night at all.  We went a whole week with very little sleep and got right back to being so frustrated.

So we sat down and talked about it.  A lot.  Sometimes in the middle of the night with me almost falling asleep as I stood over his bed trying to discuss what was scaring him this time.  We went back to the dollar store reward plan.

And this last week, he's been sleeping again.  He's up to 7 stickers now.  He might get that Lego set after all...

The sleep study results came today and everything was normal, no more sleep apnea.  So I think we're just trying to train away this bad habit.  And like any bad habit, you're bound to have some setbacks.  But if we can just keep moving in the general direction of SLEEPING, I'll be happy.

Hurray for stickers?  And the dollar store?

And may you never take for granted a single, thorough night's sleep.  It is such a gift.

Disagreements

One of the many things I cherish about our marriage is that Craig and I pretty much never fight.

But one thing we've never exactly agreed on is when one should listen to Christmas music.  Craig begins playing Christmas music religiously the day after Thanksgiving.  And it's the ONLY music he listens to until December 26th.  And then he's done and doesn't play it again until the next year.

I'm a little less extreme.  I grew up not putting on Christmas music until December 1st, so I felt Craig was jumping the gun a little, but this wasn't a hill I needed to die on.  I just thought he was funny.  But I also listen to other music throughout that time, depending on my mood.  And I continue playing Christmas music (if I feel like it) throughout the first week or two of January.  I'm pretty flexible.  Craig would probably say I'm not as devoted as he is.

This is not something that has ever caused contention, it's just sort of a funny difference.

But now Craig gets the last laugh, because with my choir, we start rehearsing Christmas music the week after Labor Day.  This year on the docket we've got Fum, Fum, Fum, Silent Night (the MoTab arrangement!), Here We Come A-Wassailing, Go Tell It On the Mountain, and Do You Hear What I Hear.  Plus more that I still need to learn.

And I will admit that I'm totally loving it.  Yay for MORE Christmas music, even if it means Craig wins!

Happy Birthday, Mom!

I think I mentioned at the time, but the reason for our big trip to Seattle was to celebrate my Mom's 70th birthday.

Her actual birth date is September 17th, and we all felt that we should do something on the actual day, too.  So, being the generous person that I am, I told all my sisters that Craig would put together a video for her.  They sent in all the footage and still photos we needed and Craig spent hours assembling it all.  But I think the finished product was wonderful, so I have to share it here, too.

Yes, watch it!  It isn't THAT long-- you totally have time for it!

Didn't Craig do a great job?

And isn't my Mom wonderful?  Admit it, you sort of wish she was your mother, too, don't you?

Happy Birthday, Mom!  (And welcome back to the country!  I've missed you while you were away!)