Awww We Love Dada

Yes, I've been blogging quite a bit lately. I am finding lots of happiness in reflecting on my familia's days together. Lately I've been a bit stressed and overwhelmed at work with the problems of students- homelessness, gangs, racial identity, racial slurs, girl fights, 911 calls, a student suicide at another school in my district, UGH! On Monday I am delivering holiday meals to some families we identified as needing T-day cheer. It makes you grateful to have everything you have!

I found this picture on my iPhone and thought of Jimmy. One morning James pointed out the beautiful colors in the sky. I told him it was a sunrise. It was so beautiful that we took a picture of it and sent it to James' Dada and said we were thinking of him. Awww!



Tonight, James tried to cut his hair with the fake little scissors in his play-doh set. Heh.


We now have FOUR colors of play-doh all mashed up and making me crazy.


Christmas is on James' brain. He has completely skipped over Thanksgiving! We need to fix that!! Poor kid doesn't know the joys of turkey, cranberries, and pumpkin pie all in one day!! He had Thanksgiving last year but probably doesn't remember it. Wait til he tastes his Tia's cooking! T-day is her FAVE!

And so a Christmas book has made an appearance.


So with Christmas on the brain I asked James what he wanted for Christmas. His response? "Popcorn!" Easy.

Beauty, Brains, and an (early) Bird

My little boy is not only the most beautiful boy, he is also smart. Here is a letter from his Spanish teacher:

Hola Lisa,
I’m pleased to hear from you and it’s great to have James in class. Our classes do include the ABC’s, colors and numbers every time we meet in addition to our monthly theme. James is a good student and a very good listener. I have attached last week’s lesson. You will receive this weeks in the group email that will be going out. You will find that each lesson we do a review of the previous week vocabulary and we add a few more words every week.

Thank you for enrolling James in our class. I’m looking forward to teaching him more and more Spanish. I’m teaching them the ABC song, in Spanish, so you might be hearing him sing some it.

Best regards,
Rose

James is such a considerate boy that when he wakes up early he entertains himself in his room so as to not wake up his Mama and Dada. A few times now we have found James playing quietly in his room or reading books in his closet "clubhouse". Thank you James for letting Mama and Dada sleep a little more!

A mouthful

I found that James had a busy day at "school". He had his Spanish class today but also the "Mad Scientist" fieldtrip too! I was sort of peer pressured into the extra Scientist class because I noticed that James was one of three kids that hadn't signed up and I didn't want him to be excluded. These little fieldtrips add up though- this one was an extra $6 and it wasn't even a fieldtrip but someone who came to the school for a this special little class. I guess the fieldtrip part of it is that the kids travel to the "Big Room" where there is more space. Well, sounds like he had fun. He showed off his homemade "play doh" that was a clumpy reddish mess in a ziploc. Cute :)

About his Spanish class, I was surprised to see that the coloring sheet they worked on had really big words on it. Zanahoria? Mantequilla? For a beginner class I thought they'd stick to simple words like the colors, numbers, etc.

We also had a mouthful at dinner tonight, and not in a good way. James refused the mini burger that I made him, the corn, and the "salad" that he did ask for. He cried and cried for pudding. I mean, uncontrollable, loud cries. Talking it out didn't work. A time-out after he angrily pushed a bowl across the table didn't work. He recovered from the time-out and apologized only to burst out in more crying. Aye. And then suddenly James said, "I not crying anymo." And he transformed into a different little boy who tried a bite of the corn, tasted the salad, and then was agreeable to having toast with apple butter instead of pudding. (I was okay with the toast because its that protein bread that we buy.) Wow, it was like a major mood swing!

A little less TV tonight and active play with Dada- soccer in the living room, a Leapfrog video game, playing in the "clubhouse" tent, and lots of laughter. Good times!

My Baby Love

What a sweet little boy tonight! He was so good! Jim had pool tonight (Tuesdays) so James and I ate a simple dinner of breakfast- eggs, toast, and applesauce. He ate heartily and I was glad. Its been so hard to watch him eat very little that we put in front of him, since we've been determined not to make him side meals.



Toast with apple butter... mmmmm.....


We played for a long time in his room- playdoh, Legos, and reading books. So fun!



Can you see the tiny little "spot" on his forehead? Just like Mama and Dada!


Pretending to take a bath.




One little monkey jumping on the bed...


Getting ready for bed...
James is suddenly taking his medicine really well! He will sit calmly on our lap and "swallow" so he "not get sick". Too bad we're almost done with the 10 day dose!

And then we went to the potty. James peed! I never actually see it but I saw the evidence on the potty seat. Yay James! His sticker chart is slowly filling up.



It will be a tough day tomorrow. I just received a phone message from my school principal that a teacher passed away suddenly- she was newly retired and her daughter is a teacher at the school too. I didn't know Mrs. Speckien very well but she was a nice lady and well respected. Her teacher friends are going to be devastated tomorrow! I am so sad for the family because they've had tough times before. Mrs. Speckien's other daughter died in a house fire in Dinkytown a few years ago... My thoughts are with them!

Spanglish

I have forgotten to write about James' Spanish class! We signed him up for once a week Spanish lessons at daycare. I'm so excited! Last week was his first class and I asked him what he learned. He told me "yellow sun". Well, I kept prodding and he finally told me he learned about the "sol", which is Spanish for sun! He also keeps saying something like "azooo" so I think he might mean azul, or blue. Maybe they learned the colors?

I'm very happy that he will be exposed to some Spanish early on. I hope that they'll continue to offer the Spanish classes or we can find some other class that he can attend. I heard that his future elementary school is a Spanish immersion school, so I'm really hoping that's true and that they'll keep the program at least for a while. You just don't know with budget cuts and things.

A class picture was sent home with James yesterday. I took a picture of it for you all to see. I just don't know how they managed to get all of the kids sitting reasonably still!! James is the cutie near his favorite teacher, Sheana, on the right.




Jim said that James is able to point out each kid in the picture with their name. He has many friends :)

Now, I don't love pictures of myself. I took this other picture because I'm finally wearing a COLOR and maybe you can see my hair a bit better. A teacher just complimented me and then called me "rude" in the same breath. She told me she loved my hair and wondered if it takes me a long time to style in the mornings. I said not really, I just let it air dry and that just takes time. She said, "How rude!" and laughed. She said she wished her hair was so easy :)



I also wanted to write about an experience I had yesterday. I was invited over to the high school to participate in a Latino student event and guest speaker. They are having some Latino boy gang issues and they had a Youth coordinator from Centro (a Mpls organization) come over and speak to the students, all Latino students regardless of whether they are in gangs or not. He was a great speaker and spoke a lot about pride, familia, education, and learning our History. I have to say that I was quite inspired to read and learn more about Latino culture and history. I just don't have a clue about some things!

The students responded well to him. This man has walked in their shoes and he had lots to say. It didn't hurt that the young ladies thought he was cute too :)

Baby Happy, Baby Sad

Artwork from this week- a Feather Collage.



There's a book that we read at bedtime now called Baby Happy, Baby Sad. The Sad Baby is shown first and he is sick. I tell James that the Baby is sad because he didn't take his medicine. The Happy Baby is playing and having fun because he took his medicine!

Well, I don't think this has quite sunk in with James. He refuses to take his medicine easily. Tonight was the worst. I feel sick that I need to restrain James to get the medicine down his throat. I had one of my fingers in his mouth to get his jaw open just a bit, to get the syringe in there. Owwwwww! That kid is strong!! Sadly, I am winning this battle. I need to. I need to get these antibiotics in his system. There are lots of hugs and kisses after the medicine trauma but it still pains me.

On Friday we had a false alarm with daycare. They called us and told us that James had a temperature of nearly 103 and we needed to pick him up ASAP. I left work in a hurry to get to James while Jim called the doctor. We might have jumped the gun on that one. I brought James home immediately and took his temperature. It was 98! Nothing. He was acting so normally and so happy I started to doubt the daycare and their thermometer accuracy.

I called the clinic and spoke to a nurse. She agreed that it was an impossibility that James' temperature could have gone down THAT much in an hour. We also explained that we were told he had an ear infection on Tuesday and we also missed a dose of antibiotics the night before. Well, we ended up cancelling his appointment. I took his temperature again after naptime and he was of course fine. James has shown NO sign of illness all weekend.

Really, I felt panicked as I drove to pick him up from daycare. With everything going around, to hear about my baby with a temperature?! Scary but it ended up fine.

Today we went to the apple orchard! James was so excited to see the apples. We promised him pumpkin pie and cider. He also got a cookie bonus :)





Mmmm. Cider chocolate chip cookies!


On the way out James insisted on smelling the flowers. So cute.






Back at home, James has LOVED playing in his new "clubhouse" and tunnels. I need to get better pictures of the whole clubhouse, but here he is looking through the tunnel. He was crabbypants after his nap.


A balloon from his birthday party. It was floating around without a string and it kept floating up to the top of the living room ceiling until we had the bright idea of reconnecting it to some curling ribbon. James is having a good time chasing the balloon around the house.




No plans tomorrow! Probably football and baking with apples :)

My tooth is feeling better. It still hurts occasionally and I don't like taking the painkillers- really they don't seem to affect me much.

Smiling through the pain

Yup, I have issues again. Just days after I finished my last round of antibiotics (illness, sinus infection) a tooth started to ache. I mean, REALLY ache. Not a normal toothache. This probably started on Saturday night or so. On Monday I tried calling my dentist to get an appointment and I couldn't get a hold of anyone. That dentist is all the way in Minneapolis and it takes some effort to get off work, drive there, and get back to work within a few hours. I decided its a good time to find a local dentist, even though I love my dentist in Minneapolis. The Blaine clinic didn't have an opening until Wednesday but I took it.

I found out at the dentist that a tooth that had had a root canal like 9 years ago had become infected, something about the seal to the root had been penetrated, etc etc. They wondered how I had been living with the intense pain! I told them I had been on antibiotics off and on for a month and a half. They concluded that I had held off the infection and pain but the minute the antibiotics left my system it became time to deal with this tooth.

I am now on antibiotics, a stronger form of them and one that I have to take 4 times a day! They also gave me a prescription of Vicodin but I'm only taking that if I have to. I was home alone with James last night and I think I scared Grandma Rosie with the thought of me being loopy and alone with James, so I did hold off on taking that pill until after bedtime. I now joke that I can tell James one day that I gave up Vicodin for him. I lived with the pain like a good Mama :) But really the Vicodin didn't do much for the pain, it just dulled it a bit. I was disappointed.

Today I already feel better. I think the antibiotics are working fast. This just sucks that I have another issue right after being sick for damn near 2 months.

I have a Retreatment procedure scheduled for 11/25, my day off. They are going to go into the crown of my tooth with a microscopic needle and treat the root canal. They said it shouldn't be any worse than a cavity being filled and I should be fine for Thanksgiving. Good thing because I need my pumpkin pie, cranberries, and turkey lurkey!

Oh and check out my new haircut! Its probably hard to see because I'm wearing black but its much shorter than I expected. I was happy with the end result and a student just told me that my hair is "Cute!" so I guess its a good cut :)

3 year Wellness check

James did NOT like the gown.


Heh. His (diapered) butt is hanging out!


Dr. Keis is wonderful with James. She can always get him to smile!






I was surprised that James cooperated with the vision screening. Instead of identifying letters in this test, he found the ice cream cone, the grapes, the basketball, and the cookie!


The Stats:
Weight: 33 lbs (64 percentile)
Height: 37 1/4 inches (37 percentile)
Blood pressure: 92/58
BMI: 16.76%

I asked about the low percentile for height but he is right on target for a natural progression from his earlier stats. Dr. Keis said that James will most likely reach 5' 9" or 5'10" at this rate.

We discussed his eating, his potty training, and his learning/behavior. All normal :) I am going to try and be tougher about meals (no side meals, and not giving in) at her suggestion, and also I'm really going to focus on potty training during my Christmas break. We're also switching to skim milk and I'm going to try and introduce vitamins again. Dr. Keis suggested that James help me buy the vitamins so he has some buy-in and wants to take them. Some of them have characters that he'd like.

One bit of bad news: He has an ear infection! He really did not show any symptoms beyond the usual daycare sniffles. He will start antibiotics today and we'll see the Doctor again in two weeks to make sure it has disappeared.

James also received another round of shots- flu vaccine (regular not H1H1), Hepatitis A, and the HIB (Haemophilus Influenzae type B). Poor James. I had to help hold him down for the shots but the flu vaccine was a nasal dose. Jim was missed- he is on a business trip in Philadelphia.

Oh, and probably early next year we'll start him with the dentist and eye doctor. I already asked about the eye doctor at the Blaine Eye Clinic and the child-friendly doctor is on maternity leave until January, which is a good time for us to take James too. Dentist? I'm going to a new dentist tomorrow in Blaine, so I'm going to feel out that option.

Happy Birthday!

We had leftover cupcakes from James' daycare party and so he had TWO! The daycare teacher told me that the kids didn't know what to make of the owls, but I'm glad that James knew he should EAT it. I made them for James, I'm just glad he liked them.


I like this picture because you can see his little boy hands.


Birthday party!!! James defines a birthday party by cake, presents, and balloons. We had to have it all, of course.


We also added a little decoration.


James was a LITTLE crabby coming out of his nap. He clutched his Dada while our guests waited for the mood to pass.


He was interested in the presents though, but look at that face!


Cupcakes! I made these with much love for our little boy.


James listened while we sang Happy Birthday.






Presents! I didn't capture too many presents in the mad scramble. It was like Christmas!




Flying a paper airplane. We bought the airplanes at FAO Schwartz in Las Vegas.


James is set to cook up a storm!


And make ice cream cones :)








A video game system from Mama and Dada, a keyboard from Uncle Joe. James has shown over and over that he loves music and instruments. I hope its an interest that's here to stay.


Light up drum sticks!


Thanks everyone for the noisy toys :P
And thank you familia for a great birthday!

Please see James' 3rd Year video below. Its long at 20+ minutes! We showed this DVD at the party today.

Make an on-line slideshow at www.OneTrueMedia.com