Parent Teacher Conferences, doctor follow-up, etc.

We took Ben to his second parent-teacher conference on Wednesday night. His new teacher, Mrs. Rounds, seems to be fairly nice. As usual, Ben is pretty smart and knows his stuff. Mrs. Rounds said she'll ask Ben things if the other kids seem to be struggling and he always knows the answer. She showed us some charting with the last iri testing he took. He was well above average with everything except for segmentation (where they're given a word like table and have to sound each part out separately). He was right at the top of the average section there, so pretty close to being above average. He didn't get the highest score in the school for Kindergarteners this time. He actually was 2nd in his class for most of it, except the segmentation, where he's 11th (out of 22, so right in the middle there). We had practiced segmentation with him at home and he did it really well, so I think he just didn't do quite as well while he was tested. Mrs. Rounds did say that sometimes Ben has a hard time listening and doing what she's asked him to do. She said there have been a couple times where she came close to calling home, but she knew that the conferences were coming up, so she'd discuss it with us then. She said she talked to Mrs. Warnke (Ben's old teacher) and found out about the bean system we had been doing, but Ben keeps insisting that he doesn't need to do the beans anymore, so she's letting him try it without. She also wants Ben to work on his handwriting a little more, mostly with getting the letters the right size so that the uppercase are taller than the lowercase, etc. She thinks that Ben is getting a little bored with some of the things, like when they're still discussing the letter sounds. He knows that part pretty well. He'll be starting in a group that's a little more advanced when they do their workshops so that he can learn things he may not already know. He may start doing a thing with the library where they test him to see his reading level and start sending home books with him to read.

We took Daniel to the doctor to follow up on his pneumonia yesterday morning. His blood ox level was up to 100% and he was looking and sounding better. He still had fluid in one of his ears, but the infection seemed to be gone. He had also regained a couple of the ounces he lost, but has a bit more to go to be back where he was before he got sick. The good news is that we can call him over it, but we just still need to watch him to make sure he doesn't get worse again. He has his 9 month well-baby check up on the 17th, so the doctor will check him again then to make sure he's completely over it.

After the doctor appointment, I took the boys to the zoo. They had a really good time. Daniel had fun sitting up in the stroller and playing with his brothers and they all had a good time seeing the animals and playing on some of the slides and toys they have there. As we were driving away, Chris kept saying, "I want to see more big animals!" I'd tell him that we saw them all and he'd say, "No! I want to see more!" He's been asking me today if we can go back. I may brave it again, since they were pretty good, up until the point where Chris had to use the bathroom. That's when having another adult with me would have been nice.

Here are a few pictures:

The boys are coming down the slide together:


They're playing on the animals:


Daniel is hanging out in the stroller:


This one is just Alex and Chris making silly faces:

Take 2 (and 3)

So yesterday I took Daniel back to the doctor, only this time instead of taking him to the Quick Care place, I actually was able to get him in to see his new regular doctor. I wasn't surprised when he said that the ears were infected for two reasons: one, he had started coughing everytime we'd take his temperature in his ear, which he hadn't done before, and two, when the doctor pulled on the ear to put the scope in to look at it, Daniel started crying and tried to pull it out of his ear. But it's always a bad sign when you're talking to the doctor about how you had just taken the baby to Quick Care on Friday and the doctor says, "And they thought he looked okay?" Dr. Aldous was concerned that Daniel might have pnemonia (and he said something about seeing if he'd be able to go home or if he'd have to go to the hospital) and so he sent us to the lab downstairs and then to x-ray and then back to his office. I should mention at this point that I had all 4 boys with me. The appointment was at 3:30, but it was more than an hour after that when we finally got to go back to the examination room. Of course, to complicate things, at a couple of the places, the older boys (all 3) would decide that they needed to use the bathroom. So after they took the blood and then did the x-ray, we got back to the office where we were told that yes, he did indeed have pnemonia. It wasn't severe enough for hospitalization, but they gave him a large dose of antibiotics (a shot in each leg) and we had to wait an additional 20 minutes to make sure he didn't react to the shot. And they made us an appointment to go in at 8:45 the next morning (which was today). It was after 7 when we finally got home. As stressful as it was to be having to go to each of those places and be at the doctor's office for over 3 1/2 hours, the boys were fairly good. Well, they were consistent, anyway. They didn't get worse as the time went on. Still would have been much, much easier if I didn't have them with me or if I had someone else there who would have been able to help take kids to the bathroom, etc.

A huge THANK YOU to Katie for being willing to come over and watch my older 3 boys while I took Daniel in to his appointment today. He was still pretty sad-looking and got lots of comments from the nurses about how he didn't feel well. One of the first things they did was to check his blood ox level, which was at 98 today, higher than the 93 it was yesterday, so that was definitely a good sign. The doctor listened to his lungs again and said that he appears to be holding his own, which is what he wanted to make sure was happening and that he wasn't getting worse. He had the nurse give Daniel another shot of the antibiotic (this time only one shotand a 15 minute wait after) and he sent over a prescription of a high dose of amoxicillin to the pharmacy for me to pick up. Poor Daniel has been so sick that he hasn't been crying very hard at the shots even though they really burn going in. I made another appointment for Thursday to make sure he's still doing well, of course with the instructions to make sure we call if he seems to be getting worse.

So of course when my 3 youngest children are all sick, it's all something different. But they do have basically the same medication for it.

And maybe some day I'll get to sleep again.

Sunday...a day of rest?

Sundays are usually one of my favorite days of the week. I love the spiritual renewal I get from going to church and then enjoying the rest of the day knowing that it will be fairly relaxing and we won't even be tempted to run errands or do things of that nature. Today definitely wasn't a typical Sunday for us.

Yes, our kids are still sick. And because Bryce and I were supposed to give the opening and closing prayers and Bryce was being sustained in his new calling as Ward Choir Director, we both needed to be at Sacrament Meeting. We really didn't want to have to bring the 3 boys who were running fevers, coughing, and had runny noses. So we decided to do the Sacrament Meeting Switch. Bryce went in the morning so he could say the opening prayer (luckily that's the one they had put him down as saying) and be there for when he was sustained. He also asked the bishopric to announce that choir practice would be cancelled today (due to the fact that our house was a mass of germs). As soon as he was sustained, he left church to come home, and Ben and I got to hop in the van and go back to church for the rest of the meetings. Right after church, I had a visiting teaching appointment. It was the last one with my visiting teaching companion, as she is moving on Saturday. It was also to only one person, since we saw the other 2 last week, but it still managed to last an hour. Then I finally got to go home and eat some lunch and try to relax (the boys wanted to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 3, which Bryce bought me for Valentine's Day and I had never seen, so we were up in my room watching that). Try is the operative word there. If you know my boys, they're not still for very long, even when they're sick. The only difference is that they cry a lot easier when they're fighting and/or teasing each other. When they actually sit still for extended periods of time, that's when you know they're really sick, especially when you're dealing with Alex. So Sunday afternoon became a time of consoling crying kids, breaking up fights, etc.

Now is when the fun begins. Alex has had a pretty bad cough with this cold and has thrown up a few times because of it. At least twice today. Chris had a fever and Bryce was trying to give him some Tylenol for it, which he didn't want, so Chris threw up all over the floor. We got it and him cleaned up and tried again, and yet again, he threw up. So Bryce took him up to give him a bath to clean him off again and said, "Take Alex and Chris to the doctor." So as soon as Chris was out of the tub and I had nursed Daniel a little bit (it was 6:00, so getting close to when he goes to bed), I loaded the two boys up in the van and we headed over to the Quick Care (luckily, they count those as regular office visits). No one was waiting in the waiting area when we got there, so I thought that maybe it would be a bit quicker than usual, but unfortunately, about 5 different people had shown up right before I had and were in the examination rooms. So we had about a half hour wait. They took us back and had the kids get on the scale (Chris weighed 26.8 pounds, so almost 27 pounds and Alex was 41.1) and then put us in the room where the nurse asked what their symptoms were and then took their temperatures and did the blood oxigination level test. When she took Alex's, her thermometer read at 98.6, but I was pretty sure that was wrong, since he felt a lot warmer than that. Her machine was also picking up his blood ox level at 84%. So another nurse came in and took his blood ox level and it was normal. She let Alex play with the thermometer (head scan type) and he took his own temperature and it was 100.8, and he didn't even get it on there very well. Chris wasn't too happy about being at the doctor, so I had to kind of hold him as the doctor was examining him. Ears looked good, chest sounded good. Then came the time when we had to force open his mouth to look at his throat. The doctor said, "Wow, that throat looks bad." He decided to just go ahead and give us medication assuming it was strep and not doing a strep culture because of how stressed out Chris got just looking in his throat. Then he looked at Alex. "Well, that's a bad ear. And that one's worse." Then he went to look in his throat and I got Alex to open his mouth by saying, "Alex, do you want to show him how you don't have tonsils?" So the doctor started asking why he had them out (they were touching they were so large and causing sleep and eating problems, in case you didn't know). He mentioned that Chris has large tonsils too, but not quite that big. Alex's throat looked good though. So the doctor wrote out a prescription for alex's ear infections and for some cough syrup since Alex really has been coughing quite a bit, and we were able to go home. I dropped the boys at home, then left to go to Walgreen's to fill the prescriptions. Not an original idea. 2 hours later, I finally get home with the prescriptions and we get the boys their first dose (we managed to force it down Chris without him throwing it up again, so that was a bonus) and put them in bed. When I took the boys home and before I left to get their prescriptions, I was telling Bryce what we found out at the doctor and he said he feels like he has strep. He said he thinks he got it from me. I told him that my throat really hasn't been hurting very badly. He's decided now that I'm a carrier. I suppose I could be. If I am, I feel bad for all the people at church I've just exposed to strep. Also, I've decided that Daniel probably has strep, which is why he's had a fever for a full week tomorrow. When I took him to the doctor on Friday, they never did look at his throat. I keep thinking how much better he might have been feeling by now if they had looked at his throat and he really does have strep.

So now the boys are in bed and Bryce went to bed and I decided to get on the computer and write about my day. I think now I'll finally go get some much-deserved Sunday rest.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today is Valentine's Day, so I thought I'd actually post on here and tell everyone happy Valentine's Day. So Happy Valentine's Day!

I'm actually not too big on celebrating Valentine's Day, although it is fun to get something for it. Almost more fun to give stuff for it though. I ordered a fruit bouquet for Bryce and would love to be able to see him when they deliver it to his work. And it's starting to get a little more annoying as I had to sit down last night and help Ben do his 22 valentines for his class at school today. He wrote them all, but I had to help keep him on task and I got to fold them and put the candy in and try to tape it together so the candy would stay in. Wasn't totally successful there, as there are a couple of candies floating around in the bag where we put the finished valentines. At least we tried.

Since it's been a little bit since I posted, I thought I'd follow up with some pictures from when we were playing outside in the snow for FHE last week. It was a bit cold out, especially as it was getting dark, but the boys really had a good time.
So here are the pictures:

Alex throwing a snowball

Ben throwing a snowball

Chris threw one at me

Playing in the snow

We built kind of a fort with the snow we had shoveled off the driveway


Oh, and last night we got a call from Brother Bird, the first counselor in our bishopric. I had kind of been waiting for the call, so when he did call, I wasn't too surprised. Bryce will now be the new choir director for our ward. He went to give a blessing to the daughter of the woman who is the current choir director and told her it was her fault and that he knew she said something. He wasn't sure if she knew he was teasing her or not. :)

And just because, here are a couple more pictures.

The boys love playing the Wii


Daniel got a hold of his bowl when I wasn't looking and this is the result:

I hate to curse this, but....

So as I'm sure you're aware, we've been working on potty training Chris. Potty training is one of my least favorite things to do. It's a pain to have to deal with wet and dirty underpants as they're learning. Of course, it's never quite as bad as I remember it being, although it does come close. Anyway, there were actually a couple of days in a row last week where Chris stayed clean and dry, then he had a bad day where he pooped twice in his underpants and peed another time. He did wet his pants once yesterday, but otherwise stayed clean. Now to the part that I don't want to curse. Two times today, Chris has actually come up to me and told me that he needed to go to the bathroom and so I'd take him and he pooped and peed in the potty both times. I'm hoping that means we're over the hump of the bad part of potty training and we can basically call him trained. He has been in underpants full time for a bit now, but he very seldom would tell us when he needed to go. He'd only stay dry if we kept taking him to the bathroom. So cross your fingers for us!

No church

So being from Utah, it is sometimes a little strange to me when things sometimes go a little differently in other places. Take today, for example. Overnight we got about 4 inches of snow, so this morning at about 8:30, we got a phone call informing us that church was canceled for the day. Granted, in Idaho they don't plow the roads (they say they don't plow because they don't want the snow to pile up on the sides of the roads and cause problems with melting and flooding, etc.), so getting to church would be a bit treacherous, but it still seems a little silly to cancel it because of 4 inches. Bryce and I were supposed to give the prayers in Sacrament Meeting today, so I guess we get out of that for another week. And it gives me an extra week to prepare the lesson for Sunday School, which is nice because for some reason, I'd been having a hard time feeling like I was prepared for this one. Maybe that's why though. Maybe Heavenly Father knew that we would not be having church today, so I had the blockage. I think in a way I was also prepared for this because I kept thinking last night how Brian's church in Georgia was canceled because of 1 inch of snow.

Here's a picture I took from our garage this morning. You can't really see much with it, but it might give you an idea of why they canceled church:



For Alex's preschool this last Wednesday, we went to the firestation. Ben's school happened to be canceled that day because of snow and bad roads, but we still had preschool. Ben would have been with us for the firestation anyway, since his Kindergarten is in the afternoon. The boys all had a really good time and said their favorite part was the end when the firemen gave them hats and stickers. I didn't think to take my camera with me to the firestation, but I got a couple pictures of the boys with their hats at home later. Here they are:





And just because I thought they were cute, I added a picture I took of Daniel on his 7 month birthday and another picture of Chris.

Who do you look like?

I was playing on myheritage.com and found this collage thing they do with their face recognition software where they tell you which celebrities you look like. I've done the one with the celebrities before, but I wanted to see what it said with a more recent picture. So here's what the collage did:

http://www.myheritage.com/collage

And here's another one I did. Mostly different people, but one is the same. I guess I must look like Sara Evans. Huh.



And here's a third. Sela Ward and Kate Bush are repeated in this one.