New iPad

Joel finally talked himself into a new iPad today :)

Puzzles with Cousins

Happy Thanksgivvukah!

Thanksgiving Helper

Strep Boy

I am just going to start calling him that. I think he has had strep at least three times now? To be fair, several other kids on our street have had it lately/currently have it. We had to cancel plans to go out last night (had tickets to see John Oliver) and laid low all weekend. Joel took Becca out for a bit today, to the last day of the auto show at the convention center, where (shockingly ) they did not let her sit in the Ferrari. Ben was feeling well enough by late afternoon to throw the ball around a bit, but crashed again a short time later. School tomorrow will be a game-time decision.

Caroline's Hair Cut

Clean Carpets. For a Nanosecond.

Yesterday I had a carpet cleaning service come and spend over 5 hours (and $350 of my money) cleaning all the carpets in the house and patching a spot by the master bathroom entry way that Clara ripped up like two days after we moved into the house, which we never bothered to have fixed until now. I was very happy with the results, until Joel walked in the door and said, "Oh this looks nice. But what is this little orange spot here? And doesn't it look like they used the wrong carpet scraps to patch the carpet? See it looks like it's not the exact same color...." And then Caroline clambered off the sofa, dropped her apple in the middle of the living room carpet, looked at me and said "Oops!" and walked away. 

Thanksgiving Prep

Never mind the menus, shopping, the fact that Hanukkah coincides with Thanksgiving this year and I haven't done any shopping yet for that either. Or figured out what I am going to cook this year (I want to keep it all or mostly gluten free for Caroline). Thanksgiving prep is starting with an electrician coming tomorrow to hopefully figure out why all but about two of the outlets in our kitchen have stopped working (yes I checked the fuse box already). Also, I hope no one needs the 2 , 7 or 9 buttons on the microwave. They have mysteriously stopped working as well. As have the recessed lights in the front hall. Also, carpet cleaning  is scheduled for Thursday. Yes by Thanksgiving I do hope to have functioning lights, outlets, and clean carpets. Now to figure out what we're actually going to eat...

Story Time

Story time courtesy of Ben last night, and a little tickle too :)

Today is Going to be a Quiet Day

If it kills me :P

I finally got Ben back to school this morning, though not without difficulty (a lot of drama and complaining this morning about how his stomach hurt). He has not had any vomiting or diarrhea since Tuesday, but I did not want to send him on a two hour bus trip to the NC Zoo yesterday, in case if he got sick on the way there or while he was there, so he stayed home.  Now finally I have an empty house and plans to get some work done... wish me luck :)

What Happens When the Kids Leave the Interior Car Lights On

So today I discovered that all the yelling I do at the kids about not messing with the interior car lights because they will drain the battery a)  is true and b) has apparently gone unheeded. I am fairly certain that Rebecca is the culprit. Yesterday when I picked her up from camp she informed me that some of the interior car lights were on, and offered to turn them off for me. But I was driving at the time so I told her to wait till we got home. (Although she brought them to my attention and offered to turn them off, I am pretty sure she is the one who turned them on to begin with). Anyway I promptly forgot about it once we got home (and so did she) until I tried to start the car this morning.

The fortunate part was that I did not really have anywhere to go, since it was Joel's half day he had taken Caroline to preschool and gone to the gym, and I was simply trying to go put gas in my car and pick up a bagel for (still sick but improving) Ben. When Joel got home from the gym we borrowed jumper cables from a neighbor and attempted to locate the battery on the Prius to do a jump start. Having realized that it is in the trunk, we backed his car into the garage next to mine and tried to do the jump start. It wouldn't work, though I am not sure if it's because Joel was doing it wrong or because the Prius battery is not adequate to jump start a mini van (it is awfully small). Eventually our neighbor brought his truck over, but it would not fit in the garage next to mine so we had to push my car out of the garage (rather, they pushed and I steered backwards). We finally managed to get my car started and I drove it over to Firestone where they tested the battery and proclaimed I needed a new one. Fun (and expensive) way to start my Tuesday :P

Sick Kiddo

Here is a picture of Ben and his buddies in the arcade during his great wolf lodge trip. Ben had an awesome time. Becca went to PF Chang's and saw Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 with Joel on Friday night and had a friend over to play on Saturday morning, so she was reasonably occupied during Ben's absence. Unfortunately last night around 10:45 Ben started throwing up, and threw up all night long, managing to hit every toilet in the house as well as some less-desirable areas :( It was a long night! Now he is sleeping, and I am scrubbing toilets, mopping floors, doing laundry, and trying not to get sick! I am glad he waited till after he got home from his trip to get sick though!! Poor kid. There's no school today, so he is only missing the school's out / J's in day I had signed him up for. He has a much-anticipated zoo field trip on Wednesday so I hope he is feeling better by then!

Friday Update

Ben scored a gem of a birthday party invitation -- an overnight trip to Great Wolf Lodge indoor water park with his best friend & family and another friend. He leaves after school today and comes home tomorrow late afternoon. He is of course very psyched, and Becca is of course feeling rather left out! Joel is going to take her to dinner and a movie tonight, and I arranged a play date for her for tomorrow morning to help  make up for it.

In other news, Caroline's blood test results came back. Her TTG level is 68. Normal is 0, or close to it. Her first test result showed her TTG level of > 128, which is as high as they measure. So, off the charts high. The doctor is happy with the drop from >128 to 68 in six months, and will recheck it again in May. I am happy that she is improving, but it still seems pretty slow for me. I didn't know at the beginning of this process that it could take a year to get her digestive system back to normal. She is doing so much better than she was six months ago, and I am impatient to see the improvements that another six months will bring! She still has some bloating and normal-only-for-Caroline-bowel movements ;) But the diarrhea, lethargy, irritability, stomach pain, lack of weight gain are all gone -- she gained 5 pounds these past six months :) Yay for Caroline and the gluten free diet!

In still more news, Ben and Becca are going to sleep away camp this summer! Ben is going for three weeks, from July 13 to August 3, and Becca is going for one week, from July 13 to July 20. They are going to Camp Blue Star, which is a Jewish camp in the Blue Ridge mountains about 2 hours or so from here. Ben's best friend is spending 7 weeks there, and I thought it would be a good way to entice Ben into becoming more independent. At the moment his independence level on a scale of one to ten would be about a -2 ;) He would never have gone for the idea if his friend weren't going too, and once he gets there I am hoping he will gain some confidence / learn to do some things for himself / make some new friends. Becca, upon hearing about this and all the activities and trips Camp Blue Star has to offer, immediately said, "Well I'm going too!" For which Joel and I were prepared, so we offered to send her for one week, making sure she understood that Mom and Dad would not be there with her, she would be sleeping there for a week, etc. To which she replied, "Do I need to pack?" and started to dart off to her room to pack her things! I had to quickly call after her that she was not leaving yet! The price of sleep away camp is a small fortune, and Ben and Becca will be doing day camp before / after sleep away camp, so I am still congratulating myself on somehow convincing Joel to agree to this plan.

GI Appointment

Caroline rocked it at her follow-up GI appointment this morning, holding still and only fussing a little during the blood draw. We talked to her doctor a bit before getting the labs, and he said her weight (now 30 pounds) is great, and she is both gaining weight and getting taller now. Her belly is still a little distended but much improved. He said he would not expect her to have made a full recovery six months out, and he does expect that her blood tests will still show some elevated TTG levels. But he assured us that this does not mean we are doing anything wrong with her diet; rather, the intestines can be slow to heal and she may still be getting some sugars passed into her colon which causes gas and bloating. He would expect her TTG levels to have dropped significantly since six months ago, and in another six months he would expect them to be at normal levels. He will continue to follow her every 6 months until her blood work comes back normal and then less frequently after that. She has been growing well and her bowel movements are much more normal than they used to be so there is every reason to think her blood tests will be much improved from six months ago. So now we just keep our fingers crossed and wait for her results :) They should be back later this week.

Parent-Teacher Conferences

Today was a teacher work day / conference day, so Ben and Rebecca did not have school. They went to Schools Out / J's In at the JCC, where they went on a field trip Space Kidets and swam in the indoor pool at the J. I on the other hand, went to two parent-teacher conferences and of course I did not have the wherewithal to schedule them back to back so Ben's was at 1pm and Rebecca's was at 3pm.

Ben's conference was pretty typical. His teacher said he is very bright and scored off the charts in his literacy MAPS testing and "solidly" in his math MAPS testing. He is reading well above grade level. He also does sloppy work and doesn't take the time to go over his work / correct mistakes. He is perfectly bright enough to get all A's but because of his inability to really sit down and focus and concentrate on what he is doing, his grades for the first quarter are a 95, 3 92s and a 90. This is 1 A and 4 B's although since the cut off for an A is a 93, he was 1 percentage point away from an A in three of his subjects. When I told Ben that with just a *little* more effort he could have had 4 A's this quarter he was not pleased. (Especially since we pay him for each A!) Hopefully he will try a little harder next quarter although if he doesn't, his teacher said those grades will start to slip because she is going to be cracking down on careless mistakes (the kind Ben always makes).

This was Rebecca's first conference, and Joel left work early so he could come to it. We were hoping for a decent report from her teacher since her behavior in terms of the color she gets every day, has been improving - usually she is on green but sometimes she has been on blue or purple (very good / excellent) and the yellows have decreased to maybe once every 2 or 3 weeks. Her teacher said that academically she is right where she needs to be, doing fine, and socially in terms of appropriately interacting with the other kids/making friends she is fine. But she doesn't pay attention / participate in class discussions at all, and often rocks back and forth at her desk and is totally zoned out/ not doing any work/ not following directions/ not having any idea what question the teacher has just asked her, etc. Of course Rebecca has been rocking since she was a baby and has been very good at not paying attention / not following directions at home, but we were kind of hoping she might pay a little bit of attention at school. But apparently not. Her teacher says so far it is not affecting her learning (she knows everything she's supposed to at this point) but she expects it will start to affect her learning if it continues. So at the moment Joel and I are not really sure what to make of it or what to do about it, if anything at this point. Ugh!

Caroline's First Trick or Treat Haul

Unfortunately most of Caroline's first trick or treat haul got confiscated after she went to bed. Joel and I dumped it all out and went through it:

Items confiscated for being a choking hazard -- M&Ms, Laffy Taffy, Tootsie rolls, Twizzlers
Items confiscated for containing nuts/peanut butter which we don't want her eating yet -- Reeses peanutbutter cups, Snickers, Reeses pieces, Pay Day, Baby Ruth
Items confiscated for not being gluten free -- Milky Ways, Twix, Nestle crunch, Nershey's miniatures, 100 Grand

Leaving her with: a small pile of 3 Muskateers bars,York peppermint patties, and Dum Dum lollipops.

Poor Caroline ;)

Halloween 2013

Despite my earlier misgivings, we did not run out of Halloween candy this year! We almost did, but not quite. We shut the porch lights off at 9:30, but the trick or treating was winding down by then. We did have a little "incident" which is that Ben had a meltdown about his costume, claiming he didn't like it and feeling self conscious about wearing it. So he spent about an hour sulking on the porch while I gave out candy and tried to explain to him that a) his costume was fine, b) even if it wasn't for some reason no one would care and c) his explanation for why he had picked a costume he didn't like - because he didn't want to disappoint the sales person at the store - made no sense at all because the sales person gets paid whether he buys the costume or not, and wouldn't have cared one way or another if he liked the costume or not. And the person who DID care, his MOTHER, who had paid good money for the costume and now had to sit here listening to him whine, was the one whose feelings he should more carefully consider ;) Eventually he was persuaded to go trick or treating so when Joel brought Caroline back to put her to bed, I took Ben and Becca out and Ben raced around trying to make up for lost time, and Becca, I suspect, double dipped at a number of houses. Below are some pictures from the evening :)