The last few days :(

Monday, Katie got 6 misquito bites. Tuesday she had a fever, was sneezing and coughing and just miserable. After a screaming fit well into the AM we realized she may be constipated as well. How does all of this happen to a little girl in two days?

We ended up having to take her to the dr for the bites. They are infected. She has to take an antibiotic orally and one to rub on the skin. She also has a cold and we treated the other. How awful is this?


She is feeling much better tonight. Still congested and a slight fever but overall she seems happier.

New Jersey Childrens Museum

This weekend we chose another location to take the girls to. We chose this childrens museum. The only downside is that adults had to pay as well. There is nothing for adults to do. This place was completely child-friendly. Everything is at their level, everything is childproofed and safe for them to touch. There were about 20 different "rooms" for children to explore. There was a drs office, ambulance, dinosaur cave, castle, living room, pizzeria, grocery store, construction site, dance studio and it goes on and on. What I was saying before is, the adults job is to follow their child, sit in assigned areas to view your child while they play (you are able to interact if you wish but my girls had so much fun being on their 'own') and then you cleaned up. I had to pay to get in to watch and clean up after my kids. I don't mind watching them or cleaning up after them but to pay for it? It was only $42/family of 4 but still.

They had an awesome time.

5 weeks from tomorrow, the girls start school. I'm very excited to open this door for them and watch them learn so much.

A vent..

This is probably going to turn into some long rant but I need to get this out and where better, right?

6:30
I wake up. I'm late getting up. I have to leave at 7 to drive 45 minutes to the dealership to pick up my car before heading to work. Throwing my hair into a ponytail, I get dressed in capri sweats and my work t-shirt. I'm stylin' (we can dress down from time to time, no biggie). I kiss the girls and the hubby and get into the rental car. Drive to Jersey City, 40 minutes.

7:40
I am notified that the mechanics are not there and cannot let me take my car until they have tested another thing. I'm annoyed but it's got to be fixed right (my car has trouble backing up).

8:28
I walk into work with 2 minutes to spare. I grabbed breakfast on the way in and am settling into work.

9:00
I start circle time and we are reviewing our letters A-F and we talking about moving up in Sept. Snack is served and I start preparing for art.

10:00
Preparing art, I get paged. Tina, line one. I answer the phone. My husband is on the other line. "We have a problem" "Hello? Donald?" "Yes it's Donald. We have a huge problem." "Oookay, what?" "Karly swallowed my fathers xanax." "Oh no!" I left my room (don't worry, there is an assistant) and go to the nurses office. "My daughter swallowed a xanax. I need to go." I grab my stuff and run out the door. On the way, I call Donald and tell him to call poison control. He says that he found some tiny pieces of the pill. It had been chewed up and spit out. I call peditrician and she tells me to head to emergency room.

12:00
I leave the emergency room. They tell me that Karly needs to sleep it off. She's passed out in the car. I'm supposed to watch her and make sure she's still alert and reacts and that her breathing is regular. I take her home. She doesn't move when I carry her in, put her in bed and her sister went over to lay on her and kiss her. Not a good feeling. Then I have to listen to my husband and his family fight. Basically all wants sympathy. I only care that Karly is going to be okay. I don't care about whos mad at who. Should they have been more careful? Hell yes. Should this of happened? Hell no. However, when you've worked with kids as long as I have, you learn that sometimes Shit. Just. Happens. In hindsight you find 100 ways for it not to happen but it does. I just Thank God that what happened wasn't serious and my baby girl is okay.

1:30
Donald stays home from work to watch her, I drive to drop off rental and pick up our car. It cost $130. Go to pick up my car, they tell me nothing is wrong. I paid 130 bucks so they could fix my car and they can't find anything wrong. Gave me a few suggestions but didn't fix anything. Drove home because what can I do.

3:00
Get home. The package I ordered 3 weeks ago still hasn't arrived. I go and check it and call them. It's lost. They can't find it. I call UPS. I call JCP. JCP cancells my order and refunds my money then reorders it for express delivery, no charge.

4:30
Take the girls outside in the backyard and let them play for hours. It's 5:30 now, there is a breeze, very comfortable and I have no plans in moving from my patio chair unless the girls need me.

A day at the beach..

Was just what this family needed.

We left around 7, met some friends and headed to the beach. We arrived around 8 and paid the $21 for parking and entrance. The beach look brand new even though it's been around since the 1800's. It was very clean. This beach was very family friendly. There were moms, dads, grandmas and grandpas and of course, lots of children. No teens with their radios, cursing, walking around nearly naked. It was very nice.

The sand was white and clean. The water was warm. The girls sat on the sand under the umbrella and played with the sand all morning. They walked around a bit, we tried the water but they didn't want anything to do with that. The day was very relaxing for us because we just got to relax. Usually when we go anywhere, Donald is chasing one and I am chasing the other. We sat in our beach chairs and watched the girls. Just sat there relaxing. We needed that in a huge way.

Birthdays and stuff..

Katherine and Karly .. 2 years old..

On the 14th, I left work early, ended up having to take my stupid car in to have service and that took two hours. The girls didn't mind, they have fun everywhere. It rained so we had to change their party to Thursday.

On the 15th, I worked until 430 is then left early again. My check is going to suck lol. Anyway, I got home and we started getting everything ready. Guests started showing up and all was well. My In-Laws don't like anyone coming over so they didn't join in on the celebrations. Didn't even come outside for cake or buy the girls anything. I don't know.. We had a great time. They girls were running around and playing with the other children. We had a great time. Girls didn't get in bed until 1130 and slept until 8 this morning. I didn't take many pictures but below are some..

Today I left work really early. Tomorrow is Donalds last day of vacation and since I couldn't take another vacation, I tried to leave early every day so I could spend extra time. Today we went shopping for a beach umbrella. We tried 5 and below because a friend said to check there. They didn't have one so we tried another. Then we tried the Christmas Tree shoppe, nothing. We got some chair umbrellas and called it a day. When we went into a liquidation store, we told the girls they needed to sit in the cart. Karly said no no but I explained she had to. In the store, she started screaming "down down". With twins, when you let one down, you let the other down. Then they run..in opposite directions. the liquidation store is not the place for this. Karly got so upset we had to take her to the car to calm her down. She was convulsing, couldn't breathe, it was all just silly. Donald got upset. I brought Katie to the car and we left.

While in the car, I gave the girls their markers and coloring books because there was traffic. They love to color. Karly started saying "daddy, I color" "daddy, I color green" Donald turned around and choked. I asked him what and he hid his face and was laughing. He told me not to look. Karly started laughing and said "Momma I color green!" When we got to the store, I got out of the car and opened the back door. OMGoodness! She did color green. All over her legs, feet, arms and hands. Her carseat and was starting on her neck. She was green. Not lines or drawings, she covered herself. She colored in the parts of her feet showing out of her sandal. I wanted to laugh, I wanted to cry. I took her marker, put the cap on and while I listened to Karly say "Green" over and over (i'm happy she knows the color) I took out wet wipes and started wiping all the marker off. She had a green tint to her skin but what could we do. We decided to go home and order dinner since our daughter was green.

When I got home, my neighbor was outside. Our daughters like to play together so we chatted while they ran around. She looked at me and said "Why is she green?" I told her the story and she laughed. After they each ate and entire slice of pizza and a cup of milk, they were dunked in the tub. Karly is back to her normal color..Not Green!

2 years ago..

Two years ago, my husband and I were celebrating his birthday at home. Not going anywhere. Why? Well, we were expecting our twins arrival the next morning. We couldn't wait to get them out so we could meet them.

Tomorrow they turn 2. I just can't believe they are 2. Where did the time go?

They have started 'reading' books to me. They open the book and point to all pictures and tell me whats there. I'm actually figuring out what they say haha. Katie says the first sounds of some words but we are getting there.

We are having a small bbq for the girls tomorrow, around 14 guests, nothing huge. The theme was ladybugs and butterflies (our theme for the girls since they were born) but they have become obsessed with Dora. So far their gifts all include Dora haha. We bought them Dora guitars because the girls are very muscial and love to dance.

I want to enroll the girls in some extra curricular activities but my work schedule makes it impossible. I'm hoping to look up some dance classes and gymnastics for the weekends but I know that these two classes are a bit pricey. In the town next to us, an 8-week gymnastic program is $300. Multiply that by 2 and it's no longer affordable at all. I'm hoping there are some in our town that aren't as high.

Today I started cleaning out the extra room to get it ready for next year. It's fun building a new classroom. I got to spend two hours going through magazines picking out stuff for the new room. I'll only be there for this coming school year then I'll go back to preschool. Exciting!

The girls are watching Dora and I need to run their bath .. I'll post birthday photos in a few days!

My Journey through Motherhood

Lets try this to see how it works..

 

My new netbook has something called Live Writer.  You click on it and type in your thoughts and it blogs it for you.  I know going to my blog doesn’t take all that much time but it’s kind of neat just the same. 

 

Work has slowed down.  The number of children in my class room has gone from 20 to 12.  Today I had 8.  When you have so few children, there are more things to do.  Today was so laid back.  We even poured sand on the tables and mixed it with water to make sand castles.  We had a lot of fun and I didn’t even mind spending the 45 minutes they were eating, cleaning up.   This year we had a tough class and spent more of the time just getting down to work and I forgot to loosen up and just have fun.  Working full time with children then coming home to my children can be a little much.  I love them all, well in different ways, but it became so demanding.  I think I need the summer to try and get back LOVING what I do again. 

 

Next year, I am going back to Toddlers.  I don’t mind because that is my favorite age group.  2-3 is the best age group.  However, that means I will have 14 – 2 year olds at work for 9 hours then picking up MY 2 year olds from the other toddler and going home with them haha.  It should be interesting and fun but i can see the stresses coming. 

 

The other thing I wanted to blog about was the girls routine.  We were really strict about the 730 bedtime this year.  No matter what, they were in bed at 730.  At 7, we would start reading to them.  Now that they are older and it’s light out longer, we’ve pushed bedtime back about 45 minutes.  In fact, we’ve changed their entire schedule to fit school.  I still want their bedtime to be 730 but I’m just not ready to say goodnight to them when I don’t get to see them until 6 and most nights an hour and a half a day isn’t enough time.  So their schedule is

630-wake up

7-breakfast

745-drop off with grandma

930-snack

1130-lunch

1215-nap

215-wake up

300-snack

630-dinner

730-bedtime

They’ve been doing so well with this schedule the last few weeks.  Some things that haven’t gone as smooth are teeth brushing and book time.  They’ve learned to talk..a lot (more on Katie and speech below) so when we read they laugh and scream out the words.  This is fantastic as repeating stories that have been read is the first step of reading, however, when you are trying to get them into relax mode and they can’t because they get so excited, it backfires and they start giggling and playing.  I am not going to stop bedtime story time because it’s just an all around fun time but I wish I knew how to calm them down.  We’ve started playing calming music during storytime.  Toothbrushing… the most hated activity in our house right now.  I hate brushing their teeth, they hate having their teeth brushed it’s just wonderful :(.  We have had to hold Karly while the other brushes her teeth while she screams.  My mother in law says I shouldn’t force it but hygiene is NOT a choice.  You will take a bath, you will change your clothes, you will change your diaper, you will get your hair brushed, your face washed and you will brush your teeth.  Tonight, she let me do a quick job because I promised her I’d read her her favorite story and I kept telling her how proud I was that she was letting me brush her teeth.  Then I gave her the toothbrush and she practiced while I read the book.  A light at the end of the tunnel?  I hope so. 

 

I wanted to call early intervention because I didn’t feel Katies speech was where it should be.  I spoke to my director and told her that if Katie were a child in my class, I would recommend the parent call EI but she’s not a child in my class, she’s MY child.  My baby girl.  My perfect baby girl.  I put if off and asked some of my friends that know Katie if it was just me being overly worried or if they thought there was an issue.  Everyone, even my friend that teaches special education, says that there is nothing wrong with her speech.  I think the problem is is that Katie and Karly are so completely different in everything they do.  Karly has very clear speech, repeats everything you say, knows what you are saying and and respomds.  Katie on the other had, doesn’t answer yes or no, doesn’t tell you what she wants and most of the time I don’t understand what she’s saying.  Everyone says that Karly is advanced and Katie is exactly where she should be.  My gut is still telling me to have her evaluated but we decided that she will start school and give her a few months and see if that helps her because more vocal.  I know my mother in law doesn’t work with her and they do so few things that I know school will be the best thing for both of them.

 

Terrible twos..Karly is at this stage.  I was hoping I’d be the parent that says “No, we never went through the terrible twos” but I’m not.  She is your typical toddler.  Everything is hers, everything she wants is hers, everything that is yours is..you guessed it, hers.  And the tantrums…my goodness the tantrums.  They are so loud and she doesn’t care where she is.  People stare at me like I’m killing her.  We’ve started doing time-outs, they work some of the time.   She is also taken to kicking and hitting, sometimes biting when she doesn’t get her way.  All I can is thank goodness Katie has decided there is no fun in being terrible lol. 

 

Bon Jovi is tomorrow!!!  I won’t see my kids until Saturday which sucks..A LOT.. but I need this and will enjoy it immensely. 

My Journey through Motherhood

Another week down..

So tonight I had to make myself sit and work on the yearbook. I like the yearbook but I don't. Its a pain in the butt but it's nice to give it to the kids at the end of the year. It's just a lot of extra work that I don't really have time for but it's almost done.

The girls birthday is coming up :) Will write about more details another night.

I was talking to my aunt tonight and she suggested that next year when I go to MO, I should come see her and we could all do something. Sounds like a great plan if I can just implement it. I do so much driving that another 10 or so hours sounds like a lot but I really want to go.

It's a three day weekend! Other than the yearbook and lesson plans, I really don't have anything planned. May do some yardwork for the girls party and have a bbq for the fourth but thats about it. We are going down the block to watch the Macys Fireworks on the Hudson. They are blocking off all the streets where I live for the crowds so I won't be able to move my car anyway.

Next Friday, some friends and I are going to see Bon Jovi. Never been a "fan" but it was a birthday gift so I might as well have a blast with some really great friends. Donald will stay home with the girls. I will miss them like crazy but hey this mama never gets out. Might do me some good :).

Happy 4th of July!