The Hunt

Well, it's just me and my little boy this weekend. Matt has ventured to northern parts in hunt of the prevalent deer. He's got a license to shoot "anything that walks in front of me," says he. Apparently it's for bucks and black bear. I know that he's excited about this and I hope that he has a good time with my brother and my dad. I just hope that they all make it back safely and all that stuff.

And, Max and my dad came by this afternoon while they were waiting for Matt to get home from work. So, Joseph and I got to hang out with them for a bit. Joseph was so funny. He was showing off all of his tractors and trucks. Then he had to show Max how he runs up and down the hallway "boom"ing into things with his giant dump truck (which he just got back after repeatedly "push[ing] Staley dog"). It was just too cute. Hopefully we'll be able to see them a bit Sunday night when they get home from The Hunt. Otherwise, we'll wait until Christmas.

After everyone left, I learned that "Joseph ride Papa new truck Max Dada." Apparently he wanted to go with...maybe in ten years or so...

All done

So, I've apparently reached my limit. Or my sinuses just hate me. Either way, I kind of crashed and burned today. It was kind of fun, actually. The end result is me in my house all by myself for 7 whole hours!! That NEVER happens!! I've got a whole pile of things that I should be doing (big shocker there, I know), but I'm taking some time for myself to rest and recuperate a bit. And eat Cheez-Its Party Mix. And I don't feel too guilty, either. Maybe a little guilty, but not too much.

Every family has one, I guess...

The kid who won't eat. That's mine.

I hear about all of these kids of my friends who are like 14 months and 28 pounds or something like that. Joseph will be 2 in 2 weeks, is probably 33" (if we're lucky), and about 23 or 24 pounds. Food has never particularly been an interest for him. He was diagnosed with reflux at about 8 months old, but it had been bothering him since he was probably about 4 months old. So, he had a sour stomach while he was first experiencing lots of foods, and he didn't eat much because it hurt his stomach. We also figured out at that point that he had a dairy sensitivity, which apparently also made food a little less than appealing.

So, now I've got a kid who's almost 2 and doesn't eat much at all. Thankfully he takes his gummy vitamins, but it's a challenge to get food groups into him. He liked veggies when he was little--corn and peas were always hits. Now? Nope. He shoots them across the room. Beans? No. Tomatoes? No. Potatoes? No. Broccoli? No. You get the picture. It's kind of frustrating to hear that other people's kids will eat anything and everything, and mine would rather go hungry. I'm guessing that he'll grow out of it, and he does go hungry from time to time as we try to teach him to eat what's available.

So, I've learned how to sneak a bit of nutrition into him. V8 Fusion is a big favorite. He likes the Orange-Tangerine the best. It tastes like fruit juice, but actually has vegetables in it. We found these juice boxes called Fruitables made by Apple and Eve that are the same thing. Hopefully he'll learn to enjoy food...not that I want a rolly poly round kid, but it'd be okay if he tried new stuff.

*Sigh*

Big Boy Words

It's just been hitting me that my baby boy is rapidly turning into a little boy. As his second birthday is right around the corner, it's been so neat to watch him change. And, his language is in one of those "booms" that I'm sure happens with language development. He learns new words every day and does really well with applying words that he knows to describe things that he doesn't...hard to explain, but neat to see.

Anyway, with this multitude of words has come better pronunciation of some old favorites. For example, we're up to "tra-tur" from "tur-tur" for tractor. "Tray" is up from "tee" for train. And, we don't have "wee-woo tuck"s anymore, we have "fie enn"s for fire engines. Can you tell that we talk about a lot of transportation? A particular favorite of mine is "hay-tra-tur" for helicopter. It kind of sounds like heli-tractor, which I find terribly amusing.

I know that we'll work our way through this baby talk, but it's kind of bittersweet to realize that he's growing out of it already. Obviously, I don't want him to be 10 and talking about heli-tractors, but some of his words are really cute. And, he's figured out how to say his name. I know that this might be a little late for that, but I think that the "J" sound is kind of difficult to put together. He used to just refer to himself as "baby," but we're up to "Do-suf", which I think is pretty good.

I'm able to understand almost all of what he says, and he's really good at showing you what he's talking about if you don't understand it. I realize that, to an outside adult, he probably sounds rather incoherent, but we're getting there. A couple of words that he's never seemed to have an issue with are "no" and "mine." Go figure. I hope to record him babbling away one of these days so that I can play it for him when he's 15 and embarrass the hell out of him. Heh heh heh. ;)

Losing

I have a student who has had a rough semester. His aunt died in late August. She was 43 and it was a suspected drug overdose. His step-grandmother died about a month ago. And, he found his 73 year old grandfather dead on his floor last week. He's a sweet kid who's having kind of a hard time coping. It seems like he looks at all of the people around him with a kind of clock over their head that's counting down to the time that he loses them. It also seems like he might not have the greatest support system in his life. But, he's made good use of our guidance services at school and seems to be hanging in there.

We were chatting this afternoon about our respective experiences of finding our deceased grandparents; I think that he felt better knowing that someone else had experienced and survived a similar encounter. And, we were talking about the suddenness of death, sometimes. And, we were talking about the things that so often go unsaid to the ones that we lose. And, since it's my 'Grandma' time of year, I was feeling perhaps more chatty than usual. I think that it helped him a little to just talk and share. Maybe. I know that I'm not qualified to be a real assistance, but I'd like to think that his afternoon might have been a little bit less stressful. Maybe.

Daily blogging = failure

You know, we do the best that we can...so...there.

I think that I've decided that both Matt and Joseph had H1N1. Joseph had a fever between 100 and 103.5 for five days...up and down, but never gone. He had a gross cough that complicated itself into croup. And, all he wanted to do was lay around and snuggle. Matt had a fever for four days, gross cough, chills, and body aches. So, I'm kind of hoping that's what it was since we can't manage to get in to Joseph's pediatrician for a flu shot. Hopefully I won't have to worry too much about it now.

And, I'm officially half way through my first master's class. I don't know what I was expecting, but this is a lot of work. I'm making it, and I think that I'm doing all right with it, it's just particularly stressful to try to keep up with all of my other responsibilities, and add student duties to the mix. Our house is just disgusting, and Matt is perpetually ticked off at me for being stressed out. So, I'm not sure if this was the best decision, but I'm going to persevere. I'm not getting any younger, and this is the only way that I'll earn more money as a teacher. I guess that we'll all just saddle up for another 2-3 years of this. Oh boy.

And here's another picture from this summer for your viewing enjoyment. We were at THE Yankee Candle and Joseph was coloring the flowers.

Innovation and YouTube

This daily blogging thing is going to be hard. I feel like a lot of my life is pretty trivial and rather un-interesting to the casual observer. So, I'm going to bring something to this virtual table that was a topic of discussion today.

Election day is a teacher workshop day in my district. So, this afternoon I went to this workshop on Interdisciplinary Planning (IDP). It was ok. Not great, but ok. The best part of it was something that didn't even work. The presenter had a link in his presentation to this that ended up not working. Well, I don't know if it was really that version, but that's the one that I like the best right now. It really speaks to the absolute necessity for innovation in the classroom. The intention was to start a conversation about IDP and how we can integrate that into our classes, but I think that anything that gets teachers to think creatively is worthwhile. And, teachers are notoriously the worst students, so it's pretty futile to try to keep us on task. So, I came away from today with some energy to try to integrate some cool stuff into my classroom. We'll see how that goes.
I had more complete thoughts, but I'm currently distracted by Matt who is on the other couch crying (I'm not kidding, he has real tears) and coughing up whatever lungs are left since he's recovered from his flu over this. Ahhh, the future of America...I have hope for Joseph.

Camera and Mending

So, I found a cord for the camera and cleaned off all of the pictures. There are some cute ones from the beach this summer. And, there are some cute ones from a trip to Chicago. And, there are some cute ones from today. You get a handful of sand from this summer and two from the last two days.Thankfully, both of my boys are on the mend. Matt slept all day while my mom hung out with Joseph. I went to school and got some things in line if I should need to stay home later this week. I think that Joseph should be well enough to go back to school tomorrow, and Matt's probably going to take one more day. Phew.

This first picture was yesterday. This is pretty much how we spent our weekend.And then, today. Better? Why, yes!

F-ell-U

I need to find the cord for my camera. I found the camera this weekend, and it's got some really cute pictures from this summer on it. So, I need to find the cord.

And, the flu needs to go f- itself. If that is in fact what has made our house unclean. I feel like I need to go find bells for us, or something... I thought that Joseph picked up my cold and it complicated itself into the croup. Matt has a fever, though. I never had a fever, as far as I can tell. I tend not to take my temperature, though. It's harder to ignore illness when you're more informed. Whatever.

I'm most concerned about what to do with the young man tomorrow. He's been fever-free all day and has been perky with the exception of the 3-hour scream/cry/whine-fest that ensued after he got woken up from his nap after only an hour. I think that he's going to go back to school. We'll see how that goes. As for the big guy, he's going to be on his own tomorrow. That's why he's the big guy.