Little Ducky Duddle

Was swimming in a puddle, a puddle, a puddle so small...

I just have to tell you how delighted I was tonight to hear Kyle singing this song (among others he has learned at swim lessons) as he was splashing around in our neighbor's pool. For some reason he has had a really difficult time becoming comfortable in the water at swim lessons this Spring. It was bad enough that I have commissioned Amy to pick him up from school and take him to Miss Colleen's house for lessons so that I am not there for sympathy. Amy has done a great job with him and I have received numerous compliments from Miss Colleen on what a fantastic friend I have in her. However, he was still having issues with not wanting to swim. She did however let me know that today at his lesson he got in the pool on his own. This is the child who we could not keep out of the pool last summer, so it's been quite a shock to all of us that he had developed this fear. Anyway, we went to our neighbor's for a pool party tonight and Kyle told us he didn't want to swim. I took his suit just in case. After about 45 minutes of watching the rest of the kids playing in the water he decided he wanted to get in. He played on the step for a while and I looked over and saw him singing the bubble song ("B is for bubbles and bubblegum..."). Then he started kicking his little legs and singing "Little ducky duddle". I was so excited! He stayed in the water for quite a while and didn't even want to come out even though his little teeth were chattering. Derek put him in the spa for a while to warm up a bit and then we headed home. He did not want to leave. So I guess we have made it past the fear. It will be interesting to see how he does on Wednesday at lessons. Only 3 more to go! I will be able to go watch him on Monday since Katie doesn't have school and she'll already be with Amy. I'm looking forward to seeing what progress he has made. Katie is doing such a great job by the way. She has become quite the little fish (or whale as she told me this afternoon)!

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Cat Scratch Fever!

Is everyone singing that song now? I am...

Well, the story begins with Fluffy Tail. Fluffy Tail is a neighborhood cat (I think she's a stray but Derek seems to think she belongs to one of the neighbors) that terrorizes Owey through the window. Seriously I have flashbacks from my childhood when my sister's Labrador Retriever, Dexter, came crashing through the window and running up the stairs chasing after my cat when these two (Fluffy Tail and Owey) start fighting through the window. The kids have named Fluffy Tail because obviously that is her distinguishing characteristic (the other cat that roams the neighborhood is affectionately referred to as "Curly Tail". So Fluffy Tail and Owey pretty much fight through the windows on a daily basis. I usually try to run outside and scare her away - we've tried glasses of water, spraying her with the hose, kicking a beach ball at her and shaking the bushes. She always comes back. And many times she comes back at 2am in the morning.

So last night I think they started to go after each other through the front window around 11pm. I opened the front door to scare Fluffy Tail away and Derek came into the study to get Owey to calm down. For some reason, he tried to pick her up. Why he picked her up, I don't know. I asked him that when I saw him trying to dislodge her claws and mouth from his hand and arm. She was clamped down and they both twisted this way and that and she finally dropped to the ground. He had several small puncture wounds which we cleaned up with running water. Then I sprayed some Dermoplast on it to try to get the pain to subside.

This afternoon I called Derek to see if he'd be home early to mow the lawn. He wasn't going to be, so I tackled the yard all by myself (and did a pretty good job I might add!). I am trying to get the house ready for Amy's bridal shower and had some things planned for this evening. Derek called me around 5:30 to let me know he was on his way home. Then he says, "I think my hand is infected." I thought he was joking because I had completely forgotten about last night's episode. Then I realized he was serious. His hand was swollen and red with a 2 inch circle at the spot where she had bitten him. We decided to go pick up dinner and then head to the emergency room. As we got closer he decided that I should drop him off and then go get dinner and bring it back to him. It was a good plan because as everyone can imagine Friday night in the emergency room is fairly busy. So I headed off to a local fast food place (Raising Cane's - yummy!) and called Amy. She said to bring the kids over (thank God!) so that they didn't have to sit in the emergency room. I got back to the hospital about 7:45 and Derek was still waiting to be seen. They finally took him back and to my surprise they wouldn't let me go with him which I thought was weird. So I chatted with the people in the waiting room and watched SpongeBob Squarepants. That is not my favorite show and it's even more annoying when you cannot hear the words. I finally got sick of it and moved to the other side of the waiting room and found a magazine. He finally came out about 9:15 limping along because he had to get 2 shots, an antibiotic and a tetanus shot. Then we had 3 prescriptions to fill. He's in pain, but obviously not too much pain. He received another birthday present today in the mail, Guitar Hero Encore, Rock the 80s which he had to try out tonight.

So back to Fluffy Tail: I have a friend who was willing to make Fluffy Tail disappear (nothing sinister, just take her to the shelter), but for some reason we cannot bring ourselves to subject her to that fate. She's a beautiful cat, very loving and tame. She just really wants to be an inside cat in our home. Can't blame her, we have a nice kitty home! It's very well protected too.

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Anyone wondering where I went?

Well, I was crossing my fingers that we were over and done with all of the viruses in this house. That is, until tonight. I got sick again on Sunday night with a stomach virus, but forced myself to go to work on Monday...and to swim lessons...and to Chuck E Cheese for the soccer party. I made it through and was even able to eat a sandwich at the party (I had one bite of pizza and skipped the cake though). Katie said she had a stomach ache on Monday but she never really got sick. Kyle's been fine (so far). Then tonight the stomach bug got Derek. I called him at 6:30 and he asked me to come pick him up from work. For those of you who know where we live in relation to where he works, you will understand when I knew at that moment just how sick he was. Luckily I thought ahead and asked a friend who he works with if she would go pick him up and I could just meet them at her house. She was able to go get him and get back to her house and get her kids bathed before I even got to her house...and she's halfway between our house and work. Poor Derek was too sick to be moved at that point so we camped out in their house for another 45 minutes until he felt able to get up and walk to the car. I felt so bad, but the kids were having a blast. I really hope no one over there gets sick!

Other than that I've been busily trying to get ready for a bridal shower that I am hosting over here this weekend. Now the fun part will be trying to keep the kids from messing up the clean house!

The other news of the week is that I accepted a job for next school year. I will be teaching Pre-K two days per week at Trinity Klein. I'm so excited about it. I was really having reservations about even working next year, but four-year-olds are a huge difference from two-year-olds. And I love the staff over there and am really excited about working with all of them. But the best part of my week is that there are only 10 more days of school for this year! Hooray!

I guess that's all the news for now. Hopefully Derek's bug will be gone as quickly as mine was. He's miserable right now.

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TGIF

I'm so glad it's Friday and that we get a little break this weekend. Derek and I are both still a bit under the weather so it will be nice to rest a little.

Today was Muffins with Mom at school. Unfortunately this mom was awoken at 2:30am by a screaming little boy who wanted to be rocked back to sleep. I tried my best to not give in, but fifteen minutes later there I was rocking him back to sleep. His screaming woke up Katie so she had shuffled herself downstairs to my bed while I was shuffling upstairs to stop the screaming. So in an effort to sleep a little, I camped out in her room after I put Kyle back to sleep. Big mistake - I missed my alarm clock going off. So while we had planned to get up early so we could go have muffins together, we ended up being 30 minutes late for school! And, it was an early release day. I usually just leave her in extended care on those days since Kyle is still there until 2:30, but I decided I would take her to lunch since we missed the muffins. So, Amy and I headed over there and took her to Chili's, one of her favorite restaurants, then we ran errands and got her a new coloring book. She loved having us all to herself. It's been a while since she has gotten all the attention. Her last soccer game is tomorrow. We were going to skip it since we were supposed to go to Halliburton Day at the Ranch, but neither of us think we can handle a "day at the ranch" right now.

My kitchen is finally coming together. I moved some of my things out of the family room and into the kitchen to go with the blue/white theme. I also picked a few items up half off at Hobby Lobby today. So now the window treatments are done and the tops of the cabinets are decorated. Now if I could just keep it clean! Somehow I manage to junk it up every other day with piles. I also got the wall hanging hung, but no picture of that yet.



I hear Katie and Kyle upstairs "rock-a-bye-ing" so I guess I should get ready to put him to bed. He loves to sit in his glider all by himself looking at books before bedtime. So off to bed we go!

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Picnic in the Park

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Somehow I'll make it work

So today was the last soccer practice and our first swim lessons. A few weeks ago when I signed the kids up for swim lessons I didn't realize that we wouldn't be done with soccer yet. For some reason I had 6 weeks in my head, but failed to calculate the 2 weeks we missed because of Spring Break and Easter. So the season went on longer than I thought. No biggie, we had plenty of time (15 minutes) to get from swim lessons to the Y for soccer practice. What I failed to properly gauge was the travel time between Kyle's swim lesson at 3:30 and Katie's swim lesson at 5pm. No, they are not back to back which is my first problem, but there was no way to work that into the schedule. My second problem is that I allotted myself an hour between Kyle's lesson and Katie's lesson to go pick her up from school and get back to Colleen's house, which you would think would be plenty of time. What I failed to allot myself time for was changing Kyle out of wet clothes into dry clothes and changing Katie out of dry clothes into a swimsuit. I also failed to allot myself time for RUSH HOUR TRAFFIC! The crazy thing is that I shouldn't have even really had a problem today since Kyle decided he wasn't going to swim. He got in the water and got out of the water. We put him back in the water and he got back out of the water. And a third time, he got in the water and started screaming and got back out of the water. At that point Colleen said, this is not the Kyle I know. He was the one that always wanted to be in the water and had no fear last summer. We decided that he had not had a long enough nap (he only slept about 45 minutes at school today), so she said just to let him sit and watch. So technically, he wasn't even really wet by the time we left. But for some reason it took me forever to get to Trinity and back. I will be trying a different route on Wednesday...and I'll also be getting Katie dressed for swimming before we leave Trinity.

As for Katie and her swim lesson, we were about 10 minutes late so she missed her favorite part which is floating on the barbells across the pool. She also was nervous since we haven't seen Colleen since last summer and she didn't know the two other girls in her class. I'm so very thankful for Colleen though because she is so patient with Katie and even though Katie did not utter one word to her today, Colleen said, "that's okay, I speak Katie Rude's language" and she gave her a big hug. Katie did go under today and picked up the rings off the bottom of the pool, so at least one of them got their hair wet!

Back to soccer. Today was the last practice and the YMCA presented the kids with a special wristband for their award. They were so excited to get them. Then Coach Tim had a special surprise - he had set it up with the fire station for us to have a special visit. They had the ladder truck out and sprayed the trees and then let all the kids (and some adults) have turns with the hoses. Derek had his camera phone, so the pictures aren't too great, but at least we got some. Katie had so much fun.

Katie getting her wristband:


Putting out the "fire" (spraying an orange cone):


Katie and Sam in front of the ladder truck:


Anyway, I will somehow figure out the travel time between the two lessons and will make it work. I just have to be careful because I don't want to get a ticket like the other driver in our family did last week when he picked Katie up from school! Tee hee hee

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Stop-Loss

Last night we dropped the kids off at Parents Night Out and had a date night for Derek's birthday. We had dinner at Berryhill and then headed over to the movie theater at Market Street to see Stop-Loss. I hadn't even heard of the movie, nor knew the definition of "stop-loss", but out of the choices available agreed that would probably be the best one to see.

The movie is about a group of soldiers who were fighting in Iraq and came home to Texas on leave. Two of the soldiers had completed their contracts and were scheduled to get out of the military. After turning in his gear and taking his paperwork to be signed off, King, played by Ryan Phillippe, learns that he has received orders to return to Iraq at the end of the month. He has been 'stop-lossed' by the President and is not being let out of his contract. Instead of following the orders, he goes AWOL in an attempt to pull some strings through a senator who promised to help him with anything he needed.

The movie was really eye-opening and deep. I did not even know that the government could force these soldiers back into duty and there are so many who have been affected by it. I think the end of the movie said over 81,000 soldiers had been stop-lossed prior to 2007 and the numbers were not yet in for 2007. Those of you who know what we went through 2 years ago with Derek potentially going to Afghanistan will understand when I tell you that this one really hit home. I left in the middle of the movie to go to the restroom and just prayed over and over, "Thank you God for not sending him over there, thank you." To say that these soldiers' minds were a little messed up is a complete understatement. I cannot even bear to think what we might be going through had Derek not been released from his orders. I know that there are men and women who go over there and come back fine, but so many of them don't. Surprisingly, I did not cry in this one. It was disturbing, but I am glad that I saw it.


I do want to give a big thank you to those men and women who are sacrificing over there. We have a close friend who will be going on his second tour to Iraq this summer. We pray that God's angels will keep him safe while he is away from his family.

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Happy Birthday Daddy!

You would have thought it was Christmas morning in this house today. Katie was up bright and early asking "Where's the blue present I decorated for Daddy? He needs to open his presents!" So we were all up at 7am sitting around the living room so Daddy could open his presents. Earlier this week he talked me into giving him his 2nd wireless guitar for Guitar Hero so that we could play together. Katie let that secret leak out. Since he already had opened that one, I tried to surprise him with a gift I knew he really wanted but wasn't expecting. So Katie and I went on a covert mission yesterday afternoon to pick up the gift. So when she gave him the gift this morning she announced, "Daddy you have to open your CAMERA first!" I gasped and said, "Katie! That was a secret!" Little did I know that the "secret" had already been divulged last night. So while I tried my best to surprise him, a little birdie surprised him before I did. That's okay, he said he was still surprised when she told him last night since he wasn't expecting it. Or course I'm as excited about his present as he is. Here are some shots I took this morning before church:




And of course I had to throw in some flowers because it's not all about the kids! My mom, sisters and I had a "girls day" in Brenham about 3 years ago. We visited a nursery there and I bought this plant to remember our trip. This is the first time it has bloomed since I bought it. So here's to "Girls Day"; we need to do it again soon!

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Go Titans!

What a beautiful day for a soccer game! Katie had fun as usual and her team did a great job. It has been fun watching her this season as she is starting to grasp the concept a little more. Her coaches are fantastic and we received news today that her team has been named Core Values Team of the Month. This is an award voted on by parents, coaches and YMCA personnel and is given out once a season. So, out of 120 coaches and 1300 players, our little Titans won! I am so proud of them and the coaches that we have. My absolute favorite thing about soccer practice is when there is an airplane break - if there is an airplane flying overhead and a player sees it, the coaches and all the players lay down on the ground and watch it as it flies over. I love that our coaches realize that there is more to life than soccer practice (especially to 4 and 5 year olds). Unfortunately the picture above does not have all of the kids in it, but it's the best team shot I have.

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Painting

I decided to finish painting my wall hanging this morning. It's only taken me 8 months to finish it...the other ones I did only took a few days, but I just never got around to working on this one. Of course Kyle wanted to help paint, so here he is working on his own masterpiece. Hopefully I'll get mine hung this weekend.

Obviously, Kyle is not at school today. He woke up from his nap yesterday with 103.2 fever. Of course he's doing fine today, but I couldn't send him to school since he'd had a fever yesterday. Unfortunately, I've got the same illness.

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Sick again...

The good news is I got to leave work early today, the bad news is that Kyle has a 103.3 temperature. I don't think this is related to the stomach bug since he's really congested and had trouble sleeping last night. Poor little guy. I had to send one of his little friends home from school with a fever today too.

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Creekside Park

Today we went to take pictures in the bluebonnets (see post below). We probably should have gone last week, but due to the stomach bug we weren't able. But they were still pretty. My friend told me about this great patch in the Village of Creekside Park which is the new village of The Woodlands. Unfortunately we went early and there was still dew on the flowers, so the kids were not too happy about walking in them. Afterward we played at the playground at Creekside Pavillion. It's a beautiful area.

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Bluebonnets!

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The bug lives on...

Sadly this time it got me. I was up all night last night and spent all day in bed. I missed yet another soccer game and spending time with my parents and Laura and Roy for my dad's birthday. The good news is that it seems to have been short-lived with me. I was able to eat dinner tonight and have had no adverse reactions so far. I'm hoping that I am finished with it because Katie really wants to go to the Children's Festival tomorrow and I'd like to go with them.

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Sprucing Up

I've been in a sprucing up mood and while it's not quite done, I wanted to share my new window treatments that I've been working on. I have one complete and two more to go. I was so tired of the ones that I made when we first moved in (the red). The blue and white ones were super easy to make! Not to mention quite inexpensive. Shh, don't tell! When I get them complete I will put a finished picture up here. I just had to share because no one is home to appreciate it with me.

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She eats!

Katie woke up asking for breakfast and when I looked at her the sparkle was back in her eyes. She's eating and smiling and asked for her favorite outfit to wear today. Hooray! Let's hope she can keep the food down...

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Sick Ward

Katie has not eaten since Monday night. She's thrown up several times, mostly water. I think she's scared to eat, but she's really hungry at the same time. She's been trying to take one bite of her dinner for about an hour and 45 minutes. I told her if she didn't eat I would have to take her to the doctor tomorrow and I hate to do that since it's a virus. I'm just worried that she might end up dehydrated. She just laid around all day today.

Is this ever going to end? I feel trapped in my house. I did get out today while the kids were napping. Amy came over so I could run an errand which was so nice of her. Derek's out of town and I'm just praying that Katie is eating tomorrow and feeling better so that she can go to school on Friday. I have not had "my day" since before Spring Break and I'm not sure that I can handle being cooped up in the house for 2 more days.

Please pray for Katie to feel better and for Kyle to stay well.

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Kyle's better!

But now Katie is sick. She stayed home with Amy yesterday since she had a fever Sunday night. I was hoping it was just a short-lived little virus since she wanted to eat last night. You could tell she didn't feel good, but I guess she was hungry since she hadn't really eaten for a day. Needless to say, she woke up this morning with the same tummy issues Kyle had last week. Poor thing.

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