The Slippery Slope:

Well, hey.  What do you know.  I finally have a couple of minutes in the house.  ALL. TO. MYSELF! Sorry for yelling, but it's been awhile.  The sickness that I last wrote about caused quiet a havoc in my house.  Each and everyone of the children fell prey to it.  And I was not feeling so hot myself, but that never counts.  The three older kids each missed three days of school.  Tom missed standardized testing, Katherine came back just in time for a math test that she was not prepared for, and Sam, well he missed a ton.  Seventh grade is proving to be a HUGE step up in the responsibility market, and I'm not sure if he's all that ready for it.

The bug hit Jill the hardest.  The cough...oh my lord, the cough.  She just couldn't get rid of it and it turned into a pneumonia in one of her lungs.  Her fever spiked so high one morning, she was actually hallucinating.  She was seeing huge spiders crawling up her bedroom walls.  This normally would have made me freak out, but this happened to me once as a child and I vividly remember it.  Her fever came right down with some motrin and the doctor didn't seem overly concerned.  After a couple of days on the antibiotic, the fever is gone and so is the cough for the most part.  I even sent her back to preschool today.  But in total, she missed two weeks of school!  Two weeks we're paying for---and that really bugs me.

I don't know what this bug was.  I don't know if it was the seasonal flu or the H1N1, or some mutant common cold.  I have no idea.  The doctor didn't test and she didn't even speculate.  It seems as if her perspective was to just treat the symptoms and not to worry about putting a name to it.  Should that bug me?  I don't know.  I'm just glad we're all better.

All this sickness  has made me less than prepared for Halloween.  I'll admit it, I'm not into this year--at all.  In fact, I have to run out in a few minutes to go see Jill parade around the preschool grounds.  And then after that, I have to go up to the elementary school to see the other two parade around the school.  Frankly, I'm sick of it.  I was going to skip it this year, but the call of duty as a PTA board member was too strong.  Now I have to sit at a table and give out visitor stickers to all the parents.  All I really want to do is stay home and raid the candy I bought for the trick-or-treaters.   I feel like the elementary school goes all-out for Halloween because they can't celebrate any other holidays like, god-forbid, Christmas!

I'll leave you with a couple of pictures:

Katherine passed the strings test at school which allows her to begin taking instrument lessons.  She chose the cello.  Here she is with her half-size cello.

Thomas passed his recorder test which allows him to choose a brass or woodwind.  He chose the trombone.  So here's my T-Bone (we've always called him that) on the trombone.  (I know he's holding it wrong, but he hasn't had any lessons yet.)

  

Sickly

Yes, yes.  Long overdue, I know (much like the library books I just returned.)  Not much to say though, things had been coasting along quite smoothly for awhile.  But now, it seems as if the plague is descending upon the household.  A bit dramatic?  Yeah, probably but many of us are sick.

Tom started with a fever on Saturday and of course my mind went entirely to thoughts of SWINE FLU!!!  But then I calmed a bit and started to remember the symptoms I had been told to look for, and well, I don't think he has it.  His fever was low and he's not complaining of other symptoms.  He's just tired and it looks like a typical virus.  But, who knows?  He's still feverish tonight, so no school for him tomorrow.

And then today, Sunday, Katherine started looking quite pukey.  So she was down for most of the morning but looked remarkably better after the motrin kicked in.  I'll most likely keep her home tomorrow because you're supposed to be fever free for 24 hours.  I'll do my part to stop the spread of disease.

For my part, I have a lovely head cold.  I'm not flu-ish, it's just a whole sinus thing.  I'm pretty miserable, but I'm still functioning.  I'm hyped up on cold meds, so I'll be fine.

Jill was supposed to have her preschool class trip to a farm tomorrow to going "pumpkin patching*."  I was going to drive her there and meet up with the class.  I considered dropping her off at school and letting her go with someone else, but Chris and I aren't comfortable with that at all.  It makes me a little jumpy (Ok, a lot jumpy) to think of her driving off with someone I hardly know.  Of course it would be with another preschool parent and their child, but still, you know?  So the trip to the farm will have to wait and we may have to go pumpkin patching at the grocery store.

*Why do we call it pumpkin patching?  Sam was so literal as a child,  he interpreted everything as plainly as heard or saw it.  The 1st time we took him to a pumpkin patch, he assumed one must go there "to patch" (whatever that means).  It has stuck with us ever since.

I'll end this post with a stay healthy everyone and GO PHILLIES!!!

Hair Today..Gone Tomorrow

 October is in the air and the Phillies are heading to post season baseball!!! Woot Woot!  I've got to say that they've put me through the ringer these past two weeks, Chris has had to admonish me a couple of time about my yelling and waking up the kids and scaring them and what not, but they pulled it out tonight.  I can breath easier and relax for a couple of days. Maybe the children will sleep easier now!

I've recently taken my rather large rear end back to the gym.  We're planning a spring time getaway to a far away destination, and let's just say that I need to get things back in shape.  I started back at the Body Pump classes, and oh lordy, lordy I'm in pain.  I used to go quite regularly, but then life got in the way, and then I just stopped.  I went on Monday and by Monday evening, my legs were sore.  By sore, I mean excruciating, muscle searing, eye watering pain.  By Tuesday, it hurt to move anywhere.  Getting up  or sitting back down was just agonizing.  I got back on the treadmill to just stretch them out a bit, but it didn't seem to help.  This morning was only slightly better, but I went back to class.  No pain, no gain and all that, you know.  So tonight, I'm rather useless. It hurts to much to get up but when I do, it hurts to much to sit back down.  Here's hoping tomorrow is better.  I think I'll take a day off from the gym.

I know some of you have seen this on FB, book this will be a big surprise to others.  On Saturday, Jill apparently had enough of bangs falling in her eyes, so she took that matter into her own hands. Well, she took scissors into her own hands.   Unfortunately, she decided to cut the hair from the side of her head instead of her bangs. 

In this picture, you can see where she cut around her ear.  This hair was just above her shoulder.

In this one, you can see the chunk she cut from the back.

 

So she cried and cried when she realized what she did, but we didn't get upset.  It's only hair and I think all kids do it at some time or another.  Katherine cut her bangs down to her scalp when she was three, and Thomas cut his hair when he was four.  At the time, he adamantly blamed it on the Boogie Man.  I'm still laughing about that one.  In fact, in the wake of Jill's hair fiasco, he finally admitted that he was the culprit who had cut his hair and was just afraid that I would yell at him.  I strike fear in the hearts of four year olds!

We had to do something about the obvious unevenness, so I took her out to S*uper C*ts, and they fixed her all up.  It's short, think Demi Moore in Ghost, but it's quite cute.  Isn't she a sweetie?  Hey, look on the table, that my book.  The new Jamie and Claire story has arrived.  I've already shed a couple of tears, but it's a long book with several story lines, so it's taking me a while to get through.  Will let you know what I think when I'm done.