So where to begin? It's unbelieveable that it was August I last posted... and so much has happened that I can't possibly nor would I want to type out everything that has occurred, blogging-worthy moments that should have been captured in words. It would take me hours to do it, and I'm sure no one would sit here & read it either (well, besides me). But I can and will simply highlight over the high's and low's of what the past half year has been like for us.
The kids (both Justin & Asilyn) are doing great in school. Justin is now seemlessly working on multiplication and division and I swear it's as if the kid's been doing it all his life. I watch him work sometimes just looking at him in amazement because for the life of me I can't figure out how he came up with the answer, and so quickly! Math I truly believe will NEVER be a problem for him. In order to help him with sentence structure, we jokingly began writing Justin "letters"... originally it was meant to be funny, but then turned out to be altogether a learning experience for him. Because when I handed him a letter (just telling him how much I love him and am so proud of him) he actually wrote me a letter back, and surprisingly in good form. Now when he's mad or upset & he's crying or angry and I can't understand what he's saying, I'll tell him to go write it in a letter, and he will... which has a double intention behind it because unbeknownst to him, it actually calms him down & when he's handing me his letter, more often than not he's hiding a smile. All in all, he is doing awesome! His first report card came home with 1 B and the rest A's... we celebrated. Then his second report card came, and he brought that B up to an A as well... so, yes, my son has straight A's (keeping in mind some of his curriculum is on the 4th & 5th grade levels)!!! Impressive? Most definitely!
Asilyn, too, has blown us away, daily. She can read small words now, write her name, mom, dad, and "sounds out" the spelling of Kailyn & Justin. She gets pretty close! She can count to 100 (probably more but my patience can only go so far!) and she can count to 10 unassisted in Spanish. Daddy's planning on teaching them how to count to ten in Japanese also. I had a mid-year conference with Asilyn's teacher, showing me how far she had come since the beginning of the year, which was INCREDIBLE! And her teacher (as well as Tommy & I) have noticed not only a strong desire on Asilyn's part but an actual talent in art. So much so, that her artwork was selected over the entire school (along with 2 others, but their not my kids & I'm not bragging about them, now am I?) and was sent to the state to compete against all other schools in the state of GA, with a chance that her artwork would be chosen to be formatted into a book of art. :) So needless to say, we have nurtured her desire, which amazingly has brought some of my own desire back to take a pencil to hand. She has just about everything she could possibly need to flourish her artistic abilities.
Kailyn has learned a lot being home with me. I've been working on sight words with her now and trying to teach her letters by sight. She is such a doll and being home with her, man... she's my little buddy. She and I truly needed this time to bond without distractions. I've seen her confidence level skyrocket (not in approaching individuals - she's never had that problem, but rather her confidence in her own abilities, to be able to do things on her own and not rely soley on me or her older siblings to do it for her). And she's a snuggler.... oh my, this child, mmm, just typing this gets me all squenchy and ready to snuggle down. lol She's so cuddly! Like a little teddy bear! I made a commitment to begin the potty training once the other 2 were in school... which we worked on some last year but I quickly realized her lack of interest was working against me! So I stopped and began again in January right after Christmas and I can now officially say, SHE IS TRAINED! I honestly thought it would take longer, expecting about 6 months or so, but she surprised us all! She has been out of pull ups now for 3 months since "Santa" brought her a brand new potty seat & stool. And what's cool is, I barely even have to remind her now, she just.... goes! I love it. I never thought I'd get here, but here I am 9 and a half LONG years of constant diapers and pullups, we are now diaper/pullup free in this house. To celebrate we smashed the diaper genie to pieces and threw it in the dump! LOL
As for Tommy & I, we are doing great! Not pulling a John & Kate plus 8 moment with renewing our wedding vows on the beach during our 10 yr anniversary and then less than a year later, split. Nope! Not a chance! We have way too much good going on here to ever think life on the other side could possibly be better than what we have in each other. We are completely debt free now, a goal we set for ourselves a couple of years ago, and now we can officially say (beisdes the house) we have no debt. No credit cards, no car payments, no outstanding doctor bills. We paid everything off on our credit reports and now it's only uphill from here. We're taking a page out of his Grandfather & Grandmother's book and decided if we want something bad enough, we will save for it & buy it outright. (Which we're finding that in this economy, people are willing to negotiate a price down when there's cash in hand!) We just installed a brand new AC/heating unit, paid in full. It was nice to be able to write that check. We have the plans drawn up for our new master bath/closet addition in our bedroom and sometime within the week will have someone over, finding the plumbing lines, and preparing the space for the lines to be installed. And by our guess, within a few months our brand new bathroom and closet in our bedroom will be in, again, paid in full! It feels really nice! :) And once that's installed, we will be saving for our hardwood flooring, and new carpets in the bedrooms. Our guess, probably by the end of this year. One thing we did while on our annimoon, we brought along a recipe box with notecards, sat down one evening and wrote out goals and ambitions for our family, for our house, for our lives, for ourselves. Each notecard held a dream, that by putting it on paper made it more real than it had ever been by being a simple thought. Gave us something to physically look at, and by extention to look forward to. Who ever thought it would actually work? lol Because we hit the ground running that night, and continue to run side by side, hand in hand, checking off the list of our life's dreams. :)
So, now the high's have been touched on, the lows are few but they are there. Mainly to do with illness and the like. Having children in school is ridiculous sometimes. They might as well swim in a public pool, with 50 other children, or lick the floors of the mall... it's a walking infestation. It drives me NUTS! Justin and Asilyn out of nowhere came down with fevers, sometimes as high as 104.7*. Yes, extremely high. But the odd thing about it was that's all it was. A fever. Out of nowhere, one second literally, they're running & playing, the next they're flushed and can't understand why they feel so tired. No other symptoms. I thought I had it pegged down to teething. What?! Yes, I know, you're thinking a 9 and 5 year old teething?! Yes, Justin has his last set of molars he needs to get in (and as his gums are swollen, they are most definitely on the way), and Asilyn is working on her first set of molars. Lucky me! :) But as I said "I thought I had it pegged"... leaving room for error. It may have been completely coincidental that they ran fevers just as both of their gums were swelling with the movement of new teeth, and logically it would make sense... until I came down with this random high fever. Literally out of nowhere, midday, boom! Fever. My highest coming in around 105.4*. But that was it. No sniffling, no coughing, no stuffy head. Not even a headache (unless the fever skyrocketed to the higher temp). It was the weirdest thing. Which completely turned my thoughts back to the kids. It thankfully only lasted at most 2 days. And it left just as quickly as it came. Just odd. And then, my sweet baby Kailyn contracted Pink Eye more than likely from a child at church (which is so annoying, but that's a topic for another blog day)... along with a sinus infection of some sort, and I leave that one open ended because the doc couldn't really peg down the reason behind the stuffy nose & sore throat. (Ahem... allergies maybe? Aaaaaaanyway...) So she got the typical eye drops 4 times a day (which is a pain, if you have a young one & have had to do this then you KNOW), along with the lovely pink antibiotic 3 times a day. But her being at home with me... not so hard. Until....... oh yes, it gets better.... I was snuggling Asilyn one day before bedtime (last Friday to be exact) and I happened to look at one of her hands. And then I looked at both of her hands. And then I proceeded to jump out of my bed, grab her hands and hold them closer to the light while yelling Tommy's name. There on my daughters hands, covering the entire top part and trailing halfway down her fingers, creeping up her arms was this God awful, blood red, dry, sandpaper like feeling, painful (for her) to the touch, swollen rash..... I had never ever seen anything like it in my life... ever! I was freaking out. I may have freaked out a little too much, I'm sure Tommy would agree with me. LOL I tend not to let the children see me freak, so I waited until I had walked out of the room to freak. I grabbed the first topical cream I could find which was Cortisone, rubbed a little on both her hands and IMMEDIATELY washed it off when the blood-curdling screams from my daughter told me it was burning her skin! (If I thought I was freaking before, I was wrong...) So along with causing her pain on top of pain (as now I'm rubbing the skin with my fingers under water which hurts), my mind is running. I think every mom goes through this... most probably end up calling the doctor or local ER... or even their own parents for advice. And all thoughts crossed my mind, but one being the most prominent, I had to help her someway somehow, NOW. So I grabbed some benadryl cream (she's allergic to everything so I thought it was a reaction to something), and gently rubbed it into her skin, and proceeded to do so for the next couple of days, making the promise to myself that if it got worse or stayed the same, I would call the doctor. Luckily it got better. Long story short, I checked her out of school on Monday & took her to the pediatrician. At first they thought she had strep, which was really odd to me... missing THAT connection, but whatever, they're medical "professionals", right? But after testing her & confirming that it was not strep, the doctor came in and let me know that my child, my baby girl, my Asilyn Brooke, has Dishidrotic Eczema, an uncommon (rare) form of Eczema which could potentially affect her for the rest of her life. It only occurs in 20 out of 100,000 people. Which is a fraction of a single percent out of the entire world. In other words, my baby is special... inside & out. Literally. But what it TRULY means, is that she will more than likely every year have this reaction to the warmer weather change, she will have to change lotions, and BE lotioned on the upscale of 4 times a day, she will have to change her soaps to be frangrance free for extra dry sensitive skin, she will not be allowed to be in the bath for longer than 5 minutes as the chemicals used to filter the water will dry her skin out more quickly... right now she has a steroidial-topical cream that I have to put on her every morning before school (along with a full body lotion-up) and every night before bed. Add that to the other 2 times I have to lotion her up with Kailyn's eye drops 4 times a day and antibiotics 3 times a day and showers/baths (less than 5 min now).... it's been the longest week and a half of hell. Seriously. I haven't wanted to go anywhere, do anything, see anybody, much less take a shower for myself. It now has become a chore, just something else I have to do daily. LOL I'm exhausted.
So now that we're all caught up, I'll end this by saying, regardless of the lows my life has, regardless of the highs that may come our way, my life would never be as fulfilling without the people in it. My husband, who is my best friend, is everyone of those cliche sayings and then some... ridiculously loyal, protective, fierce, and everything I could ever want in a life partner. My children are beyond the most precious blessings God has granted me the responsibility of raising. That He would trust me with these three little people's welfare, their health, their upbringing, that He would trust that I would do everything that I am required to do as their mother, be THEIR advocate, to be THEIR voice, to be THEIR mom! It amazes me daily that He has given me such a huge and great responsibility... He must have known I could handle it. For He never gives more than we can handle. And without these 4 people in my life, I would have never felt the true meaning to life, what it's all about, what's important and what's not so much... I would've never found my own voice, my own legs to stand on, and now, to them, I feel like I am the most important person in their world. And that's an awesome feeling. :)
Until Next Time,
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