7/31/12: Prayer for Nigeria

Today, Elodie picked Nigeria to pray for:  Dear Jesus, Please help the people in Nigeria know you Lord. Help the people who have Bibles not be put in jail or be killed. Amen.

7/30/12: L's prayer

Dear Jesus,
Help the Christians in Cuba don't get killed or in prison. I want the government to know you Lord. I love you. I love mommy. Amen.

7/29/12: pictures

So excited that mommy is actually letting me play with pl@ydoh!!

cheese!


gorgeous.


posing like sissy?


This is what most of my attempts at getting both my kids in a photo look like.


BEAUTIFUL!


Eating raisins...always eating raisins!


GREAT shot of my family!

7/28/12: Front porch bling

I got some new-to-me pots and planted some flowers to give my new front porch some pizzazz. :)

Prayers and School

Each morning of school, we start with the Pledge of Allegiance and a prayer. Elodie has been picking a country from our Persecuted Countries map from VOM. Today she picked Belarus and here was her prayer: Dear Jesus, Please help the Christians that live there don't get killed or put in jail and let them know you. I love you so much. I love mommy too. Please let the people with Bibles not get killed either. Amen. I've been so proud of the heart she shows for God's people and her love for God during these prayer times. At the end of the prayer, I noticed that Callen had clasp his hands together in the prayer position. I asked him if he wanted to pray too and he nodded so we prayed again. :) After I read Genesis 1:20 "God said, 'Let the water be filled with living things and let the birds fly in the air above the earth,'" Callen came up to me and said "wawa" while signing it and then signed "bird." Smart boy! And then when Elodie and I were going through her ABC sounds cards, Callen wanted to be included in that as well. He signed and said "apple" for the A card then wanted up in my lap. He said "baby" for the B card and signed "cookie" for the C card and then said "doggy" for the D card. Overall, school is going great. I am most surprised by how much Callen wants to be involved. Never thought I'd have a 22 month old in Kindergarten!

Prayer for China & Callen's in school

Today Elodie picked China off the VOM Persecuted Countries map to pray for. I told her about China's one child policy, heavy taxes that people can't afford for a second child, forced abortions (baby killing), and abandoning babies. This was her prayer: Dear Lord, Let the people who have two babies not kill the babies. Let them know you are real Lord. I love you Lord one hundred times more than I love my mommy. Amen.

Elodie did a perfect letter N in HWT.

Callen can say "mo" (more), "pee" (please), and "sssinky" (stinky).  He can breath through apple straws.  He wants to draw when Elodie is drawing for Kindergarten and he dances along with the school songs like "Frog Jump Letters," jumping at the jumping parts and putting both hands in the air when demonstrating the letters in the air.

He wanted to color like his sissy.

Elodie on day 4 of creation.






"cheese!"


Jello time (part of sensory exercises assigned by his OT)




cute girl


Doing school :)


SO excited to be at the dentist!






Prize she picked.


Naptime!

7/25/12: C's words

Callen can say "ah-pull" (apple), "boo" (blue), and "baboo" (bumpy).

7/23/12: Elodie's 1st Official Day of Kindergarten

Today was Elodie's first official day of Kindergarten. School starts early here in Colorado, around mid August, and since we're going to be gone three weeks in September, starting school three weeks early means starting school the last week of July! I started this morning by picking out a super cute first day of school outfit for her and making her pose for the token first-day-of-school photos. :) Can't miss out on that just because she is homeschooled! We're using My F@ther's World (MFW) Kindergarten curriculum this year along with H@ndwriting W!thout Te@rs and M@th-U-See Primer (which she did off and on last year). First thing we did this morning was say the Pledge of Allegiance and pray. Elodie's prayer was so cute: "Dear Jesus. Thank you for my first day of school. I love you Lord. You are great. I pray that I don't loose my patience. Amen." MFW starts out with a 10 day lesson on Creation so we read the first 5 verses of Genesis (she said, "I know this already!", which of course she does...). She then cut out a big number 1 that was half dark and half light and glued it to a string of green construction paper taped together. She'll be adding a number for each day of creation. Then she sang her A-B-Cs and we were supposed to play a ABC game, but she knows all that stuff already, so we skipped that part. Maybe when I have everything cut out, I'll have her do that part anyhow since she wanted to but I ran out of time last night after everything was laminated. She said she loved it and can't wait to do more. Let's hope that enthusiasm sticks throughout the year. Then we added Handwriting and Math. Oh, and I had to put her in a timeout for lying (we've had this problem with her for the past week...so frustrating!!) and she said "you can't put me in a timeout during school!" and I said "oh yes I can!" :) Dave said that's the beauty of homeschooling :) We even had a snack and lunch in there too. After lunch, the kids spent an hour outside playing with water. I think that's the beauty of homeschooling too! :)

7/20/12: C's trip to the ER

When we got home from our trip to the Tetons Monday, Elodie sounded sick, with a headache and stuffy nose.  Tuesday, she had a runny nose and by Tuesday night, Callen had caught it and woke up almost every hour all night long.  Wednesday, he had a runny nose and cough but seemed otherwise okay.  Wednesday night, we were in his room like ten or fifteen times between 8pm and 11pm.  I heard him around 5:30am and when went into get him, his breathing just didn't seem right at all.  Callen was asking for (coconut) milk so we went downstairs to get it and then brought it up to sit in our room to drink it.  I asked Dave, "how long has he been like this?" and Dave said, "for about an hour."  I was very concerned.  His chest was heaving in and out rapidly and he sounded wheezy.  After sitting with both me and Dave, Callen threw up his bottle of milk. After cleaning him up and everything else up, we went down stairs and it was 7am.  I was still worried because he seemed so lethargic and I knew that was something to be concerned about.  I was debating whether to wait to take him to his doctor at 8am when they opened or just take him to the ER, and if the ER, Avista or Children's.  I finally decided Children's hospital so I ran upstairs to change quickly and gather a food bag from him since I knew from experience to prepare to be there awhile.  Then we were off.

There was someone checking in when we got there so I had to wait.  Then I checked in with his insurance card and the lady said the respiratory therapist would come listen to him to see if he could jump ahead in line.  Well the respiratory therapist came out and didn't even listen to him.  He just took us straight back, had Callen stand on the scale to be weighed, and then took us into a room where a nurse was already waiting for us.  They immediately asked me questions, as we undressed him to put a pulse-ox on him, I realized how bad Callen was and that I should have taken him in much sooner.  The muscles under his rib cage would suck up and under his ribs, the skin between his ribs sucked in.  He looked like a starving child from a third-world country.  God totally protected Callen because he could have gone into respiratory failure before we got there.  Anyhow, after they gave him a neubulizer treatment, he got a chest x-ray to rule out anything more serious.  He was so good and sat exactly how he was supposed to.  I think he was just so sick that he did it.  He also oral steroids, and albuterol inhaler and the doctor said he sounded better but she was still unhappy with how he looked.   Plus, he had gotten really hot and lethargic after his treatment.  So she ordered a double round of neubulizer treatment and another albuterol inhaler.  After 6 hours there, he was finally discharged with orders to take albuterol every 4-6 hours, including through the night, for the next 48 hours and oral steroids twice per day for four days.

He got a puppy from the x-ray tech.  You can almost see the blue oxygen tube that they taped to the blanket.

Hard to take a good photo of him without me in it when he sat on my lap for the entire 6 hours.

Today he seemed much better and was running around again.  He's been taking his medicines like a champ.

can't stay still for a photo

This is what happens when you have an older sister.  You ask to wear tutus and crowns.

He had a follow-up check-up at his doctors office tonight and she said he sounded good.  She said to let him run around a little so that the gunk would loosen up in his chest because the only way it was going to get out was for him to cough.

He had to wear a mask at the doctor's office because he had a cough (whooping cough risk).

He wanted to wear his mask home.

So when we got home, I let him go on a walk around the block, but I guess it might have been a little too much because he cough, cough, cough, cough, cough and then threw up all over me in front of all the neighbors. Awesome.  The doctor at Children's had said that it is common for children in respiratory distress to throw up so we went home to give him his medicine.

7/16/12: C new teeth & words

When we got home tonight from six days and five nights away for my photo tour in Grand Tetons National Park, we found that Callen had three new teeth poking through and more words!  He has the two teeth on the bottom that are on either side of the front bottom four that he already has and then he got the third tooth over on his top left.  New words include: babbit (rabbit), water, papa (grandpa), hi, meow, and moo.

Before we left, he was saying: baby (says it super clear and knows exactly what it is...points to photos of babies and babies on diaper boxes, to himself, etc.), bee (and then says "bzzzzzz"), wawa (water), woah, owie.

He also does this super low grumble noise to imitate a song on a helicopter Y*u Tube video.  It's so cute.  So he makes that noise to tell you he wants to watch that video.

When we got home tonight, he had a stuffed moose in his crib, so I got him to repeat "moo" and "ssss."

Oh, and now he's saying "key" because Elodie had found a key and was playing with it.