Living Room Dancefest

As you probably already know, our house is pretty much always filled with music. Since Elena came along, dancing has been added to that mix. On a fairly regular basis, dancefests just breakout in our living room. I was able to capture one of those moments the other day.

The first video is Elena. I am completely NOT technologically savy, but I wish that I could somehow set the video to the song on this youtube link.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2KxBMMtOdHA

The next video is Elias' rock-n-roll guitar dance...

Sluggers!

Elias has started T-ball again! Actually, we started about 3 weeks ago, but this is the first chance I have had to really sit down and write about it! We are on a great team of 5 and 6 year olds. We have connected with most of the parents, and the coach is a guy who Adaryll played softball with last spring. Elias has come a LONG way since last season! I remember how he looked like a newborn giraffe running the bases, and now he actually looks pretty athletic!! The boys got to pick their own team name (they do major league names in the spring, but the fall is more laid back and focused on fundamentals), so they are the Sluggers.

Wordless Wednesday

What would you do...

What would you do if you were not afraid?

3 Questions

I didn't get the usual play-by-play of what happened at Kindergarten on the way home. Honestly, I don't even know why- I can't remember what we talked about instead. We had gone to see Adaryll in his office and then on a hunt for the water bottle Elias left in the cafeteria at lunch, so by the time we got in the car I guess we both just forgot to talk about it.
So, before bed tonight, I started asking Elias about his day. I have learned to ask more open-ended questions. The first day of school I asked him things like "Did you have music today?", "What did you have for snack?", and "What was your Bible story about?" Not that there is anything wrong with those questions, but I wasn't getting much more than the direct answer to each one. So tonight I asked him to tell me about his 3 favorite things that happened today. First, he told me he got to go to Art class. He told me he sits at the purple table with Sarah, Julia and Camden and that they learned about the primary colors on the color wheel. Then they got to color with markers. His second favorite thing was looking at airplanes after school with Kalii. Actually, this happened when we were on the hunt for the water bottle. We found it outside his classroom in the hall (obviously some nice person had taken it down there since it had his name on it). When he got the water bottle, he saw Kalii in the classroom. Kalii has been Elias' best friend in Sunday school since we moved here, and he was hanging out with Ms. Horvath because she is his aunt. Unfortunately he is in a different Kindergarten class (since they probably didn't want to put him in his aunt's class!), but they get to play together on the playground during recess. Anyway, Kalii was looking at planes on the internet, so Elias joined in the fun for a few minutes. His third favorite thing was his new Bible verse (they have a new one each week): Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved. Acts 16:31.
This is where the story gets good. I asked if they got to do Morning Board (where they are studying the days, months, calendar, etc) and he said yes. He actually asked me this morning on the way to school, "Mommy, today is September what?" After telling him it is the 8th, I realized he was prepping himself for Morning Board. I think he wanted to know the answer in case she asked. So I asked him if he got to tell her today's date. He said no, that he was too slow raising his hand. But that, later, everyone got a turn answering Ms. Horvath's questions when they were studying things God made. He told me that they are learning about day 3 of creation and that they are making a petal for each day. So when they get to day 6, they will have a creation flower. He told me that Ms. Horvath asked each child 3 questions and everyone had a turn answering each question.
The first question: "Who made you?"
Answer: "God made me."
The second question: "What else did God make?"
Answer: "God made all things."
The third question: "Why did God make you and all things?"
Answer: "God made me and all things for His own glory."
And that, my friends, is why this whole experience of paying for private school, getting up at the crack of dawn, and sending my baby boy away to Kindergarten is all worth it! I had a big internal struggle this morning- really my first tears about him going to school since he started. It just hit me like a brick as I walked out of the building that this is all really happening!! And I can't go back or make it slow down! But, after hearing that story, I have peace again. I know he is in the right place and that this is the right time. I am SO incredibly thankful for all his teachers for what they are imparting to him. Because, really, if we all just knew and believed the answers to those 3 questions, our world would be a much better place!

Wordless Wednesday Winner

There were several great ones, but without a doubt the winner was Jennie with "Get in my belly!"

BRAVO! (and I don't mean "job well done!")

I had two different GI procedures yesterday at an endoscopy center. I pretty much think that if your doctor tells you to do to an endoscopy center, you might want to RUN in the other direction! All the procedures they do there involve putting tubes in your body through places that are obviously not made for that purpose! I had a tube put into my stomach through my nose and then had to lay there for about half an hour sipping water and swallowing at various times so that they could take pressure measurements in my esophagus. For a girl who wouldn't even use nose spray until a year ago, this was quite a feat! I kept telling the nurse, "This is really crappy!" She would just laugh and say that she hadn't ever really had a patient who loved it. This manometry test was all done with no sedation or drugs of any kind because drugs can relax you and affect the result. (A little relaxing wouldn't have been so bad, actually!) The next test involved a tube into my esophagus through my mouth. Same size tube (about the width of a coffee straw), so you would think that surely it would be better than through the nose! Then I saw the thing on the end of it. It was a device called a BRAVO pH monitor, and the whole contraption was about the size of my index finger! And that thing had to go down where??? She offered to numb my throat, which I was more than glad to do! FYI- Benzocaine spray in the throat burns worse than having a tube go through your nose. After much gagging, throwing up, pulling the whole contraption out and starting all over several times, she finally got it where it needed to be. Then she suctioned the little BRAVO monitor (actually about the size of a big pill) to my insides and pulled the rest out. Now I am electronically transmitting data about the pH levels in my esophagus to a little machine I'm wearing on my belt. Crazy huh?! I'm electrified! It has been cool to watch how it is all neutral (7) when I am standing and then drops to 1 (acidic) when I lay down. I could have told them that was happening 20 years ago (and I think I did!), but I'm glad that now they have their scientific evidence. This machine will record data for 48 hours. I'm relieved it is almost over and am looking forward to hearing what the doctor has to say about treatment. I have been dealing with GI problems for as long as I can remember (even as a kid), so having a doctor be so aggressive in finding out the real problem is pretty refreshing. Let's just hope I never have to do either of these two tests again!

Wordless Wednesday

As always, leave your caption in the comments section.

Things That Bother

You can comment on any that bother you too, or you can add to the list.
Next week: things we love.
1. School zones. I think a perk of actually paying for your kid to go to private school should be that somehow you start and end at times different from public school, so you don't have to deal with school zones.
2. Dust. The kind inside your house. Where does this stuff keep coming from?!
3. Songs on the radio that make me cry.
4. Crying. It gives me a headache.
5. Annoying songs that you hear and then can't stop singing in your head. Sometimes I feel like I am going to have a nervous breakdown if I can't stop humming so-and-so song.
6. Whining. Enough said.
7. Alarm clocks. (see previous post)
8. Spiders. Adaryll killed a tarantula in our garage yesterday. UGH!!!! Elias was all about killing it when it was running around, but was sad and concerned when we said it was a tarantula. His teacher apparantly has a tarantula, so Elias wanted to know what this one's name was, etc.
9. Flies. Not because they are such a bother in themselves, but because Elena has a nervous breakdown everytime she sees one. But it does always bring a smile to my face when, once swatted, she tells the fly "night night bug" before it goes in the trash.

Breathe

I feel a little bit like I am drowning and having a hard time coming up to breathe. It really isn't all that bad, but having to be at specific places at specific times is really taxing!!!
My pre-kindergarten life was very regimented and scheduled. But it was MY schedule!!! And if we had a day where we were out a lot, then I had the option of staying home and literally not leaving the house for the next 2 or 3 days.
Life now consists of waking up to an alarm at 6:30am. I honestly can't remember the last time I used an alarm to wake up, and I certainly haven't seen the 6's in a very long time. Maybe since Elena had an early morning nursing time. I didn't wake up til the 7's. Which was fine, because I didn't get the kids up until 8:00 or 8:30. And if they did wake up early, they don't get out of bed (see previous post about "Do not get out of bed rule"), so it didn't really affect my schedule.
So, now I get up with the alarm. Then another alarm tells me I need to go get Elias up at 7:00. A third tells me when it is time to get Elena at 7:20. Otherwise I would get really sidetracked, and it would be 8:00 and school would be starting and we would all still be in PJ's! But all these alarms are stressing me out!
So now that I have that out of my system, and I can take a breath. Thanks for listening.

Here is Elias' report of that they did at school today:
He loved chapel. He really like a song about how deep, high, long, and wide God's love is. He bought his lunch and the spaghetti, pineapples, corn, and breadstick were all really good. He wants to buy again the next time they have that. They had art class out in the art portable. They drew lines with markers, but he doesn't remember his art teacher's name. They had rest time. His teacher turned off the lights, but not all of them, and they laid on the floor. They listened to quiet music. I asked him if that was funny and he said no. (I was trying to guage whether he was folling around or really resting) He reported that they had THREE recesses! And that recess is his favorite part of the day. He played balance beam with Holloway the first two times and with his friend from Kinder B the third time. They learned about the letter I. He told me he has a new friend named Still. (It is actually Steel, but I could not convince him of this).
I am so thankful that he is enjoying himself and making new friends. He really seems to like school so far. I've worried that all the hustle and bustle would stress him out. Who wouldn't be stressed out by a mother saying "You have 2 more minutes to finish that breakfast and we have to leave. We are going to be late" or "You have 3 minutes to finish you dinner and you have to get dressed for Tball! Hurry, hurry!" Ugh. Sometimes I hear myself and think, "That is NOT the mother I want to be!" The good thing is, we get to start over each day and I can try to get it right tomorrow.