Day Two + Visitor
Day two of preschool is going pretty well - except for the fact that I don't feel good. My head and stomach aren't feeling too hot, not sure if it's the heat or something else. My allergies were a bit heavy last night so I don't know, and on top of that I didn't sleep well.
Kathleen didn't really want to go, but she seemed pretty happy once we got there and I got a preview of what it could be like. One of the little girls in Kathleen's class showed up at the same time and she didn't want to leave her dad. She cried and screamed but I asked Kathleen if she wanted to help her, so she went pretty easily. I am glad we don't have that, even Sammi doesn't do that when we leave. She did of course cry and she was very clinging, meaning I've just now gotten some un-cling time from the kiddo. She's wanted me to watch Phineas and Ferb with her and I did, now she's happily playing her art game again. She doesn't get to do this very often so she's having a good time.
Kathleen is going on a field trip today. They didn't get me the paperwork to let her go until this morning but I have no problem they are just going down the road to the old high school gym to play for an hour or so. I hope she has fun.
Last night after we got back from helping Shea's parents load some things into their truck from Aunt Johnette's house we had a visitor stop by. The door bell rang and I just figured it was Shea's folks, we or they had forgotten something. But it wasn't when I opened the door McL was standing there. I gave him a hug and invited him in and we went into the back of the house - where it's cooler.
We talked about the situation with him and his wife and son. We offered moral support and told him if he needed a place for Gabe we were willing to help while he was in the army until he could do it himself. He joined WoW but couldn't seem to get into things so I helped him buy his full subscription and hopefully we'll be able to help him out in his game time.
I am thankful that he has some good friends that stopped him from doing something he shouldn't. They are good friends and I'm glad they are supporting him. He has some good support and that's going to be key I think.
It was very good to see him and I hope we can spend more time with him before he goes back to Virgina to deal with his life and get back to work in the army. He got to spend time with the girls, Kathleen and him wrestled around for a while before we went looking for Mam and Pawpaw. He spent the night up there, we just don't have a place for him with only living in two rooms and he'd be more comfortable up there. Hopefully he'll come down later today. Maybe we can get him to stay to get the group together, we don't know yet. Hopefully tho.
First Day of Preschool
Today was the first day of the next fourteen plus years of Kathleen's life. This particular phase is something that she'll have to endure for that long and hopefully longer through college too. But we'll get there when we get there - hopefully not too fast.
Our schedule started at 6:30 this morning. As both girls tend to have accidents at night we decided that it was best to give them a shower first thing in the morning just to make sure they are clean and not smelly. Last thing we need is for someone to pick on Kathleen cause she sticks, we want her to go back to school and like it. So we showered and ate breakfast (and watched Mickey Mouse Clubhouse). Then we got ready for school - getting dressed, brushing our teeth and our hair.
Kathleen really didn't want to go but I prodded her along to get going. Once we got there, she saw other kids and started to inch in more towards one little girl the ladies introduced to her. I think she wanted to join in. That was the end of that for her. Sammi on the other hand wanted to stay with sissy and she wanted to go to school too. But she can't so I carried her out hugged so close to me she was afraid I was going to leave too. In the car she insisted she wanted to go to school, but when I told her she was too little she changed her tactics "I want to see Kitkat". She so relies on her sister.
We came home and she had some root beer or I attempted to give it to her but she didn't want it. But I had to go to CVS to fill my prescription and change our insurance to the new one since it went into affect Aug 1. Sammi got to ride in the push cart car that CVS has for the little ones. She never gets to ride in it alone so it was a treat. We came home she finished her root beer and sat down at their computer and played their little art game until we had to leave.
All in all they did really good. Kathleen's teacher told me that she counted well, which is good to hear. She busted out into tears as soon as she saw me and she told me that she missed me and clung to me like I was gone for a long time. I feel for her and this is a big change for her. It is for all of us.
I guess I'm not like most stay at home moms or even most moms in general because there was no crying, or OMG my child is going to school moments. My biggest fear is forgetting to pick her up. I think it has to do with already dealing with that anxiety by leaving the girlies with their grandparents for overnight stays or even a day while we go out. I missed her but I'm more proud she went and did so well then I'm worried how things will go. Yeah I worry but they have my number and I put stay at home mom as my employment so they should know I'm there but I doubt it'll be needed at all. As I told my Mom earlier I'm more "OMG I'm glad she's out of the house for half the day" than I am "OMG she's gone what will I do", lol.
But today was a good day. I even got real work done. A logo near finalized for a client, their coming soon page and a custom post portfolio working with my 3.0ified WordPress layout.
I officially have a preschooler
Today I made a few phone calls (I started on Thursday). The First Baptist Church on Pascagoula Street no longer has a preschool. This was my first call and kind of my first choice as Shea and his mom gave it good reviews. Next was the First Methodist Church on Market Street. Which was a good choice and the price was right last time I called but it's now $200 a month instead of the $115 a month I remember it being before. But they had no openings.
Shea found a daycare preschool on his way home on Ingalis Street. It is the Eastlawn Child Development Center part of the Eastlawn Methodist Church. This was Shea's grandmother's church and theirs when they lived in Pascagoula, many many many years ago.
They had one opening for a four year old for preschool only. So we did some running today and Kathleen is registered there and will start school next Monday. That's when their curriculum starts and that's the important part. The only thing lacking is the short record form the need from the heath department bu I can bring that in on Monday. But for some reason the Health Department was closed today, odd. But I will run their tomorrow and get the form.
We got the few supplies she needed and I will probably have to go pick her up a new backpack (and Sammi one too) on Tuesday so she has something to put her things in.
I am nervous, but not so much about Kathleen, Kathleen once she gets accustom to things she's an open book, it may take a little while tho. I am most nervous about forgetting, to drop her off on time or to pick her up. The latter bothers me the most. I'm going to have to have an alarm set to get Sammi ready at 11am so that we can get there early and be waiting for her.
She starts school a 8am and it ends at 11:30am. Half a day, a good start to going to school. Hopefully it won't be a traumatic experience for either of the girls. I fear more for Sammi than I do Kathleen, Sammi is going to be lost with out her sister. I will probably have to adjust my working hours to after Kathleen comes back from school so that Sammi isn't so lost.
Wish us all good luck even though I'm sure we won't need it. I am very glad to have found a preschool close to home and with in a price I think will be manageable on most occasions.
Counting
I know I've mentioned it before but The Girlies are doing really well counting. Rather Kathleen is getting better and Samantha is mimicking her sister. We have a set of flash cards that Kathleen can rattle off up to 13 with out a problem. The rest of the teens get her confused but once we get to twenty she is all ready to go again and she'll even count past the cards we have which tops out at 25 right now.
She's getting better at her letters but I don't know if it's actual recognition yet or not. Right now we are working in order as she has to learn their names and be able to say them. After we nail her letters and numbers in order I'll start shuffling them and maybe start picking up a book for her to go through each page with.
I did see a book for $25 on the tv the other day that might help. It wasn't one of those ones that had promises of making my child learn to read at an early age, while I did look at that, it just seemed kinda corny to me and I'm not sure that it really would work with my kiddos anyway. But this book is a flip book - it's a phonics book. You can set it to have a followed by t and then flip the first letter to make new words showing how the sounds work - bat, cat, fat, hat, mat, pat, rat, sat, vat. oat and eat would work too but they don't have the same AT sound lol. But it also comes with books and sing along DVDs that could help too. But this isn't something that she needs right now, as she doesn't recognize her letters yet. But soon, very soon I think.
I really need to look into preschools I guess. Maybe in half an hour or so when more things down here are open.
The Beach Park and Fireworks
Yesterday we went to the beach park. We rode around for a while looking for parking. We eventually found some near the park itself and we got out and took the girls to the playground. There was too many people and not enough police and neither Shea nor I felt comfortable.
We got back into the van with a dismayed child. But we hit Sonic and got drinks and ice cream and we went back down to the beach and found some parking in a vacant lot no where near the actual park. It was quiet and windy so it wasn't hot to my liking.
We let the girls play in the sand for a little while, until Kathleen threw sand in Sammi's eyes. So we went back to the car until the fireworks started. They watched the little ones people had going and were excited. By the time the big ones started they weren't really interested. But we were far enough away they weren't overly loud. Yay to that.
Food worked out well yesterday. I "marinated" my chicken in a brine solution - salt, water, some seasoned meat tenderizer, a little honey and a little vinegar. I wasn't very familiar with my grill since I've not used it in a while, so I forgot which was hot and which was the cooler side. so my skin was a bit darker than I liked, but it turned out well. After it was mostly cooked I added the barbaque sauce and it was. The corn was wrapped in tinfoil with butter and put on the top rack of the grill. It was yummy. Potato salad was good too. The Watermelon was AWESOME!
Happy Fourth of July
Today I will be grilling some chicken and corn. This is the first time I'll be trying chicken since leaving home. I'm not very patient. But I've been doing a lot more with cooking that I think I can manage. We will also be having potato salad, which I made earlier. And watermelon. I think the girls are looking forward to the watermelon more than anything else we will be doing today.
We will also be trying to go to the fireworks tonight. I think we are planning on heading to the Beach Park for some live music and see how the girls do with the fireworks. It'll be an interesting day.
On another front, Kathleen is starting to count to 25. She has troubles with her teens, but she's getting better. If you don't ask her to count for you and she's doing the cards then she'll count to 13 with out a wrong number after you get her started with one. She's doing so much better now I think with some of the games she's had too. But this last set of flash cards I think have helped a lot. We've tried them before but she didn't really have the patience for it then.
When I purchased these flash cards I made sure they were one sided. Meaning that there were no pictures on the side with the letter on them. The pictures are distracting and they both end up saying the name of the object and not learning their numbers. I think that has been the biggest help here, no pictures - both numbers and letters with no pictures.
Yep a cold
Well Samantha found us a cold. We all have a cold of some sort.
Samantha had a fever for 3 days then the sniffles. Kathleen started with sniffles and a cough yesterday, right when Shea started with the sniffles. I have a cold too but not sure if it's allergies or not, I think it is. That's what it feels like. I took my Zyrtec this morning instead of last night so I think that is making it better.
The girls got some Nasonex and come cough syrup. We'll see if it helps anyway.
Fever to Cold?
Sammi has had a fever for the past couple of days and we really didn't know why. Allergies, cold, heat exhaustion? We really have no clue, we've been doing all we can to make the fever go away, it tends to show up when she's clothed or when she's been bundled up at night.
We've taken baths and showers and kept her inside, this morning we didn't have a fever to any real extent, but now we are irritable and have the sniffles. I think it was a cold starting in on her. Though we are limiting the outside time to zippo as right now it's WAY too hot for anyone to be outside, much less my child who turns red after 20 mins outside in the shade lol.
I hope that it is just a cold and nothing else. She's behaving normally and doing well so I'm not overly concerned the fever seems to have gone so I'm much happier, we'll see once Shea gets home.
Potty Training
For the past few weeks we've been working on with Sammi and potty training. It's been a big problem with trying to get her to go, it's not something we could ever enforce on her nor was it something she was really interested in. Our biggest hurdle was actually getting her to wear panties. Basically we just had to go cold turkey. We started with pull ups for a few weeks. And now we are into pullups only at night.
The biggest push came when I purchased a clear, air tight, sealable jar that now contains starbursts. This has been the biggest push for Samantha and potty training. We implemented a Starburst per potty. We tried it with a timer but Kathleen would go every 20 miniutes and thus get a candy. That didn't work for me and Sammi never had to go when I asked.
Last week we had a break through, Samantha went to the potty with out prompting. The only drawback was she didn't take off her panties. BUT she did go in the potty. We've had some very good days these past few days with her going in the potty. She tends to run around completely naked now but it saves on cleaning panties all the time.
Now to master #2 which I've not seen her do except in her pullup in the morning. so not sure how that's going. But we are doing great but I really hate bribing the girls to go, but hey it's working on the little stubborn one.
Getting Ready for summer
The weather is getting warmer, not quite as warm as my parents house, but warm enough that last weekend we installed the window units and sleep with them at night. The girls have slept much better as have we for the most part. We are still working on the door, the planing Shea did on Sunday wasn't enough, time for plan B next weekend, not sure what plan B is yet, but Shea will figure it out.
Today I moved the PCs to the bedroom, and I need to clean the house in totality, including the play room. We will be bringing a toy shelf into our bedroom for the girls toys they can play with this summer in our bedroom.
I have a lot of running around to do today so not sure how much cleaning I'll get done today, but we'll see. I really need to make sure the office is cleaned up and the living room but that's not likely to happen today. I have to go to staples to get some pages printed off, to the bank to deposit a check and hopefully pay off a loan with it, and also going to hit Big Lots and Walmart with Samantha's birthday money.
I've made it this far with out freaking out about the abnormal MRI. I have had a few late night thoughts I've had to push away, mostly really bad what ifs which aren't good for me. Though this weekend was as promised busy busy busy so I really was tired when I went to bed this weekend so the most "thoughtful" time of the night was pretty much not there. I did wake up a little and have to push away thoughts, but it wasn't difficult I was rather tired still.
It's nearing 9am when the bank opens so I should start getting the girls ready to do our running and then we can be home sooner. Maybe I'll let the girls play their baseball set up that Mam and Pawpaw gave Sammi for her birthday. I guess they want to eat first lol, so we'll eat first then go.