Life is Full of Surprises

I certainly didn't expect the snow/ice storm that hit our area two weeks ago to result in almost a full week of cancelled school. Maddie and Andrew enjoyed their snow days much more than I did. Four children children suffering cabin fever can result in a magnitude of unfinished projects for mom.



Mylie has two bottom teeth now. They are so cute (and sharp). She was miserable around the time of the ice storm, fussing more often, hardly sleeping, and seeming very uncomfortable. I was feeling really bad for her, since teething is miserable (I recently had a wisdom tooth surface). I swabbed her gums with baby orajel to numb them and gave her some infant motrin. Well, two days later I noticed gunk coming out of her ear. It turns out that what I had deemed as teething pain, was actually a bad ear infection that led to her ear drum bursting and draining. I felt awful for not figuring out the ear infection sooner. Ten days of amoxicillian later and she is doing just dandy.

Last week my cousin Rachel Gee, her husband Chris, and their three sons, Christopher (5), Ethan (3), and Matthew (1) came up from North Carolina to stay with us. It was so much fun to have guests. My kids loved having more kids to play with and it was fun for me and Ben to catch up with Chris and Rachel. We spent quite a while in the evenings watching episodes of AskANinja online. Check out www.askaninja.com and watch Ninja Poetry and also the episode about Pirates of the Caribbean. They are about five minutes long and very funny. We also liked watching "My Hands Are Bananas" at this link : http://youtube.com/watch?v=RO10s_HK6d0&mode=related&search=

I hope that you took a moment to click on both of the links above. Especially the "My Hands Are Bananas" video, which totally reminds me of the videos that my Durham cousins would make. Josh and his friends make videos like that too. If you want to see a great one of my brother Josh when he was 14 years old, then check this out: http://youtube.com/watch?v=jljl-KXCEnY

So, back to the surprises of last week... Thursday I get a call from the director of Andrew's preschool telling me Andrew has been "involved in an incident." My first thought was that Andrew had a bathroom accident. Unfortunately, as it turned out, Andrew had an argument with one of his fellow preschoolers and bit the kid on the upper thigh when the kid tried to take away Andrew's truck. I was shocked, since Andrew is my weepy wimpy child most of the time. Zack loves to charge at Andrew just to get him to run away in terror. Part of me was amazed that Andrew stood up for himself finally, the rest of me was mortified that I had received the dreaded phone call informing me that I was the parent of a bully.

Then, on Friday morning as I'm cleaning up the breakfast dishes, Zack strips down naked walks into the bathroom, climbs onto the toilet, and proceeds to both pee and poop. I'm blown away, because I haven't been working on potty training with him at all. So, he has graduated to underwear and pull-ups. He is about 65% trained so I'm forced to follow him around the house to prevent him from stripping down and leaving me "little presents" in various rooms. Still, I am very proud of him for taking this big step himself. Can you imagine the joy that is in store once I have three of my four children potty trained?

Life is full of surprises...