Germs. Ick.

Simon brought home some respiratory loveliness two weeks ago. Sore throat, headache, low-grade fever all of which finished off with a lovely, wet cough. He came home from school with it,  missed the next day, (his first so far!) and was back the next day feeling fine. Kicked the cough in five days days or so. My little asthmatic sickly one has finally grown an immune system!

Jonathan fell next.. I think it was last Friday? Sore throat, which hurt him badly enough that he gagged himself and threw up all over me. (briefly panicked and saw Thanksgiving and whole-family stomach virus flash before my eyes until I realized what had actually happened) Low-grade fever for a day. Bounced back well enough that he never even missed a day of school over it. Then the cough kicked in... fine... figured it would work its way out like it did with Simon.

Somewhere in there, Ben complained of a sore throat one day, but never had any of the rest of it.
Non-event there.

Anyway, so it has been 8? 9 days? Jonathan is still hacking and it's still the same. Now he's all tired and cranky. No fever. Eating fine. Drinking fine. Sleeping all night. (except for one random night in there where he wasn't tired at all EVER) So I was trying to be nice and non alarmist and wait it out. But for the second day in a row now, he has taken his nap starting at 10:45.  Cranky and hacking. We had to leave school this morning because he was just WIPED. He even asked to go home. Poor thing. :(

Guess we're all to the germ incubation center in the morning to have his chest listened to. Joy! Hope we do not pick up anything else while we are there!

Jonathan is 27 Months Old...

Dear Jonathan,

Yesterday you turned 27 months old! Forgive me for missing it. It was a busy weekend and a busy week all around!

Not much to report this month, actually. Your words continue to grow by leaps and bounds. Miss Cindy says you are more or less caught up to where you should be. We are just working now helping you speak more clearly. (and frankly, I don't know a single two-year-old who speaks all that clearly... so, I'm happy to call you basically caught up) ;)

We're working with on OT this month too to develop some playtime ideas that will make you have to stop and think about what your body is doing before you throw yourself forward headfirst into things... this is pretty much how you go through life and I don't expect a whole lot to change. Basically you have the perfect storm of ZERO fear and not a whole lot of grace. But, the playtime ideas sounds like fun! So, onward!

This month, you've really started playing well with Simon and vice versa. You actually seek each other out for entertainment. We've come a long way from Simon not even wanting to acknowledge your existence to this. You really PLAY together now and he is practicing his patience when he teaches you things. It's been fun to watch this new and unexpected friendship blossom.

You can still throw a good tantrum for what appears to be no reason at all...  but they are less frequent. So that's something.

You love school. Interestingly, I think your favorite part, aside from going outside or riding bikes in the big room, seems to be craft time. You LOVE all things glue and paint related and you also love cooking days! What you do NOT like so much, however, is getting your hands dirty, which sometimes makes things a little high maintenance during craft time. You'll glue or paint a little and then squeal with your hands up in the hair over the smallest speck of anything sticky or wet on them. I'm usually ready with a baby wipe and then off you go again all willy nilly with the paint and glue.  You were VERY into the thanksgiving indian headband project, carefully deciding which color feathers to put on it and where. You wore it proudly for two solid days after that too. SO cute.  I'm very excited for when we make the official Two and You glittery Christmas ornament. You spotted Simon's on the Christmas tree two days ago and keep pointing to it. I can't wait to see your face when you realize you get to make one too. :) You are going really enjoy the glitter part!!!

Speaking of Christmas, we put our tree up yesterday and I realized you are still not at the age to be able to resist touching it. You looked at us as if to say, "WOW! Thanks for the tree full of toys for me!!!" (sigh) It's going to be a long December.  You do love it though and are mesmerized by all the little Disney and Fisher Price ornaments that light up or play music... your favorite is a Beaker (the muppet) that sings Ode to Joy when you press the button. You stand in front of the tree singing along with it, "Mee mee mee mee meee meee mee mee mee!!!"  LOL!

You are such a fun and pleasant (if not still a bit challenging at times) kiddo.... my favorite part? You are still generous with hugs and kisses. :) I love your hugs and kisses. :)

Happy 27 months!

Love,
Mommy :)

Jonathan is 27 Months Old....

And I missed his monthday. Par for the course lately.

More later!

Graff Family Lab Rats...

Just got an email that Simon has now qualified for a study at Johns Hopkins. LOL.  So that's two out of three now. LOL! Not sure if we'll do it or not. Simon is the one of my three who would be weirded out by something like this. But, we'll talk it over and see.... ;)

"In this study we use a remote eye-tracker to investigate how children
understand questions. In order to investigate this, we'll present short
cartoon stories followed by a question about what happened in the story.
By looking at how your child answers the question in addition to his/her
eye movement patterns, we can see whether children comprehend questions in
the same way as adults do. This study will last about 20 minutes, and your
entire stay should last about 45 minutes."

Success!

The homemade laundry detergent is a success. I did throw a scoop of Oxy in with every load, but yeah, the clothes are as clean as they were with Tide. Winner! I did the cooked one btw... just had to melt the soap down. The whole process took about 15 minutes. I have enough to last me for what seems like forever. LOL.

Cool!

Ben just got recruited at Kennedy Krieger for a study on reading, processing speed, attention, and genetics. He gets a $25 Target gift card for an hour of his time to take a couple reading assessments and to give a swab of his saliva. Tom and I have to give a sample too. It sounds very, very cool! (especially since we are well aware that there is genetic component to the issues we all have around here... LOL!)

So excited! Ben probably won't be as excited initially, but when he gets the gift card he will be!

In other news, I mixed up my laundry detergent today. Laundry day is tomorrow, so I'll put it to the test!

Thanksgiving table is all set (thanks, Mom!). Just have to start cleaning a little and grocery shopping. Amusingly, after being rejected by a McCormick research study screening about Thanksgiving shopping, I got a phone call the other day that they wanted me. Of course, I couldn't do it because I'd already planned other things for the day I had told them I would be available. Bummer. That would have been $50 just to have people shadow me while I shopped!

I wonder if anyone else in our family will get recruited for a study soon? We seem to be on a roll. Jonathan actually has his name in for a bunch at Johns Hopkins that he qualified for because of his speech delay. Just waiting to hear ! LOL!

Random....

* The ingredients for my laundry detergent came today. Hope to have a minute to mix it all up soon! Krystyna, I bought the Purex crystals to make a batch with those too. I like the idea of soft towels that smell good.  ;)

* Simon is home sick. It's his first missed day of kindergarten.

He had complained that his head felt "weird" two days ago when he got home. I asked him if that meant it hurt, he said no, just "weird". Later that night, he asked for some Motrin because he said it hurt. When he woke up yesterday though, he seemed totally fine. I checked his temp just in case and sent him off to school. When I got to go in and observe for American Education week around 2p.m., he was a little out of it. He didn't raise his hand or even read along with the story they were doing. At center time, he was dazed and looked like he was going to fall asleep. The teacher and I decided something must be up, but he didn't feel warm. I offered to take him home but he said, "I just have a cold!" and the teacher said he was fine to stay. However, by the time I came for pickup at 4, he was tanking and QUICKLY. When we got home, he wanted to put jammies on and lay on the couch. I felt his head and he was on fire. *sigh*

Today it mostly seems like a head cold with a cough, and he stayed home,  but he's still tired, so we'll see what tomorrow brings, I guess. :(

* Jonathan got into some cake yesterday while I was in the office scanning the boys' school photos.


* The school pictures came home yesterday and were BAD, so bad, so. very. bad.  I'm not even posting them here because I'm having them retaken. I just don't understand how those photographers manage to make them SO very bad. All you have to say to Simon is "Smile!" and his eyes get big and his smile lights up his face. His photo looked like he was wincing in pain.  Ben's was just bad... I can almost forgive that though because he's a hard kid to take a picture of... he just doesn't smile naturally for photos. So between that and Lifetouch's awkward posing and lack of hair combing, yeah, his is bad too.

I think that's all for now... I'm a little overwhelmed at the moment. The holidays are bearing down on us all already (seriously?!) and I am hosting Thanksgiving this year, which I swore I wouldn't do until I absolutely had to. Turns out, that came sooner than later.  So yeah... busy!

Experimental Erin Strikes Again...

I watched a documentary yesterday called Chemerical about all the chemicals that are in the things we use to clean our houses. Granted, it was a touch leftist/crunchy and I can't get on board with some of it. (sorry, I like my shampoo and lotions!) But the cleaners stuff made a LOT of sense and I am one who is guilty of using every fancy cleaner under the sun. The air in my house is probably crazy toxic. LOL.  So I got a bug to experiment...

I thought I'd start small, one thing at a time. So I got the ingredients to make my own laundry detergent. This one is a no brainer for me because I have at least one kid with horribly sensitive skin, one who has occasional sensitive skin and one for whom the verdict is still out, but genes are, frankly, not on his side.

Anyway, it looks easy. I found all the ingredients on Amazon... and I already had the Borax anyway.
I went to Safeway to see if they had any of it and all they have is Borax.

Of all the things the family in the documentary tried, this was, by far, the most quickly accepted and adopted and, apparently, effective. (That's is the issue I am going to have... if a natural alternative doesn't seem to get things as clean, I'm going to have a hard time adopting it 100%.)

After this, I might try the wood floor cleaner. I use Mr. Clean on my floors... it smells great, but who knows what's in it. And my kids and the cat spend a lot of time on the floor. So that would be another good one to start with.

We'll see... I'm so ADD with this kind of thing. There was a statistic in the documentary that struck me though.... stay at home moms are 54% more likely to develop cancer than moms who work outside the home.  That's kind of scary.

Anyway, stay tuned... ;)

My Tax Dollars at Work...

Jonathan's speech teacher has wanted to bring in an occupational therapist to look at him for months now, claiming he has low tone, a weak core, he doesn't always protect himself when he falls and he lacks the motor planning to be able to stop himself when he runs.

If he were not already working with Cindy, I honestly never would have done anything about this because I never would have known.  It's really subtle and until you know what to look for, you really wouldn't notice.  Yes,  I had my doubts... but I've started to see what she means.

So the OT came out yesterday to join us for Jonathan's regular speech session. Her name is Joanne. She's really sweet and Jonathan took to her right away too, which is always nice.

It wasn't more than a couple minutes before she saw all the things Cindy has observed and explained them to me in further detail and what we can do to work with him. She said he's interesting because all of his issues are easy to miss because he has such great gross motor skills and is such an adept climber. But when you look closely, he'll do things like still support himself with one hand when he is playing on the floor, or fall over when pushed gently instead of tensing up his middle to stay upright.

Interesting stuff.  Sooooo, she'll be joining us for school in a couple weeks to work with him on the playground one day. Fun!

We have her enlisted for six sessions total to work with him and give us strategies for things we can do when we play with him to strengthen his core and teach him how to play less impulsively (always assuming someone will be there to catch him) and more safely.

Anyway, so she was working on her paperwork and getting ready to leave when Jonathan wandered off and picked up my phone. He pulled up Gangnam Style on YouTube and started dancing. Now, I haven't gotten this on video yet because he always quits on me, but he dances every bit as well as Simon. And it's not just that song either. He knows the choreography so all his favorite songs on the Wii game Just Dance. It's very, VERY funny. So he was doing this -- lasso-ing, galloping... all completely in rhythm. She OT put her pen down, stopped what she was doing and just watched. "Does he do this all the time? This is amazing!"

Her biggest observation was that some of the developmental motor milestones he doesn't seem like he has hit under normal circumstances (doing separate things with his hands was one.... getting both sides of the brain working together), he DOES while he's dancing.

She told me I should see if I could find a dance class that would take him... and to let him play the Wii Dance game lots because it's really good for the issues he has.

Once again, music is the thing that is the way to get him to progress.... I have to think this is going to play into his future somehow. LOL!

Half Day....

Today is a weird day.

I'm not feeling fantastically wonderful... annoying cold thing that has left me more tired than anything else... otherwise just a little sniffly. But I don't have time for tired and more than I have time for being sick.

Jonathan had school, which is normal. There were only three kids in his class though because everyone else was out sick. So, it was quiet, but nice. He had a great day and enjoyed every bit of it.

Usually, right after school, he goes right home for a nap, but the big boys got out at 12:50 today, so we went over to the bagel shop and grabbed a quick bit to eat then headed over to get Ben and Simon.

The elementary school was a madhouse today. My head was pounding from lack of coffee, Jonathan was tired, kids were everywhere, parents who don't usually pick up were also everywhere. Simon brought home a painted pumpkin, in addition to all of his usual stuff, so I got to lug that to the car along with Jonathan.

Home now, thank goodness. Jonathan went down happily for his nap and I can finally take a motrin and some DayQuil. I have so much to do and no energy with which to do it.

Thank goodness it's Friday!

THis, This, This, This, and This...

So, since last I updated, we weathered a hurricane and didn't lose our power. (yay!)

The kids were off for two days from school but life has now gone back to its regularly scheduled programming. Well, except for the fact that they have a half day on Friday because it's the end of the marking period, and then Monday and Tuesday off for teacher work day and then the election. Serenity now!

We had the pleasure of hurricane house guests Uncle Taylor, Aunt Sarah and cousin Audim. They lose power at the drop of a hat so preemptively took refuge at our house at the last minute. It was nice to have company for those long two days!

This is a photo of our Davey Jones, who has, in recent months, become a part-time outdoor cat. He was NOT happy about having to stay inside. He sat for hours just gazing sadly out of the kitchen window.

This is a picture of my husband and his brother, who, thanks to the magic of telecommuting, were able to work from here during the two days their downtown office was closed. I sort of wish this was a permanent situation! (note, I said "sort of". I told Tom if this ever did become a possibility, he needed to move the office somewhere else in the house where the kids would forget he was here and he also needs his own small kitchen set-up so he would stay out from under my feet all day with his tea-making and lunching and just random wandering)

This is how Simon occupied himself for a good chunk of our first day stuck inside. He made the box jail from Toy Story. What you can't see is that on the other side of this box, he wrote "Toe Store". I was like, "Toe Store?" and he said, "TOY STORY! I spelled it myself!" LOL.

Jonathan was happy daddy's Ipad was home. He found himself a box and got comfortable. 

Ben got addicted to Minecraft. We call it a "gateway" game... you know, to Civilization and other such nerdiness. Actually quite thrilled about this development! Beats Pokemon hands down!

Prior to all the weather insanity, we had trick or treating at the local shopping center. THis was the one and only time Simon wore his homemade Ninjago costume.  He was Darth Vader at school and a regular ninja on Halloween. Sigh.  Here he is with his buddy Quinn. The other picture is the boys with their cousins Alek and Anastasia who met us there to trick or treat!

Simon had his last soccer game of the season, danced on the field and got his first participation trophy. Mommy is glad soccer season is over. It was a bit much overlapping with every other Saturday swimming lessons for Ben at the same time and Jonathan's naptime. Yikes. Must plan that better next year. 

There was THIS. 

And then THIS.

To explain, the school had a rock concert for the kids last Friday to wrap up their "Being Drug Free ROCKS" week. The kids were supposed to dress like rock stars. Simon went as the guy from the Gangnam Style YouTube video. This was all his idea. Like, completely. All I helped with was spraying his hair black. He performed this for me before leaving for school that morning. Apparently he also got up on stage and opened the rock concert for the whole school with this routine (sans the song). This kid is just hilarious. He just keeps us laughing ALL the time. 

Ben got a haircut by someone new. (We finally got around to finding a hair place near our house) It's super short now and we all love it!

THere was a Halloween parade at the elementary school yesterday. Simon went as Darth Vader. So did two of his classmates. Here he is with one of them. LOL.

Ben went as random undead guy....

Then, on Halloween night, Simon switched it up and went with the regular ninja, Ben went with the x-ray skeleton and Jonathan went as the purple dragon (which Ben wore when he was either 2 or 3, I can't remember)

It only took one house for Jonathan to get the idea. He ran up to every house after that right behind the big boys and said "Tick Teat" and "Dankoo" and then brought me the candy and said things like "Open. Dis one. Pwease? Candy. More. Again!" TOO funny.  Love his newfound words. :)

And that about sums up the last few days... :) Whew!

I'm tired!