First day of school pics!

Andrew and Madelyn leave before Ty and Jack even get up, so I had to take 2 sets of pics this year (3 really, ‘cause Jack started his school a week later).  A is a senior, M is a freshman.  HOW AM I OLD ENOUGH TO HAVE KIDS THIS AGE???  Weren’t they just babies?!?!

My sweet Tyler and little brother Jack (Holly had to get in there too).  Ty is off to 6th grade.  I have them in 6, 9, and 12 (hee hee).

And here is my precious guy on his first day, along with best buddy Braska and lil sis Kinlee.  RK has better pics so that you can actually see that B is Thing 2!  Kiki coordinates with them but she’s not a thing this day, she’s just cute!

Something I’ve been meaning to explain

I keep getting those weird comments full of chinese symbols.  Sometimes there are words too but clearly they are complete spam and I know many of you have complained of getting them too.  That’s why I changed our comments to “moderate”.  No one was rude.  I just didn’t want to have them on there since there’s no telling what they said.  It’s not worth it to translate.  Thanks for leaving comments anyway!

They Went to School….Waaaaah!

I hate when they go back to school.  Get up early, fight to get ready and get out the door on time, fight to do homework, fight to get ready for bed, and go to sleep on time.  Remember to buy lunch food ahead of time, get dinner ready on time.  No more movie nights, sleeping late, hanging at the pool all afternoon, eating popcorn for dinner.  I took pics of their first day, but no downloads tonight.  Gotta get ready for the grind again in the morning.  Have I mentioned I hate this??

Slot machine, or little boy??

Here's a story I meant to post awhile back:

2 weeks ago this Thurs Tyler came running upstairs with Jack saying "he's choking". So I looked at him for a fraction of a minute and knew he was breathing, but clearly there was something in his throat. We debated calling 911 but since he was breathing, and the ambulance house is right close to the hospital, we decided to run him to the emergency room ourselves. Allan drove and M & I watched him all the way there (less than 10 mins.). When we were in the parking lot getting out, he started coughing up lots of clear mucus-y stuff so Al ran him in and M and I grabbed our stuff and followed. They put him in a room pretty quick and took an x-ray. Guess what was in there???

Can you tell what it is?? Yep, it's a quarter. Look at it from the side (it's a real faint up and down line in front of his spine):

That's why he didn't choke to death and could still breathe.
So the doctor decided to send us down to St. Louis Children's Hospital to be checked out and have surgery to remove the quarter since he couldn't swallow it down and he couldn't throw it up. Lovely. He was pretty pathetic, real sad looking and quiet. Just wanting to be held. After we'd been there about 2 hours the dr. came back to tell us the ambulance was there to take us to Children's and asked "how's he doing?". We had literally just remarked that he suddenly perked up, and was talking, and seemed more like himself. So the dr. says "hmmmmm, let's take another x-ray before we send you down there". Guess what?? No quarter!

He managed to swallow it! Yay! So surgery! The guys that showed up with the ambulance (hi Andrew and Kevin!) waited so patiently for the xray results, chatting with us and entertaining Jack. They even took Jack on a little tour of the "bus" because he wouldn't ge to ride in it. He loved seeing the lights on top (he's into lights lately so that has super special). Then we went back in, spoke to the dr. who told us to watch for the quarter (ewwww) and that it could take up to 2 weeks to see it again. We've been waiting, waiting, waiting ever since. But guess what happened last night? We have quarter! (the black one on the right is Jack's, the other one I pulled out of my wallet for comparison. Can you believe the color change? Interesting.

So all is good, and now you know what happens to a quarter after going through the digestive tract of a little boy for 2 weeks. I was glad it came out - all the jokes about where the soda comes out or where does the change come out were getting repetitive!

The saddest day of the year.......

The day before the first day of school. I hate it. I hate the stress of homework, short amounts of time with my kids, fighting about going to bed, doing homework, getting up......BLAH!

We went through all the school supplies this morning and everyone picked out what they need and loaded their backpacks. Even Jack got in on it.


M got a notebook she's happy about. We love Johnny Depp even when he's bizarre!


Say a prayer for me tomorrow. I'll probably buy a coffee drink to ease my sorrows and thank goodness for Jack's company, but I'll still be sad and lonely and pathetic. Maybe I can channel some of this boredom to clean out the house. Wish me luck.

Jack's School Issues

Okay, a couple of posts ago I was ranting about Jack's school. I am not going to take back anything I said because I still think it's accurate. However, I do have an update. The problem began when I was given a call to say that Jack would be placed in the afternoon class when school starts. My immediate reaction was, "hmm, that may not work, he still takes a nap in the afternoon". So I called the person I thought could help me and told them I didn't think his placement would work and although very nice, I was basically told "oh well". Now we all know that Jack's good buddy is in his class as well. Initially, we didn't want to compare notes because we don't want school to think we are ganging up on them and what good would it do really, but I knew they were having the same issue. But for health and performance reasons, they were more than happy to pull her from school (she learns better at home anyway). (Yes, at some point we had compared notes and analyzed every conversation either of us had. But like I said, we were tying not to.) I was surprisingly hesitant to pull Jack, but after thinking about it for awhile, I was looking forward to keeping him home. I was a little concerned because that meant no professional therapy (no our insurance wouldn't be helpful), but I was ready to give it a go here on our own.

Now keep in mind, all this is happening on the verge of and at the beginning of our vacation. (We went to FL for the National Down Syndrome Congress Convention, and a few days of fun in the sun. More on that later.) So I wasn't quite as invested or po'd as if I'd been at home. But surprise, surprise, I got a call from buddy's mama (yes, you all know who it is), who said school had been calling my house and I should call them back. Guess what? They had some staffing changes and Jack is now in a morning class. Very interesting. I don't know why, but we're back in business. I was a little sad that I don't get to keep him (but c'mon, he's still 3 and it's pre-school soooooo they can count on Jack not having perfect attendance if ya know what I mean). But it will be nice after Dashlyn comes home to have some time to spend just with her, and Jack will have his therapies, and he will get to hang with some friends which he does enjoy.

Bottom line - once again I realized how much I HATE other people telling me what to do with my own kid, but things have worked out quite nicely. Next week may be a completely different story.