updates

Lily is doing pretty good lately. We've had a lot of good days in a row. It's so fun to hear her talk about stuff. So much of what she is learning at school comes out of her mouth without having me ask her. She has learned a lot about the Pilgrims. They came on a boat and a lot of them got sick. They met the Native Americans and they became friends. There was one really nice Indian and he helped them grow food. Then they had a big feast together. She came home yesterday with a Pilgrim hat and collar made of construction paper. Today she wore it to the Y when I went to go workout. Oh, and she also recently dressed Drew in Pilgrim garb to go to Walmart. He was wearing his soccer socks (tights) pulled up to his thighs, navy pants with elastic around the ankle pulled up to the top of the tights. Then he wore a brown shirt inside out. He looked like a neglected child, but when you give the kids lots of room to express themselves through fashion, it's hard to rein them in when they make such outrageous choices.

Drew. Oh, Drew. He's definitely all boy these days. He's  pushing everyone's buttons just to see what will happen. If he's engaging in negative behavior and you give him attention for it, he amps it up by 1000 times. As hard as it is I've been ignoring some pretty annoying behavior lately; when I can muster the patience, that is.  One story I keep forgetting to share about Drew is the time a couple of weeks ago when it was rainy and cold. Lily had gone out to play in the light rain (with my permission) and Drew yelled at me that Lily was outside in the rain. I told him it was okay to go out and he says to me, "I'm going outside to play on this cold, cold wet day." Which is a line straight from his favorite book, The Cat in the Hat. It still makes me laugh when I think about it.

Julianna seems to be recovering from her surgery just fine. She's a few spikes in fever, but it's usually when I've not given her the dose of Motrin soon enough to keep the swelling and fever down. They said that she'd have a lot of drainage from the nose that should stop spontaneously within a couple of weeks. Today I have only had to wipe her nose about a dozen times, which is about a 150% drop since the weekend, so at least we're moving in the right direction. They also warned us that she also might have bad breath after surgery. Well, they weren't kidding. Oh. My. Lord. She can knock me over with one breath. There have been several times that I have accused her of having dirty pants and it's turned out to be just her breath. Tom said that when he went into her room to get her this morning her whole room stunk. Julianna has also become spoiled over the last few weeks. She has been sick or recovering from surgery for nearly a month now and since I tend to let the kids get away with stuff when they aren't feeling well, she's developed some pretty great habits that are going to be hard to break. In the evenings she will not eat her dinner unless she is sitting on my lap. At night she won't go to bed unless she's kissed everyone in the house at least twice, had 3 drinks of water and I've come into her room at least 2 times to snuggle her.  One of these days I'm going to break her of the habits, but that is a hard time of day to follow through with something that you know will cause a temper tantrum. Dinner and bedtime for me is about getting food in their bellies and getting them in bed. I don't have energy by that point in the day to argue with something like sitting on my lap or a few extra kisses. Someday soon we'll stop the behavior, but probably not tonight.