Braelyn turned 3! However, she lost her best friend and playmate when Emily started school. She tends to follow Mom around all day making it almost impossible to get things checked off of my to-do list each day. I am trying to keep things in perspective, knowing that this is just a season. I remind myself that it is a good opportunity to spend some quality time with my 'middle child'. Braelyn started Cubbies a couple of weeks ago. She goes each Wednesday for about an hour and a half and has a great time learning about God, doing crafts, playing with other kids, and memorizing scripture. Her favorite part is picking a prize out of the bag when she says her memory verse for the week. What I enjoy the most about Braelyn is the randomness of her conversation and her love for snuggling. A friend was watching her for me while I was in the ER with Grady (we'll get to that later) and she later told me that Braelyn asked why she had plates on her wall. My friend responded 'they're pretty for me to look at.' Braelyn said, 'I don't have plates in my room- I have underpants in my room.' On the way to pick up Emily from school today, Braelyn saw a turtle in the grass and she said 'the turtle is going to school just like Emily.' Usually a day has not ended without me smiling at something she's said. Makes me wonder what goes on in her little mind.
What a ham!
Ok, back to the ER with Grady. Now that Grady is mobile... let me digress. He's definitely mobile, but he looks more like a lizard than a baby when he moves. I guess it's a form of 'commando crawling', but he moves so fast and alternates his arms and feet that his form resembles that of the lizards that bask in the sun on our windowsills. Anyway, now that's he's mobile, I have constantly been nagging the girls to pick things up off of the floor that he could swallow. There always seem to be little scraps of paper from crafts or hairclips that don't make it back to their place of belonging laying on the floor. Apparently on one of Grady's morning excursions through the house, he attempted to swallow something he found on the floor. I didn't see what it was and after a call to the pediatrician, we ended up in the ER for an X Ray to make sure his airway wasn't compromised. After a 3 hour wait in a small space crammed with people infected with the swine flu (oops... the H1N1 virus :) ), we finally made it into our own examining room. As I was nursing Grady, I saw what looked like a piece of paper lodged in his throat, so I went out to the nurse's station and told them I didn't think an xray was necessary because paper wouldn't show up on the film anyway. They insisted... just to make sure. When they were done with the xray I ended up feeding him again and could see that the paper had moved around a little bit. I kept him on his stomach and eventually I saw him 'chewing', so I flipped him over, pried his mouth open, and caught just the edge of the 'foreign object' and pulled it out. I'm still not sure exactly what it was and where it came from. It looked like the plastic wrapper from the straw on the back of a juice box. It was such a thin plastic that it formed a vacuum against his throat so he couldn't get it out and just continuously gagged on it. Lots of praises coming out of that- that Grady managed to get it out himself, and I consider it a true miracle that we did not end up with the H1N1 flu. Needless to say, mykids are learning that if anything lays on the floor for more than 30 seconds, it is liable to end up in the trash :) All is well that ends well.
Grady at 8 months
Braelyn loves to snuggle with Grady
Lastly, and maybe most monumental in our lives... Emily started Kindergarten. Ok, let me take just a second to vent about a random pet peeve. If someone can't spell Kindergar'd'en right, they should not be allowed to homeschool their children! Back to school... Emily is loving it! Over the summer, we were given the option by the school to request a teacher for our child. I prayed about it and came to the conclusion that God knows so much better what my child needs than I do, so I would leave it in his hands. I am so glad I did not try to stick my hands into his business. We all just love her teacher. Without coming right out and asking her, I am assuming that she is a believer. Emily told me last week that she used to teach preschool at Fruit Cove Baptist- where Emily went last year. She is organized, but not in a way that will exacerbate Emily's type A personality and she is firm and clear in her expectations and consequences. We get the run-down from Emily each day of who ends up on yellow and red... so far she's been on green each day. Public school has definitely given me some additional opportunities to take Emily back to God's word and help her apply it to specific situations. This week we had our first 'incident'. Instead of biking, I picked Emily up in the parent pick up line by car. As she opened the door to get in, her teacher said, "we had a little incident today. I put an envelope in Emily's folder for you, but before you freak out, read the note." I have to say I was a little alarmed by the 'before you freak out' part. Of course, I couldn't look at the folder right away since I was driving, so I was trying to pry some information out of Emily, who I might add wasn't volunteering much. My first question was, "did you stay on green today?" The answer was 'yes', so I figured it couldn't be THAT bad. I was too curious to wait until we were out of the car, so I had Emily get her folder out and I read the teacher's note. Apparently Emily had misused her scissors to cut her hair. Inside the envelope were the curly locks that she had cut off. Her teacher did tell me that she believes it was a one time thing since Emily is usually so well behaved and she also said that she believes Emily was 'encouraged' by a friend to do it. After asking a few questions, I ended up with the full story. I took the opportunity to remind Emily of the scripture that says we are to be different from the world. The lesson learned: even though our friends are doing things that are wrong, God expects us to obey him. We were made to please God, not our friends. It made me realize how easily swayed children can be and even though I feel like I am constantly beating them over the head with God's word and what kind of heart Jesus wants them to have, this was a good reminder that I can never be doing too much of that. I sent a note back to her teacher, thanking her for sending home the hair. I told her that she was a 'hairless' baby, so now I have some for the baby book :) It's all about perspective, right? At least she didn't cut the hair off of someone else's head.
Emily on Picture Day
The morning before the hair cut :)
I think that about covers the highlights of the last couple of months. I'm sure I'm forgetting some things that I should have remembered to include, but this will have to do. We're looking forward to a trip to Guatemala, probably in November. That should in itself provide plenty of blog-worthy material for our next update.
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