What you can't know

Before you have kids, you really can't know how fast the time is going to go. Sure, people tell you all the time that time goes by in the blink of an eye when you have little ones, but you can't really understand it (even though you think you do). Maybe you've got an infant who needs to eat every 3 hours, and it's feeling that has been going on f-o-r-e-v-e-r and that it will continue to go on f-o-r-e-v-e-r.

The reality is that each stage goes by pretty much as soon as you get used to it. And then you turn around and your baby boy is nearly shoulder-high and getting taller every day, learning more and more about the world and his role in it. Your baby girl is a competent, spirited first grader. You stop and say to yourself "But they were just babies ten minutes ago!"

I know we're not perfect parents, but we do the best we can. Sure, we lose our tempers, we lack the patience we're asking for from our kids (irony!). But we always do the best we can to make the best decisions for our kids, who are such a gift to us. Time is so fleeting and it's not going to be long before they're grown.

I always say that I wish there were a way you could 'record' a day in your life at each age with your kids, so you can replay it and relive it. I know that those baby days would be even sweeter if I could get back to them with the full knowledge of how quickly they will pass. I look back at pictures of the kids when they were one and two...seems like so long ago! Thankfully, every age has its own special elements, and I can't wait to see what the future holds for these beautiful children of ours!

Picture of Determination

Our Amy can be so very determined when she wants to be. After taking a month off from tae kwon do (it was getting to be a fight every single class day, so we thought a little break would be helpful for all of us), she's back at it with a lot of energy. She's been working to earn the tips she needs to get from her green belt to her green stripe belt. This week was a review week and she earned the second of four needed tips on Wednesday, then the third of four during tonight's class. After class, she bravely went up and asked Instructor J.P. if she could test for her black tip (forms) – he said he couldn't test her then, but she could come back at 7:15 p.m. when there was a review time that was open to anyone.

Tod and Reed left this afternoon on their trip to Montana to celebrate Grandmother Holt's 100th birthday, and Amy was really excited to share her news with them. Tod taught her how to send texts on the iPhone a week or so ago, so she asked if she could send him a text. I said sure. She got busy typing...

Today Feb.9,2012 I got my  blue tip it is for KICKS I know that I will get my black tip. I even think i'll get before you get back form Montana.Love Amy.

We added a picture to tell the whole story.

We came home from Top Kick, she had a bowl of cereal for dinner, did her homework and back out the door we went for the practice session. She worked for about a half-hour, practicing her form with another girl and with Instructor Jeremy, and she was able to earn that coveted 4th tip. Here's her second text to Dad...

I went to the 7:15 practice class and instructor Jrmmy came and tested me on my Form and I earned my BLACK TIP!!! As you have noticed it is for FORMS I will graduate Feb.22,2012 at 5:15.

Success!

When this girl wants to do something, she does it. I am so very proud of the way she works hard to achieve her goals. What an amazing girl she is!

Pants problem

No, this isn't about the dog (Shelby, who Amy nicknamed Shelby Pants). This is about Reed. He has a problem. A pants problem.

See...sweatpants.

I will take the fall for starting this one. When he was small, I put him in nothing but elastic waist pants. Come on, they're more comfortable, and cheaper too. Lots of people dress their young sons in impossibly adorable and expensive pants and jeans...but not me. I went for comfort and low cost.

Consequently the poor child has not learned how to manage pants buttons. He's gotten a lot better at shirt buttons (on the rare occasions when he wears them), but he is flumoxed by his pants problem. His thin, reed-like (get it!) fingers just can't manage to properly manipulate the buttons without what he feels is Herculean effort.

Lack of practice combined with a lack of dexterity. What are you gonna do. I have decided to not be bothered by it - he'll figure it out sometime before he goes off to college (or else be outfitted solely in sports pants with elastic waists). Meanwhile he will either skip going to the bathroom (yikes) or, since his waist is so skinny, just pull his not-designed-to-be-pulled-down-without-unbuttoning pants down over his hips. I guess we should applaud his problem-solving skills.

One day, probably in the next two years or so, peer pressure will maybe get the better of him and he'll want to wear blue jeans like all the other boys. Or maybe not. But either way, no worries on this end – just smile!

Migraines? At 6 years old?

A week ago Friday, I got a call from one of the Daisy moms that Amy came down with a terrible headache at the Daisy meeting and wanted to go home. (Geez, I just realized that day was Friday the 13th. Ugh.)

Turns out it was more than a headache, it was her second migraine headache.

The first one happened on December 5. I picked her up from school as usual and she was fine. All four of us walked the dogs around the block and she was fine. We got back home for her to get ready for tae kwon do class (which was a fight, as it sometimes can be) and she was fine. Until she wasn't. Suddenly she said her head was really killing her. We thought we'd try making it to tae kwon do class anyway, but as I drove her there she continued to complain about her headache, and added that she felt sick to her stomach. When we parked the car, she said she didn't think she could do class, she thought she was going to throw up. We sat on the curb for a few minutes and then decided to go home. She laid on the couch for a few minutes, and threw up all over the family room not too much later. That improved her headache some, and her sick tummy feeling went away. Within an hour or two, after some Tylenol, she was feeling a lot better. She stayed home from school the next day, but was fine. We chalked it up to a really fast-acting tummy bug.

And now here we were again, same set up. She's fine, and then she's really not. When I got there to pick her up, she was sitting outside with a Mom, trash can nearby. Face as pale as a sheet, clearly in a lot of pain. We made it home fine, and again within 15 minutes or so, she'd thrown up (this time in the bowl I'd given her - yay, no vomit to clean up!). That made her tummy feel a lot better, and improved her headache some, but the headache continued for a while. Within an hour or two, she was laughing her head off at the Smurf movie we'd all settled in to watch, clearly feeling a hundred percent better.

After this happened, I did some online research to find out more about migraines. Her symptoms all fit, and of course we have the family history with my Mom suffering terribly from migraines from age 19. One of the things I read was sometimes people experience an "aura" - a visual disturbance of some kind, sometimes blurred vision, sometimes seeing colors - before a migraine starts. I asked Amy if her vision changed at all when she got this headache, did she see anything funny. She told me that when her head started hurting at lunch time at school, she'd had a bright yellow and purple/pink light in the corner of her eye that she "couldn't make go away". Sounds exactly like what I'd read.

We visited the pediatrician on Wednesday just to make sure everything was (relatively) okay. She told us what we already knew, that we should try to watch for patterns that go along with these migraines, and try to help Amy recognize when one is coming on so she can get some ibuprofen immediately and hopefully lessen the effects of the headache. So we'll be keeping an eye on things and I really hope this doesn't become a terrible problem for Amy. She's as tough as nails, so I can only imagine how terrible she was feeling in the middle of that headache - she looked so miserable. We're also going to get her eyes checked to rule out this being caused by eye strain. The school nurse told us there are lots of kids in the school who suffer from migraines. We'll see what happens - so far this has only happened twice, so maybe it will stop just as quickly as it started.

Meanwhile I'll be sending positive thoughts to keep this pain away from my baby girl.

What's special about our kids

Amy is a girl who appreciates structure and having responsibility. Where perhaps we did too much for Reed since he was our first kid and there are so many instances where it's easier to just do something for him rather than wait for him to work his way through something....with Amy our expectations were higher. We'd learned that it'd really be best to let her do things on her own, that way she'd learn faster. I guess that's where it's not so fair to be a second child! (Don't I know it!)

But ultimately I think it suits Amy well. She is quick to jump in and do for herself what Reed is content to have done for him a lot of the time (pouring a drink is one example). She likes having jobs at home and will even get upset if someone does one of her jobs for her (like delivering drinks at dinner time). She works to solve problems when she runs into them, rather than throwing her hands up in surrender. If she can't figure it out, she'll keep working. Her problem-solving skills are terrific.

This has carried over into school as well. Her kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Mitkowski, knew that if she allowed Amy to be an authority in the classroom, it would benefit everyone - they often joked that if they forgot something they needed to do or remember, they could just ask Amy and she would know. They let her help kids who were having trouble, they let her give direction. She thrived in this environment.

Now, Reed...he is becoming much more self-sufficient as time goes by, and it's great to see. Now he can reach the higher cabinets (or he'll drag a chair over so he can reach), he fixes his own lunch (mostly)...but we probably didn't do him any favors by over-doing things for him. We're working on it, though!

Reed is great at recognizing the structure and rules for things – I think is why he's doing well with chess. He can explain the rules of a game very clearly and completely. In third grade, his teacher says he's doing everything he's supposed to...he gets his work done (really) quickly and then has time to read while other kids are still working. He even reads while the lessons are going on, but when Mr. Heenan asks him a question about whatever they're discussing, he's prepared with the answer despite it appearing that he wasn't really paying attention. He's a great multi-tasker, hopefully that will benefit him. Somehow it's still astonishing to us how fast the kid can read. He got books for Christmas that he'd read within 15 minutes of opening them. I guess some people might think then the present wasn't really worthwhile, but what they don't realize is that he'll read the same book a dozen times more. Reed is also someone who doesn't follow the norm – he thinks on his own and doesn't do thinks just because other kids are doing it. I hope that's something that continues since it will serve him well in pursuing his own happiness.

Our kids also genuinely seem to enjoy each other's company too. Which is not to say that they don't fight and drive us nuts, but they have a lot of things they both like. They are both big into Pokemon and Club Penguin, and for Christmas they got a Wii game called Skylander that they've spent a lot of time playing and talking about – discussing strategies, favorite characters, favorite moves. They also worked together on a big Lego set that Amy got for Christmas – that is a new shared interest for them that I'm happy to see.

So overall I'd say that they're keepers. Happy New Year!

Whoops!

Well about two and half weeks ago, I picked Reed up from CASA (the kids' after-school program) and he told me he'd gotten hurt playing football. He'd tripped over someone's foot and landed face down. There was a bump on the right side of his collar bone and it seemed pretty painful, but we just figured it was a sore muscle and it'd feel better with time.

Fast forward two weeks later, to this past Monday. A nagging, month-long cold finally brought us to the doctor's office. We also wanted to ask about the shoulder pain, since Reed was still seeming to have trouble.

Imagine Tod's surprise when the doctor took one look at Reed and said "Yep, he's got a broken collarbone." YIKES! Wow, I never would have guessed that (obviously). Dr. Shannon said that even if we'd brought him in sooner, there isn't really much you can do for a broken clavicle - at most, they would have put him in a splint for a few days. She said by that point it was probably pretty well healed.

So now both our kids have had broken bones. Neither of us has ever had one. I think we've got two really tough kids, that's for sure. Reed continued playing football (he just used his left hand) and doing most everything he normally does, all while having a broken bone. Amazing kids we've got.

What a kid!

A couple of times in the last week, I've been struck by what a great kid Amy is. I mean, she drives us batty sometimes (okay, frequently), but wow. She's amazing.

Yesterday was our annual cookie day. Mom started this tradition when Aly was a baby, if I remember right. We get together, bake a bunch of stuff, order lunch and just hang out together. None of us really needs the stuff we're baking, usually, but it's a tradition.

This year, Amy helped from start to finish, only taking a break to eat lunch. Afterward, Tod asked if she was helpful...and honestly, she was every bit as helpful as anyone. She did everything we asked her to, did her best, and was geniuinely helpful. When we got home, she ran to the bathroom and on her way said "I didn't go to the bathroom all day because I didn't want to stop working!". When it's something she's interested in (like cooking), she is all in. She works so hard. It's awesome.

Another thing was a school problem that Amy solved for herself. When we had her parent-teacher conference in November, Ms. Rokus told us how Amy was sitting next to a girl named Katie, and that Amy had been really helpful in getting Katie to come out of her shell and feel more comfortable in the classroom. How great for both of them! Well, one day last week Amy told me she'd switched seats in the classroom. The first reason she gave was that Peter (who she loves wanted to sit at the table with the girls where she sits. Then she said, "Well, that's one reason, but there was another reason too." After a little prodding, she explained: "Katie wants me to tell her the answers, but she knows what the answers are, she can do it on her own. I'm afraid she won't be my friend anymore if I don't give her the answers." Wow. So Amy saw the opportunity to change seats as a chance to get out of this problem, while also making her friend Peter happy. I am really impressed that she found a way to solve her problem, and it's one that works for everyone.

Last, Amy has unfortunately gotten a case of head lice in the last week (cue the paranoid scratching). She was invited to a 'penguin pajama party' at her classmate Morgan's home, where a couple dozen little girls were going to eat popcorn and cupcakes and watch the movie "Mr. Popper's Penguins." She was SO excited about this, since she hasn't gotten a lot of invites. Well since she had head lice, we decided it wasn't a good idea for her to go, since she'd possibly be laying on the floor next to other kids, sharing pillows, etc. We were so worried how she would take the news - it's the kind of thing that would normally devastate her. Tod broke the news to her, and while she was definitely very upset, she also told him that she was kind of expecting that to happen. So she wasn't nearly as broken up about it as we feared. We had a special movie night at home where she picked the movie we rented, and we had pizza and she snuggled on the couch with Dad.

We are so lucky to be her parents. She's quite an amazing kid.