catch up.

sisters with new haircuts and new jammies. after we got back from kansas city we completely revamped their bedtime routine and they've been doing amazing with it. this was their reward. after much debate they picked the same nightgown, complete with matching sleep mask. they have jammie parties and are adorable.

 they took the stuffing out of a huge bear that has been deteriorating for a while. they've had more fun this week pretending the stuffing is snow, soup, blankets, etc. i feel almost bad that we're going to throw it out soon, but it's a pain to clean up.

i wanted to take a picture of nola because she looked like dora on her shirt and avery snuck in under her legs. nola didn't miss a beat, and let her through while she posed. 

we went to a museum in kansas city that had kid friendly face paint set up for the kids to do themselves. we set up their room with a mirror on top of a new dresser and i found some face paint for them. they ask every single day to use face paint. this was nola's cat face, she did it all by herself and then wanted a picture of it so she would remember what she did for next time. 

avery, on the other hand, colored her entire face in black :)

the girls have been watching "power puff girls" during rest time this summer. they love it. avery especially, so she's started drawing the girls on the blackboard. 

i can't remember if i mentioned that i got the job i interviewed for--today i went to the school and met with the coordinator to see the library and get my email set up. i am completely overwhelmed, but excited. i'm hopeful that they will give me some sort of assistant/aide. with only being there half-time, it's going to be difficult to get everything done. the good news is that they coordinator wants us to start pushing for the full-time position to be reinstated next year. the trick will be doing enough to make the program work well and for them to hire me back, but not enough to make them think that half-time is enough to run a really excellent library program.

*just went back and realized i've updated nothing about this job. i got a call the next day and the principle said he thought i was a terrific fit for the school and he needed me to make an appointment to meet with the superintendent (or someone from the administration) for them to make the final call. i met with the assistant super the next week, was hired that day, filled out the paperwork and the rest was history. i know that the pool of candidates for school library jobs is slim and poor right now (i've been in touch with my simmons director and she has the inside scoop from districts who are looking). the job i took was a .5 library teacher position in the middle school in the next town. no one wants .5. no one really offers .5 because to do a good job as a library teacher in half the time that the rest of the school is in session is near impossible. it is the first year this school wont have a full time librarian, so it will be an adjustment for everyone. and that's that.*

avery starts kindergarten in a few weeks! the other day when she asked when she started school and i told her 3 weeks she pouted. i thought she was sad about school, but then she told me that she wants it to start sooner. hope she continues with the excitement :)

AND! nola had her follow up appointment with the ENT and had a hearing test before the appointment. the audiologist said her hearing has improved completely and she can hear perfectly :) both tubes are still in place and look great. so happy to have her healthy.

it's AUGUST?!

the summer has run away with us for sure.

*nola's surgery went well, her recovery went well, she can hear, she can smell, she can sleep. best thing we did, just wish we had done it a bit earlier.

*avery graduated from preschool! we were invited to a short and sweet ceremony, complete with caps and gowns, songs, cake and ice cream. very proud of how well she did this year at school, from making friends to keeping her teachers on their toes (among the many funny reports from school, my favorite was "scotty, if you keep tickling me i'm going to have to punch you.")

*we finished out the school year, loaded up the car and drove to kansas city! this is a post in itself, but i'll condense it to one word: awesome.
the girls were awesome in the car, we had an awesome time when we stopped at our big destinations on the way, we had an awesome time in kansas city, and though there were a few more trying times on the way home (we were exhausted, we wanted to be home, we hate pennsylvania), we had an awesome time on the return trip. it felt great to get home and reconnect with the animals, our house and our routine.

*since we've been home we've been soaking up the summer. going to the res beach, eating out, cooking out, learning how to play crazy 8's, running, playing basketball, moving rooms around in our house for the millionth time, changing the bedtime routine, zane started to make a playhouse/fort for the girls in the back yard, we had neighbors over for brisket.
we have a few more weeks to enjoy the summer, hoping to get to the beach, go to the children's museum, go see a movie, eat more ice cream, read more books, eat more s'mores, enjoy more lazy afternoons and take more walks at night.

*i had an interview today. should know next week if i'm in the running.

crazy 8's!

res beach

nola's drawing of a "type rope"

dada's helpers

enormous and impressive.

Those were the words the dr used to descibe nola's adenoids. She had tubes put in this morning and her adenoids removed. When the dr came to tell us that everything went great, he told us that they were so large she probably wasnt able to breathe out of her nose at all. Poor girl.
Other than nausea from the morphine and a sore throat from the breathing tube, she is quiet and resting  beside me. Everytime she starts to fall asleep she starts to sweat and almost gets sick. Hopefully this phase is over soon!
Already I can tell she can hear more. Before she would ask me to turn the tv way up and still couldnt hear. Now its on pretty quiet and she says she can hear it, yay!! The dr said her ears were filled with thick fluid, so he has no doubts that this is going to make her feel a lot better when she is healed. Double yay!!

The hard thing will be limiting her activity for the next week. No playing with friends, no running, no recess, no swimming. Good thing it looks like it will be rainy and cool for most of this week. Averys going to have a hard time leaving her little sis alone ;)

the ball game saves us...

We had another hell of a week consisting of nola up most tuesday night crying about her ears and then vomiting for most of the day on wednesday. She was more miserable than I have ever seen her. Since I dont work on wednesdays and the girls dont go to school on wednesdays, avery was home too and impressed me over and over with sympathy and helpfulness (except for her 1 outburst when I stopped at cvs to get nolas medicine, right after we went to the dr, right after she threw up in the car and avery yelled "you never buy ME gatorade!!", which was so over the top that i had to laugh at it.)
Basically her medicine wasnt working on her ears and one was just awful. The dr said her infection may have been making her sick or she could have a stomachbug on top of her ear issues. I cannot wait until we get her tubes on tuesday, and pray that they do everything they are supposed to do.

Now onto the good! I have a friend whose family owns season tickets to the red sox. She gave us 4 tickets to a night game, and even though no.a was still getting over being sick and we hemmed and hawed about going for an hour, we finally decided togive it a shot and it payed off. The girls had a blast, were good as gold and our seats were incredible!! We so needed good family time, and we squeezed every ounce out that we could.

None of these pictures are great quality, but our memories are :)

the weekend that wasn't long enough.

i was so excited to have the three day weekend with almost no plans! and it was every bit as good as we anticipated. with the exception of a birthday party that nola was invited to, we made our own plans and got stuff done that we had neglected (a trip to bjs, laundry, having fun).

Avery and i went on a date on saturday morning after we dropped zane and nola at a bouncy house party. we went shopping for shorts and dresses for her since her legs are too long for just about everything she owns and i can't send her to school in good conscience in most of her spring-wear. after we shopped we went to panera where she devoured soup and realized she likes the sandwich i always get. we picked up the other half of the family (nola had a sweaty blast at the party)and went home to rest.

nola had filled out her sticker chart, so we bribed the girls with a special treat if they napped. napped they did! off we went to chuck e. cheezits (if they know how to say it right, they don't let on ;))

 we let them play for a while and then headed to dinner nearby. after dinner we headed home to set up the tent in the living room (since it was 30 degrees outside) and start a fire.

we lasted until 9, when i finally made the call to head up to our own beds since no one was even close to sleeping. avery screamed in my face "you're not being fair! you said we could stay up all night!" and after zane and i stopped laughing, we reminded her that i said we could SLEEP all night downstairs, but since no one was sleeping, it didn't matter. 

we ran a bunch of errands on sunday and then finally got to meet phil and jill's "new" baby (almost 3 months old-born on MARCH FOURTH ;)) before coming home to eat dinner and let the girls stay up and watch half of "america's funniest home videos". 

monday we waited around for zane to finish playing basketball, then went to aram's for our usual breakfast. we came home in time to walk back up to the square for the parade. it was as short as ever, and avery was as miserable as she is every year until they threw out the candy (i need to remember this for next year so i don't get annoyed...)

the rest of the day was spent either napping, shopping or playing outside while zane grilled dinner. 

there wasn't a whole lot to this weekend, but it made me that much more excited to be done with work and the girls' school and start enjoying the summer. 

in the meantime, we have scheduled nola to have tubes put in her ears on june 11th. at that time, if they see that her adenoids are enlarged, they'll remove those as well, but if not they'll just stick with the tubes. i am so excited to get this done so she can hopefully get some relief from the constant fluid in her ears and nasty infections. a few days later she turns 4 (?!) and we celebrate father's day, then avery graduates from pre-k/k the next weekend. it feels great and a bit surreal to have the school year winding down so fast, but i'll take it :)

i'm finally back running. i'm slow and out of practice but it feels great. i've been able to use the treadmill in the basement while the girls are resting/watching a movie after school. once school is out and everyone is home i'll be able to get outside more to run (and hopefully i'll have built up a bit more endurance at that point so it will be a bit more enjoyable). looking forward to finding some races in the fall to keep me motivated :)

7th times the charm.

Nola is on ear infection #7. Yep, 7. Good timing as we have an appt tomorrow at childrens hospital to see what is going on in her ears, nose, throat. If you are the type, say a little prayer that we get an answer and can get this girl some relief soon!

we *heart* NOLA

yep, it's been a while. moving on...

our new orleans trip. in pictures :)

we had a blast. the weather was the only downside, chilly in the morning and night,but we powered through with the fleece jackets we brought. for a trip that doesn't have a lot for young kids specifically, it worked. the girls played "let's go to new orleans" yesterday at the park and nola called us over for fresh beignets. i think we managed to make some memories.

never what you expect

This isnt going to be a long post, because frankly I dont have the energy.
This week brought lots of good in the midst of so much bad. The girls had a blast at school when they went and zane and I got a lot of work done around the house and for my school work.
Friday we woke up to the phone ringing at 6am. It was the police doing their town wide messaged call. I listened to the police chief telling us to stay in our house and lock the doors. We spent all day in our house, looking nervously our the doors and windows, listening to the military helicopters fly over our house, realizing how quiet it was with no one out and about, marveling at how well the girl took the news that they werent going to their pony ride party at school, watching our neighborhoods on the news with tanks and rifles and snipers, trying to be productive but not knowing how, and finally hearing word that the shelter in place ban was lifted even though they hadnt caught the bad guy yet.
We put the girls to bed and came downstairs to make our dinner when zane noticed they were giving new updates on the news channel. While we were upstairs, shots were fired just 2 miles from our house and they were closing in in the suspect.
We ended our night watching a movie called "butter"; I picked pickedt bedause I thought it would be ridiculous and help us escape from reality. It was and it did, but I still ended up in tears...of relief, of exhaustion, of happiness and grief.
Saturday came and it started out crappy.  We were all tired and even though we could leave our house now, I didn't want to. We got to tell the girls that the bad guy was caught and the police kept us safe like theyre supposed to, but I cringed at the realization that we had to even tell them about real bad guys.
It will seem sureal for a long time that all of this happened right here, in the sleepy little towns outside of boston. Not in a movie, not in the run down and sketchy parts of boston.
Tomorrow we go back to work and school and theres another relief in the mundane and regular routine. What a week off...

vacation!?

today was the first full day of our april break! i spent about 4 hours of it working on finishing up some things for my practicum, the girls (and zane) spent 2 hours of it resting in bed (zane and nola fell asleep), the family spent about an hour lounging in the living room (see picture below) and not doing much of anything which felt amazing, and we spend 2 hours out eating dinner and running errands.

i'm just about to call it a day.

we lost power last night randomly for a couple hours. the girls instantly started crying when their sound machine and hall lights went off. so zane and i spent the night on their floor with a battery operated sound machine and flashlight propped up in the hallway. we were all pretty beat today. particularly avery who didn't nap at all. at one point this afternoon nola looked at the bottom of her own foot and said it was dirty. so i said "lick it", and she tried to (and almost succeeded), so i said "no silly! don't really lick it." a few minutes later i looked at avery who was scowling at me, until she burst into tears and yelled that i "shouldn't have said that!!" i asked nola if she was upset by what i said, and she wasn't, so i tried to tell avery (without laughing) that i would make sure to never tell her to lick her feet since it upset her so much.

the girls have monday off from school, but then have a fun week planned with their classes. they have pajama day, ice cream day, bubble day, and then they round off the week with a pizza party complete with pony rides! i have to say that it's nice that they're going to have so much fun at school so zane and i can not feel guilty about being home alone (and cleaning/purging/sorting/organizing).

snapshot from this afternoon. a few minutes before this was taken, bitzer was with us too. it was a chair full o' love.

nola's finally doing better after days and days of (mostly low) fevers. avery's still holding on to a nasty cough, but seems to be fine otherwise. i don't know how i managed to get all my hours at my practicum site this semester with all the sickness and time off. looking forward to some time off and just being responsible for my hours at the middle school. 

i've sworn off coffee for the time being. i was starting to rely on it too much and didn't like how i would crash in the afternoon. instead, we bought a bunch of fruit and spinach the other week and i created juice drink ingredients in plastic baggies to freeze. it's easy enough to blend one in the morning before work (of after to share with zane) and after the first few days of nasty headaches, i feel much better all around without all the caffeine. i do miss the warmth of sitting downstairs before the girls wake up and drinking my coffee, so i may just have to switch to decaf or find a good hot chocolate. 

11 days until new orleans! which means 10 until i'm officially done with school work.

this better be it.

nola woke up from her 3 hour nap with a 103 fever this afternoon. this is after a 101.5 fever this morning with red cheeks. this is after she's been on medicine since monday night. this is after went to the dr on monday afternoon to find out that she has yet ANOTHER ear infection.
the good news in all of this is we have an appointment with a specialist at the end of may to find out if her adenoid is enlarged and if that's what is causing all these ear infections. i'm really hopeful that if this is the cause then she could have an ear infection free winter next year! until then, i'm hoping with everything i have that this is the end of illness for us for a long time.
on the down side to all of this, i keep missing work (i took nola to work with me this morning after receiving a text about when i'd be making up the 2 hours i missed on monday). and i have about 5 major reports to write up before next tuesday when i have a meeting with my advisor.
wah. rant over.
________________________________________________________________________
*found out tonight that avery can count by 2's to 10. and she can count by 2's to 10 in odd numbers.

*at work this morning (before my co-worked insisted i bring nola home and give her a popsicle on the couch), nola saw some words on the edge of a book rack and promptly read all the letters as fast as she scanned them. i knew she knew her letters, etc, but it still surprises me when she shows what she knows.

*since the weather has been getting nicer (very gradually), the girls LOVE to ride their trikes in the driveway. the other day zane brought out their real bikes and they took turns helping each other up and down the driveway with their training wheels on.

I wish I were kidding.

On monday I picked the girls up from school and averys teacher goes so did you know Avery has a rash? Sure enough on her neck and upper chest she had a nice little rash. She wasn't complaining that anything hurt so I brush it off thinking it was he rush. Tuesday morning we're getting ready for school and I decided to check a rash randomly. Sure enough it has spread to her arms and back and she was saying it was a little itchy. Off to the doctor we go and the rest should spread a little more.the doctor was mad she didn't have an intern in with her because it was a classic rash for scarlet fever and the interns always complain I never get to see rashes. But a rapid strep test came back negative and she still didn't have a fever or sore throat. So we got a note that she was fine to return to school and we get a call if the strep test comes back positive. So now it's Wednesday she still has a rash but no other symptoms and I'm just praying for this is our last doctors visit for a long long time. on the bright side I'm writing this on my early graduation present to the family, a tablet that will be good for traveling and entertainment. I never thought I'd want to read a book on a device but I love it. I'm actually writing this by speaking into the tablet and having it convert my words so if some of these sentences don't make sense it's because my english isn't good enough :-)

the first full day of spring.

i've been eagerly anticipating this day for so long now! it's spring!

i did not anticipate that there would be snow on the ground (and a little more possible tonight), and i didn't expect to be spending it on the couch with a sore throat and fever.

but i won't let that get me down. IT'S SPRING!

(the last time i was sick this school year was in november, when i had about 3 1/2 weeks left in my practicum. i have 3 weeks left of my practicum this semester, guess my immune system lets down it's guard a little too early)