Day In and Day Out

In response to viewer demand, I'm actually going to post something new :-) Not much new actually going on, or so it seems when you're living it, but I'll see what I can come up with.

Let's see... we're nearing the close of the third week of 1st Grade for Kara. So far so good. To be honest, it's all actually gone quite well. Kara has a best little friend in her class, she still thinks her teacher is "Great, like ice cream", her reading is accelerating at a great pace and she scored a 100 on her second graded paper for the year. The teacher is focusing on penmanship and Kara doesn't love having her work corrected when she perceives herself to have written things just fine, but I remind her, daily, that the teacher is just making the marks on her paper to remind her of the right ways to write the letters. Kara is hoping that one day soon she won't have so much green or purple marker markings from the teacher on her penmanship papers. All in all, she's loving it and appears to be doing well. The only difficulties of the last month or so have been at home with us, not at school.

In terms of medication, we are continuing to try the Daytrana daily patch for Kara's ADHD. It releases the medication slowly and appears to give her the focus she needs. We were concerned it was causing some negative/aggressive behaviors and a bad attitude, so we took her off of it for three days (Friday-Sunday) -- we discovered it really wasn't the medicine. We're not sure if that is good news or bad news. If the meds were the problem - change the meds. If the problem is her temperament, that takes more work to fix. The saddest thing is I saw myself in her. (L. here, if my writing style alone didn't give it away!) I suddenly remembered why had fought with my mother most of my childhood. It was quite simple really. I was brat! I wanted my way. I wanted to assert my will and get what I wanted. I didn't want to be punished for my bad attitude either, so most of our fights revolved around my wanting my way and not whatever discipline was being dished out. Unfortunately, I figured out at a pretty early age that I could get out of most any punishment. I would fight and have my bad attitude, then I'd genuinely feel sorry and then the punishment would be lifted. It wasn't a game. I genuinely was angry and then genuinely felt sorry for my actions. The trouble was that I never learned to control my reaction on the onset of the problem. This is what I want from Kara -- a better initial response and therefore less fighting. So, in response to this, Thom and I are trying everything we know how, and a few things we're learning new, to try to deal with this now and not let it go on for 15 years.
(For anyone who needs an example of how bad it could get, ask me sometime about the "Kate & Allie" Family Fight of 1985.)

Meanwhile, Kara has begun ballet and that's going so-so. She has only had one lesson and was feeling sick over the weekend and Monday, so didn't go this week. Next week is Labor Day - so it'll be another week after that before she goes again. I think she'll like it more as time goes by.

Caleb -- he does this screeching thing that makes us want to poke our own eyes out (or at least wear ear plugs). Sometimes, he does it when he's tired or to let us know he needs his diaper changed or he's hungry and sometimes he just does it to join in the conversation. It's horrible!! Meanwhile, we feel a little sorry for the little guy. He's getting his molars and so he's a little miserable with all of the normal teething signs.

As for me, I am picking up my honing my writing skills and again doing some writing for EBSCO. So far I have written one article on doll collecting, but I am hoping to continue writing for them for their biographies project. Hopefully it will mean one or two 1500 articles each week and a bit more money in our pockets.

As for Thom, he is moving forward with the application process to do some leadership training through work. We are hoping that this will turn into a pay raise and promotion come review time in December/January.

In other news, Kara and I did a fun end-of-summer project together just before school started. We made a small scrapbook together with a page for each of the fun things we did during the summer. I was feeling that sense of how fast the summer had flown by and wanted to see for myself that we had done quite a few fun things. Swimming at grandma's, the Birmingham Zoo, the Family Reunion, the trip to Massachusetts - with pages for our whale watch, seeing SWR, QE, meeting SI and seeing all of Kara's friends. It's quite a cute little book. I'd like to make this a summer tradition and do this with her at the end of each summer. As she gets a little older, it should make that first "what did you do over summer vacation" report a little easier, too!

While we're on the subject of scrapbooking, I am very proud of myself for having finished Caleb's baby book last weekend. For each of the kids I have two baby books, a record book and a 12X12 Creative Memories album. The album covers just their first year and is mostly pictures, while the record book covers a little more and includes more writing. Both of Caleb's and Kara's are completely up to date!

Well, that's our little world... now I need to go and get Caleb down for a morning nap. Oh, yeah, Kara is also spending one afternoon a week at my parents, learning German! She's loving it! Well, I hope this kept everyone entertained for a bit. Enjoy your day and have a great Labor Day Weekend!