Monday, May 23, 2011

Encopresis..what?

I've had three major stresses in my life for a year now.  One I changed at the beginning of this year, and another one just got a name today!  Encopresis.
Hudson is a fabulous middle child.  He is loving, cuddly, and sometimes lacks listening skills.  We have struggled with potty training since he's been potty trained.  We had a glimpse of a great potty trained child from December to March of this year.  What sweet relief!!  The end was here and we could all rejoice!  Until the first warm day which we had in March.  The boys were playing outside and I saw Hudson hiding behind the tractor.  I immediately hauled him inside and to my complete, and utter frustration, he had streaked his shorts.
We have been dealing with this on a daily basis since then and it finally came to a peak this past Friday.  The thunderstorms had kept the kids up the night before, which meant I was up, so I was already tired and cranky Friday morning.  Within minutes of getting Carson on the bus, the first streak came.  I screamed and yelled until I was red in the face.  An hour later, another streak.   I was so angry, that I ended up spanking him.  He was crying, I had started crying and he promised he would never do it again.  Can you believe that 15 minutes later it had happened again?  I couldn't.  I knew I didn't want to spank him again (because that obviously didn't work), but I didn't know what else to do.  I called the pediatrician's office and set up an appointment to see what to do about this.  I seriously thought Dr. Tim was going to go on and on about rewards charts, staying calm, making him clean up his mess, but I knew I wasn't going to leave the office until I had a better answer.   Hudson turns 5 in a few weeks, I know he can do this.
When I picked Hudson up from school, his teacher told me he was complaining about a stomachache.  I couldn't think of better timing since we were heading to the doctors any way.  Within minutes of feeling Hudson's stomach, Dr. Tim said it was encopresis.  He said he could feel the stool in the (now inflamed) intestines, which would cause lots of stomachaches.  The mess in his underwear can't be helped.  It's the stool that is leaking around the blockage and just sort of leaks out.  So what do we do?  Lots of stool softener.  The build up inside his intestines has to go so the intestines can shrink back to normal and we can get back to a normal potty routine.  It's going to be a messy couple of weeks, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.  We'll just have to keep an eye on it from now on (now that we know what to look for).
When we had walked out of the doctor's office, everything was wet (including the inside of my car because I had left the sunroof open, doh!).  We must have missed a short, but powerful rain storm.  I couldn't help but think that the rain was pouring down while I was telling Dr. Tim about our struggles, and when we finalized our plan, the sun started shinning.  Nothing like a deep thought about poop, eh?  HA ha!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

To go, or not to go...

...to kindergarten.
As a parent, I know that I will make a lot of tough decisions regarding my children.  Which daycare is best, which school is best, which friends should we steer away from.  The one that I was totally caught off guard for was whether or not to send Hudson to Young Fives.
A few weeks ago we brought Hudson to kindergarten round up.  Last week we received the assessment in the mail.  "Based on the assessment, your child has been selected to participate in the Young Fives program."  I was reading it out loud to Hudson and Mike and I had to stop mid sentence.  It wasn't what I expected.  We didn't even know to considered Young Fives.  All of Hudson's conferences were positive and he seemed ready.  I called the school the next day and talked to the school's counselor.  She said that she had a question mark between Kindergarten and Young Fives.  Academically he was ready for Kindergarten.  But he giggled a lot (he's 4!) and looked at other kids before speaking.  He made a 'b' instead of a 'd' in his name (which, coincidentally, Carson had done on a homework assignment the day before (we saw it erased out)).  And that is why they recommended Young Fives.  I talked about it that evening with Mike and we decided we were still going to send him to Kindergarten.  Kindergarten was an all day program, that meant no extra fee for after school childcare (Young Fives is half day).  I decided to talk to our neighbor (she had sent her son Young Fives the year before), the school principal and some people at work.  During the week, I talked with 19 people.  Perhaps it was overkill, but they all gave me different insight.  I had thought Young Fives was for children with September - December birthdays.  Turns out, for boys, that birthday starts in June.  To be the youngest one in the class, and sent to kindergarten unprepared or a little bit 'not ready' leads to kids trying to constantly catch up in school.   In middle school, teachers and parents can tell the difference between the older kids in the class, and the younger ones (immaturity, lower grades, etc).  Now, I know this doesn't apply across the board, so I had to figure out where Hudson fit into all of this.
We have constantly struggled with his potty training (#2, TMI sorry!).  His personality is much different than Carson's, so it requires different parenting, and we haven't quite figured it out yet.  This leads to constant reminders over and over to do something, and it only get done with 100% supervision.
The beginning of the week was Kindergarten all the way, by Friday, it had turned into Young Fives.  Wish I could know now if this was the right decision.  As the principal told me, nobody regrets sending their children to Young Fives, they only regret not sending them.
Now I just have to convince Hudson...

Sunday, May 8, 2011

My Mother's Day was...

...FANTASTIC!
Even though the day ended with Bryson having a 101.4 fever, Hudson with a sever cold, and my husband with laryngitis, I think they (and I!) would repeat the day in a heartbeat.  Carson said it was the best day ever.
I started the day sleeping in until 8:30 (that's huge in this house) and was greeted with breakfast in bed.  I then challenged the kids to a game of Chutes and Ladders followed by Trouble (I lost both).  I even lost a game of Connect 4 to Bryson!!  I swear he's got the Jedi force working with him.  I spent the rest of the morning planting the flowers the boys had given me.  My husband then whisked us off to the Northwest track where we played catch, played soccer, ran/walked a few laps, and had a picnic.   I got to spend a little time with each of the boys separately with the different grocery stores I went to (not my ideal thing to do on Mother's Day, but I didn't have any other time to do it).  The day ended with some pizza from Pizza Hut!
Why don't I spend more days like this?  If a simple trip to a park, or clearing makes my kids so happy, let's do it more often!  That's the plan for the summer!

I help out Carson's first grade classroom every other week, and I've seen how he and his classmates work.  So when he gave me my Mother's Day gift (a book that he made), I wasn't too shocked with what was in it.  Some parts were probably copied from his neighbor.  It all adds up to be a wonderfully hilarious book.  Here's some excerpts: "My mommy's hair is blond and her eye are blue." (not blue, brown!); "My mommy loves to relax by the fire."; "Her favorite household chore is clean my room."; "Her favorite TV show is SpongeBob."; "Her favorite song is I no I'm a superstar."; "If she could go on a trip, she would go to Hollywood.".  We were cracking up when I was reading it.

Now we are back into routine with baseball Monday - Thursday, with extra soccer on Tuesday and Saturday.  Busy time in busy town.  We'll have to try and find a few more hours to rest to keep these colds/fevers at bay.

Ciao!

Saturday, May 7, 2011

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

From Mom to Ama
Seven years ago.
And now times three,
Luckily no mo'.

The best advice
That I received
Was stay away from guys
That work on machines.

Any time
Or any where,
You always pause life
So that you can be here.

Helping us out
By lending a hand.
We know to count on you
We are your biggest fan!

We love you
Cuz your such a hoot!
We love you
Ama Toot Toot Toot!

Happy Mother's Day Mom!

And Happy Mother's Day to all of the wonderful women out there!  Without you, there'd be a lot of kids who would live on fast food and random bedtimes :)

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Cinco de Mayo

Me after picking up the boys on May 5th: "Did you guys learn about Cinco de Mayo?"
Carson: "Yeah!  The Mexico people borrowed money from France.  The French wanted the money back but Mexico needed it for one more day.  So they had a war, and the Mexico people won."

Me: "What happened with the money?"
Carson: "They could keep it for one more day."

Me: "How much was it?"
Carson: "Like $10 or something.  I dunno.  But nobody from France got hurt in the war.  The Mexico people just took all of their weapons and they celebrated.  And ate a lot of tacos afterwards."

That's first grade education for you!

Sunday, May 1, 2011

Pictures are in!

I just wanted to share with you a few pictures that we got back from last weekend's photo shoot.
I've been to a few other blogs that have problems displaying numerous pictures, so I'm trying to select just a few to post.  Hopefully these will show!
After seeing this one, Bryson asked when he had been in a cage.  He didn't realize it was a gate he was standing behind.


Just wanted to show this one because I actually found pants that were long enough (need to get them hemmed!)!  Plus, we're all cute.


Bryson is still a snuggler.  Awwww.....



This monkey is like my fourth kid (actually kids 4, 5, and 6 since we have three monkeys).  He goes with us everywhere and Bryson is always carrying it around.  Gotta love "Ooh Ah Ah".



My baby just turned 7!!  I can't believe it.  He's turning out to be a great kid.




Can you believe I've managed a few days without Facebook?  I'm constantly thinking about things that I would be putting as my status.  The other day I had such a great status that I almost thought about activating my FB account to put it on there.  Guess what?  Today I don't even remember what it was!  Probably something to do with the peeps we roasted on the bonfire last night (Hudson thought they were delicious.  The neighbor boy roasted one, then decided he didn't want to eat it.  The peep's eyes had burned off so I didn't blame him).  Carson invited a neighbor boy over for dinner, and then we invited his parents over for Smores afterwards.  It was a fun impromptu get together.  

Time to go play Lego RoboChamp with Carson!