Tuesday, October 12, 2010

First day of school pictures

I am running out pictures for Down syndrome awareness month! I need to get some more ready.

My camera died a few months ago. I know which one I think I will replace it with but was waiting closer to Thanksgiving and Christmas because of sales... and I'm still thinking about it. So recently I have been borrowing Max's. He is OK with that sometimes! However, his USB cable stopped working when I plugged it into my computer. I tried the card reader on my computer. It does not work because the driver is not installed. I found the driver on Dell website and scored. It worked. Once. Then it acted like I never installed the driver. Irritating to say the least. So now to get pictures from Max's camera to my computer I have to give the SD card to Pete. He then either puts the files in a "share" file over our network or loads them on a portable drive for me. I can't just go take some pictures and quickly download them to my computer. Yeah, I should probably check Ebay for the USB cable for his camera.

Max can be a tricky guy to photograph. If you can get "the" shot then he looks great! Most times though, he will smile until he knows the camera is about to take his picture then make a silly face. On the first day of school he kept doing some weird hand thing while I was trying to get his picture.He is a goof ball!

Then there is goof ball number 2!
Sam insisted on this umbrella. And no, it was not raining!

And my little Joe. Ready for his first day of school. Apparently Max and Sam forget to tell him he needed to make a crazy face, carry something silly or to include hands in his picture!


School has been going on for a couple months now but I never shared the pictures. In fact, this week is the last of first quarter. The kids all get Friday off for teacher work day. Next week they get a 4 day weekend and lucky duck Joe gets a 5 day weekend. It is for Parent teacher conferences.

Enjoy your day!

Monday, October 11, 2010

Our pumpkins


This weekend we went to a pumpkin patch. It is the 1st year it has been open but it is only about 2-3 miles from our house. Much closer than any of the others. The place is really a vineyard/winery. It is pretty new to this location. The pumpkin patch wasn't great but it was OK. I hate that pumpkin patches are so expensive. Most the ones around here have tons of activities and could be an all day thing. This one had pumpkins in the field, but all the vines were already cleared out. It also had 2 inflatables, which cost $ and face painting, also $. However, they were also gearing this towards adults so they had hors d'oeuvres and wine.

We went, picked out our pumpkins and left. I could have gotten 4 big pumpkins from WalMart for cheaper but hey, it's the pumpkin patch. Like I said, pumpkin patches are expensive.

The fun part is decorating them. We will carve them out shortly before Halloween. At least, that is the plan.






I did not get a good one with Sam and her pumpkin
Here she is acting like it's a baby and she's punching it. Isn't that nice??!

Working hard on getting the pumpkins just right.
Perfect...
(Sam's pumpkin is 2 sided, BTW)

Ike did a lot of this...
All because Max got the red nose piece. Oh my gosh- end of the world!


While decorating our lovely pumpkins a big Monarch butterfly came to visit our sunflowers.


Sunday, October 10, 2010

funny picture

For Down syndrome awareness month I am posting about Max and all the fun things he does.

My brother got married a few weeks ago. I'll have more pictures to post soon of that. However, all the kids were taking pictures while we were there. I think it was Joe that caught this funny little picture. Could have been Sam...

Oh yes, he is trying to lick me! Silly boy. I thought it was a pretty funny picture though!

Saturday, October 9, 2010

touching bugs

Yesterday I posted Max won't touch bugs. He is getting braver in this area. He does want to hold the bugs but then chickens out right as the bug is being placed in his hand. During our bug collection days he did hold this little caterpillar. For a long time. He even carried him a ways with a stick he had. I finally told him we had to let him go.
The other day at the park he even held and carried a little frog. No pictures though.

Friday, October 8, 2010

Coolest bug collection ever

Remember a few weeks ago I talked about Max having a bug collection project due? We got lots of bugs. We went to my parents house a couple times, who live in the country, and got some good bugs. We went to a couple different parks a few times as well. As I mentioned before I wasn't much of a bug killer. I did 'sacrifice' a few bugs but others were found dead, or dying.

Max would not touch any of the bugs. So collection was mainly my part. One trip to the park I just took pictures of the bugs we found and planned on using those but we ended up with a lot of bugs so I didn't even need them. I did use one picture of a praying mantis that we found because he was cool.

I found a piece of (ugly) art at Salvation Army and thought it would be a cool case for the bugs. I bought that for around $2, foam poster board for $1 and had Max help construct it. I did paint the frame with the help of 2 little boys. Max wasn't interested for some reason. We hot glued it all together and then glued all the bugs down. I made labels for the bugs and Max cut and glued those. He then picked the colored stickers for his name.

On the due day I carried it in for him. I got a note saying Max seemed very proud of his collection and was interested in the other kids collections as well.

I was expecting these 3rd graders to have super cool displays. I think I over estimated 3rd graders. Not that they weren't cool. But the few I did see weren't anything fancy like I expected. The minimum number of bugs to have was 6. I noticed most kids only had about that number. His teacher told me Max had the most bugs.

I had fun helping Max with this project. I think he enjoyed it too.

Thursday, October 7, 2010

Max the pirate

My last post was my 300th post! Wow.... that's a lot for me.

Max had his 3rd grade musical tonight. It was pirate themed. He was gone from school for 3 days. 3 days, I'm sure, that they all practiced. He did a good job considering he had to play catch-up in learning the moves. He was about a step behind in all moves. But that's alright he was super cute anyways.

Max, my pirate....

(his pants are rolled up. The boys could either cut or roll up their pants to look like pirates)

Tuesday, October 5, 2010

Not a lot to say

OK, today I don't feel too good. It must be some good ol kid germs from the doctors office visits yesterday.

I kept Max home again today. He acts fine. He was even ready for school this morning. I had his lunch packed, wrote in his communication notebook and everything. I dosed him up on his liquid meds then went to give him his ear and eye drops. I noticed his face was still snotty, eyes were still red and watery and his ears had some nasty stuff coming out. So he got to stay home. Thursday he has a musical at school. I am sure they have been practicing tons but he is missing it all. Oh well, I'm sure he will do just fine.

Monday, October 4, 2010

The day of crying

Today was busy! Friday Max got sent home from school because he had lots of snot and his eyes were red, watery and kinda crusty. I figured he would be sent home. I even wrote a note telling them if they were thinking about it to please do it before the afternoon because Ike and I had dentist appointments. He acts just fine. Except during the night while sleeping. He tosses around more than usual because he is so stuffed up.

This morning his eyes were still red and watery and he had his fair share of snot and then some. I decided to keep him home to save myself a trip back up to school to pick him back up! He was up this morning with no problems. I woke up Sam and then the day really started.

Sam would not get up. Or rather, out of bed. She cried and screamed and carried on that she wanted me to put her clothes on her bed. I told her she needed to get up, go to the bathroom and then I would help her get dress. Nope, she was not going to it. I counted down for her... 20 minutes until he need to leave, 10 minutes, 5 minutes. Pete heard the racket and came down, told Sam she better get out of bed, get ready and never yell at mom again! She got up, dressed, ate and finished getting ready. Not without foot stomping and crying though. We left later than I wanted to, but that is like most days!

The drop off car lane was really long this morning so I parked to walk her up. She would not walk up towards school. I walked her all the way to the door. The school counselor is generally there holding the door and greeting the students. She took Sam's hand and held on to her while I made my escape. I did tell the counselor that it was a rough morning. Sam was still crying when I left. Her teacher told me she calmed down when she found out her morning job was the calender. Very uncompliant morning.

Call the doctor for Max. 10:15 appointment. I had to wake up Ike to leave. We were 5 minutes late. Max now has 3 meds. Eye drops, ear drops, antibiotic. We decided to throw in a flu shot since we were there. Fighting, crying, screaming. I take the band-aid off Max's leg and he was all better. Just like magic. We go home and chill for a very short time. We take Joe to school around 12:20. Then straight to Walmart to drop off scripts. They said about 40 minutes. That would work. I had some shopping to do while I waited. We get our stuff and make our way back to the pharmacy about 50 minutes later. They said about 5-10 more minutes. We wait and wait. Then I decided to go check out and come back. Still was not ready. We wait some more. Finally about 2 hours after I dropped them off they were ready. Grrr- I hate Walmart pharmacy. Why do I keep going there?? By that time we only had a short amount of time before we had to get the kids from school. We stop by Subway on the way out to get some late lunch. That also took forever. I drop of my frozen foods at home then go get the kids from school.

Joe's class is usually the last of the kindergartners to come out. They were about 10 minutes later than let out time. I quickly got the car loaded and drove my neighbors boys home. Sam and Ike has their yearly check up at the doctors office at 3:45 today. I dropped off my neighbors boys around 3:45! doh! I figured I would be about 5 minutes late anyway. With K letting out so late it threw us even later. To top it off the street I was on had construction so lanes were closed. And that street was opened early in the day, BTW. We arrive VERY late. 20 minutes late. Oh well. They still saw us.

Sam would not do a thing. She would not stand on the scale, get her height checked, nothing. It was a fight to get her to do anything. We heard lots of "no" and her just generally misbehaving. She did the same thing last year at her appointment. I'm not sure what is up with her.

I did ask the doctor about ADD (attention deficit disorder) and she agrees that we should look into it. We now have a referral to a childrens hospital that does testing and such with ADD/ADHD. They should be calling us to set up an appointment. We should be seen within a couple of weeks. At least that is what the doctor said.

Ike got 2 shots and cried but it was short lived. Sam got her flu shot and cried and carried on forever. Joe did the same thing. Joe claimed he couldn't walk. Ike was running up and down the hall. By this time nobody was left in the office but a couple of employees.

On the drive home I got to hear lots of crying, complaining and whining. Once home, Sam and Joe had to go lay in bed because they were obviously very tired. Sam was in trouble from her behavior from the day.

So today all 4 kids have cried. They all got shots. Max was pretty concerned about his siblings when it was their turn for shots. He covered his ears to mask all the crying as well.

I am tired and starting to feel sick (sore throat and achy body). I am hoping it's just from the day and I'm not really getting sick.

Tomorrow has to be better, right?

Sunday, October 3, 2010

down syndrome awareness month

Ok, Not off to a great start.....


The Kansas city Step Up for Down Syndrome Walk was at the end of September. The weather was great. Everyone had fun.

So to start the month with a picture (only a couple days late)....
Max with the best seat in the world.

Friday, October 1, 2010

Happy Down syndrome month

OK, so I am way behind in blogging. I don't have a post set up for today to kick off Down syndrome awareness month. I hope to sometime today. However, today is a busy day so we'll see if I can get it up.

Thanks to all my bloggy friends that also write about their child with Down syndrome. I love reading about what others are up to.

Happy Down syndrome awareness month everybody!