The Spotsies

Do you ever have those weeks where everything seems to go badly? Well, we had that this past week. It all ended up working out fine, but there was no end of frustration while it was happening. So here is what happened to us on Thursday. I had plans to work on some preschool things with my friends and have a playdate. I was having it here because our dishwasher was supposed to be delivered and installed. So the kids got up a little late, around 7 (aren't you jealous?!) and I had to get their milk from the downstairs refridgerator because we were all out upstairs. So I put a box of butter and a bag of bread out to take upstairs with the milk, and then I proceeded to put a movie on for the kids. While I was setting up the movie Corbin tells me that he is kind of itchy. So I turn around and I look where he is scratching. His wrist is all covered in red spots. Then I see that they go all the way up his arm. I followed the spots up to his face where they were much darker and scarier. At first I thought they were mosquito bites, but there were far too many of them for that. And they didn't look anything like mosquito bites on his cheeks. My next thought propelled me to action. Could they possibly be chicken pox???
Oh no! Please no! He had only been to school for ONE day! How could he have chicken pox? So I immediatley rushed upstairs and called Nate, and then the Pediatrician. Of course, neither one was available to chat. So I got online and tried to figure out what they were. Well, some of them kind of looked like the beginnings of chicken pox, but others not so much. They didn't look anything like a rach caused by poisonous plants either. So I called the Dr again and made an appointment. Luckily they could fit us in that very morning. But I had to cancel my playdate plans.
Oh and do you remember the milk and bread and butter I left out downstairs? Well it would have been nice if I had remembered them. They got left out for 2 hours while I was running around like a crazy person. In fact the kids found them and put them away in their toy kitchen which was pretty cute, and if I hadn't been so stressed out I would have taken a picture. They even put the milk in the play dishwasher :) So cute.
So we go to the Dr and she says that she thinks it is an allergic reaction to the pennicillin he's been on for more than a week for his strep throat. I was floored. He's allergic to pennicillin??? That's really annoying. I just hope I can remember to tell all the right people that now. Oh dear.
But at least it wasn't chicken pox! I was already starting to calculate how much money it was going to cost us to keep him home from school for 2 weeks. So I was very grateful for that. Here are some pictures from that morning and when we were at the Dr's office. I know the close ups aren't too good, I'm still learning how to work this camera :)

I wish you could have seen this in person. It looked much worse than the pictures convey.

This is the first place I noticed it. The spots go all the way up and around his arm. They also extend to his chest and back.

Hives, hives everywhere, and not a drop of Benadryl (ok so that isn't entirely true, I just wasn't sure I could give him any, it says on the box not to use it on chicken pox).

He looked so bad an miserable, the poor guy!

He did so good though. He only complained a tiny bit. And he still played happily the entire time. He called his hives "the spotsies". It was so cute. "When you are sick you have the spotsies right mom?" Love this kid!

Here we are at the office waiting for the results. This is also a great example of his silly rabbit smile.

Yay! It's not chicken pox! Wuhoo! We can all breathe a sigh of relief! I am also grateful to know at this point in his short life that he is allergic to pennicillin. Hives we can deal with. Anaphylactic shock? Not so much. I tell you it has been one difficult situation after another this week but the Lord has provided an easy way out every time. I am learning a lot.

Corbin's First First Day of School :oD

Well, it finally happened. My little boy grew up! I think it must have been overnight. I still can't believe he is old enough to be in school. He goes three days a week and has a wonderful teacher; Miss Hill.
He wanted to wear all Spiderman. It was the theme of the day. He had a hoodie, a shirt, shoes, and backpack that were all Spiderman. He was so excited to show his teacher all of his new things.

He was so excited that he didn't even wait for Madalyn and I, he just started walking up to the school. It was a foggy morning, as you can see.

He was asking me something about the wall that I didn't understand, and I was trying to get him to look at me so we could take the picture. So this is what we ended up with.

This is going to be a frequent stop for us :)

He looks so grown up standing there.

He is so excited to start school! Poor Maddy was a little concerned. She wasn't sure what was happening.

Here is Corbin's class. He is on the middle right, behind a little boy's head. Sorry he moved when I was taking the picture.

One thing I love about Corbin is his ability to talk to anyone. Here he is trying to make a new friend! It warms my heart.

Good job listening and being attentive, now if only you could do that at home ;)

He is getting ready to walk in with his class. The teacher asked the kids to turn around and wave good-bye. She had to remind Corbin twice. He was so excited that he didn't want to have to turn around and say good-bye. At least he isn't crying and throwing a fit.
Yes I did get a little teary at this point. It was a big moment! I would have been remiss if I hadn't.

Maddy and I spent the morning shopping for things for her preschool that we are dong with some friends in the ward. Here she is checking out the bug superhighways while we wait to pick up Corbin from school.

Poor Miss Hill had her hands full trying to keep these excited kids from bolting to their excited parents. I couldn't wait to hear how his day went.
All he would tell me was that he loved it and he wants to play with the knight toy on Friday. Ikind of expected that though :)

The first thing he did was run up and give Madalyn a big hug and tell her that he missed her! How cute is that???

I just love these guys! They are so great together.

I asked for smiles and got growly faces. Go figure.

Then I got tiger claws to go with the growly faces! Raarrr!














All in all, he had a great time. I found out after school that he didn't listen at recess and got left outside with another class. We need to work on his listening skills. But no harm done. He passed his preschool initiation with flying colors :)

The End of a Chapter

Our baby girl is growing up :( She decided the last few days that she was not going to stay quietly in her crib until I came to get her. Oh no. She decided to climb out. Well we can't have that. So we took down her crib and upgraded her into a Big Girl bed. Mommy isn't ready.

These are the last pictures of her crib :(
"Hey mom, could you just take this old thing down already???"

I was sad that I didn't get to document her last night in her crib, so we faked it with this.

Ok, enough.

Here is Corbin helping with his Super hero claws to help us with the plastic wrap. Rarrr!

In the process...

Not too concerned about it.

Daddy's little helper.

Concentrate, buddy.

I spy Corbin!

It's gone!

Here's the newest one!

We're almost ready!

Wow! She looks so much smaller in this bed than the crib. Even though the mattress is the same size. Hunh.

Corbin wanted a piece of the action too. They had to pretend to be alseep in their beds for the pictures. Ha ha.

Now she feels like a princess. Oh wait. She is a princess ;)

They are just so sweet! They wanted to snuggle up together in her new bed.

I love these guys! The best kids ever!

Muaw!

Back in Business!!!

Yay!!! Our camera finally arrived! Here are the first pictures we took with our new camera!!!

Look at that handsome face! Sorry ladies. He's taken :)

What a Stressful/Amazing Day!

I know, how does that even go together? Well I will tell you :) I have to preface this story first. So my statistics class requires that I either show up on campus for the exams (4 in all) or I have them proctored. Obviously I am not going to Las Vegas to take them so I had to find a proctor. More easily said than done. So I admit I procrastinated a bit, I had no idea where to go to find a proctor. It had to be either a teacher (one who is working at a school currently), a police officer, or a librarian. Doesn't sound too bad does it? Except that I just moved here and don't know that many people :( So Nate kept bugging me to contact the public library. But I was very hesitant about that. For several reasons, first because I hate calling places and asking questions, also because the ladies at our branch are SCARY! They are rude and mean and grumpy. Why would I want to subject myself to that??? I sure didn't. So someone mentioned to me that MSU does test proctoring, so I got on their website and checked it out. It looked great until I saw how much it was going to cost...$30! Per test!!! Yikes. So that was going to be my last resort. I finally broke down and emailed my library (I really am terrified to talk to those ladies at all!). They were very prompt and wrote back within 24 hours.
So that was last Tuesday morning that I got the email. The very nice lady :), informed me that my branch doesn't do that sort of thing but there are two branches that do. Only those branches don't open for business until 3:00pm! Who ever heard of a library that doesn't open until that late in the day??? Weird. So that was out. I had to take the test Tues. Sept. 8 between 8am and 11am. BUT She did mention that Lansing Community College does proctoring. I didn't have much hope but I went to the website and looked it up.
Sure enough they do proctoring. I tried to open the link on the website but it wouldn't open, so I couldn't. But I found out that they need 7-10 days to process an exam request. I was down to 7 exactly! So I found the number and called. It took a few tries. I actually didn't get to talk to anyone until Wednesday! I finally got through, and basically they charge $15 per test which sounded like a steal next to MSU. I told them my situation, and apologized that it was so late in the game. She told me that we could still do it as long as my teacher got the test to her by Thursday. No problem right??? Well...
I emailed my teacher all of the info and told him that they needed the test to schedule me, and that he had to do it by Thursday. He told me that was no problem and I started to relax a bit.
Thursday: I waited most of the day for an email confirmation that LCC had gotten my test. No dice. But I did get a confirmation that my professor had faxed the test over, but it was late in the afternoon. I guess I should have explained that there is a 3 hour time difference we are dealing with, and the lady at the office was going to be out Friday and Monday. So I spent all weekend worrying about this test. Was I going to be able to take it?
Tuesday morning: My kids get up early so I was up at the crack of dawn. Waiting to hear. She finally called me at 8:15 or so. She said she had received the test and could I please come in at 11? ABSOLUTELY! I had already set up a babysitter, so I called her and gave her the scoop. Then I got ready. I packed all of my things, all the kids things, got the GPS ready, packed the car, got the kids in and buckled, then went back for one more thing, and in the process I left my keys sitting on the table by the front door...which I locked by hand on the way out.
Yes, I locked myself out of the house just 1 hour before having to be at my test. Yes, yes I really did. Oh man. So I tried all the windows: locked. I opened the garage and tried the door into the house: locked. I tried the back door: locked. Wouldn't you know I was super responsible about locking all the doors and windows for once? Yay me! Dumb dumb dumb.
So I called a friend and while I waited I tried to break in. I figured the best door to break down would be the one in the garage. But this handle is quite difficult just in general. Then I had an epiphany: I happened to have my wallet in the car, and inside I had an old credit card. So I ran a grabbed it. It didn't work on the garage door, but it did work on the front door! Yay! Grabbed the keys and jumped in the car. I only wasted a half hour. Called my friend to cancel on her, ran to the bank to get the money for the test, then dropped off the kids.
Well, let me just say hallelujah for GPS! There was so much construction and detouring that if I hadn't had the GPS I would have in no way made it to the test. It was ridiculous. But I did. I then had to parallel park the van: it was quite humorous I'm sure to be on the street trying to watch me do that. I ran up and took my test! It was great, I felt good about it. Sigh!
But that's not all folks! So you know my camera died. We ordered one and didn't expect it to arrive until around Thursday of this week. So that meant I would miss taking Pictures of Corbin's first day of school! Unacceptable. I was sending Nate to the store on the way home from work to pick up a disposable camera, when the doorbell rang. It was our mail delivery person. And she had our camera!!! Talk about divine intervention! I called Nate and told him to forget stopping at the store, we had our camera!!! I am soooo in love with it. It is amazing. So I tried to post pictures but something isn't working right. I will work on it and get them up soon. But what an amazing day! I know it all worked out because I fasted on Sunday that I would be able to take this test, and I read my scriptures yesterday. Thank you Heavenly Father! I couldn't be more grateful for the way things worked out. What a blessing.