Do Francis children just not like kindergarten??

Mia has recently expressed that she does not like school.  She has been requesting that I home school her next year or at least that she go to a different school.  When we ask her what the problem is she says that whenever she needs help no one has time to help her.  It isn't a social thing because she seems to be getting along great with all the kids she's loved all year.  I think part of it is that her teacher sucks and maybe part of it is just that public school sucks.  We are looking into all our options at this point.  There is a chance we could get a scholarship to this awesome montessori, but we would have to move to send her there.  There is also another school further away that we would have to move for, but it's not first on our list.  Another option is just to try switching her to another teacher's class to see if things improve.  Shelby says that a bad experience in kindergarten caused him to be jaded against school from the start and to have a 5 year old who doesn't want to go to school is horrible.  She's not miserable or suffering or anything, but she definitely is not thriving like we thought she would and I think it has a lot to do with the environment.  I scheduled a meeting with her teacher for tomorrow afternoon right after school to see if she has any recommendations for me to help Mia enjoy the school part of school more.  If nothing comes of that I may ask if she can be moved to another class to see if that makes a difference.  Otherwise, I guess we'll start looking more into private schools and possibly even home schooling I guess.  

The Joy of Sitting

  Lennon has been practicing and is improving his ability to sit back down from a standing position.  For a while now he has been standing and cruising around the place, but he always got frustrated and cried when he was ready to sit back down because he just didn't know how to stop standing.  It's so fun watching the wheels turn in his little head as he moves all his little muscles and maneuvers his way back down to the floor.  He is really enjoying the new freedom he has achieved.  Another good thing is that now if he wakes up in the middle of the night, I know that he can get back down and I don't have to go in and lay him back down anymore.  I'm looking forward to getting a full night's sleep again soon!  

First glimpse of friendship

Yesterday morning Mia and Lennon actually kind of played together for a minute.  She was playing with this little toy xylaphone (sp?)  and he would crawl across the room to get it and she would pick it up and move across the room.  Then he would laugh and crawl to wherever she had moved and so on.  They played like this while she moved back and forth across the room maybe 5 or 6 times.  It was really cute and Lennon was just laughing and really enjoying the game.  

Then today I took both kids to the science museum after church while Shelby napped because he was starting to feel sick.  Yes, again!!!  Anyway, we had a really good time.  Lennon actually explored some things on his own while Mia was doing her usual thing.  We sat all three together and explored different rocks and stones, examined sea shells and star fish and looked in a bee's view mirror that made it look like there were nine of each of us.  Lennon especially liked the mirror.  After Lennon and I pretty much followed Mia around for a while, she came with us into the under 12 months room and we played in there for quite some time.  Lennon really enjoyed himself and Mia crawled around on the floor with him showing him different new things to handle and yes, chew on.  I can't even imagine all the germs that were on them, but sometimes you just gotta chalk it up to building the immune system.  It was lots of fun, but after 3 hours Lennon had finally had enough and we headed home.  Unfortunately Shelby wasn't feeling any better and it actually looks like he is coming down with something pretty nasty.  I don't know what's going on around here, but if we don't all stop getting sick I'm going to start thinking it's something in the house.  

Attempt to recapture the past two weeks

Chapter One...

Okay, so let's back up to Monday, March 10.  Hillary and Jackson are coming for an awesome 10 day visit!  We are all soo excited to have them here.  However the trip starts off a little bumpy.  Hillary is running a little late for the plane, but manages to barely make it on.  Her luggage is not so lucky.  So she and Jackson arrive on time and then we have to make a second trip to the airport a few hours later to get her stuff.  The luggage is running a little late and she gets in the car with her stuff with ten minutes to spare before Mia gets out of school.  We make a mad dash out of the airport to Mia's school where Mia is ecstatic to see Hillary and Jackson.In the car Lennon is freaked out by the shrieks of joy Jackson is emitting and at the house he is suddenly drawn to anything Jackson has in his hands.  Is this a glimpse of things to come?  Mia loves giving Jackson a bottle on the couch and they catch up on their cuddles.   We then have about a one hour turn around before heading back out the door to ice skating lessons.  Mia was really excited to show Hillary all that she had learned.  Although Hillary was not to keen on the freezing temperature at which the rink is kept.  Still, she was a trooper and watched the whole lesson.  I got super dizzy while there and almost couldn't drive us home.  When we got home we made Mia dinner ordered wings for ourselves and put all the kids to bed.   Ahhhh...finally we took a breath and relaxed.  If only we had known what laid in store for us we might have taken more than one.  

Chapter 2

Monday night Jackson doesn't sleep well, but we assume that he is just adjusting to a new environment and he'll do better in the coming nights.  All day though he is just not himself.  The next two days nothing too eventful happens, but Jackson still seems a little off.  Again, we assume he'll adjust.  On Thursday Hillary and I take the babies to a free photo shoot for this company called HappyGreenBee.  It's an organic cotton clothing company that wants some free models basically.  It was in Cambridge and they dressed the babies up in their cute stuff and shot some pics.  Lennon did great  and smiled a lot, but he was so intent on crawling around that it was hard to catch him in the right spot for a photo.  When Jackson's turn rolled around he just sat there looking kind of sad.  This normally all smiled kid looked like his cat had just been hit by a truck.  We still stupidly assumed he was just tired or something.  Friday morning after another night of no sleep for Hillary or Jackson he starts barfing.  In the time that it took for me to take Shelby to the train and get back he had puked like 6 times.  We knew something was wrong.  Poor Jackson felt awful, but once he was in bed we started our much anticipated "sleepover" with Mia.  After dinner Hillary,Shelby,  Mia and I painted our nails- well, Shelby backed out of that part-,watched a movie and had big thick milkshakes!  Yum!  AFter teh movie mia fell asleep on the floor in front of the tv.  She must have been super tired cause she never does that.  This was the beginning of a beautiful weekend.  In the next three days all three kids and Hillary had a nasty stomach bug which left all kinds of stains on our carpet.  Thank goodness we rent, right!   The bright side to this day full of puke was that Shelby and I went to the Salvation Army and got some awesome stuff.  A beautiful dress for Mia for just $7 and some really cute black dress shoes for her for just $5.  Just when I thought Shelby and I were going to escape this thing he called from work Monday morning and said he just wasn't feeling right.  He ended up coming home early from work and sleeping almost 14 straight hours and feeling much better by the next morning.  Tuesday we were all feeling fine and Hillary and I went out with my girlfriends.  The next morning we all had a new kind of sickness.  More like the flu.  Nice!  Both babies were miserable and Hillary and I felt like we had been in a car accident.  Mia also was home from school because she had a fever of 102 the night before so I couldn't send her, although she seemed fine all day and had lots of energy and a regular appetite.  

By this time Hillary and Jackson's trip was nearing it's end.  They were supposed to leave on Friday and that was just a day away.  Where had all the time gone?  Oh yeah, in the toilet, on the floor, the couch...oh wait, that wasn't time, that was barf.  Anyway, luckily the airline changed their flights to Monday night and didn't charge a dime saying that anytime you change due to sickness there is no charge.  A good thing to keep in mind!  Yea!  We thought, three extra days and surely we'll all be well and feeling great by friday and the weekend will be awesome!

The Final Chapter

It was Good Friday and we had a second appointment at The Picture People to get Easter pics of the cousins since last weeks was a disaster due to the oncoming sickness.  By the end of the more than an hour of picture taking we realized that Jackson's ear had been hurting so bad that he had caused it to bleed from pulling at it so much!  That poor little guy just could not catch a break.  He had already cut two teeth in the time he had been here and it was looking like he might get another before the trips end.  So it looked like it was just not in the cards for us to get a cute picture of these three kids on this visit.  Oh well.  Jackson screamed in the car the whole way home.  I dropped Hill, Jax and Mia off at home and told Mia to take a nap cause she was acting kind of whiny.  I was going to go up to Shelby's office to see him give a presentation on his most recent project at school.  Well that was a total bust cause Lennon whined the whole way through the presentation.  Every time I walked in the room he would fuss and as soon as I walked out into the stairwell he would instantly quiet down.  I was really excited to hear about what he had spent so much time on and see the reactions of his coworkers and even one of the partners was there.  I was pretty bummed and I left to run by the store and go home.  As I was leaving the store Hillary called and said Mia just woke up from her nap screaming in agony.  Now she had an ear infection which made us wonder if Maybe the two babies had ear infections too.  Hill got Mia in a hot bath and she calmed down and I rushed home.  At home we treated all three kids with silver and ear oil, gave them tylenol and put them to bed as soon as possible.  I also called my doc and had him call in a prescription for some numbing ear drops that seemed to really help.  

The next day the kids all seemed to feel a little better.  We went to an Easter Egg hunt at The Brill's house with a few families from our Bible study.  It was super fun.  Suzanne made an awesome brunch with waffles, egg casseroles, fresh fruit, bacon, delicious muffins and juice.  The egg hunt was awesome!  There were like 250 hidden plastic eggs!  The kids had an awesome time and the babies played on the floor in the living room.  Later we had another ice skating lesson with Mia and it did not go well.  The new session is in a different rink and it was colder and she was upset to find out that her best friend from school was skating at a higher level than she was.  That night Mia had another fever of around 101 and went to bed early.  Easter morning Mia felt much better.  The Easter Bunny had visited our house and brought the kids lots of cool stuff including a Tinkerbell watch, new pinwheels, a dark chocolate bunny, a toy phone for Lennon, a stuffed bunny for Jackson and a new outfit.  Mia wasn't too into the hunting for egg thing.  I guess it's not as much fun when you are by yourself.  She did have a lot of fun coloring the eggs earlier in the week though.  Church was great.  Jessica, Ella and Diva came and Jessica's sister came with us as well.  Sunday night we went to bed early.  Well, all except Shelby who stayed up late working on a project.  It turned out it was lucky Hillary did extend her stay because around 3:30 AM Shelby sliced his hand open with a utility knife and I had to take him to the ER for what we thought would be stitches, but ended up being fixed with dermabond.  The attending doc was either drunk or just awoken, but he still got the job done I guess.  Shelby also had to have a tetanus booster and got a couple of tylenol, woohoo!  The good news was there was no major damage done, it was his left hand, and it was less than one hour from the time we left for the ER and the time we crawled into bed with the whole episode behind us.  Monday came so much faster than we ever imagined and we had to take Hillary and Jackson to the airport and say goodbye to them.  It was sad, but it had been such a whirlwind that it didn't sink in that they were gone until I got home and put the kids to bed.  I came out and realized I was all alone.  Shelby was at school and the house was quiet.  You would think I would have appreciated the nice quiet house, but I totally wished Hill was here with me to keep me company while I folded laundry or to do the dished she had done so often while here.  

Amazingly, we still had an awesome time together while they were here.  We laughed soo much.  About new things and old things.  Having a sister is pretty cool.  I think Lennon is super lucky to have a sister like Mia.  And I am pretty lucky to have a sister like Hillary.  

WILL THE SICKNESS NEVER END???!!??!? or..Mr. Magorium's vomit? Emporium??

It's day 12 and there is still sickness in the house.  There has been stomach virus, flu like symptoms, ear infections, new teeth in the babies, and more.  Tonight Mia had a fever, for the second time.  It was 101.3 and she generally felt crappy.  I am definitely taking both my kids in to see Dr. Coffey monday morning cause this is never ending.  I feel like I am living in an insane asylum right now.  There has been someone sick, crying, vomiting, having diarrhea, clinging to me clinging to Hillary, not sleeping, or just generally acting fussy every day for the last two weeks.  Happy Easter!  We did manage to have a really nice "sleepover" with Mia, Hillary, Shelby and me.  We rented Mr. Magoruim's Wonder Emporium and had cookies and cream milkshakes and nachos and painted our toenails.  All the left toes red and all the right toes green.  Shelby said he would paint one toenail just for Mia, but somehow managed to avoid having to do so.  Mia had an awesome time and then she slept in bed with me and Shelby.  The next day was full of barf.  Good times...  

What's happening right now?  Well, Lennon just woke up and cried for about half an hour.  I went in to him and comforted him as much as I could, but he still cried until just about five minutes ago.  Just before all this sickness he had started sleeping like a dream.  Twelve hours straight through the night without a peep.  The last four or five nights there has been at least one if not two or three awakenings and at least one middle of the night feeding.  What happened???  He may just be teething, or he may have an ear infection in which case I need to go into him and comfort him when he cries.  On the other hand, if the habit is just forming then I am really screwing up by going in every time he cries out.  I am pretty obviously delirious from all this sickness and non sleeping that has occurred lately, and need to go to bed.  Just wanted to update the blog since I hadn't been on in a while.  Mia is very excited about the Easter Bunny visiting tonight and looking forward to Ella, Diva and Jessica visiting church with us tomorrow morning -  that is assuming that we go if she isn't too sick to be in with the other children at church.  As Mia would say, Ay yi yi ( no clue on the spelling of that btw.)  Who knows where this plague has come from.  My only hope is that it disappears as quickly as it came upon us all.