Another week in the life

This week was a bit rough because Beki was sick all week with allergies and a sinus infection.  She went to the allergist on Wednesday and they basically said that they can't do much more to control the symptoms.   So she is going to have to learn to manage her CHRONIC DISEASE (that was a depressing realization for her).  We went and got an air purifier by ORECK; a professional grade one that can clean a 600 sq. ft. room and you never have to buy a replacement filter so we will see how it works.  There might be a few other things that we will need to do, but time will tell.

Chris had a normalish week.  The students are done taking the MSA (test) and so things should have returned to normal, but a lot of his kids were on a field trips or their teachers won't let them go down to his class - a constant struggle for him (you know since he isn't a "real" teacher).  But this next week is spring break and he is planning GRAND things for the back yard that will culminate in an Easter Egg hunt with lots of friends.

Owen is becoming more adjusted to his new nanny and going on "Bertie the Bus" two days a week to go to her house.  He is also getting a lot better in Primary - he will now sit with his class for opening exercises and most of sharing time and he doesn't cry anymore when it is time to go with his class.  Sometimes is seems as if he will "never" do something, or adjust to new things and then in no time at he is all adjusted and growing up so fast.  He got a package from Grandpa White and he loved what was inside...

He also had a lot of fun in the bathtub this week and all on his own he decided to "clean" the bathtub.  Grandma Peterson would be so proud!

Over all it was an okay week.  Hopefully this next week will be a little less stressful and Beki will get better and her allergies won't be so bad.  

Just a Normal Friday Night

Fridays at are house are usually uneventful. Beki gets home from work, we have dinner, maybe watch Numbers - or the NCAA Basketball Tournament if it happens to be the right weekend - and then go to bed. It isn't very exciting, but it is our chance to unwind and relax. This past Friday we were well on our way to a normal Friday evening, when The Boy decided to spice things up a bit.

While Beki and I were occupied doing something else he somehow managed to get the bottle of Children's Benadryl open. What exactly he did with it was the mystery. We know that he spilled some on the table. because he was cleaning it up with napkins when we found him. What we did not know was how much of it he had actually ingested. About half of the bottle was missing, so it was a significant amount. Beki called Poison control, and then loaded the boy up in the car to go hang out at the hospital, just in case. Now usually when it comes to things involving The Boy and hurting himself, I am the one who is overly protective. Yet in this occasion, while Beki was impatiently waiting in the car, I remembered to grab some pj's for The Boy, his bag, and the actual bottle of what he drank. It was 8:30pm so traffic wasn't bad, and it is nice to know that we can make it to a hospital fairly easily should the need arise - and knowing me and the amount of yard work that I will be doing, the need may arise.

The hospital ladies - I suppose I should call them nurses - were very nice to Owen and they took him back to get his vitals checked out, while I was stuck at the reception desk trying to 1. tell the lady that there is no u in Renberg - yes I am sure, 2. convince her that the boy was born on the 24th of July, not the 26th - again, yes I am sure, and 3. simultaneously watch the NCAA game being broadcast on the TV just over her head, it was challenging, but I can do hard things.

They took us back to a Pediatric room where they could keep and eye on The Boy's vitals, and keep me away from watching any basketball games.

As you can see, they also gave The Boy a bracelet identifying him as Owen, which he thought was pretty neat, because he likes things with his name on it.

Because we didn't know if he had ingested half of a bottle of Benadryl or not, we had to assume yes, so The Boy got to drink charcoal. While charcoal might smell good if it is mixed with the smell of your steak cooking on top of it, the idea of drinking it is not very appealing, even with chocolate mixed in. The Boy was not very cooperative at this point, made evident by the fact that it is all down his chin, and all over mommy.

Just when it looked like we would be spending the rest of our evening and most of the morning water-boarding our son with liquid charcoal, I decided to use my superior negotiating skills, and worked out a deal that The Boy found acceptable - all it cost me was a package of Fruit Snacks! He downed the nasty stuff (and it was a giant cupful) quickly and as you can see, happily enjoyed his Fruit Snack chaser.

In the end he is fine and back to his same old activities, including one of his favorites: Taking pictures of himself!

We think Spring in here.

So this last week brought us quite a bit of rain, which means that the trees are starting to have pollen, so Beki is miserable, but every one else seems to be happy that the cold months are almost over.  This was a pretty quite week with the normally every day stuff.  We did go visit a pre-school/day care on Thursday that we are considering for Owen in the Fall and on Saturday we watched some kids for our friends so they go to the Temple, but other then that, just the same old stuff.  

Chris has been frustrated because this week all the kids are taking the (Maryland State Achievement) MSA test (thank you standardized tests that tell you nothing, waste your time, and lead your principal to actually tell teachers to, "Teach them what is on the test."  If you want to know what is wrong with the education system, Chris will do a post sometime and tell you - if only they had asked an actual teacher about their wonderful legislation).   So he has had hardly any students coming to band and to add insult to injury, they asked him to "help" proctor some of the exams (i.e. make sure the kids complete the test and have tissues - again Chris will do a post later).  They have one more week of this and then things will return to "normal".  Beki has been busy at work with failed experiments and repeating things over and over and over and over again.  This next week is spring break for her, so at least she doesn't have to go to class.  She is getting ready to select her Research Committee and so has been spending a lot of time thinking about and arranging that.  To make matters worse, her phone decided to give up the ghost on Saturday and so now she has to find a new one and since we don't want to buy a new one because we are switching to Verizon on October, things are going to be interested for the next couple of days until we find a solution.  Chris' phone also has issues - it got washed in the washing machine and so the buttons don't really work, but he can talk on it - if your number is programed into your phone or you call him - no texting either.  So we are having phone issues and I am sure that it would cost us a lot of money to get out of our contract with T-Mobile, so we will hobble along.

Here are some highlight pictures of the week.

One day Chris came home from work and found Owen wearing his Nemo swimming shorts.  He thought that I had dressed him that way (right, that is what I said), but we finally figured out that he had found them and wanted to put them on, so he did it himself.  He refused to take them off, even for his bath, so he went "swimming" in the bathtub.  Thought it was pretty cool - then we had to do it again for the next two nights - and then he forgot about wearing Nemo, and baths are back to normal.

This week Owen also discovered Papa's old piggy-bank, complete with REALLY old coins.  He thought that is was totally awesome and spent a long time dumping out all the coins and putting them back in.  Something old is now new again.

On Wednesday, Papa got to play basketball with some other men from church, so all of his "athletic" stuff was out.  Owen found these and decided that he needed to wear them.  He put them on and proceeded to tell us that he was a superhero, complete with pose!

We had some friends over on Saturday (see above) and they watch a movie and consumed copious amounts of popcorn.  Lots of fun all around!

After the movie, they went to play in Owen's room, and when we checked on them, this is what we found.  We asked them what they had done and Owen said that they were making "S'Winter" (If you are not familiar with Phineas and Ferb - they decided one summer day to make a mountain of snow and called it S'Winter [complete with song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMuK9nSbD0M], they are on Disney XD and are quite funny even for adults.)  They had found some Styrofoam and crushed it into very small pieces that stuck to everything.  I was even cleaning it out of Owen's nose!!! 

National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center

We went to the Air and Space Museum that is not on the national mall (I think it is the only one), it is located in Virginia.  Owen's "best friend" just turned 3 and so for his "party" we all  went over to Virginia.  It was about an hour ride and we ate lunch on the way there.  It was AWESOME!!!  It is basically airplane hangers that have been converted into a museum.  They have hundreds of airplanes inside and a lot of famous one.  The Space Shuttle Enterprise (it is used for training - so it never actually went to space, but still way cool), a Concord Jet, a Boing 707, a Lockheed SR-71 Blackbird, THE Enola Gay, a Grumman F-14A Tomcat, a really cool observation tower, etc..  Owen had a lot of fun running around and seeing all the planes and helicopters.  Since the museum in located near Dulles Airport, in the observation tower you get to see almost all the planes land and take off.  Since we are all big kids at heart, we spent a good half hour just watching the planes.  It was worth the trip and we will definitely go back.  Here are some highlights.

At the entrance, checking out the planes!

Look Mom!

Watching all the planes land and take off!

  

THE END - it was a long day for both of them!