Off to School

All my kids actually went to school today. YAY!

Monday I sent everyone to school. I had to go pick Makkiah up at 10:30 because he was coughing and they weren't comfortable with him staying there. We took Angie's paperwork for school and dropped it off at the dentist. Then we went back and got Angie.

Went to meet someone interested in the condo and Ladaria's school called. She was in the office sick so I had to go get her.

Yesterday Ladaria stayed home sick again although she was doing better by the evening and didn't want me to take her to acute care.

Angie had a dentist appt. She has to get 4 teeth pulled and 4 others need fillings. I didn't take Makkiah to school as I wouldn't be close to pick him up if I needed to.

Today Ladaria wanted to stay home from school again but I was mean and made her go. Since she was fine last night, eating, playing, and watching tv I made an executive decision to send her to school. Haven't gotten a call yet so she must have started feeling better- at least I hope. I think everyone who has a cold feels worse in the morning.

I'm going to work on my Christmas letter. I might actually get one sent out this year. You can always hope!!

Sick of Being Sick

I'm sick of being sick.

I've had this cold, or maybe it's colds for over two weeks now.

I'm tired of coughing.

I'm tired of blowing my nose.

I'm tired of blowing my kids noses.

I'm tired of wiping snot from noses,

faces,

hands,

shirts, (including mine)

and anywhere else that a baby has decided to wipe thier snot.

I'm tired of listening to my kids cough,

sneeze,

and blow their noses.

I'm tired of my kids thinking that because they are sick it's the end of the world.

Well I think she's tired of being sick also,

or maybe she's just tired!

Next in line

We were awakened this morning by a loud bark at the door. I don't I've ever seen Rod hit the door from a dead sleep that fast in my life.

He thought it was Makkiah. It was Jaleel. He sounded croupy and was having a hard time breathing in. Rod took him out to the porch swing and made him some lemon tea. We also gave him some of Makkiah's on hand steroids. Probably not the acceptable thing to do but we needed to get the swelling in his throat down. The combonation seemed to help and he was breathing easier in no time at all.

Sent him back off to bed and fell back asleep.

Next at the door was Ladaria.

She had a headache and had coughed so hard that she threw up twice. She was hungry and wanted to know what she should do. Gave her some Tylenol and had her eat something. Back to bed she went.

Next up was Ellie who decided at 5am that she also was hungry. Last night she was playing her little - I'm not going to open my mouth and eat game. She didn't eat much dinner. Guess it caught up with her. She very willingly ate this morning.

Jaleel is better this morning and sounds normal, Ladaria is still sleeping and Ellie is fed and happy. Hopefully this cold will get out of our house soon.

Makkiah in the ER

Well our Thanksgiving didn't go completely as planned.

Wed afternoon Makkiah started sounding a little croupy. Started giving him his Atrovent and he took a nap. Woke up around 3:30 in the afternoon coughing hard and sounding bad. Continued giving him his Atrovent.

Spent the rest of Wed watching him but deciding that for the time being he was doing ok. Around 8 pm he fell asleep in the chair so I put him in my bed. Played around on here for WAY to long trying to give it a new look.

Around midnight I decided that I should probably go to bed. Makkiah was sound worse so I gave him moer Atrovent, which I repeat 3 times at 10 minute intervals. Rod and I debated as to taking him to the ER or not. He thought we could wait it out some more. I thought he was getting worse even with the medication. I also know that once he hits a certain point it's downhill fast from there.

We decided that we should take him in as he was sounding worse, his respirations had gone from 25 to 36 in less than 1 hour and I didn't want to be home with him when he nose dived.

Loaded him up in the car and off to the ER we headed at around 2am. Got to the ER at 2:30am and got checked in. They put us in a chair in the hallway waiting for a bed to clear out. Got taken to a bed at 2:55 and the doctor came in. Asked his history and such - I told her that once he starts making the "whistling" sound he goes downhill fast. He was making the sound. She walked out and he started having a hard time breathing. He was hunched over, puffing out of his mouth.

The quickly got an IV in to give him Decadron-which is the "gold standard" for him. The also gave him a nebulizer with racemic epinephrine. Once it took effect he was better.

At 6am the peds came down and looked at him. They then gave Dr. W a call and he said that if we were comfortable taking him home then we could as long as he was doing better. They gave us the clear at 7am to go home. When we came in his croup score was 6, then it went to 2, and down to 1. Anything or 3 is considered moderate croup and needs to be treated.

Came home and cooked Thanksgiving dinner. Only two people showed up. After dinner I crashed. I was so tired and couldn't keep my eyes open anymore. I've had a cold which doesn't help and then I had a fever. Took some Tylenol and off to sleep I went.

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!

I just wanted to get on here and wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving. We have much to be thankful for- our house, our kids, family and friends plus all the little things. We plan on having a big feast for Thansgiving - deeo fried turkey, ham, deviled eggs, sweet potatoes, fruit salad, green bean casserole, veggies, corn, lumpia, and lots of pie. We have invited over friends since all of our family is so far away but we will be thinking of all of you today. We hope that wherever you are you are enjoying the day. We miss you all!!

New Look

I decided to try a new look. It took me a long time to figure out how to do this but it doesn't look quite so generic anymore. Let me know what you think.

And the other Half!

Here is the other half to Jaleel's Family Tree. At least the part of the three that is above him!!

Mom DianeDad Clyde

Me

Rod's Parents

Jaleel had a Family Tree Project for his class. We made a big poster with pics of all the kids on purple paper, Rod and his parents on blue paper, and me and my parents on red paper. We then took a family picture and put it on red, blue, and purple paper- each trimmed a little smaller so that you could see each layer. The idea was Rod's parents were on blue and had him, my parents were on red and had me. Rod and I were right next to each other on our respective colors. Then red and blue got together and made purple! He titled it "My Rainbow Family" and glued all different colors of construction paper as the background. When we get the poster back we will take a picture of it and I will put it on here. It turned out really well and he got a good grade on it. All the kids in class as well as his teacher loved his poster. I thought for fun I would post pictures of Rod and his parents along with him and then on another post put my parents and me.

Mom Bernice

Dad Harold

Rod

Busy and sick and teething baby!!

I've been so busy. Constantly on the run AND we have a cold going around. Of course I have the cold along with the kids. I've been loading up on vitamin C and zinc. Taniyah has been teething for who knows how many days and has been miserable. Up all night and screaming all day. She screams and I can't talk since I seem to have lost my voice - we make a great pair!! I'm really NOT ignoring anyone just haven't slowed down to less than 4th gear in week it seems. A million things on my list of things that need done, cross one off and add five more things! I promise to write more soon but I am going to attempt to get some sleep tonight!

OH!!! BUTTON!

We have an ongoing joke about getting Taniyah to say BUTTON.

This comes from Poppa's mom saying that he said button at 6 months as he grabbed her button.

Now I know that we have sorely missed the target date for this great accomplishment by several months, but, alas we still try.

Anyway one morning as we were laying in bed Rod was trying to get Taniyah to say Dada and I, of course was trying to get her to say Mama. This went on for several minutes. She actually says dadadada and mamamama.

I decided to seize the opportunity to see if she would say button.

She would say "bu"

and everytime I would say "ton"

she would give us this face

almost like it was a bad word or something.

We laughed so hard and it was so cute!

Our painted house!

I finally found the cable that connects my camera straight to the computer so that I could download the pictures.
I know that I could just have easily walked back outside to take pictures of the painted house on my memory stick, but, well, hhhmm, that just didn't happen!! I guess I figured that since I already had them then I just needed to find the cable, SO I did it.

A before picture- again - just for comparison sake.
The Dungeon

And the much awaited after picture- although the door is still not painted - I must say that it is a dramatic improvement.

The unDungeon

This is minus the porch swing and porch furniture that we have since added.

Happy 8th Birthday Jaleel!

Today Jaleel turned 8. He really wanted to have a party ON his birthday so we made that happen. I called a couple of friends from church who came over and he also had a few friends from the neighborhood over.
He had a hearing appointment at 3pm which made for an interesting day. I didn't have anything but we still made the party happen.
When Rod got home I ran to the store to get a cake, ice cream and gifts. He ordered pizza!
We had a table full of kids, a Monsters Inc cake, ice cream and gifts.All was good in his world.
Still hard to believe that he is 8 though - time passes so quickly!!

Bathtub reglazed

My MOm had the bathtub reglazed about 2 years ago. It's much cheaper to do than replacing the whole bathtub but it does have it's drawbacks.

Not long after our tenants moved in we had a plumbing dilemma. The outcome was new plumbing in the shower, not fixtures, and a new shower surround. One of the drawbacks of reglazing - if you remove the old surround chances are that you will chip the glazing and it will have to be redone. If you chip the glazing and your tenants don't say anything to you about it chances are that it will look REALLY bad (like somebody poured paint into your tub) when you finally get back into the unit after evicting the tenants.

Needless to say I have learned that the above is true. And I have also learned that once you reglaze it's impossible to get even close to all of the glazing off. It on'y comes off where it wants to come off!

So I had the bathrub reglazed. Thankfully it's not something that I can do myself!! It's a stinky job and as much as I love my Mom it's one of those jobs that I would not do:-) While cleaning out the bathtub the night before I made an executive decision to remove the shower doors and the tracks prior to having the glazing done. I figured that it would look better if the inside of the tub was the same color as the outside.

Well the glazing is done and I think it looks much better without the shower doors. Hope my Mom wasn't to attached to the look;-) Makes the bathroom appear bigger which will be a plus if we decide to sell. I think it also gives it a newer look. Now all I have to do is out some caulk in the two screw holes in the wall and touch up some paint.

New appliances at the condo

Got the new fridge and stove at the condo. If you remember from an earlier post the tenants left their food in the other one even though they had no electricity. No electric for two months with things growing in the fridge - YUCK.

Mom and I decided that a new stove would be a good thing also. I think that the one in there must have been the original. I ordered new ones from Sears and had them delivered. I also paid the $20 to have the old ones hauled off. WHEW! One more thing to check off my list.

The new appliances arrived. I must say that they look really nice. We also changed out the light in the kitchen. The old one had a broken cover and you can't buy JUST the cover. They want you to buy the whole thing. So Rod and I replaced the old one. New cover and nice wooden end caps makes it look nicer.

Still haven't found a renter. Maybe the new pics that I took will help.

Halloween

All the kids came home yesterday and got all dressed up for Halloween. Rod was going to try to get off work early. His co-worker is having "family issues" and needed to leave early so Rod ended up not getting home until 6pm.

Our plans were to take the kids to Hallopalooza with some friends. The frineds called to let us know that 3 of them had fevers - 2 of them being Mom and Dad - so they wouldn't be going.

By the time Rod got home it was dark and their was traffic. We made an executive decision to forgo Hallopalooza and go trick or treating on our street. By the time we got there we wouldn't have much time to do anything and we couldn't possibly get by with doing nothing. Especially since all the kids 9 and under were dressed in their costume garb.

We did a practice run at the front door. Jaleel, Destini, and Brayana got it. Makkiah thought it was cool that I put candy in his bag and Angie sat down on the porch poised to eat the candy that had dropped into hers. I let them all know that we wouldn't be stopping to eat each piece of candy on the way.

Tyreque went to a friends birthday party and Ladaria stayed to pass out candy to any trick or treaters that might venture down our driveway (we did have one!).

It took us about 2 hours to make it to the end of the street and back. The kids had fun and couldn't wait to get home and see what they had gotten. To bad it was a school night and they had to get ready for bed. Maybe today I will let them have some of their loot!

Here's a picture of Taniyah who obviously wasn't impressed with the whole idea of costumes and candy. The rest of the kids are on Flickr.