South Dakota - Part I

On Thursday after Raegann was picked up at 5:30PM, Ryan and I looked at each other and said, lets leave for South Dakota tonight!  We had origianlly planned to leave the next morning.

Grace was already packed and ready to go, so why not. We were out our door by 7:00PM. 

We arrived in Sioux City, SD at 12:08 AM.

Here we all are, wide -eyed and bushy tailed!

Grace fell asleep right past Des Moines, she was watching Baby Signing Times, and it put her right to sleep.

Jace watched Duck Tales and Curious George the whole way.

We were all finally in bed around 12:45 AM. Our room had a little buffalo for Jace to curl up next to.

On Friday when we woke up, it was so nice to have the hard part of our trip out of the way.

 

A few things done and home-school

Jace on the phone with Ryan yesterday while he was donating plasma. He wanted to know all the gory details about how big, and sharp, and poky the needle was.  I had to leave the room, so I am not sure what he found out, but I am sure it wasn't a small needle.

Well, Ryan is slowly but surely making progress on his vacation "to-do" list.  Tuesday, he donated plasma before the crack of dawn, and studied for the OMSITE at the same time!

On Monday, while I taught a Suzuki Violin teacher training class for 3 hours, he had some success with the backyard weeds, and he did it with 4 children in tow. And they all lived to tell about it--impressive!

On Tuesday we met with Sharina to discuss home-school curriculum.  It was such an informative meeting.  We/I have been torn as to what to do with Jace next year: home school or kindergarten.  He is currently registered for kindergarten, as I had pretty much decided that  that would be the best for him next year.  But that all changed a few weeks ago when I had an "ah-ha" moment in my life.

It first started when I sat next to Sharina at a Relief Society meeting/social.  I brought up the subject of home school with her because I knew that she was currently home-schooling her 4 children, and I was wanting to have something to visit with her about during dinner. Through our conversation, I learned that she had been a public school teacher for over 5 years.  She gave me a brief  rundown of the curriculum she was using with her children at home, and what she felt was the problem, in her opinion, with the current public education system.  I left that evening feeling intrigued and excited about what she had told me.

Then the next morning, as I was reading Elder Anderson's talk from last General Conference,(of the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints),  he quoted Rachel Jankovic. She said,"Motherhood is not a hobby, it is a calling.  You do not collect children because you find them cuter than stamps.  It is not something to do if you can squeeze the time in.  It is what what God gave you time for." 

After I read this, I had a thought or impression come to my mind.  I realized that I could send Jace off to kindergarten and that would be fine, but if I wanted to, I could spend that time with him everyday, teaching him myself, and that that time together would be an opportunity for us to build an even closer bond and friendship. (and be an exercise for me in patience EVERYDAY!!)  But God has given me this time to take on home-school, if I so choose. 

So this is where I am personally with home school- I have put it on the table as a definite possibility for next year.  Ryan, on the other hand, has always had a plan.  He wants to build an office that has a school room upstairs, I would be the office manager, we would hire an Oral Surgeon, and he would do home school!

And I personally think this would be the perfect arrangement.

Christopher Robin has been blessed to have an amazing father and friend.

I love to see the affection Jace has in his eyes for his father.

And it is even more amazing to see how much piano he will practice in order to earn some time watching "Ice-Road Truckers."

It's vacation!

Yesterday, we found a little black ant roaming around our kitchen.  Ryan put it on Gracie's arm to crawl around, and you would have thought the sky was falling with all the excitement that entailed-until there was nothing left of it, that is.

Ryan's week of vacation starts today!!!! -after he rounds this morning on patients.  His plans this week include the following:

-yard work--weed the backyard
-paint the upstairs bathroom
-FOLD 6-8 loads of laundry (I wash them)
-donate plasma
-study for the OMSITE
-meet with Sharina on Tue to talk about home school for Jace
-drive to South Dakota with his shrieking daughter. She hates the car-would rather run around. (But it's only 320 miles each way)
-watch General Conference (of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints)
-clean the house-upstairs and downstairs
-play with his children
-teach Jace some piano lessons
-make love to his wife

We will see what he gets accomplished.  I'm sure you know as I do, that there are a few items on his list that will take priority.

I will be posting about our progress during the week.

Have a great day everyone.

Backyard bliss

Here you see Robin and Rue in our backyard yesterday. Rue had batted her eyes and screeched a little and said please a few times to Christopher Robin, and Christopher Robin finally agreed to push her in her swing.

Fortunately for Mom, Rue had absolutely refused her offers to push her.

Christopher Robin was curious as to why Rue ONLY wanted him to push her.

But then he remembered why,  "It's because we are married Mommy!!"

So with an "I am so in love with you" look in his eyes, he happily swung little Rue for quite some time in both of our swings.

Someday soon he'll realize that he isn't married to his little sister, and that he will never be married to her, but as long as he doesn't realize this until she is old enough to push herself in the swing, I am just fine and dandy with their little arrangement!

Little tradition

We have a tradition here at the Swigert household when Ryan is on call. On call day, usually around 6:30PM, I get a call from Ryan letting me know that he is done with evening rounds, etc., so I load the kids up and meet him at the fountain entrance of the hospital.  He unloads them and gives them a ride on a wheelchair right into the dining hall.

Where they scarf down chicken nuggets and chocolate pie.

When we are all done, Christopher Robin excitedly picks up the tray and carefully carries it

over to the conveyor belt. And most the time he doesn't spill anything on his way.

Then he stands there for several minutes watching the conveyor belt do it's work--carry dirty trays to the dish washer.

Then we turn Grace loose to run around. 

The place is empty, so no one minds.

She usually wants to go see the grand piano that plays itself, so she can dance around.

And Jace's favorite pit-stop is the ambulance.

Sometimes he is the driver, and

sometimes the patient.

But he prefers to be the driver when his sister will let him have a turn.

While the children are having a blast, Ryan and I discuss what he is expecting to come into the ER that night, and if he will get to come home and have some sleep.

And sometimes he does come home, but a lot of times he doesn't. Like last night, he came home for a few hours, but was up until midnight taking some post-op calls, then gone by 2:00AM.

And that's what we do to make it through call one day at a time!

Sunday Evening

It's Sunday evening, a little past 10:00 pm and BOTH of my children are asleep.  I really don't know what to do with myself.  Ryan is in his office working on his CV--curriculum vitae (resume). We are headed to South Dakota at the end of March for him to interview for a position there.  He still has 2 years left of residency, but we have been told that most residents sign into a practice during their 3rd year. 

Since I have so much free time,  I am going to give you an update about how we are all doing.  By Friday my headaches had stopped and I felt energized again, but Jace was no better. His fever was still raging and he had vomited during the night so during Ryan's lunch hour we raced him in to Quickcare for an antibiotic.  But not before Jace took a much needed pit stop!

On Friday night, we stayed home for obvious reasons.   Ryan and I had scheduled a much overdue date, but we decided not to share our germs with our babysitter.  I was really disappointed about not getting out because I have been excited to see the new ipad but it didn't happen. We watched Tintin instead. And curling up to my handsome man was much more exciting than drooling on a new ipad!

Saturday brought a  new Jace.  His fever had finally broken. He stayed in most of the morning and watched episodes of Night Rider while Ryan and I went outside to wash the cars and weed the front yard.

How did we keep Gracie from running out in the street? By tethering her to the front steps banister.

But don't worry, we fed our princess chilled grapes while she sat on her throne.

Saturday night, I finally got to go on my date with my man, but as you can see we were well chaperoned, which is  a good thing because that new ipad....HOT!

It is now past 11:00PM and Ryan is asleep in his office chair,  I am off to haul him to bed.

Goodnight everyone.

Suffering

I have been suffering with a severe, (or several) migraines this week.  I have had one everyday since Saturday. I told Ryan that I probably have a brain tumor, but not to worry because I won't go to the doctor until I buy at least another $250,000 worth of life insurance on myself.  But last night, Jace spent the evening on the couch because "his brain was hurting" too.

When Ryan got home he spent awhile massaging him trying to help relieve his pain.

It seemed to work for awhile

because Gracie was able to slap (tickle) his back and

 rally him some.

But he woke up in the middle of the night in tears because his head was hurting so much, and when I felt him, he was on fire.

So our exciting, happy, news is that we probably don't have brain tumors, but maybe just a virus!

Recovering

Besides losing 3 nights of sleep this week and moving the clocks ahead an hour this weekend, the Dr. is still alive.  I had my doubts for a while, if whether he would live to tell the tale of  3 mid-face nights and 6 full work days, but look, he is a live and smiling!  On Sunday, I could tell he was pretty tired because he kept nodding off in the corner of our nursery class and we had 9 two-year olds running around in there.

This week here in Iowa City is Spring break so Jace has no pre-school and Raegann is in Virginia with her parents. So yesterday, was just like the good-old days.  We didn't get dressed until well after noon, and I lounged with the kids and worked on the laundry. Ryan called us a 11:00 to come pick him up for lunch, so we did, in our PJ's.  We then spent almost 2 hours with him in the middle of the day. It was great. It is supposed to be in the 60's and 70's all week, so it should be wonderful. Because of the warm weather Ryan has made lots of plans for us. He told us that we are all going on walks and hikes this week.  He even bought a new bike tire for Jace's bike.  Jace and I are home bodies, so we aren't as ecstatic as Gracie and Ryan to be in the great outdoors, but I will rally some enthusiasm!  He did get us out last night on a walk, but of course I forgot my camera, so no proof that we went-but we really did.  We then came home and had Family Home Evening.

The lesson was on keeping our bodies healthy and strong.

An appropriate lesson since Jace doesn't eat and Grace doesn't sleep.

We then finishd up the evening by picking  muffin crumbs out of the carpet and watching the Incredibles.

And it was...Incredible.

Have  a good Tuesday everyone.  We are off to Speech therapy.

Good day bad day

Although today was a fantastic day for me, it probably was a day Christopher Robin wants to forget entirely. 

I had a lot of fun with my children today, they nearly were perfect angels. Ryan (although he was on call) made it home on time so that I could get to a church activity-and his pager didn't go off the whole time I was there! And the highlight of my day was having the opportunity to invite Raegann's Mom to go to church with me. She is not a member of my faith. I really hope she takes me up on the offer.  It was such a wonderful experience for me to be able to share a little bit of my beliefs with her.

If any of you reading this post are not members of my church, you can learn more at www.lds.org.

Ryan telling jokes to Jace while he drank Tylenol.

The highlights of Christopher Robin's day included:

Having an accident at pre-school and getting his "peemie" zipped up in his favorite pair of pajamas. 

Fortunately for him, when the accident happened Miss Erin had an extra pair of dry pants so she quickly wisked him away and got him dressed before anyone even noticed.

And his "peemie"? After a lot of tears, a good amount of tylenol, and some jokes from his dad to make him laugh, it was like it never happened at all. 

 Well, almost!

News from the homefront

I tried last night to think of something fun to write about in this post, but nothing would come to mind.  My life is just a little too boring lately.  So I have decided that this post will be a rundown of news from the home front.

Lets start with Ryan:  He is back on Oral Surgery service.  This week is Mid-face trauma call.  This means his service treats all the trauma injuries to the head and neck that come into the ER. This week he will take call on Tue, Thursday, and Saturday.  So it will be a long week for him and me.

Jace:  He is LOVING pre-school. He looks forward to it everyday.  He asks me all morning long if it is time to get ready for school. Yesterday he painted a rainbow with watercolors.  He went to bed early last night in tears with a stomach ache.  But this morning when he woke up he was all smiles and feeling better.  He loves to dream.  He is my dreamer.  He paces/dances around my living room everyday for long periods of time.  While he paces-he dreams.  His dreams are always about cars and trucks and semis.  If it gets too loud in the room he tells us all to please be quiet because we are interrupting his dreaming.  I love it!

Gracie=ENERGY and SPUNK.  She is the last to fall asleep every night and the first to get up every morning.  She dances and runs, hardly ever walking, around our house and is delightful.  She is busy-into everything and climbing on everything.  She talks a lot and has started to potty train herself.  She is fun!

Me:  I just finished reading "Parenting with Love and Logic" and started reading  "Love and Logic Magic for Early Childhood."   These are such great books.  I have known about this approach to parenting for years, but only recently picked up the books.  I think Ryan is a natural Love and Logic parent, but I am not.  Their approach is very different from the way I was raised.   I am also co-hosting a baby shower this Saturday, so I will be doing a lot of baking this weekend, and I just got asked to do some violin teacher training next week for a couple of hours, so I am flattered and excited about that.

As a family, we are on the last chapter of the book, "The Horse and His Boy" from the chronicles of Narnia. 

And now, I am going to go take on Wednesday!

Have  a great day everyone!

Playing Monsters

On Monday, while I was working downstairs in the office, I could hear running and delightful shrieking upstairs. It was Robin and Rue having a wonderful time together.

As I sat listening to them, my heart was swelling with happiness. I love when my children are having a marvelous time together playing games they have invented.

When I finally emerged from the basement, I noticed that Grace had streaks of white lotion in her hair.  I asked Jace what they had been doing.  "Oh, we have been playing monsters. Gracie wants to look like a monster. It's funny huh Mommy?"  "Yes Jace, that's funny."  This would not be the first time that Grace has had lotion in her hair.  

Thirty or so minutes later, I  finally took the time to get Gracie dressed and ready for the day.  The only problem was, the lotion would not come out.  I discovered that it was Tacky glue in her hair--not lotion.  By then it was too late, it was completely dry. 

I looked at Christopher Robin with disbelief in my eyes. But as you can see, he was entirely innocent. He knew nothing about the glue!

But never fear, a few days later, after Gracie had walked around with nickel sized globs of matted glue in her hair, her Dad was finally able to mostly get it out.  It just took a comb and a brush, and a bath and some baby oil, and scissors, and an hour.