Hello My Dears!

The past couple of days have been busy and yet void of amusing news to share, hence the sparse personal stories. The baby had a really rough night Sun-Mon with his breathing. He was coughing and coughing, and I had tried
mullein
cough medicine
inhaler
nebulizer
sitting in the steamy bathroom with the shower on
propping him up
and finally started digging deeper in the medicine box and found that I had (hallelluia!) a little bit of steroids left (which is the big gun that always saves the say when nothing else will. I thought it was all gone, or else I would have given him some right off the bat) so I gave him that which bought us 3 hours of sleep before it was time to get up and start the day.....

Had to take our 3 year old for a speech/language evaluation at the school in order to see if he qualified for preschool. (They can automatically go when they are 4, but have to qualify as needing a service in order to go when they are 3) We knew he would qualify, but it is a formality that has to be gone through. It's kind of funny to have your child taking a test that you actually hope they will fail.

Indeed, he showed a moderate speech and language difficulty, so I put on my Super Advocate for my Kid hat and asked to get the final meeting done ASAP so that the kiddo could get going to preschool right away. His 4 year old brother has been going to preschool for a month and the 3 year old cries most days and wonders why he doesn't get to go. I figured he has waited long enough. So, we scheduled the meeting for this morning so that he could go to school this afternoon.

Had to tough it out by taking the kiddos ages 1, 3, and 4 to the meeting with me since the hubby is working today. Endured screaming, kicking, and crying by the 3 year old during the meeting. (Greatly humiliating...) Sent the two preschoolers off on the bus at 10:30, and celebrated by taking a nap for almost 3 hours with the baby! (After all the sleepless nights I have had over the past 2 weeks, I figured I deserved it.)

I couldn't help but get kind of misty-eyed and sentimental as I watched the bus drive off with my two preschoolers. I felt like I had crossed some sort of threshold..... Having 2 babies only a year a part was one of the hardest transitions I have gone through. It has been intense beyond description (at times) to have 2 babies, and then 2 toddlers...... They are wonderful, fun, sweet, funny, busy, naughty, adorable little boys and I am SO GLAD that I have them. (But it was hard!) It is really neat to see how close they are. Quite a lot like twins, I think. Definitely cool to have them so close, *if* you can survive the first couple of years.

So now I have made it through 3 years of having these two little rascals, and now I get 4 half days a week of respite (if you can call it that, since I still have my little 18 month old buddy to hang out with). I'm excited for them to have something new and interesting to do. I'm excited for me to have a little more wiggle room in my life. The baby sleeps in the afternoons so maybe I'll do some amazing stuff with my "free time." So many to choose from----how will I decide?? :)

Did any of you read Miss Julia Speaks Her Mind? If so, go ahead and leave your comments here. For those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, early on I invited my blog readers to join my reading group. You can go back about 10 days in the archives and read all about it. if you just want to jump in, in 2 weeks we can discuss A Child Called "It" by David Pelzer. It's a chilling true story of child abuse, written by the survivor.

That's all for now. Gotta serve up the dinner for the troops. Til next time--