FUN RUN!!!

Hi guys.... it's that time again. My boys are doing the Fun Run to contribute to their school. In the mean time they can win lots of prizes along the way. Please help them out by donating. You can do a flat donation as small as $1 or you can pledge per lap. It all adds up. Thank you!


Gavin....

https://funrun.boosterthon.com/a/s/AYE4NR1K



Aiden....

https://funrun.boosterthon.com/a/s/_iyCdDCj  

Week in Review

So we are getting ready for Aiden's birthday party on Saturday! It has been stressful waiting for people to RSVP. We still only got 2 of HIS friends, but we did end up with 8 total so I think it will be a good party! He is pretty excited about it. He is having a completely Star Wars themed party!! Next year we are going to do things a little bit differently. I think we may just invite a few of their friends to go out instead so we don't have to worry about how many will come.

Next week we are finally getting a washer/dryer in the house!! I am SO excited. No more laundry mat!! It is the little things lol. Man I am old, to be this excited about a washer/dryer.

Earlier this week my husband and I went outside to check on the moon flowers I had planted. I think we are finally getting some buds on them. So while he was looking I went to walk down the three steps to look with him. Did I say three steps? Yeah, I only walked down two steps and fell the rest of the way because I am just so graceful. So my toes curled under one of my feet breaking a toe and spraining that ankle and ending on the textured concrete driveway below scraping my leg and foot all the way down! There i was, on the ground, crying like a little kid. Man did it hurt. I have been down for the count for a few days, well as much as I could have been anyway, but now I am back up and moving again.

It was a long three day weekend with the kids. The beginning of school is always hard. It takes them some time to get back into the swing of things. Early bedtimes, wanting to stay up later but being so very tired, homework, schedules. Not to mention they always misbehave a little bit when school first starts. It's like they are around other kids doing things and they feel the need to once again try them out as if they will get a different response from us. I know it will level out soon, it always does.

We did get to see something fun this week. My husband is a manager at his company. So they had a thing going where if his employees met their goals then they would get to throw pies at the managers. Believe it or not, this was his idea. Sure enough the employees did great and won their prize. So we got to watch as they threw pies at him and another manager. My kids even got to throw one at him. It was great lol! 

Update: Aiden's Party

So as I said before, my youngest son has a birthday party coming up. I was worried from the start about people coming to it. It is at the beginning of the school year. He is very shy and it takes him awhile to make friends. I had the phone numbers of a few of his friends from last year, but have had very little luck there. One of them, the phone number I had has been disconnected so I went through the school only to find out that he had moved. Another one will be able to make it, but for just a short time because his brother's birthday party is on the same day (which we will be going to after our party). Now the other child I had a phone number for... I spoke to him mother via Facebook about two weeks ago. She said she did not know if he could make it because her son's birthday was around then and they did not know what they were doing. I then asked her if she was going to do a party because if so I could change ours to the next weekend so we did not have competing parties. At that point I could have changed because I had not sent out invites yet. She never responded. So we went ahead with our plans. Yesterday I contacted her again on Facebook to invite her son to our party. She tells me that he can't make it because her son's party is on the same day around the same time!! GRRR I asked her remember?!? So now I understand, in part, why we have had not even 1 RSVP for my son's party. A kid who has been at that school much longer and has a lot of friends is having his party on the same day at a fun place! I have now had to explain to my anxiety ridden six year old, who is OMG excited about his party, that we only have one of his friends coming to his party for just a little bit and a few of his brother's friends. This made me, and him, so sad. I had to break his little heart. This party thing is just too stressful. Next year we are doing it differently for sure. However, this year there is nothing I can do now since we already have things set in motion and a few people coming. So we explained that even though there would only be a few kids that we would make it the best Star Wars party ever! His brother was surprisingly helpful with creating excitement about all of the cool things that would be at his party. So there it is. 

Week in Review

So the kids started school last week. I think it went well. My oldest is in third grade now. They consider this a transition year so they kind of change classes throughout the day. They switch between all three of the third grade classes for different subjects. It is taking some getting used to for him. He is my worrier and is worried about keeping up with three teachers worth of assignments and homework. I know he will do just fine. He is such a good student and adapts so well. Last year he had straight A's all year long!

My youngest son is now in second grade! He is excited about having the same teacher this year. His first grade teacher moved up to second grade and he got her. He is such a shy boy and has a hard time getting comfortable with new people, it takes awhile. So he is starting off the year with a sense of comfort and confidence that I have never seen. It is amazing what a little familiarity will do for him. The second day of school, he walked right up to a kid in his class and said "hey, you want to be my friend?"! I was amazed. This is the same child that spent 3 months last year trying to jump in and talk to classmates.

We have his birthday party coming up. We are doing a pizza party at the house. We did the same for my oldest back in March and it was a huge success. So now my youngest feels like that is the bar, or maybe I do. Invitations were sent home with kids last week and so far we only have a few kids coming, and only one of them is a friend of the birthday boy. I am so scared that we will not get any of his classmates. He will be so upset. It will break my heart if he is sad.

It is time to start patching his eye again. We were waiting to get the patches in, but also to let him adjust to his glasses again. He tried it on this morning ad it fits well and is easier since it does not stick to his face, but it will be hard to get back in to. He could hardly see when we covered the good eye. Which is the whole reason for doing it in the first place, but still makes it hard. 

His Little Eyes

My youngest son will be seven in a few weeks. Since he was around 14 months old he has been wearing glasses. He has Strabismus, meaning he is cross eyed in both eyes. He is far sided, had an astigmatism in both eyes. He is red/green color blind, and has no depth perception, meaning he can not see in 3d and can only see in the direction he is looking. He also has Amblyopia. That is where his brain is ignoring one of his eyes and only focuses on his right eye.

For the astigmatism and the farsidedness he wearing glasses that change about every six months in strength. For the Strabismus he has had botox injections in both eyes, and then finally eye muscle surgery. For this they had to remove his eye muscles and reattach them so that they were aligned. Although they could slip again at any time, his eyes have remained straight since then. It has been two and a half years since the surgery. Depth perception develops at around six months of age with straight eyes. With his eyes being crossed at the time, he did not develop it and never will. You only have one shot at that and he missed the boat.

As for the red/green color blindness, there is really nothing we can do about this either. He sees color, but not in the same way we do. He has learned with repetition that we call red, but what we see as red he sees as green. All of the colors look different. Everything is dull an he can not see different shades of colors. Fortunately he was born with this so does not know any different.

Now as for the Amblyopia....we have been doing patch therapy. We put a patch over his good eye for a few hours at a time to force him to use the bad eye. The hope is that if we do this for long enough we can retrain his brain to use that eye as well as the other. We have been patching for six years now, with no luck. This last appointment I finally asked the doctor if we were going to fix this problem. He told me that it is possible, but more often than not, no. He said that eventually we would give up on that eye and stop patching. This will happen in a few years. At that point the eye will continue to get worse until he goes blind in that eye.

This has hit me so hard. I keep thinking about his life and what this will mean for it. Will he be able to drive? What kinds of jobs will he not be able to do? Will this be a disability? There are already things now that he can not d, like sports. I just can not believe how many problems his little eyes can have at once.

One good thing did come from his last visit. The doctor turned me on to a website that makes cloth patches! They slip on right over his glasses and we can reuse them over and over. No more sticky bandaid like patched that hurt his face! I am so excited, and so is he. It is Amblyopia Awareness month! Help spread the word about the disease and help to stop the stares! If you use patches or have a child that uses them you should check this site out!

www.patchpals.com

Then and Now

My son was talking about learning how to tell time on an analog clock. I was telling him that when I was a kid there were not digital clocks. That set us off on a conversation about how things were "back then".


Then......

Now....

Then....

Now...

Then....

Now....

Then....

Now....

Then....

Now.....

I remember having t wait while the movie rewinds, playing mario for hours because you couldn't save, blowing on my Polaroid picture to dry it, carrying a quarter in my pocket in case of an emergency, and having to go to the library to look something up. 

The End of Summer

The past few weeks have been kind of busy. First we went to my husband's family's house for a few days. t was our end of summer visit. It was nice to see everyone. Then we went to my parent's house. We just gt home last night. It was great to see them. We try to do a visit at the beginning and at the end of summer. Now that my husband and I share a car I do not get to take the kids as often during the school year. We will not be able to visit again until January. That is when we do a holiday visit. Anyway, now we are home and getting ready to start the school year. Today is orientation at the school. We will bring supplies and meet the new teachers. Then they start school on Wednesday. The summer actually went by fast this year. I am sure I will blink and this school year will be over too. Every year, faster and faster. Now it's time for early betimes, EARLY mornings, school lunches, and homework. It is also the signal that the holiday season is right around the corner. Soon it will be time for Halloween costumes and turkey and Christmas trees. Where does the time go? Although I am not wishing time to go by faster, I am looking forward to cooler weather, open windows, hot chocolate when the kids get home from school, and of course.... pumpkin spice everything!