Apologies

I have to apologize for seeming to drop off the face of the Earth sometimes. There are certain times of the year when being on the computer for the length of time it takes to put together a blog post just isn’t possible. This is one of those times. The kids turn 3 in just 7 days. That means that I’m furiously working on sewing (for their present), cleaning (for the party), and traveling (my nephew’s birthday is in 4 days). I generally reserve blogging for when the kids are sleeping, either nap or evening. But the last week or so I’ve been sewing or cleaning every moment they are asleep. Let me tell you, I’d rather be blogging!

While they are awake, though, it’s life as usual. I finally got up the gumption to start on our next letter of the alphabet. I’ll be extending it for another week, though, as I know they have not mastered it, and it works well with all that is going on this week (I’ll put it all in one post later). It’s the letter P. P as in Party! P as in Pirate! P as in Princess! P as in Pretend! P as in Playground! All of these will be a major part of the coming week and I am so excited to watch them enjoy it.

This is the first year that they have a concept of “birthday.” Not that they really understand anything beyond the fact that they get a party and that they “will be three at our birthday party”, but it’s something they are looking forward to and talk about constantly. As a matter of fact, they’ve been talking about their “happy birthday party” ever since we attended their cousin’s first birthday party at the end of March! Their thoughts have changed several times as to what they want at their party, so I’m glad I didn’t go out and buy decorations when they talked about Nemo back in March. No, they are now wanting a Pirate (Lucas) and Princess (Kyla) party. They even went with me to pick out the decorations (just some paper plates and napkins, table cloths, party favors, and pinatas) and were so excited! They want the party to be today (whatever day it happens to be), but I keep telling them that we can’t have their birthday until after W’s birthday. His party is tomorrow. I know I will have a week of “now?” on my hands. Someone reserve a straight jacket for me!

I can tell you now that you most likely won’t see another post from me until after the party is over (June 9th). And I don’t know that it will be the 10th, as we will still have family in town. But rest assured that I will get back on track.

On another note, we’ve been missing Chili terribly. I’ve gotten to where I don’t cry every time I think of her, but it still hits me now and then. And the kids talk about her often, saying “Chili gone. Chili in Heaven.” They also have adopted a couple of stuffed chihuahua dogs we happen to have and call them both “Chili” and sleep with them at night. When we say our prayers at night, it’s pretty inevitable that one of them will ask for Chili to feel better. And they tell me that Boudreaux (our other dog) misses her. And I think they are right. He’s been much more clingy and barks more than he used to. I find it odd that he barely noticed Chili was gone when she was missing, but now he is acting like he misses her. It’s as if he knew she would be back before and now he knows she won’t be. I miss her so much! I know it will be easier over time, but for now, we are still grieving.

Saying Goodbye

Thursday when the kids got up from their nap I decided we would go outside in the back yard. I got them ready to play in the pool so I could clean the yard up a bit before the person from the swing company came to do some measuring that evening.

Just as we were about to head outside my phone rang. It was the swing company. As I was talking to her I looked over towards the fence and saw Chili with her nose pressed against a corner of the fence. She was twitching a little, as if she was trying to pull free and couldn’t. But when I picked her up, she went completely limp and was panting super hard. I immediately got off the phone and called the vet to let them know we were on our way. I quickly got the kids into the car and handed them their shoes to put on while I drove. Chili lay in my lap the whole way, panting, and not once lifting her head. They took us back as soon as we got to the vet and a doctor came quickly. As I explained what happened he took her temperature. It was over 106 (the highest the thermometer would read). He declared heat stroke and took Chili to the back immediately to get her temp down and pump some fluids into her. After being gone for a while he came back and said he felt like we got to her in time and that her temp was already down to 101 and she had picked her head up a little. He debated out loud about transferring her to the emergency vet, saying that they had no one there at night to monitor her. I immediately said I wanted her at the emergency vet and he agreed that we’d all rest easier if she was there. He told me to come back at 5:30 to pick her up and he would have all the paperwork ready for the transfer (it was 4:30 at the time).

Thankfully, N was not working the floor that day and had already left his class when he got my text. Rather than go work out, he came home so he could be with the kids while I took Chili to the emergency vet. When I saw Chili she looked SO much better than when I had brought her in. She was still very weak, but not completely limp like before. The vet said that they over shot and brought her temp too low, then checked her blood sugar and found that she was hypoglycemic (low blood sugar). They gave her some dextrose (sugar water) through the IV to try to get her enough energy to shiver and bring her temp back up. He was still confident we’d gotten to her in time and she’d be okay.

I sat in a room at the emergency vet for 30 minutes before a tech came in and took Chili’s temp (still low) and entered info into the computer. Another half an hour passed before the doctor came in. While I was slightly annoyed at the long wait, I was glad to have the time to cuddle with her. She had not let me cuddle with her in quite some time. The doctor got a little more information from me, then took Chili to the back to start treating her before coming back (another 30 minutes later) with an estimate on how much everything would cost. I paid a deposit and came home, expecting to go pick Chili up to take her back to our regular vet early the next morning. I did not doubt she’d be coming back home.

Around 10:30 that night I got a call from the emergency doctor asking me where I’d found her and if I thought she might have had a seizure. I told her it had been my first thought, given her history (she was on meds for seizures for years and was able to come off of them the last couple), but that our vet had said it was heat stroke. She said Chili was weak and her liver and pancreatic enzymes were not looking good, but I went to bed still thinking things would ultimately be okay.

At 6 AM, just moments after I started to get out of bed to take a shower, the phone rang. It was the emergency vet. Chili had apparently had a rough night. Grand Mal Seizure at midnight, and again just before she called. Despite giving her dextrose, they were unable to keep her blood sugar up and she was extremely weak. The doctor let me know that it might be time to consider letting her go. I forget the words she used, but the implication was that she was suffering.

Had we gotten the call a few hours earlier, N would have been able to call in to work. Unfortunately, at that point he would have gotten into trouble if he called in, so he left. I called my mom, in tears, not sure what to do about the kids. I had told them before bed that we’d be going to pick up Chili early in the morning. I knew they wouldn’t forget. Mom insisted I should not take them with me, but I was torn. I called N’s aunt to see if she could come watch them and she said she’d get dressed and come right over. We decided that D would come with us and when it was time, she could take the kids to the waiting room so I could be with Chili until the end. I took my camera so I could get some last pictures of Chili. After giving her kisses (which she didn’t even flinch at), the kids went to the waiting room. It was then that I fell apart. The doctor gave her the injection as I stroked her tiny head. The only indication that anything had changed was that the small movements of breathing slowly came to a stop.

As I write this, I’m fighting tears. The tears are winning and I can barely see the screen. I’ve found that if I keep myself busy, I forget to be sad. But when I have down time, or I’m doing something that doesn’t require a lot of thinking, I break down. When I woke up this morning I curled into N and just sobbed. She was my baby for 15 years. This has certainly been easier (in a sense) than when she was lost, but by no means is it easy. The really hard part is when the kids talk about Chili being at the vet and wanting her to feel better. I told them yesterday that Chili was going to go to sleep and be with Jesus. They thought they would get to see Jesus when we saw Chili. They just don’t understand. Today I told them that sometimes people and animals get so old or sick that the only person that can make them feel better is Jesus. But once they are with Jesus, they can’t come back home. I don’t know how long it will be before they stop asking about her. I’m glad they love her so much, but it’s so hard to answer their questions without crying.

We will miss you, sweet Chili-bean.

Rest in Peace, Chili. April 15, 1997-May 25, 2012.

I love you, my sweet baby girl.

Momentum

***First, I want to update that we came in SECOND (for the 4th time) in the Video Race finals.***

Now, for the momentum part of the post… I seem to have lost mine. That and motivation. *sigh* I really enjoyed doing the letter M week with my kids, and they clearly loved it too (Kyla still shouts at the top of her lungs every time she spots a letter M), but I didn’t do any directed play with them last week. I’m pretty sure the reason is because N was home the whole week (he was sick) and for some reason I just can’t seem to motivate myself to do planned things with them when he is home. Not sure why. Maybe because I’m jealous that he sits on his butt computer while I’m wrangling two kids? I’m not saying he doesn’t help. He does. But I find myself getting on my computer WAY more when he’s home than if he’s not. I also don’t take the kids as many places when he’s home because he doesn’t ever want to go. But now that he’s back at work, hopefully we’ll get back on track.

I wasn’t a total loser mom last week, though. I did fit in a couple of fun meals.

Muffin Tin Meal (leftovers)- refried beans, meatballs, pineapple, dip, chicken, and Spanish rice. (Trying to clean out the fridge)

In “Elmo’s First Babysitter,” Elmo makes “Kooky Faces” with Emily for dinner. So I decided to make them for K & L. Lucas ate everything. Kyla only ate the cheese, a little bit of pepper, and chicken.

To see other Muffin Tin Meals, visit Muffin Tin Mom.

11th Annual 24-Hour Video Race

For those of you that don’t actually know me (or have been following this blog for less than a year), let me give a little background.

N and I were married in June 2001. In May 2002, before our first anniversary, a friend of ours invited us to participate in the Dallas Video Association’s first 24-Hour Video race, which became an annual event. We entered the race using the name Smoking Crayolas (I’ll share that story another time). Ten years later, Team Smoking Crayolas is the only team that has participated in all 11 Annual video races. The members of the team have changed each year, depending on who is available on race weekend, but N and I have stayed constant. We look forward to it every year and didn’t even let a little thing like surgery get in the way of racing back in 2007.

Basically what happens is this: At midnight on Friday night teams of racers are given a theme, location, prop, and line of dialog they are required to incorporate into a short (less than 5 minutes) film, which must be scripted, shot, edited, and turned in by midnight Saturday night. Everyone is given the same elements and the same time, but the range of creativity and technique is vast. Teams are broken into five categories: Pixelvision (teams predominately made up of K-12 students), Futurevision (college students), Auteur (adult teams of 1-2 members), Guerrilla (adult teams of 3-5 members), and Hollywood (adult teams of 6+ members). They screen the movies at The Angelica in “heats” over the course of three nights. The number of films in each heat depends on the number of teams that successfully turned in their videos on time. The teams that advance from the preliminary round are then shown again at finals the next week at which time 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place winners are selected by a panel of judges. First place videos are shown at the Dallas Video Association’s Video Festival and on PBS. But mostly it’s about the bragging rights.

In the last 10 years of participation we’ve advanced to the finals 6 times, placed 3rd once, and 2nd three times. First place seems to always be just beyond our grasp. Of course, considering the fact that we only make movies once a year and have never taken any courses in film making, this is pretty impressive in my opinion.

This year we had a very small team. It was our friend T, N, and me. The elements we were given were:

Theme- Going Green
Location- Inside a closet
Prop- Fortune cookie
Line- “I don’t know, what do you think?”

We broke tradition a lot this year. Normally we stick to planning at IHOP, splitting up to find props and costumes and take a quick nap then reconvening at daylight to start shooting, lunch (after shooting is done) is Sonic, and dinner is pizza. But this year we didn’t do any of those things. We planned at Denny’s, didn’t nap, had Five Guys for lunch, and Chinese for dinner. And not only that, but we had no filming to do. Instead we spent the whole day on the computers, cranking out the movie you see below.

We screened with 4 other Guerrilla teams on Wednesday and managed to make it to finals once again. We will find out on Monday if that First Place title is still elusive.

Tot School- Letter M

Sorry for not getting this out on Friday as I’d intended. The day did not go as I had planned. And yesterday was spent working on our annual 24 Hour Video Race movie (will post about that soon), so there was no way it was getting written yesterday. I should probably relieve Papa and Mimi of the kids soon, but I figured I could crank out this post first.

As I’ve posted previously, I decided it was time to concentrate on teaching the kids their letters and pre-reading skills. They are showing real interest in letters, words, and symbols (they now point out every McDonald’s and Target they see. ). After looking through a ton of information regarding the order to introduce letters, I made the decision to start with the letter M. Here are the activities we did.

I started out slowly, simply pulling out all the letter M magnets we have. I asked them what letter it was and the sound it made. They both knew it without hesitation. I pointed out M’s as we went through our day, both written and in speech. When we were out and about, we hunted for M’s on signs and products. The goal was simply to make them more aware of the M’s all around. This goal was definitely met, as they now will excitedly exclaim “M, Mommy! Look!” any time they spot one. Very cute.

It was a bit more difficult for them to immediately recognize the sound of M, rather than the written form. After reading a friend’s post about her letter M activities with her son, I pulled out several toys that start with the letter M and several that do not. I asked the kids to put the ones that start with M in one bucket and anything that did not into the other bucket. Sometimes they got it, sometimes they didn’t. This is something we’ll continue to practice.

M sorting

We also did M activities. We made mud pies (aren’t you proud of me for not only letting them play in mud, but also coming up with the activity myself?! )

Digging up the dirt

Playing in the mud

Proud of their Mud Pies

We also read books that focused on M-related things, watched Madagascar, marched like we were a band, and made maps of our house, town, and the zoo. We even got to mark them off our list when we completed the activities (they loved this for some reason).

I put together alphabet books for them using the ABC Tracing and Coloring pages I got from 1+1+1=1.

ABC books

I tried to get them to trace the letter M, but neither had any desire whatsoever. They wanted to trace the K and the L only. I didn’t bother fighting it. I just made note and decided that from now on, I’ll pull the letter we’re working on out of the notebook when we are working on it so the other letters won’t be a distraction. Along with tracing using dry erase crayons, we also used Bendaroos (sorry, no pictures).

And of course, you would be disappointed if I didn’t also include a Muffin Tin Meal, right? I actually worked on this one in advance, making the meatballs and muffins last weekend in anticipation. Guess I should be thinking about this week’s meal!

Melon, Muffin (broccoli cheese), Milk, Mac & Cheese, Meatballs, and Mango

Oh, and we also ate Marshmallows. We counted how many M words we could think of (this was a great activity in the car) and that’s how many marshmallows they would get to eat.

This week we will continue to look for M’s all around us. I’m still trying to decide if I should move to the next letter yet, or hold off until they are a little more consistent in hearing the letter in words. My friend at Hand Over the Cookies had some other great activities that I want to try with them. I guess we’ll see what the week brings.

I’m linking up to Tot School. To see more activities for little ones, visit Tot School.

To see other Muffin Tin Meals, visit Muffin Tin Mom.


It’s Playtime!

Shock and awe

I just have to post a quick note to say I’m absolutely amazed at what little sponges kids are! I was printing out some alphabet pages for the kids and Lucas wanted to look at them. I had not intended to use them in this way, but he wanted to see all 26 letters. So one by one I showed him each letter. He correctly identified 22 of them! The only ones he said he didn’t know were G, H, I, and J. I don’t remember teaching him that many letters. I guess it’s true that kids just need to be read to all the time? Because I’m pretty sure that’s all I’ve done.

Hopefully by Friday I can put together the post I’m planning for the letter lessons we’ve done this week. I’ve been very encouraged by their success thus far!

Learning to read

I’ve never taught anyone to read and I don’t particularly remember how I learned myself, so I’m totally winging it with my kids, exposing them to things that interest them and reading to them A LOT. I know they are only 34 months and do not expect them to be reading any time soon. However, they continue to surprise me.

I have some background in education and child development (;)), so I know that when they say “There’s McDonald’s!” when we pass one we’ve never been to, it is simply a recognition of the symbols and branding that are on every McDonald’s. But I also know that this is a pre-reading skill, making the connection between symbols and meaning. So the day they told me “That says stop” as we passed a stop sign, I did not think “Hey! They just read that word!” Instead I thought “Hey! They just recognized the red octagon means stop!” I then asked them “What letters do you see on the sign?” and right away they spat out (each on different occasions) “S-T-O-P” without any hesitation. Shocked me, to say the least. Later, I told N about it and he decided to test them. He wrote the word “STOP” on their menu while we waited for food at a restaurant. No octagon, and I’m pretty sure it was written in blue. Within seconds Kyla said “Stop!” You could have knocked me over with a feather. And now, any time we pass a stop sign, they tell me “S-T-O-P, stop, Mom!”

On another occasion, we went on a word hunt while we waited for MIL to get through traffic and meet us at the zoo. What better word to look for than “ZOO?” They spotted it everywhere and were very excited to do so. A couple of days later I decided to check and see if they recognized the word and sure enough, they “read” it to me.

Now, mind you, they are not sounding out words or understanding why these letters form these particular words. I don’t expect them to, since I haven’t really worked on that with them just yet. I know they are memorizing, but that is what site words are all about, right? You have to start somewhere!

Because of all of this interest in letters and words (Lucas loves to say “Look, Mom! Letters! What they say?”), on my “day off” I took the time to come up with a plan. I have started a spreadsheet of “lesson plans” to introduce one letter per week. I know we won’t have time every week and may need more than one week for some letters, but want to try to do activities relating to particular letters on a regular basis. I decided on an order for the letters based on some theories I’ve read in various places (I’d link to them, but don’t remember what I have read where). I will not be going in ABC order. And honestly, they already seem to know most of the letters, but I feel like if I pace myself and focus their attention on how letters work to make words we might make some progress. Or maybe we’ll get frustrated after a week and throw it all out the window! We’ll see.