September

Trying to keep this guy busy!  We walked to the the covered bridge.

Well, Jaxon ran.  I walked.

Jaxon saved up his own money for the first time to buy a new toy.

Sierra thought that if she wore glasses, she could trick Cloe into snuggling with her like she does with mommy :)

Love to see her nose in a book!

Finley Refuge exploration

September is here!  We are getting back into the swing of things with school.  Sierra is loving it and excelling.  It makes my mama heart proud.  She is reading above her grade level and loves math.  But above all else, I am just so happy to see her enjoy school.  I'm struggling with the realization that next year both of the kids will be in school.  I have to remind myself of how worried I was about Sierra starting school, and how well Kindergarten went for her.  But my worries about Jaxon starting school are so different.  Now it's a state mandate for full days of Kinder.  I still completely disagree that a full day of school is good for a 5 year old.  So we will see what tricks I can pull out of my sleeve.

Jaxon and I have stayed busy enjoying the weather.  We've went for walks, he's such a great grocery shopping buddy, likes to help me bake, and loves to dig up dirt clods in the garden while I'm pulling weeds.  He's grown up this summer too and has learned to say calmer when he gets frustrated about not getting his way, is a very helpful boy around the house, and is getting better at sounding out and reading words.  We continue to work on ways to calm down when he gets scared about a loud noise, but have realized that if we know that something is going to be loud, and we bring ear plugs he does great and we can usually end up taking them out.   But a surprise high pitch noise can still scare him to death.  We've talked a lot about thinking about happy or silly things when he gets scared like that, and I can see his little mind trying to do that, but he trembles and says that it really does hurt his ears.  After being to the regular Dr, an ENT, and an allergist about his ears I'm not really sure what other avenue to approach other than working with him on desensitization.

Jaxon ended up with a really bad virus to start the month off.  He had been acting off in the afternoons for quite some time and running a slight temperature at night for a week or so.  I wondered if giving up his naps was just hard on his body.  We worked all summer on going all day without a nap because Sierra's school gets out at 2:50 which is right in the middle of his normal nap time.  He definitely had days he struggled, and some days he still did nap for a bit.  Bedtime always went well because he was so exhausted he'd fall right to sleep.  But I was starting to worry it was missing his nap that was causing him to act unwell until all of a sudden he woke up with a high fever one moring.  He acted normal other than that.  So I took him to his primary care Dr and she ended up running some blood tests to make sure we weren't missing things since he was having random fevers.  He was a super hero for the blood draw!  The man explained what was going to happen, Jaxon didn't move a muscle, and watching the needle go in.  He whimpered slightly, but by then it was over. The phlebotomist breathed a huge sigh of relief.  I was so proud.

All of his blood results came back great and after checking him for strep (that test didn't go quite as well) we were sent home.  The likely culprit: a virus.  I'm so sick of that word.  Over the next few days he refused to eat, had extremely high temps, and complained of stomach pain.  At one point he did throw up, but this did not present itself at all like a stomach bug.  After 4 days of high temps and having to use tylonol and ib profin back to back to get them down, he ended up with a 105 fever on my birthday.  We went to the immediate care and they sent us directly to the ER.  By the time we got to our room the meds were working and his temp was down.  He felt a little better and was kind of being a goof.  The Dr's asked if we had mistaken his temp and ended up doing a culture again.  $1400 and 4 hours later we got a negative strep result and were sent home again with the v word.  He ended up with fevers up to 104 and 105 for 6 days total before he recovered.  It was awful.  But he did slowly get back to his old self.  Sierra ended up getting a mild cold after he was sick, but nothing like what he had.  Praise the LORD.  Nothing scares me more than having a sick child with a high temp for days on end.

Jesse took a week off at the beginning of the month to put a new metal roof on our house.  Even though our home is under 10 years old we've been having issues with the shingles.  Due to living under trees we get a lot of moss and we weren't sure if that was the problem or not, but decided to upgrade to metal before we started having mold or dry rot problems.  Both of our dad's helped a lot, but Jesse did a lot of work on his own too.  It also happened to be the week that Jaxon was so sick, so it was nice to have him home to check in on us every once in a while.  It took the fear of being alone out of the scenario.  He worked hard and the roof turned out beautifully.  It's so nice to have a husband can fix absolutely anything.

Now we are ready for the rain.  Wait.  Our house is ready for the rain.  I am never ready!