March

More. Snow.

Then the snow melted and it started to feel like Spring....

Loves from our neighbor's horse (we let her use our field for grazing)

My favorite moments!  Sunshine, soil, seeds!

Spring break trip to the coast

Jaxon learns to ride his pedal bike in about 10 minutes.  It was amazing!

"Mommy come take my picture while I dunk the ball"

March is here.  Winter is trying to stick around.  We had some more snow days and the kids were both well enough to enjoy the snow.  Mid month we all got sick and I ended up with laryngitis and lost my voice for a week.  By the end of the month I was still struggling to get all of my octaves back.

We did have some dry days.  We took advantage of them and took a few hikes, worked in the garden, and made a trip to Newport for a day during spring break.  Jaxon also learned to ride his bike.  He had been doing very well on his strider bike and we decided it was time to try a real bike with pedals.  Our neighbors ended up giving us a bike and we had to convince him to try it.  He was a little bit nervous but was off and pedaling in no time at all.  It took Sierra a lot longer to learn after using training wheels, so I highly recommend the balance bikes!  We made several trips to town to let the kids ride on concrete rather than gravel.  They have a great time and we get a workout trying to keep up with them on our feet.

Once the weather starts to turn, I have a hard time keeping Jaxon busy enough inside on the rainy days.  We've played a million games, read the same books over and over, and so I try to come up with some physical activities to wear him out :)  He loves it when I watch him play basketball (it would be great if he would do it himself while I did laundry but that's asking too much I guess), we bundle up in rain gear and he loves to ride through the puddles on his bike, and he also likes to play badminton (we use a balloon and pass it back and forth between the rackets), and catch.  I guess the benefit is that I get some exercise too.  We are all ready for Spring.  It can't come soon enough!

February

More cooties.

Celebrating Sierra's fantastic report card at Applebees

Jaxon is 5!

We had more snow this month.  And more cooties.  Sierra ended up with a flu bug.  She had a fever for several days, eye pain, joint pain, and in the end the virus ended up causing some inflammation in her legs and for several days she couldn't walk without crying in pain.  We ended up taking her in for an ultrasound and they found it just to be inflammation due to the virus.  No fun :(  It's been a bad year for germs! 

Jaxon ended up being healthy for the first time since his birth for his birthday though.  He turned 5 years old this month.  I'm still trying to process the fact that he will go to school in the fall.  He sure is ready academically.  He can count to 100, read 3 and four letter words, add and subtract single digits, knows all his shapes/colors/letters/numbers.  We are working on his handwriting because that still is a struggle for him.  He has a hard time gripping the pencil correctly so I bought some grips that will hopefully help with his finger placement.  We had a low key party for him with a homemade Ninjago cake from Grandma Shelly. 

Sierra continues to amaze us academically at school.  Her report card was full of E's (they don't get letter grades at this point but get graded based on whether or not they are below, meet, or exceed the benchmarks).  It's a joy to see her love to learn and really enjoy school. 

We are continuing to get snow.  The kids love it (Sierra has been sick both of the last times it has snowed) and so does Sugar the dog.  I don't mind if it snows and melts within a day but the days on end of frozen ground definitely are not my favorite.  I'm praying for Spring in hopes that it will bring sunshine and health for us all.

January 2017

The cooties did not leave.  And neither did the snow.  We spent another month mostly stuck at home.  Sierra ended up with walking pneumonia (only one lung was affected) and had to go on a ten day dose of antibiotics.  I hate having to give the kids antibiotics, but she definitely needed it.  I took her in for a persistent cough expecting to hear "it's just a virus and will run it's course" but the Dr listened to her lungs looked at me and said, "I'm so glad you brought her in.  She has pneumonia."  Despite the other parts of me that seem broken, my mommy instinct is still functioning.  Luckily one dose of antibiotics did the trick.  Sometimes pneumonia can be tricky to get rid of. 

When the kids were not fever or pneumonia ridden, we did spend some time playing in the snow.  After a good amount of snow had fallen the temps dropped and we ended up with an ice encased snow field that lasted for weeks.  It made for some good sledding..... unless you fell off and landed on the solid ice layer on top of the snow.  The kids liked to ride down the hill on the sled with me so that I could be their pillow.  It was comical for anyone watching, but did result in some bruising on my butt and legs.  I'm ready for winter to be over.  Have I mentioned that yet?

I did discover that despite being exhausted, a girls night with Sierra is some serious medicine.  This was a facebook post I made after a night with my favorite girl.  "The kids have been sick over and over and on top of that we've been snowed in day after day. I feel even more tired than normal, and crazier Tonight Jesse is out of town for work and his mom sweetly offered to keep Jaxon so Sierra and I had the whole afternoon/evening to ourselves. To be honest I wasn't super excited about it because I knew she'd keep me busy and I just want to rest. She did keep me busy. We played games, drank sparkling water out of fancy cups at dinner, did mud masks and painted toes, talked (well mostly I listened without cutting her short or hurrying her along), and we ate popcorn and watched Dolphin Tale before bed. I'm still tired, but my spirit has been lifted. She doesn't get much alone time with me anymore and she was walking on air. She is normally a joyful child but she was so happy she could hardly contain herself. We all need days to be doted on and validated. But giving that gift to someone else is beautiful too. Now she's asleep on my pillow taking up all of my king size bed, so hopefully my cheerful mood can last until the morning." Filling someone else's love cup up, in turn, fills up yours.

December

Santa at the local nursery

Sierra tried to hide Sugar's Frisbee

Snow!

 

Forts under the table during Christmas Break

Earliest we've ever gotten our Christmas Tree!

Jaxon got to help cut it down

So excited!

Sierra was just as excited to give gifts

Pie Face game

:)

Beginning of Jaxon's post Christmas rash

 

Scary.  Itchy.  EVERYWHERE.

New Years Eve trip to Newport

December is here!  And boy did the cooties arrive.  Sierra ended up with a stomach bug the very first weekend of December.  She had a fever and missed four days of school.  Luckily no one else got sick.  Then the day she went back to school Jesse came home sick from work with a cold.  Then we ALL got the cold.  Jaxon got the worst end of it and got a cough.  He still had his cough on Christmas.  So after missing some school at the beginning of the month for being sick, then a few snow days, then Christmas Break, Sierra hardly went to school at all in December.  Because we were all sick we mostly stayed home for Break in hopes that we would be well for Christmas.  Aside from Jaxon's cough, we did manage to actually be fever free and semi healthy Christmas day.

We had Christmas morning at home.  It was our first year of playing along with the whole Santa theme.  Sierra has never believed in Santa.  She's a realist.  She needs answers.  She is very observant and she just never believed that Santa could fit through a chimney and give presents to every boy and girl.  Jaxon, on the other hand, believes it all.  So we wrapped a present from Santa in special paper,  left cookies and milk by the tree, and downloaded a Santa tracker on Jesse's phone.  Sierra enjoyed being a part of it all too.  She liked feeling like a big girl and knowing the truth, but being able to play along with Jaxon.  

The kids do great on Christmas. They love to open presents but they look at each one and get excited about it before moving onto the next.  They love to watch each other open gifts too, so it's not a frenzied explosion like I always expected Christmas to be.  This year we wanted them to start thinking about giving gifts to others instead of only making their own wish lists.  So they each got to pick out two gifts (Jaxon picked a small gift for Sierra and I and Sierra picked out gifts for Jaxon and Jesse).  It was so sweet how much thought they put into it and they both stopped opening their own gifts to come and see our reaction to the gifts they had picked out for us.  They also got a chance to do some wrapping, which is every kids dream come true, right?  We had no big family dinners planned on Christmas day so we visited with both of our parents, but had a very relaxed day.  It was great!

A few days after Christmas I decided that since we survived Christmas day and a few family gatherings, and Jaxon's cough was getting better, that I would make some reservations for us to stay at the coast for New Years Eve.  I went ahead and used airline miles and booked two nights.  I had sworn that I would never again plan a family trip because every single trip I've planned ends in a less than ideal situation.  Usually someone is really sick but the last time I planned an overnight stay at the coast we had hurricane winds and trees down and we couldn't make it to our destination.  Really.  I was so frustrated that I swore I was done planning ahead.  So I thought that since I was really only planning about 3 days ahead, and we were currently healthy, that we'd make it.  We didn't.  The very next day Jaxon woke up with a rash on his chin and as the day progressed I noticed welts all down his spine.  Then spots showed up on his tummy and arms.  He itched at them but not constantly.  He had no fever, no cold symptoms (except the lingering cough from a few weeks back), no other new symptoms except this hive like rash.  

Jaxon is a rashy kid.  He always has some sort of a rash.  I know what each rash looks like.  He gets a certain rash if he stays at Grandma and Grandpas and they wash his laundry or he lays on their bed.  He has a certain rash when his skin dries out.  He also gets a rash when he eats foods with food coloring in them (especially red).  He's had allergic reactions to Juniper which looks just like poison oak but luckily doesn't last as long.  And he has a chronic hive condition so he gets random welts if he gets too hot, too cold, scared, tired, etc etc.  I know my rashes pretty well.  This was something I had never seen.  And it just kept spreading.  Our normal Dr wasn't in and when I called the local clinic they said he most likely had hand foot and mouth.  I said that makes no sense because the only places on his body that were rash free were the palms of his hands and soles of his feet.  He did not have a fever or sores in his mouth.  But they were convinced and said I just needed to wait it out.  

The next day he woke up and the hive like rash had grown and spread out and each piece connected like a puzzle in this bizarre purple and red kaleidoscope.  And he had more new spots.  Still no fever.  Still no other symptoms.  His normal Dr was in and took a look.  She said that this rash is the same rash that kids get from an allergic reaction to medicine or something else they are highly allergic to.  We had introduced no new foods, he hadn't been on antibiotics, he hadn't been outside, we hadn't really been anywhere except for Christmas day.  The only thing we could possibly think of was that he had gotten a new stuffed animal and had carried it around with him for several days.  So we took that away but the spots kept coming.  The Dr said sometimes a child will respond to a virus like this too.  They don't know if it's the virus itself that causes the rash or the child's immune system fighting the virus.  He had been sick but it had been weeks earlier.  She ended up telling us a few things to watch for - stomach pain, and pain/blood while peeing can be a very bad sign that things are headed south internally.  She also warned that he may complain of joint pain and get some swelling and that he should drink a lot of water to get all the toxins out of his body. 

We went home.  The next day, the day we were supposed to check in to the hotel, he refused to walk because his feet hurt.  I kept assuming it was his ankles but then realized that the bottom of his feet were super red and very swollen.  He couldn't stand to have them touched.  So we headed back to a different Dr.  They confirmed everything our regular Dr had said, told us to give him Tylenol, that he most likely wasn't contagious, and to go ahead and go to the coast.  So we did.  Tylenol helped ease the pain and he was so excited that we could still go.  We ended up having terrible neighbors that stayed up with screaming children until midnight and after making the most of the next day, decided to head home and forfeit our second night.  I complained about our neighbors and they hotel didn't really offer an alternative so we headed home.  We were all exhausted and Jesse and I were still worried so we were ready to go home.  And so once again I swore to never plan a trip again.  Does this happen to everyone with kids?  Or are we just jinxed?  Seriously?!

It took days for the puzzle pieces to eventually fade.  He did complain of headaches off and on and of joint pain, but healed pretty quickly.  We are done with December.  Be gone cooties.  Here's to hoping January brings us less germs.