Sickness

Andrew started having a fever Thursday night. It was pretty low grade so I didn't worry about it. He also had a cough. I sent him to school Friday since his temperature was back to normal. Friday afternoon, he ended up getting sick and needing to leave school early. By Friday night his fever was pretty high. He slept in my bed Friday night and Saturday morning his temperature was 103. I was getting nervous that he had pneumonia so I took him to the pediatrician on Saturday. She heard some wheezing in his chest; it was not pneumonia though. She said he had a virus but was nervous that it was kicking him into having asthma, since there is a family history of it. Andrew ended up getting an inhaler, which he thinks is the coolest thing ever. The pediatrician thinks that the inhaler might help calm down his coughing fits. I just hope that he doesn't end up having asthma. It is miserable to be unable to breath. Andrew continued to run a fever until Sunday. I kept him home on Monday and sent him to school today. I hope he is on the mend and feels better. He missed his first baseball game of the season because he was sick.

Stone Soup and other Adventures

So I am a legal widow for a week while my husband is working in their Utah office. He left Thursday and comes home Wednesday. It can be difficult to get some personal time in when he is gone. I had gone downstairs to do the elliptical. I had been down there about 20 minutes when I heard Marin hysterically crying. She came downstairs carrying her Dora backpack--or should I say what was left of it. I asked her what had happened. She told me that Andrew had cut her backpack up to use for a project. What kind of project, you ask? I was too angry to find out. I told him that he was to go to his room for timeout and that he had a lifetime ban from scissors. I then proceeded to drag out my sewing machine and try to piece the backpack together again. It is functional but does not look that great. Now, normally this would be enough for one day, but this was just the last of a series of crazy events involving Andrew. Yesterday he had looked up a recipe for stone soup online. He made himself some yesterday, consisting of butter, sliced mushrooms, a rock, water, salt, pepper, and other things I might have missed. He then heated it in the microwave and ate some of the soup. So this morning, he decided that he wanted his sister to have some stone soup. He cleaned a rock for her (he has been collecting rocks since their geology unit in school). He added some water, salt, pepper, cut up baby carrots, and cinnamon. The cinnamon was added in copious amounts. He must have just dumped it and tried to clean it up because there were about six paper towels and a dish towel that were completely brown. I have to give him points for trying to clean up his mess but I was still fuming. About a half hour later, I came into the family room to find that Andrew was trying to build a volcano out of discarded cardboard. His class made volcanoes last week. He thought he would build his own and try to explode it in our family room. Charming little scientist, isn't he. So that had been the morning I was having, prior to the scissor attack. As you can see, I am ready to have my husband back.

Building Forts

My daughter has been building forts daily for about a month now. She is driving me crazy. She gets all the miscellaneous blankets she can find around the house, drags them out to the family room and arranges them as she desires. Every day has been a different creation. Usually the forts are held together with some of the heavier books that the kids have. Some days, she even uses Scotch tape to tape the blankets together. Usually she involves the kitchen chairs, computer desk chairs, couches, ottoman and any other structure that will lift her blankets into the air. After the fort is built, she brings out all her babies, strollers, carriages, and any other desired objects from her room to fill the fort. These creations are quite elaborate. My husband thinks they are very creative, and that it is cute. I will give him that it's creative, but the clean up is not so fun. Initially when she started making forts, I would clean them up after an hour or two. That didn't go so well--she would just build it all over again after I had finished the clean up. Now I have learned to just let it go throughout the day and at the end of the day, it's time for me to assess the damage, then, let the clean up begin!