Gentle Years

I'm entering into my third week with H1N1.  Couldn't get the vaccine because I'm not in the high risk group, even though I deal with a building full of 600+ kids every day and zero ventilation (our windows are sealed and don't open).  So in school I have 25-30% absenteeism and at home I now have LB coming down with it.  No meds to treat.  Just rest, fluids, etc., and wait for it to pass.

Aidan came home on Halloween night, 2008.

He had no idea what he was in for.  We could not have asked for anything more.

Here are the boys and Little Baby-dinosaurs, Avatar, Mickey Mouse, and goth.

So much to tell.

Yesterday was our final social worker visit.  We are hoping to have our homestudy updated by our current agency/social worker as well, but since they are phasing out the adoption program in our state, we have to wait and see if they will do this for us first (they will still do adoptions in the other states they service).

On Sunday Aidan said he was having a hard time eating because his tooth hurt.  He showed it to us, and he was wiggling it all over the place.  Yesterday it fell out and right now he is sleeping on a dollar bill just waiting to be added to his savings-he got a cute little wallet of his own on our family trip to Maine and loves using it.

Let's see; what else?  Pretty Baby and her husband had their fourth wedding anniversary within the last week.  Golden Baby's wife had her birthday.  G had his birthday.  And MB had his birthday, turning one.  Enough, already?  Check out the centerpieces that my creative daughter made for the tables at her son's birthday party.

One of the pictures needs explaining.  That's the one of MB and his cousin BB.  BB isn't used to playing with other kids, so when I found them together on the step and saw MB trying to get his head at just the right angle, I knew a bite was coming and stopped them.  BB didn't understand.  As soon as I got MB to stop, he then offered his hand and then his index finger to MB, still not knowing that a bite was what MB wanted.  So he probably left the party wondering why his grandmother had a problem with that, since I stuck around until MB's biting impulse passed.

We have a 70% chance of mixed precipitation forecast for tonight and again on Friday.  I hope that this is just Squaw Winter and not the real season coming on, but we have to prepare just in case.  So we did some fall clean-up today and G is going to use the grill tonight so that we can get one last gasp of fall in.

At school, our district has been granted permission by the state to pilot a "blizzard bag" program.  We have the largest geographic district in the state, so the weather can be completely different on one end of the district from the other-requiring a snow day for half but not the other, or requiring a snow day on half and an ice day on the other.  What it means for us is that three "snow days" will actually be school days where the kids and teachers work on-line or, in the event of no online access or multiple kids in one house needing the computer, kids work out of a "blizzard bag" which will hold lessons in hard copy.  We had a meeting scheduled for October 28 to firm up these plans, but it looks like we could need to fast-forward them.  And, of course, we will have more than three snow days total, but three can be used for this.  Ice-outs like last year, where two of our schools lost power for over a week, will be true snow days without blizzard bags in use.

Aidan's school will continue to have the traditional snow days if necessary.  He is going back to school tomorrow after a normal three day weekend (normal in the sense that he was awake and slept normal times, and ran no temperature).

Aidan has been sick since last Monday.  That day he came home, climbed into his sleeping bag, and promptly fell asleep.  We figured he was tired after the family weekend.  But he did pretty much the same thing on Tuesday and Wednesday, then ran a fever Wednesday night.  So he stayed home from school on Thursday, still had a fever that night, stayed home Friday and went to the doctor.  The doctor said he could have mono; if not, he has a virus like it, and the treatment is the usual rest, fluids, Tylenol thing.  He is sleeping about 16-20 hours a day.  He also had a rash on his knuckles, but that has gone.  The fever has gone.  The fatigue has not.  He has had two normal days-Sunday and today-

Our annual family retreat is one of those great times unless you are the planner and money collector-I was both-and get to listen to everyone complain ahead of time and for the next couple of years about what was wrong with the place.

However, here is what was good about it this year:

Watching a hydroplane landing with my fifth brother

On the riverboat cruise with my third brother, to the right, and with my sister's husband, above

Here is Aidan making tracks for the gravel pit, above, and he and my sister's dog trying to scale the hill, below.

Enjoying my sister's hospitality, above, and her daughter in-law (he just adores her), below.

My eternally upbeat and energetic sister (13 months younger than me); my footprints in the sand.

Pretty Baby turned 26 this week and G's sister turned 50.  So we had some parties to host/attend.  This first set of pictures is of Pretty Baby, Little Baby, our new daughter in-law, JC, and the four little boys.

This next set is from my sister in-law's surprise party.

And here are some random shots of Aidan.  He has been begging for corn on the cob, and he loves to think of himself as a cowboy.  G and I are old-fashioned about guns.  We think that kids who grow up knowing about them and have used them/seen the damage that they cause are not the kids who pull the trigger on strangers or loved ones, but that the kids who play violent video games are-they become dissociative.  So, yeah, Aidan has a capgun six shooter strapped onto his waist.

Today is GB's big day.

Just look at how excited BB is by his parents' vow taking:

There was no best man-Pretty Baby was the honor attendant for her brother.

Little Baby actually got dolled up for the occasion:

My third brother officiated at the ceremony:

The bride's father was pretty emotional-she is not only his baby girl, but also his first child.

And then there was the dancing.  We learned that Aidan loves to dance....

...that there is still no way for me to reach my son's height....(we danced to the only Backstreet Boys song he can tolerate-"Mom, you always were the perfect fan")

...and that the newlyweds dance together beautifully:

Notice the unharried look on my face?  That's because my child is the groom and not the bride!  Her mother is probably passed out by now.

Aidan has been bugging me to measure him, so I finally hung up his tractor/big truck/digger measurement chart and he is now 48-1/2" tall.  That means he's 10" shorter than I am and 12" taller than RB.  Definitely a good sized boy.  When we received his medical information in his referral, using growth charts, I estimated his eventual height at being between 6'1" and 6'2"-right where his big brother and his brother in-law stand.  So far he's staying on that track.

Unfortunately for him, that also means that he could only ride some of the rides at the fair-he was actually too tall for some of the rides that other five year olds were riding on!