So much

has been going on since I last wrote.  Since my last post I have started making Cody get on the bus.  The first day was HORRIBLE.  And I really mean horrible.  I literally had to carry/drag him to the bus stop and then drag him onto the bus.  I left him laying on the floor and then sat on our porch and cried my eyes out.  I cried off and on the whole day and ended up having the worst migraine in a long time.  It was nothing I wanted to experience again.  But just like it is when I drop him off at school, he was fine not 5 minutes later and was in great spririts by the time he arrived at school.Cody still visits with the counselor in the mornings to read comic books.  I told him he doesn't have to and when he felt ready he can either go play with his friends or go have breakfast at school.  I ask him about school when he gets home but he of course doesn't remember much.After that first fight to get on the bus he has been very good.  He still doesn't want to go to school but he does.  I hope that someday we will get to the point where we can race to the bus stop or he will go by himself but for now I am happy having him hug on me and drag his feet to the bus stop.  He goes and he is doing great.  Now, if I can work on him getting is math back to where it was before we left.  Man, have you seen the ways they teach math now, it confuses me and I hope to someday teach Algebra to middle school kids.  Not sure if I am going to back track my math classes to catch up to the times. 

 When we were leaving California I asked both Garrett's physical therapist and his pediatrician about continuing physical therapy, they both felt that we should mention it to his doctor and at least get another evaluation.  We did that and had the evaluation yesterday.  Garrett's physical therapist now is a younger (I say younger but she may be close to my age, who knows, she just looks young, mid 20s at least) lady named Jessica.  She is great with him and is absolutely spitten with him, as everyone seems to be.After watching him play and crawl around the awesome room they have (it is full of kids toys and mats) she wasn't too concerned with him.  She said she was kinda torn as to whether or not he actually needed therapy.  He favors his right leg over his left, which I noticed as well.  That is part of the reason I wanted to see about doing another eval.  Since his therapist said she could go either way with therapy and we had the referrel I decided to go with therapy for him.  We are now going to be going once a week at least through May.  Hopefully by then he will be walking.  When it comes to walking Garrett is just stubborn.  He can stand on his own for long periods of time and he has taken one step here and there (even took one while with the therapist).  Although he will be 14 months is just over a week, I am not concerned that he isn't walking just yet.  Wyatt was 15 months old when he decided it was time to start walking.  Besides, Garrett has 2 older brothers and 2 parents to get everything for him and he can crawl so much faster than he could walk.  Who would want to walk if it was easier to crawl? 

 Wyatt is doing so well.  He gets has his jealous fits and rude and ornery but for the most part he does his best to help out whenever he can.  We have an appointment the first week in May to get him enrolled in kindergarten.  I just can't believe he will be in kindergarten come this fall.  Plus, kindergarten is the same hours as first, second and third grades.  It will just be Garrett and I at home from 730-8 until 3.  It is going to be strange being back down to just one child again.  But so much fun to get to know Garrett that much better.  Plus, Wyatt is so excited to go.  He keeps asking me when he gets to go to school and talks about going on the bus and playing with his "friends" all the time.  I am so proud of him too.  Wyatt has been going to his primary class without any troubles.  It was amazing last Sunday, Cody was in his class before I even knew it and Wyatt walked right into the Primary room and sat down with his class before I could even say anything to him.  Here Cody (as a 7 almost 8 yo) is in Senior Primary and Wyatt is in Jr. Primary so they aren't even together after Sacrament meeting.  I think it is actually good for them so they get used to not being together all the time. 

 As far as Jason and work goes, it has been crazy.  He had to work 2 Saturdays in a row.  That first weekend we thought he was going to have to work Sunday as well.  Then he was on 12s for about 3 or 4 days after that.  There is a threat that he will have to work again this Saturday.  I hope they are abel to get things done that need to be done by tomorrow so he can be home again.  There is going to be quite a few more adjustments that are going to happen before things calm down at work for him.He is still anxiously anticipating hunting season and working on getting ready for the upcoming riding season.  He is excited because he can get his 4-wheeler registered and ride it back and forth to work as well as on the streets in town (I think).  He has made contacts with people for hunting as well as riding.  Some of those contacts are people he has known from other bases we were at. 

 

As for me, I haven't been doing much.  Trying to keep up with housework and appointments.  I have actually been cooking dinners more and more.  Jason doesn't get off work until 4pm and sometimes gets home closer to 5 so to prevent having late dinners I go ahead and make it.  It has been fun.  I have been making a point to try all kinds of new meals and it has been good, the hard part I have been dealing with is trying to come up with meals that don't have meat in them.  It seems that almost every meal with have has chicken.  I have also been going to the gym.  At the fitness center they have a "kid zone", it isn't huge but still something for the younger 2 boys to do while I get to have some exercise.  I missed Tuesday and Wednesday.  After some eradic trips to the gym I figured it would be good to go Monday, Wednesday and Friday and then Tuesday and Thursday I can do my EA Sports on the Wii.  Tuesday I didn't do it for some reason and Wednesday (yesterday) I forgot about having Garrett's eval.  By mid afternoon yesterday I was just so exhausted and didn't want to do anything.  I believe it is because I hadn't been to the gym.  I went today and got to use the treadmill and felt so much better. 

 So that is what has been happening here in South Dakota.  I hope all is well with all of you.  Until we meet again, take care.P.S. Happy Birthday to my wonderful, beautiful and talented niece, JoAnna!!!  We all miss and love you!!! 

 

Cody

After posting the last post I ran into Cody's teacher at school in the hallway.  I asked her how he does while he is in class.  She informed me that he is fine.  He gets to class and he has no problems at all.  So the problem lies with me.  His teacher really wants me to send him on the bus.  I don't see how that would make things better when he doesn't even want to ride the bus.  I think it would be more difficult to get him on the bus than it is to leave him at school.  I am going to attempt to have him ride the bus home, this way he is excited about riding the bus because he gets to come home.  Hopefully after a doing that a few times he will learn to like the bus and want to ride it in the mornings as well.  I know I didn't have to ride the bus until I was in 4th grade.  I dreaded it but I was also old enough to know I had to.  I was just terrified of not knowing when to get off the bus.  I can remedy that by being at the bus stop when he gets there, at least for the first few times anyway.Well, anyway, I had a talk with Cody about how much he hurts me by behaving so badly in the mornings.  Seriously, Wednesday, I had a horrible stomach ache.  It wasn't good.  I also told him that if he is going to continue to behave that way then he WILL ride the bus in the morning on Thursday.Now, I got in trouble for not mentioning this in an email so I will be sure to mention it here...Jason also had a long (and I mean long) talk with Cody after putting him to bed.  I think Jason was in Cody's room for more than 20 mins.  Cody was telling him stories (which he apparently loves to do) and Jason told him about how he needs to behave if he wants to go hunting with Jason, get a DS, and his own hunting clothes and rifle to go hunting with.  I am sure there were a few things I missed but that pretty much sums it up.I guess all that talking helped Cody.  Although I had to do some coaxing and prodding to get Cody in the car and into the school.  He went, no crying, no fighting, nothing but a bit of wimpering.  It was amazing.  I still sat with him, per his request, until the bell rang.  When it did he got a bit upset but gave me a hug, Garrett a hug and thanks to a friend who walked him to class it was magnificent.  I was so proud of him that I wanted to cry happy tears finally.  I kept praising him and telling him how happy and proud I was and thanking him for doing so well.  He even asked again about a new backpack.  I told him if he did this well on Thursday and Friday we can get him a backpack when we go out on Saturday.Then we had another set back.  Wednesday night Cody woke Jason up crying.  He said his ears hurt.  Jason told me Cody woke Jason up pretty much every hour.  I knew that he wasn't faking this.  What kid fakes his ears hurting and crying in the middle of the night?  So first thing Thursday I called the clinic to get him in to the doctor.  We had to wait until 10am (which was torture for the both of us).  It turns out that the cold he has had turned into an ear infection, a bad one in his right ear.  So definitely no school Thursday and debated about school on Friday.  After all we finally made some headway about him going to school I didn't want to set that back again with another 4 day weekend.So, all day yesterday he was like this: 

(photo courtesy of a bing search)but slowly got better as the day went on.  Still pretty upset but better.  He was terrified about going to bed last night though.  He was afraid of his ears hurting like they did the night before.  Thankfully he slept like a rock and I thought he would be good to go to school.That is until we woke up this morning and Jason looked out the window and saw this: 

(a couple more inches of snow and some blowing snow)

 I knew that the cold and snow would not help his ears so I decided to leave him home again today.  Of course that lasted for about an hour and now I wish I had sent him to school.  Now I still can but the time off and out of the cold is still better for him than being at school and exposed to the cold weather. My prayer now is that the good attitude about school will continue on Monday.  I think we just need to continue to tell him what he can get if he behaves and what he is going to have taken away when he doesn't.

Our house

I came on to talk about something else when I realized that I have not posted any pictures of our house on the inside.  We are still not done getting everything up and as we would like it but we are getting there. 

 This is the living room before it got cleaned up a bit

 The kitchen, of course

 This is half of the living room, my craft area

 Here is the other half, notice Jason's "man chair"

 Looking into Cody's from the front door

 Cody's room from the back corner

 Wyatt's room from the door

 from the back corner

near the door

We still need to get our room put together, the stairwell, Garrett's room and the bathrooms.

As for what I wanted to talk about.

Last Friday Garrett took his first step.  I had a migraine so I didn't see it even though I was right there when he did it.  Jason saw it and I didn't want to believe him when he said it.

I couldn't deny the fact that he took a step when I saw him do it yesterday.  I was sitting on the couch doing laundry when Garrett wanted to play.  He was standing, holding onto the clothes basket when he let go and turned and stepped towards me.  Of course after that he sat down.  I am excited and totally sad about this.  I am excited, happy and proud of him for progressing in his growth.  But I am so sad because that means he is growing up and I am not going to have my baby anymore.

For another subject.  Cody and the family are still struggling with getting comfortable here in South Dakota.  Cody has been sick and absolutely HATES going to school.  I stress out every morning and night worrying about how the morning is going to go.  I feel like I could end up with an ulcer should this keep up.  I have tried talking to Cody.  I know it is because his teacher here is not the teacher he had in California.  He only had one teacher until now, his teacher was also his kindergarten teacher so he was used to how she ran her classroom.  He is not used to this new structure they have here.  It has gotten so bad that I have literally had to drag him to the car and then into the school.  I leave the school with him crying and upset.  Someone from the school has to talk to him and convince him to walk to his classroom.  The sad thing is that when I go pick him up in the afternoon he is fine and had a good day.

I keep praying every night and in the morning that today will be better.  So far it seems to be getting worse.  Maybe it is because this situation is going to be like the saying goes "it always get's worse before it gets better".  Hopefully we are at the worst or almost there.