spoken for

Well, Kayleigh’s on her third day of school now.  Her first day was last Monday and she went in fine, for the most part.  There was no fit-throwing, but she was all quiet and apprehensive.  A little boy walked up and greeted her by pointing, pointing, pointing, then pointing point blank at her chest.  She kind of gave this disgusted look and shoved his arm out of the way.  It was cute but we went “uh, oh, I can see how this is gonna be.” heehee

When we picked her up, we were a bit early and they were all out on the playground so we watched for a little bit, knowing exactly what was going to happen.  She was having a blast but when it was time to go in, all the other kids lined up… and K ran the other way.  Her teacher carried her in kicking and screaming… just like we have to after playing outside at home!  When she saw me through the door then, she was all happy, “MAMA!”  But when we tried to lead her to go home…  Steve had to take her kicking and screaming.

We were on vacation last week Tuesday through Friday so she didn’t go back until this Monday.  She went well and had to go home kicking and screaming.  Steve took and picked her up alone.

This morning… Steve took her again and this time had to leave her screaming.  Eek.  I knew it would happen eventually, I just didn’t think it would be so soon.  Should have had a clue when I was getting her dressed and she started to leave the room wearing her pajamas still, with her jeans.  I said, “come get your shirt on, don’t you want to go to school?”  She stopped, turned around… and signed “play.”  Oy!

Hope she’s in a better mood by pick-up time!

Easter Sunday we went to Steve’s grandmother’s house, where most of his aunts and uncles and cousins were gathered.  Now, Grandma has quite a bit of property, it’s a farm there.  Steve’s brothers each brought their ATV’s and one with his wife and other with his fiance, went riding off through the property.  In between Elijah whining that he wanted to go, too, and Kayleigh being an absolute bear because she hadn’t had a nap, Steve got the idea… Hey, we should go, too.  So off we went… in our Jeep Liberty.  Just like an ATV… but with seat belts and a car seat.  Kayleigh was immediately happy and contained, but Elijah whined nearly the whole time because he didn’t just want to go, he wanted to ride a 4-wheeler.  Too bad, boy.

It was fun, though.  First we navigated around near the house then went further.  The property, once you’re off to the bigger area, you’re on an open ridge, then you have to travel downhill through woods, then uphill through a field, down through woods, up through a field, down through woods, there’s another field and a creek there, then up through woods to another field then the final woods.  And we did it all!  Except the last woods, of course, because we didn’t feel like driving through a barbed wire fence.  There was an old house up there somewhere, though, in the last field, and the last woods have an old rock wall that’s pretty awesome.  Elijah got out and looked around.  He wanted to climb all over it but I was skeered of snakes coming out and biting him.

What was really funny was that we’d come across the other four down in the second to last field, right before the creek.  Steve said something to Brother #2 about it and he said no, he was scared to take the 4-wheeler through there!  So Steve went right through and they followed.

It was great fun and probably took us a good hour to go all through and when we got back, his grandmother and all his mom and aunts/uncles were just in disbelief that we’d been able to take the Jeep there and back.  His grandma seemed really interested, I guess she hasn’t been back there in a while, and Steve offered to take her back – she looked like she wanted to, but she declined.  He’ll probably go out there soon and take her when everyone else isn’t around that she feels like she has to be there to entertain.

And I learned what Trail Rated means!

The next day we ended up off-roading, again!  We went down to my Grandpa’s farm for Steve to pick up his two deer stands that were down there.  Apparently they need to be maintained and what not after having been out for 2 years.  This time we had my parents’ trailer and ended up not only driving through the woods again, but driving through with the trailer.  Steve was even able to turn around in the woods with the trailer at one point so we didn’t have to back out completely or keep following the very long trail.

Annnnd now it’s Kayleigh’s turn to be sick.  Strep.  Strange, though, the doctor said that Elijah having it two weeks ago, it was really too long for him to have passed it to her.  All I can figure is her regular antibiotic was fighting it but maybe not strong enough and when we ran out over the weekend (oops) it really took hold.  Though for all I know, I’m way off base.  Who knows?  Either way, she had a 102 temperature on Tuesday so we took her up to her doc who hasn’t seen her in a year (incidentally, a year ago was when we gave HER the “stomach flu”) and who would have ever thought having strep throat would be good news?

Good because it meant that we wouldn’t have to give the poor girl a catheter to get a urine sample to test for problems there.  Even if she does also have something going on in her kidneys, her strep antibiotics will take care of it.  Then back to normal dosages.  She makes everything traumatic enough, why add real trauma if you don’t have to?  She did get us all laughing though, signing “stop” when the doctor was looking in her mouth and nose.

Speaking of defiant signs, she’s also been “telling” me “no” a lot lately.

“Let’s get these pants on.”

“No.”

“Please just eat this chicken nugget.”

“No.”

“Let’s change your diaper.”

“No.”

For being a toddler who doesn’t talk, she sure does say a lot!

But now that she’s been on antibiotics for a day and a half, she’s back to her old defiant self.  She still has a rash, though.  All over her back and her chest.  I think I’ve heard of this accompanying strep, but never actually seen it.  We really haven’t had strep around here much before.

I’m just hoping Steve and I don’t get it.  I don’t want it and I don’t want him to have it because you know how men are when they are sick!  I don’t know what he’s doing but I’m taking extra vitamin D!  So far so good.  Really, I think I would probably have had it already if I was going to get it but I’m not calling it safe until the fat lady sings.

Oh, and need I even mention the trauma of actually administering medicine to a 3-year-old?  (YES I said THREE.  I should also bring to mind that she got this fever and went to the doctor on her THIRD BIRTHDAY.  Poor baby.)  I really dislike having to pin my kid down and force feed her medicine.  But it had to be done.  She wasn’t drinking the milk I put it in (which is her usual delivery of her day-to-day antibiotics).  Thankfully, that looks like it was just going to be the first time when she really wasn’t feeling good.  As of this morning, she’s back to drinking milk and tonight even ate some food.

Now to get some sleep before she wakes me up at the butt-crack of dawn again…