Toothy

We have our first official loose tooth! Poor little Aiden had a panic attack this afternoon when his gums started bleeding and we had to calm him through the tears to assure him that there was nothing to be afraid of. It seems all those videos on America's Funniest Home Videos of people yanking out loose teeth in various ways has given him the impression that loose teeth need to be pulled.

We knew it was going to happen soon, as his last xrays at the dentist showed that he had lots of teeth waiting just below his gums. We're trying to make it sound as exciting as possible, but he's afraid that it's going to be painful. We're not entirely sure how loose it is since he won't let us near his mouth, but we know that it's begun it's journey out of his gums. Now if mommy and daddy can just agree on what amount the tooth fairy is supposed to bring for the first lost tooth....

Break!

I did it. I actually completed my first term! Thank goodness I was just going half-time. The two classes I had were challenging enough in addition to doing the whole mommy thing. I'm planning on sticking with half-time for a while yet, although maybe I can get close to full-time once Nathan goes back to preschool this fall.

The English composition course I took was quite challenging. The professor did a great job keeping it interesting and assigning really engaging projects. The final paper was a research paper of a topic of our choosing, provided it was a controversial topic regarding the US food industry. I did mine on bovine growth hormone (rBST) in milk. It took me almost three weeks. I've never done that much research for a paper before, but I learned a lot about rBST and the whole thing really paid off, as I got an A on the paper. My other class was a basic math course - which is really not my thing - but I did fairly well. I understood all of the material, but I need to figure out a way to work through the overwhelming test anxiety I get for the on-campus midterms and finals for the next two terms as I finish out my math requirements.

I ended the term with a 3.5 GPA (an A in English and a B in Math). I definitely worked hard this term and hopefully my family didn't feel too neglected. We are all looking forward to a break for the week, and John and I are excited for our weekend away next weekend to celebrate our 7 year wedding anniversary!

Terrified

I am terrified of spring break. Not for myself - I'm looking forward to having a break from homework. I am terrified of spring break with my children who need constant entertainment. Do you know what happens when Minthorne boys get bored? Bad things. Like flooded bathrooms, dismantled furniture, secret messages written on lamp shades that I only discover when I turn on the lamp, bicycles in the house, and attempted cooking and/or science experiments. Aiden especially does not do well when he gets bored, and it's been hard to keep him occupied lately. I think he's beginning to have issues with the limited learning in kindergarten.

I have nothing planned for spring break and this is not good. And I don't have great expectations for the weather, seeing as how there was snow accumulation in the Portland area this morning. We've been discussing purchasing a membership to the children's museum and I think it's time. Also, I think we'll take a trip to Michael's to stock up on art supplies. I could use some more paintings for the house anyway!

This isn't really just about spring break though. I'm going to deal with this all summer. I have a child who requires a certain amount of intellectual stimulation and I am really struggling to find enough for him to do. We were doing ok for a while - trips to the library, kindergarten being temporarily new and different, occasional trips to OMSI, karate class, etc. But it seems we've reached another point of difficulty. I guess we'll be utilizing classes through the parks department like crazy. It seems our pediatrician was right when he said Aiden was going to need near-constant extracurricular classes!

Finding Our Place

A few weeks ago, I mentioned that I had some more things to say about finding fellowship with others, but I wasn't sure how to approach blogging about it. After a conversation today, I feel like I can finally open up about it.

You see, we started attending John's family's church after we moved back here from Philadelphia, right before Aiden was born. So, for the past six years, we've enjoyed a wonderful church family. In fact, the youth pastor was the one who pointed out to John that I was probably interested, and that was way back in high school at a Northwest church gathering.

Where am I going with this? Well, over the past year or two, our attendance at church began to dwindle. We were going about once every 6-8 weeks. It didn't really occur to us that it had gotten that bad until one day Aiden told someone, "Our family doesn't go to church". Whoa! John and I finally had to sit down and discuss what was happening. When it came down to it, it was the distance that was killing it. We've never been morning people and to get everyone up and ready in order to make a 40 minute drive to church to get there on time....well, it just wasn't happening. We like our church. We like the people in it. We have some great relationships with the people there. But it wasn't helping anyone to manage to go once every two months.

After months of feeling like there was no way we'd ever leave our church, we finally made the decision to attend elsewhere right after Christmas. We found a church five minutes away from our home and while it's been a bit of an adjustment (and still is - we're so used to everything being done a certain way for so long), we have really been enjoying the services. It's a larger church than we're used to (around 150-200 people) and we're still working on finding a way to really find our place (mainly me working up the courage to attend the weekly mom's group), but everyone we've spoken to has been extremely welcoming. It's amazing how frightening it was to walk into a new church where we didn't know a single person!

After a few months now, we hadn't discussed the fact that we have been attending elsewhere with anyone from Tigard. I was quite nervous about it as I didn't want anyone to feel like something had offended us, or that something was wrong, because that wasn't the case at all. We finally decided to invite the youth pastor and his wife over for lunch today since we feel like we have a close relationship with them. We ended up having a great conversation about it and by the end, they made it clear that they just wanted to know that we were finding a place to worship regularly and they put us at ease about our decision.

As we attend this new church more and more, I know that we'll eventually find that we've settled in and it will feel like "our" church. We are hoping to find some small group to get involved with at some point and we were invited to join the Married Couples study, but since it's at 8am on Sunday mornings, that doesn't help our issue with getting out the door!

Kiss Us, We're Irish

Well, I guess not John, but the boys and I are! Today is the grand holiday known as St Patrick's Day and we have many things planned. The usual silly things like wearing green and hoping a leprechaun doesn't pinch us or mess up our house (maybe that's what's been happening to the boys' room...). We'll be making chocolate chip cookies and turning the batter green. Yummy and fun!

We'll also be having a traditional Irish meal for dinner: Irish Stew (because Corned Beef and Cabbage isn't actually an Irish dish - it's an American creation), Soda bread, Poundies (essentially mashed potatoes), and Apple Crisp. Apples are used heavily in traditional Irish desserts and you'd be hard pressed to find a family who didn't have a "secret" family recipe for apple pie. I know I have one! :^)

As I was dressing the boys this morning, I was discussing St Patrick's Day with them. John walked by and Nathan shouts, "Daddy! We're wearing green because it's Patrick's Day. Patrick is the star on Spongebob and it's his day!".  Oh my goodness. I laughed so hard. I think we have a little more learning to do about who St Patrick is and why he has his own day.

As you go about your own St Patrick's Day festivities, I'll leave you with this:

"May you never forget what is worth remembering, nor ever remember what is best forgotten."

--Irish Blessing

Sciencey

We've enjoyed our OMSI membership quite a bit since we let our Zoo membership expire, though admittedly we don't use it as much as we used the Zoo membership (which was once per week) - probably just due to the extra distance...and let's face it, traffic is routinely awful through the tunnel on 26.

Nathan thinks everything is super fun, Aiden loves figuring out the various science aspects, and the discount we got on BodyWorlds tickets was amazing. Aiden LOVED BodyWorlds and he is very much looking forward to checking out the limited exhibit on Legos. I think it will take us quite a while to get bored with OMSI!

Here Kitty Kitty Kitty!

We are just over two weeks into our "Kick the Cats Out" project. After almost two weeks of fearing that we'd lost at least one cat, we can happily say that all three cats are still here. Not necessarily happy, but here.

It seems that they are doing the complete opposite of what we expected. The cat we expected to take to the outdoors with no problem (Izzy - the most recent addition), refuses to leave the garage unless one of us is standing in the driveway. Poe (the black one) will leave the garage occasionally, but has yet to get close to leaving the property. He will also continually scratch at the front door and meow his head off. Sort of in a "Ok guys, this isn't funny anymore" way. He also got into one minor fight with a neighbor cat. But it's Jack who is baffling us with his behavior. He hid for a few days and then apparently decided that being outside is the greatest thing in the world. I have routinely seen him happily prancing around the neighborhood up to two blocks away. He hasn't really acknowledged us again since we kicked him out, but at least we know that he comes home every night.

I'm sure once the weather starts to warm up, the other two cats will be more inclined to spend time outdoors. Unfortunately for them, the weather has been bipolar and crazy over the past few weeks, switching between sun, sideways rain and wind, freezing temps at night, and random snow showers.

In terms of how the humans are adjusting to having no cats in the house, there's been some mixed feelings. Sometimes I miss seeing them at my feet as I'm doing my homework and I definitely had a lot of guilt when we thought Jack had gone missing. But I am LOVING having my laundry room back and we're the midst of a laundry room makeover project. We're breathing a little clearer (except for the cold that has been hanging around the past week) and the upstairs is cleaner since it isn't coated with cat hair and cat litter. We're also sleeping so much better. Who knew that having three cats on your bed at night would disrupt sleep so much? Plus, now we get to have my brother in law over without killing him with cat dander!

Our Little Adult

This has been a slightly odd week with Aiden. My normally night owl of a six year old has been waking up between 6 and 6:30am, perky and ready for the day. This is very different from our typical morning routine of struggling to get him awake and dressed in time for school. Instead, he's been waking ME up. On Tuesday, he woke me up by shouting, "I'm going to be late for school!!". Of course, I woke up in a panic only to find that it was 6am. School starts around 8am.

This has been happening all week. He'll wake up, comb his hair (he usually hates combing his hair), get himself dressed, get himself breakfast (he usually doesn't eat breakfast, just like his mommy), and if he's got time to spare, he'll watch some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse or play with Legos. It's honestly made our mornings a lot easier, but I'm anticipating a switch back to our normal routine after the time change this weekend.

Whatever is going on with him, he's been thinking a lot about growing up over the past week. We had a very emotional time last night when he burst into tears and announced that he was afraid to grow up. He begged me to tell him how to keep from growing up and was devastated when I told him that there was no way to stop it. He said he was afraid that he wouldn't know what to do or how to behave as a grown up. Well kid, I'm 28 and I still have no idea what I'm doing half the time. While I hugged him, we had a nice talk about growing up. He's still not convinced that he wants to grow up, but it at least opened up some communication about his fears.

I think I'm discovering that parenting an older child might be more difficult than parenting a younger one.

Saving

As some of you may know, Aiden has been working at saving money to purchase an ipad since last September. He has wanted an ipad since my dad bought one and brought it with him on visit. There are amazing educational applications for it and it's so very in line with Aiden's interests. But, they are expensive and we told him that we couldn't just buy one for him. He was sad, but not long after that, he saw an article about this 8 year old boy who saved money to buy an ipad. He was insistent that he had to do the same. We weren't sure how long a kid Aiden's age would stick with saving money. Would he be able to be patient while he saved? It was worth a try.

Between allowance, doing additional tasks around the house, and some gift money from his birthday and Christmas, he has now saved $100 for his ipad. While he has a way to go yet, we are so impressed that he is willing to wait it out and save. Every time he gets money, he immediately says, "Put it in the ipad fund!". Since John and I know that saving $500-$600 would take a few years, we have decided (without telling Aiden) that once he reaches a certain point - probably around half way - we will match what he has saved, potentially as a gift if it happens to fall around his birthday or Christmas. While it would be fun to see his face as he opens a present to find an ipad, there's also a part of us that thinks he would love to be able to walk into the Apple store with his money that he saved, and have the pride of purchasing the ipad himself.  We'll see how it works out once it gets closer.

I had a hard time believing that he would stick with saving this long, but he's done it. And now that he sees that he's into triple digits, he is even more eager to keep saving. We are very proud of him and it's been fun to watch him learn how to earn money and then put it away for something that he wants.

Breakfast!

I don't usually post recipes here, but we've been trying out all sorts of new yummy creations lately. I have many to share, but I haven't taken the photos off of my camera yet, so those will be in another post. But I couldn't wait on this one. This is what we had for breakfast this morning:

Photo credit: Sugarcrafter.net

That, ladies and gentlemen, is Nutella Swirl Coffee Cake. If you happen to not be familiar with Nutella, it's the yummy stuff inside the Ferrero Rocher chocolates. Jars of Nutella are a tad pricey, but it's something that lasts for a while and we like to have it on hand. Once I saw the recipe for this on Sugarcrafter, I knew I had to try it. That blog is quickly becoming my first go-to place when I'm looking for something sweet to bake.

I would highly recommend this recipe and you can find it here: Nutella Swirl Coffee Cake. I was out of plain yogurt, so I used a mix of sour cream and cream cheese instead (I would used all sour cream, but I was 2 oz short, so I threw in the rest of our cream cheese to get it up to the required amount). It tasted awesome. Sure, it probably made it about 6 times more fattening than it would have been otherwise, but I wasn't going for diet food here. Seriously, a warm slice of this coffee cake along with a freshly brewed cup of coffee was one of the most decadent breakfasts I've had in quite a while. And the kids love it!

The Plan

Someone had a plan for me today. I called the doctor around noon to schedule an appointment for my arm/shoulder since the pain was constant and unbearable. As I was speaking to the receptionist, I took a few minutes to discuss options for changing who my primary doctor was within the practice (note to anyone: If your main doctor constantly treats you like you're a waste of time and space, find someone else). After deciding on a doctor, we started looking at scheduling again. The receptionist says, "We JUST got a cancellation for 3pm. Do you want it?". YES! If I hadn't taken a few minutes to decide on a new doctor, I would have already gotten scheduled for sometime next week and missed this last minute opening.

So off I went with kids in tow (the downside of a last minute appointment is that last minute babysitters are almost non-existent). However. Aiden was excited to see what the doctor was going to do with my arm. The doctor looked, and felt, and discussed, and put in a request for insurance approval for an MRI. That will hopefully be scheduled for Monday so we can find out if there's a tear or not. Once she did that, she said she wanted me to do six weeks of physical therapy, starting out with just pain management. I was sent downstairs to the physical therapy and rehabilitation office to get scheduled. They were booked out for two weeks. Not ideal, but what can you do? As we were scheduling me for two weeks out, someone called and canceled their appointment that was scheduled to start in 15 minutes. Guess who got a surprise hour-long physical therapy session?

Yes, I had the boys in with me but the therapist dug up some crayons and coloring pages so they were occupied. It was nice to get massaged a little around my shoulder, but we soon figured out that those muscles are massively irritated from my injury. Plus, she had to test my range of motion, which is around 35% right now. My shoulder is not pleased. I know it will help in the long run, but I did not expect to be in so much pain   from a pain management appointment. As I was leaving, the receptionist was printing out a copy of my scheduled appointments. There was going a two week gap since they had been booked, but can you guess what happened? Someone called and canceled for an evening appointment for the following week. Everything was perfectly lined up!

What a strange day. Hopefully things will work out just as quickly with getting the MRI scheduled. I'm ready to know what's going on with my shoulder and work on getting it healed. And here's hoping that the next pain management therapy appointment isn't quite so.....painful.