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!