Stolen....

How does it happen that I go from having a little tick boob, cloth diaper wearing, co-sleeping bundle of "Jewel" to what I saw yesterday. A little young lady among her peers looking like a ray of sunshine. I didn't cry. Nope I didn't. I felt like it, I dressed in all black, it wasn't on purpose, maybe subconsciously. Watching her little mouth contort into all these weird movements as she was trying to sing along with everyone, having that demon named apraxia trying to hold her back and her fiercely telling it to step off was really beautiful.

Next year it is onto kindergarten for Jewel, 2nd grade for Amber, and 8th grade for Carlos. My babies are all growing up. Time has stolen my babies and replaced them with children. I am happy that they are all healthy, happy, creative, brilliant, precious little people, but at the same time I miss my babies.

I love him........

Today marks the anniversary of John and I's wedding. 4 years. Yup, that is a lesser amount of years than our children are old. Yes we did things a bit backwards. Carlos when 5 years old when John & I met. 6 weeks after meeting John, I moved in with him, 2 months after that we were pregnant with Amber. 1 year after that I was pregnant with Jewel. We have been through a lot. Ups, down, twists, turns. But I wouldn't change a single thing, not a moment. I am married to my best friend and that is truly an awesome thing!

Mr & Mrs Simms

We got married in our back yard, and it was GREAT!
Our cake!

Wordless Wednesday

Where?

I live in a small-ish town. We are on the verge of getting our fifth fully functioning traffic light in the near future. We have one grocery store, which we have only had for the last year and is the reason for the addition of a traffic light. We have one fast food restaurant. Everyone knows everyone. When our census was last done in 2000 we had less than 7,000 residents. I know this has grown quite a bit since then due to the addition of a gated senior city community for which our county is notorious for, but it's like they are in their own little world in there. Our police force consists of approximately twenty officers or so. You get the idea, small town.

Anyhow we got our full access parkway exchange just two year back. It is so new in fact it is not even shown on my GPS despite my many updates to it. We can now get on and off northbound or southbound of the parkway, one of our state's major arteries. The parkway is nearly 175 miles long, mostly north and south. Pretty impressive since NJ is about 150 miles tip to tail. The parkway for those unfamiliar is tagged all along with mile markers, every 1/10th of a mile showing your exact location. Most exits are based on their mile markers position. It is very acceptable and usual when meeting someone from an area you are not familiar with to ask "what exit is that?" Everyone knows exit off of what, because despite the fact we have other highways, the parkway is "the" highway. My small town's exit is 69. Yes, haha, I have heard all the jokes. We even have a bumper sticker common to our area, Exit 69, where everyone gets off.

Before the whole exit 69 claim to fame hardly anyone knew of our town, not even people living a mere 20 minutes north of us. The joke about telling someone you lived in Waretown, was where? Waretown. Where? Haha. It gets funny after like the 2nd time, and people think they are so unique when doing this, little do they know, us living here have heard it dozens and dozens of times.

The other day while driving on the parkway though I noticed something odd. Our actual exit is not located anywhere in the 69 mile marker zone. Nope it is in the 70 mile marker zone. I am thinking some brilliant person from the highway authority who has authority of naming the exits thought he had an awesome sense of humor when naming us exit 69. Heck, maybe he is even the one who trademarked those bumper stickers. I betcha though, he does not live here, he doesn't have to tell people I get off on 69. Thank you Mr. (or Mrs.) Naming the Exit Idiot for making our sweet little town the laughing stock of the Garden State.

Wordless Wednesday

Miss California

Does anyone care what happens with Miss California? Big press conference today at 11am EST, who the heck cares? Is this news worthy? I think not. This is coming from a person who doesn't agree with her either. Donald Trump is loving the publicity, as is Miss California I am sure. Will he keep her or say YOU'RE FIRED? I will not even bothering giving my opinion because it seriously matters ZILCH! I am just sick of hearing about her and really feel sorry for the winner of the pageant because, well I don't even have a flipping clue who won.

I'm baaaaccccckkkkkkkk

Told you I'd be back. So I guess we'll start with updates. We're all healthy, that's important and something to be thankful for.

Carlos is almost done with 7th grade. He did way better this year than last, when he really slacked off. He has been on the cross country, wrestling, and track and field teams. He seems to have for the most part kept on top of his work despite his sometimes crazy schedule. He's done good.

Amber is almost done with 1st grade. Whether or not she will have to repeat it next year remains to be seen. We have her neurological evaluation coming up this week. It is the first step in the process to see how they can teach her better. We will also try to determine if her inconsistencies in reading and language are learned disorder related. She was put in and after a few months removed from basic skills reading class, because she reached the maximum reading level. She has worked super hard, and has come a long way. She makes me proud.

Jewel. We are removing her from outpatient speech therapy for the remaining part of the school year. We think she needs a break. She is almost done with pre-k and has become a social butterfly. She is also coming close to being discharged from occupational therapy because the majority of her issues are behavioral related and not sensory, although she does have some oral sensory issues. Not surprised, but we are brushing her teeth and with toothpaste, so hooray for small things. We seem to be at a stand still with school and her Dynavox, this will be brought up at her IEP next week. Out loaner device is awesome but with no technical support with it, I am lost. Currently it is not being used because I can't reset one of the vital behaviors on it, without this behavior she can't use it. As for her spoken language she still lags so far behind her peers. Her intelligible language is still hard to understand for the unfamiliar ear. But I still smile every time I have to correct her grammar because that means she is making progress.

John is working. Hard as usual. Now summer is here, well almost here. Summer is rough on him, winter is his thing. Hopefully this summer we'll make it to the beach more and he will be able to relax some. That'd be nice. I am convinced he is getting arthritis in his hands, but tough guy won't go to the doctor.

I am well, the same. An insomniac by night and tired all day. Trying to figure where I should be working come September when the kids are all in school full time. The housing market still sucks so I am not sure if I want to go back to Century 21 right away. John thinks I should. Who knows? I have time to figure it out, I guess.

We're mid-dilemma with one of our dogs. He has shown aggression towards the kids. Not cool. I will be having him fixed in the near future, but still wonder if even that is the right decision or if I should find him a new home, one without children. The kids are upset, and want him to stay with us. It is hard. We're not a give a pet away kind of family, but when safety becomes an issue, we are really left with little choice sometimes as much as it sucks.

I really need to wrap this up and got a certain little 1st grader out of bed and ready for school. As for my renewed commitment to my blog. I will try. I do promise I will do a "Wordless Wednesday" every week and at least one other entry. I am not even sure how many readers I actually have, but I do like that I have to blog to look back on for memories, if nothing else.

Happy Mother's Day

Happy Mother's Day to everyone.

I am around, just not here.

I am suffering from a nasty Facebook addiction,

which is taking up my free time these days.

I will be back soon with updates and

a renewed commitment to my blog.

Beauty

This morning I looked at Jewel while we were waiting outside to get on the bus and felt such a bittersweet feeling. This is my baby or should I say this was my baby. This morning she picked out her own clothes, did her hair all by herself and was genuinely excited about going to school to see her friends. When did she grow up so much? When did she stop depending on me for absolutely everything? It truly seems like yesterday that I had my 8 pound 2 ounce preemie 5 weeks early and they whisked her away from me, and I stood by her isolette and was afraid of touching her, becoming attached to her, losing her and John had to tell me to touch my own baby. This morning I looked at her and saw a beautiful little girl yet such a little warrior that battles apraxia every moment of her speaking life.

It's what time?

We have 3 alarm clocks in our bedroom. Strange huh? But we have our reasons. We like alarm clocks with fancy gadgets. I have one on my side of the bed with an alarm set for me and of course has an Ipod dock. My alarm is set so I get up to make breakfast for John, and his lunch, and I won't lie, to make sure he gets up every morning too. John has 2 alarm clocks on his side of the bed. One is a clock that shines the time on the ceiling. That alarm is set to ring the same time every morning with a standard annoying beep. Then he has another clock that has 3 alarms. One alarm is set to turn on the TV. Another is set with my saying Yoohoo honey wake up. Another is either a fog horn or a rooster I forget which. So essentially we have 5 different alarms going off in our room every morning. They start going off at 5am. They are all set a few minutes apart from one another and are kind of staggered to annoy the heck out of us so we just, you know, get up. Well this morning I hear John say, wait honey, it's 6:30, I leave by now right, as I hear my alarm beeping in my ear. I swat at my alarm, look at the clock, think for a second, because eosmetimes in his sleepyiness he is a bit confused and think holy crap you should have left like a half hour ago. We somehow slept through my clock beeping for an hour, he shut off 3 of his, we never heard the TV go on, and something just happened to wake him up at 6:30. Nice, huh. Well no biggie, he'd be a bit late. Buttttttt.......his co-worker waits for him in the commuter lot in the mornings, and.....he gets there 5:30 to geta spot, so on an ordinary day this guy is sitting there 30-45 minutes for John, but today he was already sitting there for an hour when we were just rolling out of bed. WHOOPS! So the moral of the sory is you can never have to many alarm clocks. I am not sure what in the world happenes this morning, but I am thinking I may be on the hunt for a bigger, louder alarm clock in the near future.

Harvest

Yesterday I picked Amber up from school early to go to an appointment. On the way there she is usually good for talking. Well really who am I fooling, when is she not good for talking. But I tend to hear things out of her during this time that gets lost in the noise of the rest of the family at other times. Yesterday I heard something from her that I wish got lost in that noise. She started talking about harvesting. Telling me now a days we only harvest for fun, like when we harvest our pumpkins for Halloween. Okay so far what's the big deal, right? It gets better girls and boys.

She then asks me to tell her what harvesting was really like. Huh? You know a lot about harvesting, right, mom? Like when you had to harvest everything. No, I don't Amber. Well way back when you were a kid they didn't have stores to buy all your food in so you harvested everything, right? WHAT? How old do you think I am Amber? 45. No I am not 45. I was quiet for a few minutes. Then I told her people who are 45 did not harvest either unless they lived on farms and what makes you think I am 45 anyway? Daddy told me. Well Daddy was kidding. No he wasn't, I asked is she 35, he said no, I said 40, no, 41, no, 42, no, 43, no, 44, no, 45, ding ding ding.

My husband. I have to love him, my only other choice, is to strangle him. I am 32, by the way.

The Climb

So yesterday we climbed the Barnegat Lighthouse. Beautiful. I have climbed Cape May's years ago and I do not recall the feelings I am having today. Now there was a warning sign, which I did read. Yes it was strenuous, yes I climbed it with my inhaler in hand, yes my legs felt quite jell-o like along the way, my thighs literally were quivering like they did when I was in labor. Never in my wildest dreams did I think today I would wake up and need pain relief. Did the sign say anything about waking up the following day and wishing you legs would fall off because that might be less painful then the burning and muscle aches you are feeling. I really had no indication I would feel this way yesterday. We even walked the rail trail last night, no issues. But today. Oh my, this is terrible. A lesson was learned though. I am extremely, undeniably out of shape and it is affecting my life. This lesson was both painful physically and mentally, but maybe I will start to do something about it.

Happy Birthday Jewel

April 1st, 5 years ago today.

The first 2 1/2 years of her life were spent like this:

One of the many lessons she has taught me.
Jewel has grown into her name perfectly.

Her 1st picture as a 5 year old. Up hours too early and sick. But always our Princess.

~~Happy Birthday Foofer~~

We love you

April Fool's

Hope you enjoy your lunch today honey.

Amber's meeting

I had a meeting earlier this week regarding Amber. This was a meeting with a team at the school to decide what measures we should take with Amber and her reading skills. They suggested we have her evaluated by a neurologist to rule out any learning disorders before we proceed. The first few phone calls I made trying to schedule an appointment were very discouraging. The only pedi nuero our insurance company suggested was not even scheduling appointments since she was booked for the next 5 months solid, but taking names for a waiting list. So I ventured off using my own resources looking for someone to take her. My second phone call proved to be successful. Not only do they see children, and accept our insurance, they are booking new patients in mid May. YES! Less then a 2 month wait. And our insurance company did not even mention this practice to me at all. Nice, huh? Don't get me started on my opinion of insurance companies. So this begins the lengthy process of figuring out how we can best serve Amber and teach her in a way she can best learn.
John and I did tell her there is a possibility she may have to repeat 1st grade again and she took it surprisingly well. She knows she is struggling a bit. John and I have talked a lot about this though and we understand 2nd grade only gets harder but we do not think her relearning the same things over again in 1st grade next year will benefit her at all, and I made the team aware of our opinion on the matter. So hopefully they will take what we say into consideration when making the final decision.
On a lighter note, today is National Make Your Own Holiday Day. Silly, huh? My holiday? National Nap Day! So what's yours?

And today.....

So this is how a stay at home mom/administrative assistant for her husband's business spends her days. With her Sissy Poo and the mascot of our local minor league baseball team The Lakewood Blue Claws, Buster. No really, an electrical supply house we use, Warshauer Electric to be precise, opened a fifth store, exciting news I know, and they had an open house so of course we had to go. I played the representative for Simms Electric since Mr Owner/Operator was working. I took Sissy Poo with me, because well since I broke her ankle I spend most days with her. (I secretly rigged the carpet to trip her so she would fall and be put out of work for this reason you know, but shhhhhhh, don't tell her.)

Amber Loves Giving

Amber's school has been collecting "Pennies for Patients." Every year they encourage the children to bring in their spare change to donate to children with cancer. This year Amber got to sit in on an assembly about cancer. A child was there who was now in review (what Amber called remission) who talked about cancer. Evidently this has all made quite an impact on Amber because she has new questions about cancer every single day.
Amber is a collector. No more like a hoarder. It is difficult with her to part with certain things. Scrap paper, rocks, and coins. She has a habit of doing something with one of those things every night before bed. Cutting the papers, sorting her rocks, counting her coins. So I was super impressed with Amber last week when she gathered up every single coin she could find and brought them into school to donated to pennies for patients. She even sacrificed the coins in her reward bucket. (A reward bucket is a small container that when the kids do something above and beyond what is expected of them that they get pennies for. When they collect 50 pennies they get something special.)
The other night, well I should say morning, there was a small knock on our bedroom door. I can always tell who it is by the knock. Amber knocks ever so softly which is so not her. Julie practically knocks the door down which is also so not her. Mommy I need you. I open the door and Amber is holding something in her palm. My eyes are not adjusted. What is it? My tooth, it fell out. Wow, you felt it fall out? No, I was awake. Alrighty. So we get her mouth rinsed out, get the tooth put in a safe place, I think it's too late/early for the tooth fairy and back to bed she goes. The following night the tooth fairy comes and brings Amber $5 which she promptly takes to school with her that day. I assume for the school store which she loves to shop at. Where in the world does she get such a shopping habit? :::looking around::::: Anyway, this morning I ask her what she bought at the school store yesterday and she looks at me weird and says nothing, why? I ask what she did with her $5 from the tooth fairy and she said I gave that to pennies for patients. OK don't cry, don't cry. I almost cried. My kids and John already think I am a weiny and cry about everything so it probably wouldn't have matter if I did cry but I am so stinking proud of her. She holds her money so dear and for her to give it away so willingly and get nothing in return, I am just blown away. I think I am going to give her a refill for her reward bucket and also give her something special to reward her, just so she realizes that she did something very good.

Here's Nixon!

Geesh it's been a trying day and that's putting it mildly. But good news, Nixon's in his new forever home! Yay! We were at the shelter at 1pm right when they opened and broke Nixon out and were on our way home by 1:22. I stayed at my sister's only a few minutes but he seemed to acclimate to his new surroundings fast. Kelly introdeced him to the rest of the house already too. He is such a lover, like his brother Reagan. I found out today that the other 2 siblings that were turned in with them were put down because their health wasn't as good as these two and they were not very "friendly." I kind of figured that was the case since they had only arrived there a little over 2 week before I adopted Reagan. I did not think that cats that old were adopted out so fast. At least these two had happy endings. Nixon had to be shaved a little and needs some cleaning up because some of his meds didn't agree with him, but he is a cutie! Surprisingly Nixon and Reagan are from the same litter.

Nixon is getting a forever home too

My sister is going to adopt my cat's brother. I am so happy. I knew getting the brother would totally be pushing John but now my sister is going to get him. I feel so much better, knowing he is 10 yrs old, hardly no one would want an older cat. I called the shelter Friday to see if he was still there and the boy who answered told me yes and it was a $55 fee, etc. Well I called today and the lady answered who did all the paper work for me and she was like I remember you, and I told her I called last week and they told me $55 for Nixon (Reagan's brother) but she waived the fee for Reagan, so she said she'd way the fee for me again. So I am going and adopting the cat in my name for my sister. I am so flipping excited!!!! I feel ecstatic we are giving these poor cats who came from such a loving home that had to give them up for reasons beyond their control and are practically un adoptable because of their age a second chance.

Pluerisy sucks.

I don't remember if I blogged about this but I ran to CVS the day before the storm and I was standing there totally still not bent over or twisted and got this intense burning pain in my back. I hardly was able to make it to my car let alone get in, I almost had to call John to come pick me up. I got home and was in tears I was hurting so bad, John of course wanted me to go to the ER but I just paid off my last ER visit literally last week so I said no way. Well then I started with these pains under my ribs as well. Both sides. I can't even sit straight in a chair there is so much pressure and pain. Now weeks ago I had a little bit of a weird feeling on the left side under my ribs, but just really thought nothing of it. Well stupid me I should have. That was the start of it, weeks ago. I have pleurisy, the membrane surrounding my lungs is in inflamed and most likely infected. Instead of the membrane sliding against my lungs smoothly basically they are rubbing against it and causing a ton of friction. She said it could have been pretty much contained to that small pocket if I went in weeks ago but since I waited it is pretty bad. I am on a bunch of meds and need to go get some xrays to make sure no ribs are cracked which is sometimes a cause of this, but she said most likely the cause is my asthma and chances are I will be prone to pleurisy now. I am totally in excruciating pain depending on what I am doing or the time of day. I can really tolerate pain, but this is just awful, So I am lots of drugs, I was hallucinating an evil spirit was lifting my blankets off last night and starting screaming NO NO NO, my house looks like a giant dump, I am just feeling really crappy. And I am wondering why they don't make ace bandages/compressions wraps like they used to. Plain stretchy material with a little metal hooky closure think, they now make these awful self stick ones which are disgusting feeling because they are sticky, and they make me itch like the dickens so I am wearing a shirt under it.