Sunday, October 4, 2009

Making Up for Lost Time

Last week I was in the Philippines for work. Not such a great week to be in Manila because my visit was sandwiched between two typhoons. My timing has always been somewhat questionable.

Unfortunately, many of the people I work with were directly impacted by the flooding in the first storm and the second storm caused them great stress and worry. I was stunned by the stories they shared. It made me feel very lucky to be an American. As much as I think insurance companies lie and cheat to take as much money from us as possible, I am thankful that we have it when we need it. That isn't the case in the Philippines where they are all having to start over from scratch.

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I have some catching up to do here so the first thing I want to post is a picture of Avery wearing a patch. My nieces in Illinois have apparently been concerned about the patch ever since she started wearing them early last month. The good news is that she only has to wear it for 4 hours a day. The hope is that by covering her "good" eye, it will force her bad eye to work more. So far, she doesn't seem to mind it much. We do, however, usually bribe her with a weekly reward if she doesn't put up a fight when we put it on.



Clearly she has issues taking pictures. I haven't been as upset about her wearing these as I thought I would be. I think that has a lot to do with her only wearing them part of the time so when she has a party to go to (which seems to be quite often) or we have something to do on the weekends, we can schedule it so that she isn't wearing a patch at the time. The kids at school have been very nice to her and her teacher said she never gets teased. I think that is partially due to the fact that they come in some very cute designs. We let her choose the one she wants to wear every day and she is careful to match it to her outfit. Hilarious. Apparently the kids can't wait to see what her patch looks like every morning.

In other news, boys are much different than girls.

Jack falls about every 3 days and leaves some kind of bruise on his precious little head. I usually take it worse than he does which leads to all kinds of extra attention for him. That's probably why he doesn't seem to mind so much when it happens. I just hope that it doesn't lead to some kind of permanent damage. I don't want him to be 16 and unable to understand calculus because he fell one too many times as a toddler. That's what happened to me, which is why I know that falling as a toddler is so dangerous.

Here's a look at his latest work of art. He fell in the parking lot at daycare when I was picking him up last Friday. He insisted on walking all by himself and when I turned around to put Avery in the car, I heard a thud and then he started screaming. Lovely way to start off the weekend.

The sad eyes get me every time.
By Saturday it looked much better, but he still clearly had a knot on his head. These kinds of falls seem to only happen on the weekend so I am sure his daycare is keeping a log of all the bumps and bruises that he has every Monday morning. I think we are going to have to start covering him in bubble wrap just to save ourselves from a CPS investigation.

Avery, of course, is part of the problem more than she is part of the solution. She is happy to leave toys laying around which turns our living room into an obstacle course for all of us. Half the time he falls over a loose piece of paper or a stray crayon. She also likes to throw balls right at his head before he has a chance to look at her. I think she sees that he is gaining on her fast and is doing whatever she can to stunt his growth.

I hate to tell her, but I doubt anything is going to stop this kid from growing at this rate.

I doubt that will stop her from trying.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

I didn't realize you kept a blog until I saw it referenced on FB! I'll add you to my Google reader. Your kiddos are too cute!
aoe,
Anjea