My new life.

I've changed a big part of my life recently. I went back to work. Part time but still a big change. I've been a stay at home mom for the past 3 years and I had gotten so used to the home routine. Working for someone else is a new challenge.
Right now I'm still in orientation so it's full time for 3 weeks and very hard on the kids. I'm lucky that hubby is in Real Estate and has such flexible hours. The kids are always with a parent or family except when at school so they are coping.
I guess I'm lucky that I chose nursing as a profession oh so many years ago. Nursing has given me the luxury to choose my specialty, hours, quit for years and step back in. All great things to have. This job is days and I will be gone while the kids are in school so it shouldn't impact them too much. The only sad part is the weekend rotation but people are sick 24/7 and I chose a specialty that has patients every day, night and weekends.

Wisconsin Fish Fry

It's Lent in Wisconsin and I love this post from Tom McMahon.

Fish fry in Wisconsin is sacred stuff and every friday in lent and all through out the year folks stand in line for a great fish fry. Cod or Perch?

I'm a cod girl myself.

Sample Letter of Intent

I read this article from Parenting Special Needs and found this sample letter of intent to be a useful tool for parents of all children.
If my husband and I died suddenly, I have a great family to care for my kids. But what do they really know about the day to day life of the kids?This tool would clarify doctors names, activities they are involved in, school routines and plan for the future.
I want to make sure that I write one of these letters for each of my children. But I'll pray that no one ever has to use them.

How to stock a pantry.

I like to keep an organized home and I am proud of my well stocked pantry. As someone who loves to cook, I need 2 things to function in the kitchen. The Joy of Cooking Cookbook and a pantry which will provide the basics for any good meal. I think the list from this blog site will give you a great starter on the basics of your pantry or kitchen.

New IEP today.

I had a lengthy and involved IEP meeting for my son today. I have to credit the Hamilton school district for the wonderful professionals that worked with my son and evaluated his needs.
I was asking for additional evals for emotional and learning disabilities and found that he doesn't need these services. We will continue his speech, add OT and a psych component to his education but he has made so much progress by the half day schedule and working to redirect misbehavior.
Of course the medications have helped greatly and the time to allow him to know and feel safe at school.
He is now back on track to full days and hopefully advance to first grade next year. I feel very hopeful!

Would you want this mom?

I read about this woman who went to have an abortion, the abortion didn't work and she ended up having the baby. She is now suing for damages to pay for the child rearing costs of this little girl. How ghastly!
This poor child will find out she was to be aborted and that her own mother wants damages for the act that she survived! The best thing this mother could do is let this child be adopted to a family who loves her dearly and places her needs above theirs.
I dearly pray this mother finds unconditional love for her daughter or someone else that can provide it for her.

These women should never vote!

When I see a video like this, my conservative side kicks in and I don't want anyone to vote unless they are at least 25 and own property. Women! You are smarter than this!

I'm finally logged in.

I had a terrible time getting into my blogger acccount to make posts. Google let me use the old version of login for a while but they finally made me switch to the new version of Blogger. Since then I have been unable to login. Until today.

My whole family is home sick and snowed in. We have had the flu for the past week. We didn't get flu shots and it has been so long since any of us had the flu I think we forgot how tottally wretched it is.!!! Both myself and my husband have had trips to the ER to get fluids and in my hubby's case antibiotics for now a new pneumonia.

We also have had over a foot of snow in the last day and we are snowed in. I called and had someone plow out the driveway since neither of us has the strenghth to snowblow. And the snow is the heavy wet kind that will cause heart attacks all over town from unhealthy folks trying to clean up when they should leave it for someone younger or healthier.

Hunkered down

The arctic blast continues and the kids are going stir crazy and looking for any opportunity to move. We went for an errand to Walgreen's this
morning and my daughter asked me to park really far away so she can run. I did. We have been mall walking and looking for places to go and get out. The average temp should be 31 not 10 and I'll be very happy when we warm up.
There was a rash of discussion about school closings and cold weather. My children were off this week for 2 days because of the cold.
I guess we are all a little wussified and we forget that when it's cold, dress warm and in layers. I won't start with the stories of how I walked to school, but things were different then. Now the news exaggerates every change in the weather so that every new weather pattern is the worse we've ever seen. I'm to blame also. The cold affects me more as I've gotten older and I don't want to spend time outside. I'm sure my children hear me and hubby complain so they don't want to go out when it's really cold. Well, I have to stay positive and think that every day is closer to spring.
I brought some potting soil inside and had the children pot up starter seeds. Maybe watching them grow will help us feel better.

-12 degrees. Where is the global warming when you need it.

-12 degrees and it's not fun. We live in an old farm house and the insulation is almost non- existent. We had the walls filled with blown insulation when we bought this home 12 years ago but I'm sure that it has fallen down the walls.
The windows are old and our dear old oil furnace is chugging along without a break. Once in a while I will hear it stop, only to hear it start up again.
The kids have three comforters on the beds. I have a electric blanket on my bed.
The kids are going stir crazy because they can't play outside. Even I, who believes in daily outside play time, won't subject them to such cold.
Now I might just sound like a big waa waa, especially to my Fargo moms,
but it's cold.

TB Scare

We just had a TB scare at my home.
When my children were adopted 3 years ago, I didn't do a full post adoption work up. They had so many other health care issues that I put it on hold.
I decided to have a full work up done late this past year and I'm so glad I did.
I found out my son was anemic and I was told my daughter had latent TB.
What a scare. I understand how she got TB. The conditions of the orphanage were ripe for the transmission of many diseases, but I was still in shock. On one hand I was glad it wasn't active and contagious TB and she didn't have any symptoms. But with latent TB, the child still has to be treated for 9 months with medications to completely kill the disease. That's a lot for a child to go through.
But we heard about the quantiferon blood test to double check the PPD and we did it. Yes, she had to have blood drawn but it was well worth it. We just got the results back and she is negative. Yeah! A big scare but I am so grateful that we had the tests done to confirm the diagnosis.

Registration for Mommy Time

I think the problem with registration is resolved. For the time being, when registering on Mommy Time, I need you to fill out the registration page, accept terms and wait for the Welcome email. This email will link you back to fill out your family names so that I can complete the background check.
I hope to get the process back to one step soon but for now at least it's working and you can have access within one day.
Now for those of you already registered, email a mom and get yourself some Mommy Time!

My birthday.

Today is my birthday. I wanted to write a long thoughtful post about my life as it is at this time. Unfortunately, today is so busy I can barely find time to post these few words. Maybe tomorrow.

Read this if you plan on registering.

To all of the moms registering at this time, I am having some site problems. If you register, try to complete all of the pages right away. Registration, terms and family name info. It looks like if you stop after the first page and try to complete later, the site may not let you in. I have someone looking into the problem and it should be resolved soon. For those who can't get in at all, email me with your name, address and family names and I'll manually enter you. So sorry!

To those of you who have emailed the last 2 days, I have returned all of my mail. The family was at the Kalahari Water Park in Wisconsin Dells for a winter get away.
I usually like this place but today the water was COLD. My 6 year old was shivering after a few minutes and I who has ample body fat was shivering as we floated down the lazy river. Not good. And the internet access was $5 per every 15 minutes so I waited until we came home.

Save Baby Gavin

I received this information and wanted to share it with everyone.

I am writing to you about a 10 month old baby named Gavin Winslow. My hope
is that you can help us save Gavin by posting the attached flyer at your
place of business. I received your name from the business directory on
Milwaukeemoms.com.

Gavin was born with Congenital Kidney Failure. Without a kidney transplant,
Gavin will not survive. Sadly, without a payment guarantee, a child cannot
even be placed on an organ transplant waiting list. That is why his family,
in conjunction with the Children's Organ Transplant Association (COTA) has
started a fundraising campaign, in his honor, in which they are trying to
raise $100,000.

To help reach this staggering amount of money, I have organized a Children's
Concert and Kids Fest featuring award winning children's artist Jim Gill.
Your support advertising this concert would be appreciated.

A CONCERT OF MUSIC AND PLAY WITH JIM GILL
Sunday, January 21, 2007
3:30 pm (doors open at 3:15)
Sheraton Brookfield Hotel in the Brookfield Ballroom
Purchase tickets at: www.savebabygavin.com or call 262-548-0614

Activities after the concert:
Pictures with Elmo
Magician
Balloon Artist
Face Painting
Tattoos
Silent Auction with great family and children items for bid

Again, I would sincerely appreciate your support advertising this concert
with the attached flyer.

One hundred percent of all funds raised are used for patients' transplant
and transplant-related expenses. COTA's priority is to assure that no child
is denied a transplant or excluded from a transplant waiting list due to a
lack of funds.

To follow Gavin's story, please visit www.savebabygavin.com.

Gratefully,

Samantha Christiansen

24 is here!

Well, the new 24 is here and I just sat through the first 2 hours. I warned hubby that I will be unavailable except for emergency's from 7-9 pm and I even got the kids down to bed with 3 minutes to spare!!! Yipee!!!I have to say, I don't know if I'm tired tonight or Jack is just getting a little too predictable. Of course I love 24 and will watch every episode and all of the reruns I can find on cable. Channel 9 in Chicago has them on regularly for my 24 fix. It just seems like how many bombings and how many presidents are we going to have? And how did Wayne get to be president?
All right, I must just be tired and I'll be perched on the edge of the sofa tomorrow at 7 pm for another 2 hours.

My Thinking Spot

Just like Pooh Bear- my daughter needs a thinking spot. I found her climbing into the small cupboard that has my rags in the utility room. She said it's a quiet spot and she likes to go in there when the wash machine is on.
We all need a place to get away and I'm glad she found hers.

It's 3 am, what are you doing?

Well, this 3 am and the kids are having a party. Actually my son woke up and couldn't sleep who in turn woke up my daughter and their playing woke up the dog who woke me up and now after getting everyone settled, I'm the one who can't sleep.
Good thing I have nothing scheduled for tomorrow. It's going to be a sleepy day.

The world will stop until you do.

I'm sitting here in my sons bedroom while I wait for him to clean feces off of a bookshelf. He just had a rage with hitting, spitting and kicking. Not a good day. He refuses to clean but he knows the mantra "The world stops until you do" No playing, no music, TV, bike or computer until the job is done. He swirls the sponge around in the bucket, rage filled eyes and I ignore him. He may throw the bucket, he might spill it but he knows I'll just get another one. He also knows not to say the bucket is too heavy since I will only add water to it. Wait, he is finally washing.
"Done!" he says, but I ignore him. "I'm Doooooone!!!!!" I ignore. "Mom, I'm done now with washing." OK, I look. "That's done, please start removing the crayons marks from the walls." I sit and write. I see that the sponge isn't working on the crayon so I send him downstairs to get the Magic Eraser."Ok, put your blinders on" and he places his hands on either side of his eyes. "Blinders on, run and get the Magic Eraser from under the sink, no distractions, no talking to your sister or dad, just run."
Wow, he's back in less than a minute and back to scrubbing walls. "See mom, it's working" His eyes are soft and he smiles. The rage is over. He'll finish his task and we will have weathered another post adoption attachment storm.

Happy Birthday Bailey!

Today is our dog Bailey's 9th birthday. The children wanted to have a party and Maria made cookies for him in the Easy Bake Oven and he had a special treat.

He may be the stinkiest dog I know and shed a lot but just like Old Yeller he's the root'n toot'nest dog in town!