Cali Here We Come!

I am now officially on Spring Break, and Ray and I will be heading to California tomorrow for about a week. While I am super excited to be spending some quality time with my hubby away from the kids, I am feeling pretty sad to leave them, too. It doesn't help that they are sad as well that we are leaving. I know that this is a good thing for us to be able to get away and recharge for a bit and I am excited for that, but there's that little part of me that feels bad for leaving.

Anyway, sorry, this blog wasn't meant to sound down, but I am very tired, I have a lot to do still, and I'm feeling a little emotional at the moment. But I will have a great time in California, and I will try to blog while I am away, and hopefully I will take some pics to share while I am there.

Helicopter Fun

A friend of mine, who I met last semester in my A&P1 lecture class is a Firefighter/Paramedic for the county. We are taking A&P2 together this semester, as well, so we talk quite often. She happens to work for Sheriff's Office, and the helicopter is both dual police and air rescue. So depending on the call, she's either airlifting someone to the hospital or she's helping the ground police officers find a bad guy.

Anyway, she's mentioned to me before that I can bring the kids by sometime to see the hangar and the helicopters. A couple of Friday's ago, while her Lieutenant was training another person who wanted to be a Lieutenant for air rescue, she had some downtime because there's only room for three people (the pilot, the Lieutenant, and another fire/rescue person, in addition to the patient) in the helicopter. She basically stayed at the hangar her entire shift, so there wasn't a risk of having to leave on a whim for a call (they can also be very busy for hours upon hours at a time). So, she called me up and asked if I wanted to bring the kids by for a tour. After I picked Grace up from school, we headed down the street to the airport. It was a little dreary that day, and a tad windy, and pretty cool out (a front was coming through), but we got a good tour in. The timing worked out great because we had just enough time for the kids to go right out to the helicopter and sit in it for a few minutes when a call came in. The kids got to watch from close proximity the helicopter rev up the engine and take off. It was so loud and so windy, and the kids loved it. They had such a good time on the tour. We also got to see some mobile command vehicles, and SWAT vehicles, and some other grounded helicopters and a big tank like vehicle. It was a good time for the kids (and it was FREE!). So here are some pics from our time at the hangar. Now every time they see or hear a helicopter, they think its my friend.

Grace in the chopper

Closer shot of Nate in the chopper

Getting ready to leave

Waiting for Air Traffic to clear the skies for takeoff

Lifting off

Off they go

Nate's Dictionary: Acuz

Thanks to my friend, T who has been posting her little Hoper's dictionary online, I thought I would post some of Nate's here and there.

Today's word is:

Acuz (ah-cuh-z):

• conjunction: for the reason that; due to the fact that
• idiom: by reason of, due to

Example-
Mommy: "Nate are you eating your lunch?"
Nate: "No."
Mommy: "Why not?"
Nate: "Acuz I'm drinking my juice."

On a little side note, when I took Nate in to his 3 year old check up, the doctor discussed with me the fact that she thinks Nate may have a speech problem called Speech Articulation Delay. Basically, his vocabulary is fine, but by now, most 3 year olds should be able to have their words recognizable by strangers. His is not always that way. Heck, sometimes we don't even know what the kid is saying, ha ha. Thanks to insurance issues, I had to wait until after February 1st to bring in him for an evaluation. So on Tuesday we went and saw the Speech Therapist or Pathologist, or whatever it's called. Nate was a VERY good boy, and he sat very well. I was so proud of him. She flipped a book and showed Nate a bunch of pictures and asked him to name the things in the pictures while she wrote things down. She said he does have some issues with the way he is forming some letters, and its mostly due to an oral motor problem, which basically is a fancy way of saying the muscles around his mouth need some strengthening. He doesn't have eating problems, so its not severe, but he does need to be coming in to help correct the problem. We will also be working with him at home on some oral motor exercises to help strengthen those muscles more quickly. (For some reason "more quickly" doesn't sound like proper grammar, lol).

So that's the update, for now.

PS: Funny thing Nate just said while eating lunch today: "Mommy, this cheese doesn't look very tasty."

Nate Has A Chip on His Shoulder....

I know he's young, but for some reason, my little guy has a Chip on his shoulder. I really don't know how to handle this.


HA HA!!!

P's and Q's

Well, it's more like A's and B's but P's and Q's just sounded better. Just the other day, I started going over the letter A with Nate. I have no idea when Grace was able to recognize her letters, and I'm sure this is probably not a big deal for a three year old. I suppose most kids are probably able to recognize their letters at this age, but my son is very active and doesn't like to sit still for very long. For that reason, I haven't really thought he was able to learn anything that required more than 30 seconds of his attention. Anyway, we went over the letter A and he has been able to recognize the letter A (upper and lower case) every time he sees it. Then I did the letter B. He gets a little confused with the lower case B, but the upper case B he has been very consistent with knowing. I'm so proud of my little boy!

I guess the other reason I haven't felt like it was a big deal to rush this because I know once he starts school, they will go over this. I know with Grace, they were learning letters, and colors, and shapes and I was REALLY surprised they had to go over that at that age, since she had known colors and shapes at 2. All of my friends' kids knew that stuff early, and definitely by the time they started school, too, so I thought that was normal. Anyway, Nate knows his colors and shapes, too, so now we are working on letters, and then its off to phonics.

We are TRYING to work on potty training this little booger, too. That's not going quite as well. He is very stubborn. There are times he will tell us all by himself that he has to go potty. Most of the time, however, I have to put him on it myself and then he will go. I've tried putting him in regular underwear, but he will still go in his pants anyway. I will change him and he will go again in his pants. I'm not sure what else to do, really.....so I will just keep trying. Maybe one day he will get it.

25 Random Things

I did this on my facebook and thought it would be a good post to post here to give you few faithful blog checkers something to read to reward you for checking my blog. (If you're on my facebook, you will see I did make some changes, so read again anyhow).

1. I have a bad habit of making sure the dishes are completely rinsed off and free of food before they are put into the dishwasher. I'm not really sure why I don't just wash them.
2. My second nephew was born on Saturday! Welcome to the world, Elijah Luke.
3. When it gets cooler out here, I can feel a change in my skin: mostly my hands get VERY dry and feel all weird and gritty.
   
4. I have a scar on the right side of my upper lip. I was bitten by my dog.
5. Grace's middle name is spelled like this: ELISABETH
6. Nate's name was almost Cole. We couldn't decide, and just said that when we first saw him we'd see what he looked like more. He looked like a Nathan.
7. My birthday is in a week. I cannot even believe I am in my 30's much less going to be 32.
8. My husband is the best hubby, like, ever!
9. We will be celebrating 7 years of marriage next month. Here's to 70 more, babe!! <3
10. One of my favorite shows on TV is called "Deliver Me" about three OB/GYN docs in southern California. I love this show. I want to be an OB nurse!
11. I didn't go to college right out of high school for many reasons: I didn't get into the ONE school I applied to, I was never really encouraged to go to college, I wasn't guided into applying to more than one college (or ever the community college for that matter), I wasn't guided into applying for financial aid to help pay for college, I thought I couldn't afford college, etc. Now, looking back, I'm glad I didn't go. I may not be where I am today if I had. I probably wouldn't have gotten all A's and B's in college either if I had gone 13 years ago!
12. I will start the nursing program in either August of this year or next January- just not sure which one I am applying to, yet. (More-than-likely, its going to be January, though).
    
13. I trust my husband completely. He's one of the few good guys out there. And he's mine! :)
14. Sometimes I think about having more kids.
15. I don't like to cook dinner.
16. I hate cockroaches. I really, really hate them.
17. I'm glad I don't see cockroaches in my house.
18. I really want a puppy. And a flat screen TV.
19. Grace's birthday is 9/12. My birthday is 2/8. Ray's birthday is 7/4. If you add Ray's birth month to my birth month (7+2) you get Grace's birth month (9). If you add my birth day to Ray's birth day (8+4), you will also get Grace's birth day (12). Cool huh?
20. I get WAY better grades in college than I did in high school, go figure.
21. I am VERY afraid of not doing well in nursing school, thanks to all the horror stories I've heard about the program at my school, and also because I constantly doubt my academic abilities on a pretty much daily basis.
22. My middle name is Marisa
23. I am exactly 5 feet tall.
24. My husband is 6'5"
25. His arm is as long as my leg, sadly.

Scary

The other day, Nate gave us quite a scare. He had his first MAJOR fall at the park. We go to this park quite often so the kids are really familiar with the whole playground and have gotten good at climbing and jumping and running and playing on it. Well, the other day Ray took the kids to the park while I was home studying and they were all running around playing. We still don't know the exact cause of the fall, but Grace and Nate were attempting to climb down a ladder about 6 feet-ish high up in the air from one of the platforms on the playground. Grace may have bumped into Nate or she might not have, we're not sure, but somehow, Nate took a tumble about 6 feet down off the ladder. Apparently it was so scary that quite a few people came over to see how he was doing while Ray was taking care of him. I obviously didn't see it, but I am glad I didn't. I would have been an emotional basket case seeing my little buddy fall that much. Ray was close, but unfortunately not close enough as he tried to make it there in time to break the fall. The good news is my little guy is a strong little booger and he didn't even get a scratch! Thank goodness. That was quite a little scare.