Nate-Dog is

sick.

Nate woke up at 7:30am this morning saying, "Mommy, my mouth hurts when I close my mouth.

At this point, I didn't really think anything of this. You see, quite often, Grace wakes up in the morning with the "I slept with my mouth open and now it hurts" sore throat thing. She drinks some water and viola- all better. Also, with Grace's appliance that she just recently got put into her upper jaw (oh.....I think I may have forgotten to blog about this....sorry, will explain soon), she has been complaining about her mouth hurting when closing her teeth/jaw. So I just thought it was maybe hurting but maybe Nate using the same excuse as his sister as to what was actually hurting. But Nate seemed to go on his merry way with no other complaints at all.

Fast forward to 1pm. Ray takes Grace and Nate to his parent's house so that I can study and he can build us a new bed frame. It's raining and Grace and Nate are inside and apparently Nate looks sick and wants to go to sleep. Ok. He NEVER just "wants" to go to sleep. Ray's mom takes his temperature and its almost 103. Ray calls me.

I immediately replay in my mind the last time something similar to this had happened. Grace was younger than Nate (actually Nate wasn't even born yet) and she had a swimming lesson we needed to get ready for. As I changed her, I could feel her body burning up. I took her temp- 104! I asked her if anything was bothering her, but she said she felt fine. Took her straight to the pediatrician's office and the doctor, who was quite surprised that Gracie had no complaints, informed me that she had strep throat.

I tell Ray to get a flashlight and take a look at Nate's throat. Nate's throat is really red, he told me. They come home and I take at look, and yes, his throat is very red. So I ask him, "Nate, is there anything bothering you?" "Yes, my throat," he says, as he is pointing to his throat. I'm just about sure it's strep throat at this point, so I get ready to take him over to the pediatrician's office (thank goodness the pediatrician's office is open 365 days a year and the office location that has the extended hours is right around the corner from my house).

So in we go, they take his temp, which has now FINALLY gone down to 100.3 nearly 3 hours after taking Tylenol. The nurse (is it wrong of me to want to say "Medical Assistant" here, which is what the "nurses" in doctors offices usually are, instead of calling her "nurse" since it correlates to the title that I am working so hard for??) asks me what we're there for. I tell her I think Nate has strep throat and she grabs the swabs to take a culture of his throat for one of those rapid strep tests. The doctor then comes in, does her thing, takes a look and says, "Yes, his throat is red." but the way she says it, it's like my whole reason for being at the office today was to confirm that Nate's throat was indeed red. I am keeping myself from laughing at this point because, while no, I am not a doctor and I don't know everything, I really didn't need the help of a doctor to interpret the color of Nate's throat. I can clearly see that it was red, AND all by myself, mind you. So, she tells me that we need to wait on the results of the strep test to see if we need an antibiotic or if its just viral and she had Nate and I wait in the chairs by the lab.

So we wait, but just for a few minutes.

A few minutes later, the lab finally puts Nate's paperwork up. Another nurse than the one we had talked to earlier (again, medical assistant) comes by and grabs it and by the look on her face, I knew exactly what the result was. The doctor, who was seeing another patient, comes out, out of the room and takes a look and tells me its positive for strep, tells me the normal things the doctor tells you when you need to take an antibiotic and then hands me Nate's prescription.

As of now, Nate is laying on the couch watching the Cars movie in his pj's with his teddy bear. He's so cute and SOOOOO calm, so you can tell the poor boy is really sick.

Now here's to the fun part of trying to keep the entire house from being contaminated, and of course, to my poor boy to feel better soon.

Spelling Bee

I had envisioned the moment my daughter would walk on stage for her very first spelling bee. It went something like this:

Grace would get up there and spell just about every word correctly. She would maybe win, but she was going against second and third graders so, they could very well win, too. But she would do well and give them a run for their money anyhow.

Well, it didn't go at all like that. She was the very first one, and on her very first word of her very first spelling bee, she was out. She had to spell the word "Form" and spelled "From" instead. Poor girl. But I am extremely proud of her, none-the-less. She was selected as 1 of 3 students from her whole class to compete and the third spot was a tie between 2 other students who had a small spelling bee of their own for the spot.....which means Grace was picked without any hesitation.

And I'm proud of her for trying to hold it together afterwards as well. You could see the disappointment in her face as she walked off the stage and back to her seat. You could see how hard she was trying to fight back tears and not a tear had been shed. But when the spelling bee was over, she turned around to Ray and me and said she wanted to just go home (there was still 30 minutes or so left of school) and started crying. "I can't believe I got out on my first word. This is my first spelling bee," she sobbed. I reassured her and hugged her and told her how proud I was of her.

She went back to her classroom to get her backpack and the other kids told her, "Good job, Grace," which I thought was sweet. She started to feel better and ended up playing with the kids on the playground for the remainder of the school day.

I was in a spelling bee once, too in sixth grade. It was my first spelling bee and I believe it was my first word, and I got out. My word was "Sense" or maybe it was "Cents" but I was so nervous that I spelled another version of the spelling then what they asked for (don't forget, it can also be spelled "Scents" as well). And just like that, I was out.

Guess the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree. Poor Grace.

Some things....

going on in our lives right now:

• I am very proud of my little Gracielu. Grace has been selected for the school spelling bee. She is one of three kids chosen from her class to compete against 2nd and 3rd grade. The spelling bee is tomorrow. While I believe that my little Gracie-pie is pretty smart, she isn't the best speller in the world. She does very well with her "spelling" lists that she is given, but spelling other words, not so much. If they use the lists given as homework for the bee, then she's got a shot. But at the same time, she's going against kids in 2nd and 3rd grade!! I'm sure their best spellers are spelling much harder words, right?? Either way, I'm still very proud she was even given the opportunity. How exciting! I'll post the results tomorrow.
• Nate. My little guy....so proud of him. He is completely potty trained and has been for quite some time, but we just couldn't get him to stay dry while he slept (never had that problem with Grace). So at night, we have been putting pull ups on him. Some days, he wakes up dry and some he doesn't. Well we ran out of pull ups and on Saturday night we have gotten home too late to run out to the store to buy more, so we took a chance. I am proud to say that he has stayed dry every night since!!! It seems like he is finally completely out of pull-ups! Some nights I have woken him up to try to go potty one more time before I go to bed, but the other nights where I haven't done that, he has still stayed dry.

So that's the update for now!

Grace's Funnies

Scene: We are eating the Mother's Day cake Grace had made for me at school. I walk into the kitchen and see that even though we had small pieces, the cake is pretty much down to nothing.

Me: "Man, we really killed that cake!"

Grace: "Yeah we did." She pauses. "What does that mean?"


Kids. They sure are funny with what they say!

Nate Logic

Nate trys celery with peanut butter and raisins (ants on a log).

Nate says he likes it, but not the celery. Takes another bite.

Still says he likes it but not the celery. I take a bite, and he says, "Hey, that's mine."

I thought he didn't like celery.

"But I like the peanut butter and raisins," he says.

He finishes it.

Then he starts eating his apples.

"Mommy, apples taste just like celery. But they're apples," he explains.

Oh OK then. Oh the logic of a 4 year old.

Swagger Wagon

I came across this satirical rap video about the new Toyota Sienna. They call the Sienna a "Swagger Wagon" and if you're not up-to-date on the slang lingo of today, Swagger means:

1 : to conduct oneself in an arrogant or superciliously pompous manner; especially : to walk with an air of overbearing self-confidence
2 : boast, brag

At any rate, a rap song about a minivan is pretty funny. Here is it: