Holiday Zoobalee

Cloe's last day at Semper was Thursday 12/18/08!!!!!! To say I was excited would be an understatement. The nice thing about staying for two more weeks, once I found another school, was that she got to participate in her holiday program, one she had been diligently practicing for. She was most definitely the cutest Hyena in the Zoo!!! (Yes I am biased). Anyway the pictures are a little dark, she was in the darkest costume and placed in the darkest corner of the stage so please forgive the pictures!

Just a little stage fright to begin.

This would be little Miss Sassy telling me I needed to move up to the front row of chairs. She actually pouted a little when I couldn't. Always the life of any party!

The whole gang!

It was really cute, I just wish that instead of the CD doing all the singing the teacher would have allowed the kids to do all the songs. Guess that would have been too much work! (oops was that my out loud voice)! Anyway, it was really cute!

Now we are onto different adventures at a new school, where her first day there will be a field trip to the movie theater! The whole school has been reading "The Tale of Despereaux" and once they finished they would all be going to see the movie! What a cool field trip. Wish I could have done something fun like that when I was in kindergarten. I am still a little anxious with everything, going from one very bad experience makes me very apprehensive, but I do have a good feeling about this school, and her new teacher has experience teaching kids with her disabilities, so that's a huge advantage over the last one. I guess we'll just wait and see what happens. I am much wiser now and even though it's been four months of fighting I still have a lot left in me! :)

First ER trip

So we made our very first ever trip to the urgent care at Children's hospital last night. Fro slammed her finger in the car door and she did a very good job. I was originally going to wait for the morning, cuz of course it was after 5:00, but when we got back from the hospital after seeing Carrie and Brody I took another look at it and decided it needed professional help. So we hit the urgent care and it was a good thing we did, cuz she did break the finger, and got a very nice laceration under the nail. Poor thing was so scared when they tried to give her the shot to numb the finger. I had to practically lay on her to keep her still so they could administer the meds. They finally ended up putting in an IV and sedated her completely, which ment we spent the whole night at the hospital. I was good until I they started trying to remove the nail and had to fight her to try to keep her still. She did announce to everyone in the hospital as well as anyone within a five mile radius of the hospital that she hated the hospital and the Dr. Good thing the doctor didn't take it personal. :) The staff was so good with her, even after all her rants. I had put a Sponge Bob bandage on over the gauze to get her to the hospital and when they bandaged her up they didn't have any Sponge Bob bandage so one of the nurses got a Sponge Bob sticker, cut him out of the sticker and taped it to the bandage so she could still have Sponge Bob on her owie. Sorry no pic's, I was so tired when we got home today all I wanted was to go to sleep. We had to re-wrap it and I didn't even think about pictures. Anyway, we survived, and she has a nice bandage to show off to everyone for the next few weeks!

What have you been up to????

So we've been in school for over a month now and it hasn't been the most enjoyable experience. I figured I'd have to be a "hands on Mom" when it came to Fro's schooling, but this is ridiculous. You know the saying, "You can never go back", well whoever said it did not have kids. I was called the second week of school to take Cloe home, I believe it was around 8:30 in the morning, school starts at 8:05! Her major offense was running away from the teacher. I refused to take her home, as I explained to the principal it was rewarding her behavior, so I gave them two options 1) I sat in the class room with her to reinforce what the teacher did or 2) I take over the principals office, they supply me with the curriculum for the day and I teacher her there. Luckily they picked option one. It's gone down hill from there and we are at the point of figuring out which school she will be transferred too, by my request.

Her Dr. had us fill out the Conner's questionnaire, it's used to diagnose AD/HD. When we went to the appointment for him to give us the results he informed me that he didn't even evaluate the teachers questionnaire because it was so negative it wouldn't give us any usable results. I have to say I felt vindicated with that statement, I seriously thought I was going crazy and Fro truly was the spawn of the devil! She has been diagnoses with AD/HD and we are seeing a councilor who thinks she may have Aspergers syndrome in addition to the AD/HD. What an adventure we are on!!!!! The good news is we are getting some answers and we have the option to change her schools, I just feel she has been so negatively labeled she will not get a fair shot at her current school!

Wasn't sending our kids to school suppose to give us a little break and not be so difficult?????

Life is pretty exhausting right now, and I thought I didn't sleep when I was in school!!!!! We're working through it though. I really like her councilor and she seems to like her too. We have a big meeting this Wednesday with people from the district, including the superintendent and the district director of special education as well as myself and her councilor so we'll see what happens.

I hate to say it but that's pretty much been life for the last month. I am on information overload and had to take two mental health day's to recover. O.k. I only planned one, that was bamboozled when Fro was suspended, so I made up for it a little when my car decided to blow a spark plug and had to be fixed! The nice thing is that bad things happen in three's so I should be good for a really long time! Oh, my kitchen facet had to be replaced after giving me a shower and I as trying to do dished Tuesday night! Life is an adventure!!! :)

Anyway, Fro is showing no scares at this point, which is good. I plan on getting her into a new school before we see any. It's pretty exhausting for her. As you can see from the picture below she was so tired one night she couldn't even get up to turn off the light, all she could do was reach for the bowl she was playing with earlier (don't ask me why she was playing with it) to make it dark enough for her to go to sleep!

1st Day of School

It's hard to believe that summer is basically over, the high tomorrow is only 63 degrees, I may need to pull out my winter coat!!! :) And with the end of summer comes the first day of school. Fro is now in kindergarten, how time has flown, I swear she was three only yesterday.

The build up to school wasn't much, the only difference from her pre-school was that she got to take her new yellow back pack to her new school. We both have survived the first week, she started on Tuesday. We parked the car and were walking across the street and we had the following conversation.

Cloe: Mom you can go back to the car, you are just dropping me off.
Me: Well, I want to walk you to your new class room.
Cloe: No mom, you need to go back to the car, I can go myself
Me: But mommy needs to make sure you get to you class o.k.
Cloe: You're going to be late for work mom, look at your watch (as she points the it) you're going to be late!
Little Miss independent!

She did finally give in so I did walk her to meet her class. They had all the kids assemble outside on the play ground so they had music playing and the principal was encouraging everyone to dance! It was fun. Anyway the time came and all the kids were to line up with their teacher, and the parents were to stand off to the side. Pictures were being taken (see below) and kisses were given. I stepped back a little way to make room for other parents and Fro so sweetly said to one of them, "You're standing in my mom's way"! Wonder if she'll try comedy out as a career or if she'll just be the class clown. All the parent around us were laughing. Good thing she's so cute!

So far we really like her teacher, and we got our first night of homework done and turned in! I'm really excited about this year and she seems to be as well, so far she is excited every morning and we haven't had the whole separation anxiety yet. The only thing for me is, I can't believe I have a kindergartener!!!!!

You will also notice that Fro has a new hair style for the new school year. We finally had enough of the fights to comb and fix her hair so one morning I told her, fine we would go to the beauty salon after work and cut her hair. I forgot all about it until we were on our way home and she announced that we still had to go get her hair cut! It's so much easier now, and I still think she looks so cute!

My little poser!

Standing in line waiting to go to class

Fro and Mom

(We're #1)

5 Yr Up-Date

Yesterday we went to our favorite pediatrician for Fro's five year check up (yes we are a little late). Anyway, for those who haven't seen her lately she is now 48 inches (yes that is four feet!!!!) and 64.1 lbs. Needless to say she is in the >97% on both height and weight, though she is in proportion so we aren't worried. She is a strong little girl too, it took me and two nurses to hold her down for her shots! We are all done, until next year so the trauma has passed.

I just can't believe she'll be starting kindergarten in less than a month. How crazy is that! I know I'm gonna be in for some fun because she had another interesting conversation with Debbie, the Pre-school director. A few day's ago the kids wanted to go for a walk and in order to do so each child had to hold onto the rope, well Fro decided she didn't want to hold on to the rope so she had to stay at pre-school with Debbie, and their conversation went like this:

Debbie: "Cloe why aren't you going for a walk with your friends?"

Cloe: "My friends don't want me to go, and I'm going to have nightmares about it."

WHAT????!!!!!

When the kids and teachers got back Debbie pointed out to Fro that her friends were back and she again announced that they didn't want her to go and she will have nightmares about it!

Can you imagine what she will be like as a teenager??!! I am in soooooo much trouble!

The Joys of HR

When I went into HR I figured I'd have to do my fair share of firing, ya know, performance issues, failed drug screens, attendance, drinking on the job. Well this week I can add bouncer to my resume because I had to throw out my very first drunk! Some guy, more than likely a vagrant, somehow climbed into our warehouse through one of the bay doors, the tall ones that semi-trucks back up into to deliver or pick up merchandise, and began wondering through the warehouse. Either my janitor stopped him or he stopped my janitor, who happens to be from Somalia and speaks only a few words in English, favorite phases are "I am fine" and "No good". Anyway this guy stopped my employee and tried to communicate with him, in his drunken stupor, it was kind of funny. Good thing I work for a manufacturing plant and I have a lot of big, tough, beefy guys to back me up and assist me in these fun little duties! I have to admit that my job is never boring, frustrating and infuriating yes, but boring NO!!!!!! :)

Gymnastics

Our latest adventure was to enroll Fro in gymnastics at "The Little Gym". It's such a cute little place, and all the teachers are fabulous. Fro had a little bit of a hard time at the beginning of each class because she wanted to skip the stretching and go straight to the equipment. I think her favorite thing to do was the uneven bars, she didn't like to turn around, she just loved to swing. :) Anyway this Saturday was her last class and they have a performance for all the parents for this last class, each kid gets a turn to show off their skills on the balance beam, the uneven bars and the floor. It was so cute. At the end each kid got a "shiny gold medal" as Fro calls it. She was really happy to get it, but didn't want to stand around and wait for everyone else to get their medal, and wasn't too happy when she had to go back up to the "podium" so we could take all their pictures, as you can see. It's been fun watching her learn the different skills and see her excited to "go to practice". We had to run some errand after her class and she had to show everyone her shiny gold medal. She's very proud of it.

Showing off!

My little poser!

I can't get the video I took to load, so I may just have to e-mail it out for anyone who wants to see it.

Is it summer????

For any one who has forgotten, I strongly dislike the cold, so when Fro was asking in February to paint a bird house I couldn't wait until it started to get warm again. I don't know where she got the idea but every time we passed a craft store, JoAnn Fabric, Hobby Lobby, Michael's she would always bring it up. Well, I finally gave in and we spent a Saturday afternoon skillfully painting the bird house, getting it ready for it's new owner, who ever they may be. Fro had a blast, and thanks to washable and fume free paints, so did I.

My little angle!

Finishing up the roof.

What I thought was the finished project

Now, the finished project.

No one has claimed this as their home as of yet, Fro has to bring it in every night! Just can't let go! :)

Somethings NEVER change :)

So in April, yes last month, my Mom celebrated her ?? birthday and my sister thought what a great idea if we all went to Montana and surprised her. So we made the 14 hr trek to Stevensville to celebrate! Mom, love ya, but never again in April. How quickly we forget how COLD it stays in Montana until July. We left 70 degree weather to spend a week in snow, rain, and 40 some degrees.

While we were there we took all the kids to the park. Ya gotta love small towns! I was looking around at the playground equipment and believe it or not the same slide that I played on when I was around Fro's age is still there, and still the only one to play on. They still had the same tractor (minus a steering wheel) and the same tractor tires, though they have been painted. How funny! The kids had fun. Anyway, over a month later we have thawed out, recovered from the driving and are looking forward to doing it all over again, preferably in Tahiti!

Fro on the tires, I can't believe I didn't take a picture of the slide! I guess I was in some level of shock that it was still standing!

New Bed

So Fro has, from time to time, been obsessed with playing with the laundry basket. Here is her latest design, her new bed!

She insisted on sleeping in it for several nights.

Isn't she just an Angel!!!

I just love her smile in this picture. It's so Cloe!

Cloeisms (Kids say the darndest things)

Cloe's favorite phase lately is "You're silly like an alligator". My only question is, how silly is an alligator?

Like this...

Or may be this...

Who's to really know. I don't want to track one down and ask.

Her latest ...

You're as beautiful as an elephant!

She announced this as she was inspecting her work, she had just "fixed" my hair! I guess I should count my blessings that she didn't announce that I was as big as an elephant!

I'm not beautiful

So this week I was waking Cloe up one morning and as she was coming to I said, "Good morning beautiful." She promptly rolled over and announced, "Mom I'm not beautiful, I'm Cloe!" So there you go! We also got her school pictures back and she is more than just beautiful, if I do say so myself. I still need to get her to say that she takes after her Mom when someone tells her how cute she is! Think it's too late???? Anyway she was quite the ham when the photographer was there to take the pictures last month, she was just coming up with all sorts of posses. This behavior was no surprise to me since she'll frequently go get my camera and ask me to take pictures of her. I was tying to get one of her pictures so I could post it with this but no luck, you'll just have to wait to get one in the mail! :) In the mean time here she is playing dress up with her mermaid tail.

Self Portraits

So Fro decided to try her hand at photography, specifically self-portraits. Here's a sample of her work.

The foot is sooooo amazing

???Checking for flies???
I think I just dated myself!

A close up for good measure!

Yes, it is a hand!

Where to begin?

So here I am joining in with the whole Blog thing. Not sure what to say right now other than I really wish I was a sleep. I have to say the human body is amazing, but the one thing the good Lord forgot an on/off switch for the brain, leaving all breathing and system functions going of course! If I ever figure out how to do that I'll let ya all know.

Fro has had a few trials lately. She is the resident bully at Pre-school. She is currently into hitting and spitting at people. On one of the phone calls I received last week, she was hitting, I was just so frustrated because if only one of these little kids would just stand up to her I think this whole thing would be over. Not to encourage their hitting or violence. Funny thing is, a few day's later it finally happened. A little boy named Dylan hit her and then spit at her. Needless to say she was VERY upset. When I picked her up that evening she announced that she needed to talk to Debbie (the Directer) and the conversation goes as follows:

Cloe: Debbie, did you take care of the Dylan situation?
Debbie: Yes Cloe we did.
Cloe: Did you call his Mom?
Debbie: Yes I did.
Cloe: Are you sure?

If I haven't said it before, I'll say it now, I am in BIG trouble!!!!!! :)

We then explained to her that everyone who is naughty has the same consequences. I don't know, Mom, were we all this smart when we were this age or is it just the last few generations?

By the way Mom, thanks for the dress! Fro has never been obsessed with dresses before this one. This week it was the only thing she's wanted to wear. Every morning when it was time to get dressed all she wanted was her "flower" dress, nothing else would do. We have had tears every morning. Anticipating this issue I "hid" it in her hamper and keep telling her if she finds it she can wear it. For good or for bad she hasn't found it yet.