{Arrow of Light}

He is moving on up in the world!!  He has finished everything needed in Cub Scouts and they said he is ready to move on up to Boy Scouts. This last Tuesday he had his Arrow of Light Ceremony and got to cross that oh so special bridge from Cub Scouts to Boy Scouts!!   He is one happy camper I tell ya!!!  He is excited to camp and shoot guns and earn merit badges.  We are proud of how hard he has worked so far and what a good kid he is!!  Congrats Ayden!

{Summer Begins}

Today marks the end of the school year here in our neck of the woods.  The kids are both excited and sad to be ending such a good year.  They are going to miss their teachers and their schools (both Ayden and Meysa are moving up to new schools), but excited to be done with school.  I thought it would be kinda fun to take pictures today to see how much they have changed over the course of a school year.  Wow, when you do a side by side comparison, you can see quite a bit of change!!  Our summer has begun (as I write this the kids are home from school early so it is official) and we are looking forward to sunshine, family and friends!!

 Ayden is moving on to bigger and better things, otherwise known as Middle School next year.  I am freaked out but he is looking forward to it.  Apparently he loved that shirt, didn't even try to have him wear it  today again!!  

Ayden had his 5th Grade Promotion ceremony yesterday at school.  He earned an Excellence in Academic award, which means that he maintained an ES (Exceeds Standard or an A+) for the year.  We are really proud of how hard he worked and how well he adjusted to a new school this year.   

Miss Meysa gets to move up to third grade and to a new school next year too.  She too has done really well this year.  She is reading proficiently at a full grade level above where they expect her to and met the criteria for the gifted and learning program in reading.  She loved school and loved making new friends!!

Little Miss Lauryn excelled too in Kindergarten.  She loved her teacher and loved going to school.  Art was by far her favorite class, which she took very seriously.  She would always say that she needed to wear old clothes so that she didn't ruin her nice ones (she gets her "art' all over).  She was that into Art!!  She is reading really well and has met all her academic goals for the year.  She is excited to be in First Grade next year.  

This little man had to get in on the action as well.  He will be starting Preschool this coming Fall with Mom at home.  I have a curriculum all figured out and we are going to have a great time together.  (he is feeling better and basically recovered from his surgery 10 days ago, yippee).

So here is to a great school year, great teachers and great friends!!  We are excited for summer!!  

{Eleven}

Our Ayden turned the BIG Eleven yesterday!!  Really I am in denial.  How could my first born be on the cusp of teenagehood (I totally just made that word up :)?  He is starting MIDDLE SCHOOL in three months and I am continually finding grey hairs.  Those are the hallmarks of a Mom of an almost teenager.  How can that be?!!  

Ayden is more than ready to move on up the age ladder.  Much to our dismay!  He has grown a lot this last year.  Moving to a new place and handling that well, being the new kid in school, earning his Arrow of Light award in Scouts, learning to play the trumpet, the list could go on and on.  What a treasure he is in our family!!  Like any almost tween we have moments where we want to ship him off to Timbuktu but on the whole he is helpful, funny and irreplaceable.  

He wanted a party this year and since he hasn't had one since he was I think 7 (yeah I am a great mom), I thought it was about time he had another one.  Thankfully he is easy to please, he had four friends come over and they played in the slip-n-slide, jumped on the tramp, ate homemade pizza and Frosty's, and of course put Legos together.  They were happy and I was happy!!  Happy Birthday Ayden Tyler, we love you!!!

 Since he is moving up to 11yr old scouts we thought it was time to start collecting all the camping gear he will need for the next few years.  Ryan, being in the Young Mens,  needed some stuff as well for when he goes on camp outs and hikes with the boys.  So they s got some backpacking packs and headlamps (Ryan is modeling Ayden's pack above).  Then Ayden got some books and his very own iPod shuffle (so he will leave mine alone).    All in all I think a great birthday for a great kid!!

Yummy Cinnamon Toast Crunch Cupcakes.  I like getting to try new recipes.  Ayden was more than ok with cupcakes and not a cake!!

Good Friends having a good time!!  Happy Birthday Ayden!!

{Can you hear me now?}

I am sure those of you who are parents have said a time or two (or twenty), "I just wish my kids would listen to me!!!"  I know I have, at least several times....a day!!  With my youngest child I thought he was taking it to the extreme.  Not only was he not listening to me he was constantly asking me to repeat myself!!  Talk about exhausting and liable to send me to the loony bin!!  Finally I asked myself, I wonder if he can't really hear.  Is that why he is always asking me to repeat myself, or is he just not paying me any attention?  After paying real careful attention to when he was struggling to hear I realized he really probably couldn't hear.  He struggled to hear when we were in the car with all the kids talking, or if I wasn't looking directly at him so he could read my lips.  Ryan and I also noticed that after a fever (which he had a few) his hearing would become worse where he would talk louder, want the tv volume up louder ect.  So I decided that it most likely wasn't my parenting skills (which by the way made me feel so much better) but that he may have a hearing problem.  So a few months ago I got him in to the Dr. for a hearing test.  He failed it!!  Not surprising but only validated my intuition about there being a real problem.  While performing the hearing test, they initially test to see how much the ear drum moves.  In a healthy ear it is suppose to look like a bell curve on a graph, Wyatt's was a flat line.  His eardrum wasn't moving at all.  The most likely of causes was fluid in the middle ear that wasn't draining on it's own.  What is so curious to me was that he had never been diagnosed with an ear infection, ever.  But nonetheless that was essentially what his problem was.  The ENT and audiologist wanted to repeat the audiogram in two months to see if the fluid would resolve itself or not.  So two months later we had another test and he failed that one too.  Still a flat line on the tympanogram.  Tubes were in this little man's near future.  The ears were only one part of our little man's problems.  He snored...a lot, enough that we called him Darth Wyatt!!  He didn't really have sleep apnea where he would stop breathing per say but he would snore and kind of have a catch in his breathing.  So the Dr felt like he needed his tonsils and adenoids out as well.  

This morning was the big day for our little Wyatt!!  He is one smart cookie and he knew that he couldn't hear well and we had discussed what was going to happen today.  The one part that I worried the most about was him getting his IV.  Thankfully the nurses and staff are so smart and didn't give him his IV until he was asleep.  We got to the hospital early this morning and got checked in, getting vitals, bracelets, consents, ect. all lined up.  The nursing staff loved Wyatt, they thought he was such a cute kid.  He was a little tired when we got there but as he woke up then his personality came out a little.  I was worried about him having a fit too about not getting to eat but thankfully there was enough going on around him that he didn't even mention it until right before he went back to the OR.  He wanted to make sure he was going to get his popsicle that I had promised him.

The really nice thing that the staff did was allow me to take him back to the OR and stay with him until he was asleep.  It was going to be traumatic enough to wake up in a place he didn't know and with people he didn't know, I was thankful they did it that way.  So I got gowned up and walked back to the OR with Wyatt and the nurse and was there to reassure Wyatt when he laid on the table and was breathing through the mask until he feel asleep.  It really went well.  He didn't even fight the mask.  Then Ryan and I got breakfast from the cafeteria while we waited for the surgery to get done.

We anxiously awaited the Dr. coming to tell us everything went alright.  Which he did of course!!  He said that Wyatt absolutely needed tubes as there was fluid present in his ears at the time of surgery.  He also said that it had been somewhat of a chronic thing too from the looks of his ear drums.  He called his ear infections silent otitis, ones that don't present themselves with fevers and an ear ache.  He also said that his adenoid tissue was substantial and no wonder the kid couldn't breath through his nose.  He said he should be able to breath much better now that his adenoids were gone plus it would help with his ears being able to drain properly on their own.  His tonsils weren't huge but they were enlarged and so it was good to get them out as well.

We were then taken back to the recovery room, where we could hear Wyatt screaming from the hallway.  He wasn't so much crying as he was screaming because he was ticked.  He recognized our voices and then it still took him some time to calm down.  He didn't want the suction anywhere near his mouth and didn't want to be hooked up to anything.  They said he had done amazingly well but was mad that Mom and Dad weren't there when he woke up.  Plus I think he was still fighting some of the anesthesia.  The nurses monitored his vitals for a while and then moved us to the APU to finish discharging.  He fell asleep right before they moved us, so tired from his crazy morning.

They wanted him to be able to eat a popsicle and keep it down before they let us go.  We woke him up (kinda) and had him eat his popsicle.  He liked it and perked up quite a bit once he had that in his tummy.  After getting discharged and stopping by the pharmacy to get some good drugs, we headed home where he inhaled another few popsicles and got to watch Nick Jr.

We are so thankful that his surgery went well, that he was well taken care of (the nurses and Dr. were fantastic) and that he can hear now.  He has already said that his hearing is different and he can hear things that he couldn't have just yesterday.  We have to put antibiotic drops in his ears to clear the fluid that is there.  Other than that we just have to nurse a sore throat with lots of popsicles and mac-n-cheese (Dr.'s orders :)!!  He has been such a trooper and has reacted better than expected.  So thankful for modern medicine!!  Now his excuse for not listening to me can't be that he didn't hear me, it will be because he is not paying attention to me!!  Love you Wyman!!