The Flu...

That's what Shawn has. I'm not trying to blame anyone here but it just so happens that my aunt and her two kids were sick with the flu the week before Easter. I would have thought they would have been germ free by then but who knows. Dr. Tappan also thinks Shawn may have a sinus infection on top of the flu so we are getting drugs to treat that. I'm just praying that Joshua or the rest of us don't get it.

Sickness

It hit our house again. This time Shawn is sick. The thing with Shawn is that he doesn't really complain when he's not feeling well. The only reason I found out he was sick was I was making him blow his nose on Saturday and I felt his face. He was burning up! I took his temp and it was 102.7. We gave him some children's Tylenol which brought it down some but didn't break the fever completely so we've had to alternate between Tylenol and Motrin. We have a doctor's appointment today at 3:10pm so I'm hoping to get some drugs for him. This morning he was still running a fever plus he threw up. Although I think he threw up because he has a very strong gag reflux and can't handle phlegm. I just hope the rest of us don't get sick. I've been trying to boost my immune system but I think Joshua may be getting it already. Last night I heard him cough in his sleep a few times.

Thank goodness...

I got that over with. The Fridge is DONE!!! Every shelf, seal, and drawer is now clean, yay! I threw all the expired condiments/food away and now there is plenty of room in there. Can you believe I had 3 small grated Parmesan cheeses? I don't even think we used them as they were all full. I think I'll try to finish cleaning the master bath today also along with the other bathroom. I'm just having a fun filled weekend aren't I?

We finally got our income tax return back and our first purchase with the extra money is a water filter for the sink. We bought this one. Now we can get rid of the water cooler that we have. It should save us a little electricity from not having the water cooler and should save us money not having to buy bottled water for the cooler. It will now cost us about $8.00 a month for clean drinking water once you factor in the cost of a new replacement filter every 6 months. I don't think we'll have the money to buy that juicer I want just yet. Maybe when we clean out our garage we can have a garage sale and put the money we earn towards the juicer.

Movie Night...

With Shawn that is. I took him to see Horton Hears a Who last night while Don watched Joshua. We got there about 4:55 and I asked for tickets for the 5:30 showing. Since we had a little time, we walked next door to Wise Guys Pizza to get some dinner. I decided to get the pizza to go so we could just eat it in the theater and wouldn't have to hurry. Well, when we walked back over to the theater, auditorium 16 still had the doors closed so we sat on a bench and waited. By 5:15pm the doors to auditorium 16 were still closed so I walked over and peeked in just to make sure the movie was actually playing and it was so I sat back down. By now I was getting a little angry that they put the movies so close together like that. I looked at our tickets again to make sure we had the right auditorium and it did indeed say #16. At 5:25pm when they still had not opened the doors, I looked at my ticket again and this time I noticed that the show time on the ticket said 4:45pm. Oh, I was so angry at that moment but I kept my cool and walked over to the customer service desk and she issued us new tickets. Luckily, there weren't that many people in the auditorium for that showing so we were still able to get a good seat and everything was fine.

I thought the movie was cute and Shawn said he liked it but he was very distracted during the movie. I don't think it had enough "action" for him. He kept turning around in his seat to see where the movie was coming out of. Of course during the previews they showed the new Speed Racer movie trailer and that's all Shawn could talk about. He wants to see that movie so bad but I don't think it's going to be rated G, lol. During the preview, I saw some Kung Fu fighting. I guess that would be considered violence and probably make it a PG. That's too bad because I know it would be a movie Shawn would love.

I finally finished wiping down the rest of the kitchen cabinets and front of the dishwasher. I even decided to wipe down the pantry door! However, I still have not cleaned out the fridge and it is way over due so it is now on the top of my list of things to do. I think I'll go start on it now.

Well, I didn't finish my spring cleaning but I think I had a pretty good excuse. I did get the top cabinets that I had left to wipe down but did not finish the bottom cabinets or the dishwasher (I did clean the inside of the dishwasher with baking soda and vinegar). I didn't clean out the fridge either. I did clean half of the master bathroom though. My excuse is this-I ordered a book on Friday and it came in the mail yesterday afternoon. I ordered the book that Kandee blogged about. You can read her post here and her update here. The book is called Gut and Psychology Syndrome by Dr. Natasha Campbell-McBride. I have been reading it every chance I get with a yellow highlighter in hand.

I've had several aha moments while reading this book. The first chapter talks about how during their second year of life, GAPS kids start developing fussy eating habits. Taken from the book- "refusing a whole lot of foodstuffs and limiting their diet to a handful of foods, usually starchy and sweet: breakfast cereals, crisps, chips, popcorn, cakes, biscuits, sweets, bananas, bread, rice, sweet yogurts. Most of these children would refuse to have vegetables, fruit (apart from bananas), meats, fish and eggs." Hello, this is totally Shawn!

It also talks about GAPS kids stools being abnormal; either constipation or diarrhea. Shawn's always had problems with his bowels. When he was 7 weeks old, he developed diarrhea that wouldn't go away and we had to switch him to soy formula. That seemed to help the diarrhea but then when he started eating solid foods, he started having constipation. After trying prunes and prune juice, his pediatrician put him on a pediatric mineral oil to keep his stools soft and regular.

Another point that sticks out is that it says a majority of autistic children have feeding problems. Excerpt from the book- "Some are very fussy and would accept only a very limited range of foods. Some cannot chew properly and would hold food in their mouth for a long time or try to swallow it in a lump." This is what I've been trying to describe to his pediatricians ever since Shawn first started eating solid foods. It was like he could not chew properly, like he wouldn't bite down all the way. He would just try to swallow things without chewing them all the way. I would have to give him tiny bites or things that would slip down his throat easily if he didn't chew it. The book does explain some possible explanations for this problem.

Right now I'm just reading and absorbing the information. I am definitely going to try the diet but I'm going to wait until after his neurology appointment next Friday. I want to get him diagnosed first. I've already started researching juicers. I used to have one but it was a piece of crap and I never used it so I sold it at a yard sale. When I buy another one, I want to really love it so I've been looking at this one. I'm not sure if I can talk Don into letting me spend the money on it but since it is for Shawn, he just might cave in, lol.

Spring Cleaning

I don't know what it was about today but I had the urge to do some deep cleaning. I didn't get as much done as I would have liked but I hope to still be in the mood to do some more tomorrow. I wiped down the front of the refrigerator, the stove, and half of the kitchen cabinets. Tomorrow, I hope to finish the rest of the cabinets and the front of the dishwasher and then clean out the fridge (it's way over due). I also went through a bunch of Shawn's toys and purged. The hard part about the toys is that we don't really have any place to store them. Our garage is a mess (which we hope to tackle in April) and we don't really feel like adding to the pile of stuff but I want them out of Shawn's room. Some of the toys I'm going to put up on E-bay and some I will donate/swap. I've already thrown away all the broken toys. Ugh, I need some storage! It would help us out tremendously if we had some walk in closets in this house. That's the one thing I haven't been able to get used to. I've had a walk in closet my entire adult life. Even the apartments we rented had walk in closets. It seems like all we do is go through our stuff to see what we can live without and then get rid of it but the pile doesn't seem to move or maybe that's just my imagination. Actually the pile has gotten smaller but there's probably a ton of stuff that needs to go back up in the attic (holiday decorations mainly). I'm just so sick of the clutter!

Happy Easter!

Here's a few pictures of our Easter:




Both boys got an Easter book, a VeggieTales CD, a stuffed bunny, and lots of candy.

At the church

Going on an Easter Egg hunt

Holy Thursday and Good Friday

St. Stephens has this neat thing that they do for the kids. They give them Holy Week passports. For each service they attend during Holy Week, they have to have their passport signed and they get a special treat. If they attend at least 3 out of the 4 services, then they get a surprise at the end. We were already planning on going to services on Good Friday and Easter so we only needed to attend one more to get the surprise. I asked Shawn if he wanted to do it and he said yes so we went to church on Holy Thursday. Then I found out what the surprise is...they can take their passport to the information booth at the Spring Jubilee and get $10.00 worth of food tickets-Not bad! I was really surprised at how nice the service was. It kind of reminded me of going to Midnight mass on Christmas Eve. You could just feel the Holy Spirit in that church! Shawn did great considering how long the service was. I think it ended up being around 1 1/2 hrs.

On Friday, I took Shawn to St. Stephen's Catholic School for a Good Friday Children's Retreat. They were making a big deal about the amount of kids they had participating but I can't remember what the count was. I picked him up at 2pm and he said he had fun. It's hard to get much more information from Shawn. If I ask him what he did, he'll say nothing or he can't remember. When I picked him up he was playing with a boy he knew from his CCD class so I'm glad he at least knew someone there. From there we went on over to the church for the 3pm mass. I wanted to make sure we got there early so we could get a good seat. We ended up sitting in the first row, right in front of Father Bill. I thought it would be better for the kids if they could see what was going on but I was kind of regretting it later. Shawn did pretty good but Joshua...it wasn't that he was bad in the crying/screaming sense but he's so loud. He's talking so much now and he doesn't know when to be quiet. Thankfully, Father Bill likes kids and always praises the families with little kids in church because that's where they belong. So I just repeat that to myself when Joshua is a bit noisy in church. He did do a few things that were actually kind of funny but embarrassing at the same time. He started singing after the song ended which Father Bill smiled at. Then when they were bringing the Eucharist in the church and the alter servers were leading the way with the candles, Joshua started yelling candle, candle, Mommy candle. I'm whispering in his ear that I see the candles and that he needs to be quiet like everyone else and then he starts singing happy birthday to you Cha Cha Cha and then pretends that he's blowing out the candles, lol. Then during the Veneration of the Cross, I think Joshua tongued the cross, lol.

I couldn't believe how packed the church was on Good Friday. There were tons of people standing. Father Bill made me laugh when he started his homily. He asked us "what are you doing here?" "NO, really, what are you doing here. According to the news, we should all be at the beach." It did kind of irk me when people made comments that everyone was making such a big deal about taking Good Friday off and that most people just wanted the day off and not to celebrate the holiday.

Tomorrow's going to be an early day for us. We are going to try to get to the 8am mass and I know we'll have to get there early if we want a good seat, especially after seeing how packed the 3pm Good Friday mass was. Then we'll come home and enjoy a nice breakfast. We are going over to my parents for dinner and will have an Easter egg hunt for Joshua, Shawn, Alex, and Aiden. I hope everyone reading this enjoys their Easter!

I wonder how tomorrow will be...

Shawn just got home from school and the bus attendant asked me if they sent home anything regarding tomorrow. I told her no but that Shawn wasn't going to school tomorrow and she said good. She implied that at least as far as the buses were concerned, it was going to be horrible. Shawn rides an ESE bus and doesn't get home from school until 4pm. I can't imagine what time he would get home tomorrow if he were going. I opened up Shawn's backpack and there wasn't anything in there regarding tomorrow so we'll see how it goes.

Why is it...

That when a man takes out the garbage, he can never remember to put a new trash bag in the trash can???

Book Crossing

Someone sent me a link to the Book Crossing website when we lived in Maryland and I thought it was very cool but at the time, we were getting ready to move to Florida so I never did anything with it. Well now I just found it again through the Frog Pond and I'm so excited. I wanted to find the Book Crossing website but I couldn't remember the name of it. Basically, this is how it works:

You put a label on the inside cover of your book that has a unique Book Crossing ID number. Then you register your book on Book Crossing's website and set your book free. You can leave your book on a park bench, on a table in your favorite coffee house, at the gym, the sky's the limit. Then you can track your book to see where it ended up. You can also search for books that other Book Crossing members have set free. They have label templates that you can print from your printer for free or you can buy fancier ones on their website and they even have weather proof bags in case you want to leave your book outside. I can't wait to get started!

Good Friday

I can't believe the controversy over the schools not having off on Good Friday! Personally, I'm very disappointed and plan to keep Shawn home that day. Good Friday is the day Jesus died for us. It's more important than Christmas. That's why I'm not sending Shawn to school that day. I just read this article at TBO.com. I'm secretly excited that so many teachers and drivers are using their right to take off a religious holiday. The school board should have known this was going to happen when they changed their calendar. The controversy that I was talking about is the comments left after that article. Some people need to get a life!

Boring Day

Well, I guess it wasn't boring but lazy. After going to the 8am mass, I was planning on bringing the kids home to eat something and then drive out to FishHawk so they could see the Easter Bunny or Peter Rabbit or whoever it was, but that all changed during mass. Joshua was horrible today! He would not stop talking. No tactic worked today. Shawn wasn't too bad but he wasn't on his best behavior either. After several warnings, I told him we weren't going to see the Easter Bunny. It was for the best anyway because this morning Joshua woke up at 5am and I think one of the reasons he was having a hard time in church was because he was tired. So we literally did nothing the rest of the day. I did not do the dishes like I should have. I did not do a load of laundry or pick up toys or the million other things that need to be done around this house. I felt kind of bad because our church had an Easter Egg hunt today at 1pm but I couldn't take Shawn because of Joshua napping. Oh well.

I'm a little disappointed that Hillsborough County schools don't have off on Friday. I decided last week that I was going to keep Shawn home that day. St. Stephens is having a retreat for kids on Friday and I'm going to sign Shawn up for it. It's from 8:30 to 2:30pm and they provide a snack and pizza for lunch plus they do all kinds of activities. I hope Shawn will enjoy it even though he might not know any other kids there.

Totally changing topics now...I like cats. I have had cats as pets. We do not currently have any cats and don't plan to get any pets until the kids are older. That being said, we have a cat problem. These stupid neighborhood cats like to hang out in our yard. Our neighbor has a few cats that live in his garage. They are outside cats. He leaves the garage door open just enough for them to get in and out of the garage. I know that they account for most of the cats in our yard but there are other neighborhood cats also. Yesterday evening, before it was dark, Don counted 5 cats in our back yard. Now normally, I wouldn't really care but at night all we hear is cats fighting. It's very annoying. I'm starting to think of evil thoughts to get rid of these cats (just kidding). I could not really hurt a cat but it's tempting, lol.

The diagnosis

We have none yet. Yesterday I took Shawn to his pediatrician for a consultation to see if he might be autistic. After a ton of questions, Dr. Tappan said that Shawn did display some characteristics of Autism and ADHD. He gave me some questionnaires to fill out along with one to give to Shawn's teacher and based on his scores, he's probably going to recommend a neuro psychologist for Shawn to see. So we don't really have a diagnosis yet but we do have a maybe so at least I don't feel stupid for thinking there was something wrong with him.

Warning- Shameless Plug

Other news- Don is going to be at the FishHawk craft fair this weekend selling our cross necklaces. The craft fair is at Park Square and they will be taking pictures with Peter Cottontail. Easter is just around the corner and our necklaces would make a lovely addition to any Easter basket. Please forward this on to anyone living in the FishHawk area. Thanks.

WTH???

I just want to breath right again. Is that so much to ask? I can not even remember when I didn't have sinus pressure or congestion. I was sure that once we changed out the ac ducts and got our new filtration system that I would be able to breath again. Well it did get rid of my cough but not my sinus congestion. My new doctor gave me an antibiotic to make sure I didn't have a sinus infection and I also had an allergy test. I became convinced that I must have allergies since the antibiotic did nothing. Well I just got my results back and guess what I'm allergic to? Nothing!!! Well, I did barely test positive for being allergic to chocolate. Do you think a food allergy could cause sinus congestion? I haven't talked to my doctor since getting the results but I can't imagine chocolate being the cause. I might just have to live in misery the rest of my life because I don't think I could give up chocolate!

An AI post

Man, where did Chikezie come from??? His performance was amazing last night. I thought most of the contestants did a good job with a few that stood out like David Cook, Carly Smithson, and Brooke White. I even liked Amanda Overmyer. If it were my choice of who gets kicked off, it would definitely be Kristy Lee Cook!

Whew, 3 posts in one day!

I had a lot to blog last week and just didn't have the time to sit down to blog so I'm making up for it today

Anyway, I just wanted to blog about going to the zoo last Wednesday. At the advice of some of my friends, I decided to get there early. I left after dropping Shawn off at school thinking there would be a lot of traffic and would take me longer to get there. Traffic wasn't really that bad and we got there about 8:50am, ugh. There was only about 3 other people there waiting but I decided to get Joshua out of the car and get closer to the entrance. We sat next to a woman that had a daughter who looked about 3 and Joshua played with her until the zoo opened up. When the zoo finally opened up, there were probably still less than 100 people in line so I guess I didn't need to get there so early after all. Here are the shirts we got:

This was the shirt they handed out to the adults



This is the shirt they handed out to the kids


They didn't allow you to request sizes and of course we didn't get the right sizes. Joshua got a size M. I think Shawn may be able to wear it in a couple of years, lol.

It was a beautiful day to go to the zoo. It wasn't crowded at all when we first got there and I let Joshua out of the stroller and followed behind him. The only bad part about going was all the construction they were doing at the zoo. They even had part of Africa closed off. You couldn't feed the giraffes but there was a temporary detour to Africa that let you look at the hippos and Okapi,etc. The Okapi were trying to mate (at least the male Okapi was trying, lol). I tried to get a picture but my camera is so old that when you push the button, 10 seconds later it actually takes the picture. Anyway, here are some pictures from our day at the zoo.

See how crowded it was, lol.


All the animals to see and Joshua wanted to play with the door on one of those stupid machines.

Shawn's birthday

Friday was Shawn's birthday and we celebrated with his favorite dinner (popcorn chicken), cupcakes, and presents from Mommy and Daddy. He liked all his presents especially the video games we got him. Don't laugh but we still have a Nintendo 64. It was sitting out in the garage since we moved to Florida and we brought it out for Shawn to play with. We only had a couple of games that he could play so we thought about finding a few more for him. N64 is so old they don't even sell the games in the used game store anymore. Thank goodness for E-bay!!! We got him 4 games but decided to save one for Easter. The games we gave him on Friday were: Tony Hawk Pro Skater, 1080 Snowboarding, and Cruisin USA. He's pretty much been playing them non-stop unless I make him turn it off, lol.




Yesterday was Shawn's last soccer game. He played great and even scored 2 goals! After the game, they did a small awards ceremony and gave out trophy's. Here's a few pics from Saturday at soccer.




After the game, Carson (the little girl with brown hair) gave Shawn a card. It had a picture of a boy and girl on the front and on the back it said - I love you so much Shon. It was so cute! Of course we teased Shawn that he had a girl friend. Carson and Jordan both like to hug Shawn and wrestle with him. I guess I need to keep an eye on him in a couple of years, lol. I think I'm safe for now because he makes it known that he does NOT like girls.

Saturday afternoon was Shawn's birthday party. It was small this year but very nice. In fact, I kind of liked it a little better than last year because the party room was not as crowded and there was plenty of room to walk around. I think next year we'll probably just have his party at a park so it doesn't matter how many people we invite and how many people can't come. I really hated leaving friends out. Shawn had a great time bouncing with his friends except for one little injury. Shawn and Alex (his cousin) bump into each other and Shawn's ear split where his ear attaches to his head. It looked gross when it happened but after we got home and I cleaned it up better, it wasn't that bad. It may take a while to heal since it's in a bad place but nothing to take him to the doctor for. Shawn got lots of Hot Wheels trick tracks. Oh boy! I've got tracks all over the floors right now. I wish I could find a good storage solution for all the Hot Wheels tracks. Anyway, here's a few pics from his party.

Well, I did it...

I met my friend Jennifer at the church on Friday afternoon so I could go to confession. Jennifer watched Joshua in the playground for me. I did not get the Act of Contrition memorized, but I wrote it down on a little piece of paper and brought it with me. Of course I thought that Monsignor wouldn't see me reading it in the confessional, but with my luck we did not use the confessional because they were setting up tables in the church for the fish fry. So out to Mary's garden we went. It wasn't nearly as scary as I thought it was going to be but it was exhausting! I felt so drained afterwards that I just wanted to go home and take a nap. I hope to make it a regular habit now.

Confession...

This is my confession of not going to confession, lol. I'm not a very good catholic because if I was, I would have gone to confession at least once in the past year. I have not. In fact, I have only gone to confession twice in my life. My first confession and then when I went to RCIA as an adult. To be honest, I'm truly scared to go. It has nothing to do with my sins. I'm not afraid of confessing my sins. What is keeping me from going then?

Well, since I grew up Catholic, I know some things that they don't teach in RCIA anymore. I remember my first confession (vaguely) and I remember having to memorize certain things and say things at certain times but I have no idea what it was that I had to remember. It's been way too long but I thought they would teach me what to say in RCIA but they didn't. Now if I hadn't been raised Catholic, I probably wouldn't even have this problem but I was raised Catholic and I know better. I had a really difficult time at my last confession because I felt like I should know what to say but I didn't. Father Mike was awesome but I didn't get anything out of going because it was masked by fear and embarrassment. So I have not been since.

A few of the girls in my MOMS Sharing group have been trying to get me to go since before Christmas and I decided that I would just go ahead and get it over with some time during Lent. My friend Jennifer has a good friend that is a Monsignor that is coming into town this week. I've met him and he's really nice. I would have never known he was a Monsignor if she hadn't told me first. She's trying to get me to come over on Thursday night so Monsignor Cusak can hear my confession. On one hand, I've met him and had a pretty long conversation with him about why I left the Navy and so it might feel a little weird or awkward. On the other hand, at least when I tell him how many years it's been since my last confession, I know he won't react badly since he already knows it's been a long time. Plus, next time I go to confession at St. Stephen's, I won't have to tell Monsignor Scully it's been years since my last confession, lol.

I've already looked up the information I need on the internet (I'm not sure why I didn't think to do that last time). Hopefully, I can memorize the Act of Contrition in the next 2 days.