This and That

I thought I was up to date with this blogging business, but its been a couple of months since I've written about life in general and not specifically the baby. 

Here's a snapshot of a few things that we did to close out the summer.

*Lexi Gymnastics
Lexi took a month of weekly gymnastic classes through the city of Caldwell. It was low key, she got to have a little exposure to the beam and bars.

She was ahead of everybody on the floor because of her tumbling experience in dance. Lexi is graceful. She really is beautiful to watch when she dances or does gym. She has these little gymnast legs, they're starting to get some muscle definition to them and yet they are long and beautiful with her pointed toes. The baby wanted to participate in gym too. I couldn't keep her contained for an hour, she was ancy to get out on the floor with the big kids. 

*Mom Surgery
My mother has been so sick since January of this year. I can't remember if I've talked about it at all on the blog. She had an episode of Vertigo right around New Year's and has never recovered. She lost all hearing in her right ear, and started to rapidly lose it in the left before the Dr. was able to give her some steroids to slow down the loss and protect what was left. Her biggest challenge has been the constant dizziness. The world is spinning. She's ok when she lays her head down. She can read. I think she's gone through 1-2 books a day for months. It's been a long year for her and she's been extremely discouraged and frustrated. The ENT she was seeing decided to try an outpatient surgery for her. He essentially put an incision in the back of her ear so he could "open it up like a refrigerator door". Then they put it "some poison" to kill off the nerves I think that contribute to her balance. Essentially, even though she didn't have any hearing left in that ear, she still had about 16% balance left and the other ear had not compensated for it yet. So the idea was to kill off the rest of the balance to jump start the left ear into compensation and thus restore the inner ear balance. As she came out of surgery, she was showing signs that the doctor was hoping for to get a complete recovery. Unfortunately, more than 6 weeks post-op, she still isn't any better. My poor mom. This has been so hard on her. She feels like such a failure because she can't be the kind of Grandma, Mom, Sister, Wife, Woman she wants to be and is used to being. For her birthday this year, the kids and I made a painting out of their hands. I was excited about the way it turned out. I feel like I have absolutely no artistic ability and it was fun to watch this come together. 

*Sarah Visit
My best friend Sarah came for a 2 week visit during the summer. I got to see her 3 times!!! It was so exciting, and so awesome to be with her. The first time we got together, both our husbands were out of town (Steven was still in North Dakota, and Marc was at Scout Camp I think). I brought all my kids to her Mom's house and we chatted, ate Chinese take out in front of the kids who didn't get any, let the kids swim in absolutely freezing water, and just enjoyed catching up. If we didn't have 9 kids between us that were all way past their bed time, we could have stayed up all night talking which is about what we did the next time we got together. Some of my friends from high school came together and talked until 2:30 in the morning before we regretfully went our separate ways. The husbands were all annoyed that we were out so late, but it was therapeutic to my soul. I needed a good night like that. The next day my mom watched the kids so Marc and I could do a lunch date with Sarah and Steve. We both brought our babies (Deacon and Isabel are about 2 months apart). It was so sad to say goodbye. Love that family!!

*End of Summer
We spent a lot of time eating lunch at the park. Isabel started becoming aware of the foods the kids were eating and started harassing them to feed her. 

The beginning and middle of August are almost torturous to me. It's the time where the kids are bored, they are tired of being together all day, they're tired of being with me all the time, and we're all ancy to go back to school but it doesn't start until the end of August. UGH!!!! I was feeling frustrated because we had invited lots of kids over to our house to come play, but not one of them had invited mine over. Not sure if it's something against us, or just an oversight. I'm hoping for the oversight. But having other people's kids over at my house stresses me out. I don't want to keep having the same ones over all the time and feeling like we're the ones doing all the inviting. I need a break too! After an epic melt down between one of the kids and I, I reached out for help on facebook and pleaded for my friends to invite my children over. Thankfully, I had several respond to me and I was able to get some peaceful moments when we really needed it. 

*Dave and Busters
Our library reading program was overwhelmingly disappointing this year. We were finished with it by the first week. We collected our prize and that was about it. I still made my kids read for at least 20 minutes a day but they didn't get to go turn in their logs every week and have the excitement of the challenge of reading the whole summer. Part of their prize was a kids meal at Dave and Busters, which is a restaurant and arcade. Marc and I went to one in Cincinnati and really liked it but smoking was still allowed indoors and that completely ruined it for us. We were hesitant to go back, but were glad we did. The food was great. The server was really nice and friendly, and we enjoyed splurging a little bit and playing some of the arcade games afterwards. We even split a brownie sundae. Man that thing didn't stand a chance with the 6 of us going after it! LOL. It was a perfect way to say goodbye to summer before school started.