Rachel is in her room crying because she's not allowed to go outside and play on a day that she's home sick from school. Nor is she allowed to put on her dress-up dress, which is about 3 oz. of scratchy gauze and another 2 oz. of polyester "velvet."

Mmm-hmm. Life is hard when you're six.

Guess what else Rachel did today? Made Kool-Aid. By herself. In the bathroom. Using her new toy tea set. With hair in it. It was also discovered in the bedroom, but thank merciful Allah, had not spilled. Not in the bedroom anyway. I spilled some of it while taking it to the sink to dump it. SMOOTH ( Read more... )

Earlier today I had two unexpectedly good meetings with the Alex's and Rachel's teachers. Alex's teacher said that Alex is improving in all areas, and in fact she has moved up to more advanced groups in both math and reading. She's also giving her a two-level bump in her reading levels. She'll be able to check out longer and more difficult books ( Read more... )

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Rachel just came in here, dressed in street clothes, asking if she could go outside and play. HA! No. She still has a temperature, y'all. And you don't get to play outside when you are home sick from school.

But I guess this means she's feeling better.

Rachel is home sick. I discovered she had a no-kidding temperature after I got home late last night. Her face and arms were sooo hot. This morning when I came in to take her temp again, she clutched her neck and croaked, "What happened to my throat?!" Well, you're sick, honey. I have to admit, that was a little funny. Poor little bug. Jimmy ( Read more... )

These phonics classes that Rachel's going to seem to be working surprisingly well. I don't know what it is that makes such a strong impression on her about the school's methods, but the stuff seems to be sticking a lot better coming from them. She's downstairs playing with the ABC magnets on the refrigerator, saying over and over to herself, " ( Read more... )

I gave Rachel a breathing treatment this morning. Back when we met with the doctor about her asthma, the doc told us a list of times that we should use her inhaler. One of the things she mentioned was if Rachel woke up in the morning with dark circles under her eyes. At the time I thought, "I've never noticed such a thing, maybe I haven't been ( Read more... )

Saturday was hectic but fun. I drove down from my sister's house, stopping on the way to grab a couple of small presents for Rachel. Jimmy and I were planning to take the kids to Soak City, so the presents would be mostly symbolic. I got home later than expected due to traffic, and despite my phoning ahead nobody was ready to go, so we spent too ( Read more... )

Jimmy seems to have caught my head cold, so I guess it's not allergies. Anyway, he had a headache this morning, so I let him stay in bed and I wrangled the children. At the last minute I remembered that Rachel's kindergarten class is going on a field trip to Sea World today. This meant special directives: keep her backpack here at the house, get ( Read more... )