And On To May!

The last month of preschool was upon us.

Since Mikey has his birthday in the summer, his "Special Day" was in May.

Teacher Dorothy made this awesome poster.

He got to sit in front of class and tell them about himself.

Then everyone sang Happy Birthday.

He was a happy boy.

Next up on the preschool agenda was a trip for the "graduating" kids to the Bus Barn.

Partway through the ride, he got quiet as if thinking about what riding a bus really meant.

Preschool was ending.  Kindergarten to begin in just a few months.

Hmmmmmm.

"I wonder if Mom will let me wear my superhero pajama tops to kindergarten?"

After the Bus Barn trip, we went back to the preschool for a really nice Mother's Day Tea Party.

Mother's Day weekend was spent in Seattle for the Color Run.

We caught an IMAX 3D showing about Lemurs at the PAC SCI Center.

Katie and Mikey both thought the lemurs were cute.

But, really, when you got right down to it, Katie was more excited about eating movie theatre popcorn that was determined to be allergy safe.

It's all about the "special treats".

Speaking of special treats....

The kids enjoyed homemade banana chocolate chip muffins at the hotel.

(We had them eat in the shower to try to contain the mess)

Huzbend and I enjoyed a dozen cannoli.

You can't find cannoli around here.

At all.

But, they're in Seattle!!

Mmmmmmm, cannoli.

Rise and shine!!!

Mikey had a rough nights sleep.

He coughed a lot.

But they were both ready and raring to go after another banana chocolate chip muffin for breakfast!

Me taking a picture of Huzbend taking a picture of me.

And we're off!!!

This year they sprayed liquid color at you while on course.

It was COLD.

By the end, Mikey was a bit cold and just a tad bit grumpy.

He was also coughing still.

Katie, on the other hand, was loving life.

Then it was time for the color explosion!

Katie was lovin' life even more!

Check out the blue teeth.

Hey!  Look!  I was there too!

And, O.M.CHEESE!  A picture of the whole family!

That NEVER happens!

And since we were at Seattle Center, Katie could not resist hitting the International Fountain.

So, then, she was literally dripping with color.

It was a great beginning to Mothers Day.

I stress beginning because when we got home, Mikey's health steadily declined.

By late afternoon, he ended up on the bathroom floor vomiting everything he ate or drank and breathing rapidly.

We visited the Urgent Care that evening where he was diagnosed with symptoms associated with pneumonia.

Yay for us.  What great parents we are to drag our sick son to a cold, morning 5K run where they squirt you with frigid liquid color and then release huge corn starch color clouds.

We are awesome.

He was put on antibiotics and was back to his old self in a few days time.

And then, gulp, it was the LAST day of preschool.

Ever.

He chose this day to finally ride a tricycle on the track by himself.

Something he had not done in his four years there.

I wonder what he's thinking in this picture.....

"I'm so totally going to kick kindergarten's butt!"

One last all-class photo.

I couldn't have asked for a better preschool experience for both my kids.

Not only did they learn a bit about ABC's and 123's and some other academicky stuff,

they learned how to make friends, share, play with and care about others.

They learned to respect and be able to listen to other kids mom & dads.

They learned to question and explore.

But, mostly, they learned to be themselves.

The preschool and fantastic teachers allowed them to do that.

It also gave ME a place to make friends and pretend that I was an adult every once in a while.

I know my kids will miss this place.

But, I think I might miss it most of all.

The evening of Mikey's last day of preschool was his

"Graduation" or "Moving On" ceremony.

So handsome....

The kids performed for the crowd.

It was great that Mikey got to stand next to his bestest pals from preschool.

All of them born within months of each other.

From left to right:

Mikey, Sienna (blonde girl/pink dress), Isabela (dark curly hair/pink dress), and Benny (blue plaid shirt).

After the songs and such, Mikey was able to come sit with us until his name was called to officially "graduate."

And here he is.

Walking over the bridge from preschool to kindergarten.

Sigh.

Such a mix of happy and sad for me.

He was SO excited to get his diploma.

And, then, preschool was over.

I stayed late that night to help with the post-grad clean up.

At the end of the evening, it ended up being myself, my two pals named Kerri and Teacher Dorothy.

We chilled out and watched some old slideshows of our kids at the school.

We ate pizza and drank some Cokes.

We laughed.  A lot.  As always.

It was a good way to end.

I'll miss it.  I really will.

That brings us to this Saturday.

We went to visit the puppies!

All twelve of them.

They are 4 weeks old and getting just a little rambunctious.

Katie fell in love with every puppy.  Immediately.

She could not stop giggling.

Especially when a wiggly puppy was on her lap.

I believe she held almost all of them.

To say they were cute would be an understatement.

They were UBER-cute.

Even Mikey got to hold a puppy or two.

He liked the puppies.

He was unsure about the grown up dogs.

We were able to not only visit with the puppies, but meet Mommy Dog, Daddy Dog, and brothers and sisters, nieces and nephews and even grandparents!

I met the biggest boy labs I have ever met in my life.

The puppies Daddy is a solid 96 pounds of powerful and ultra-friendly dog.

We've been prepping the house for puppy arrival by moving all the Legos upstairs into the kids rooms.  Huzbend also built a dog kennel outside for bathroom needs.

Now we just have to select a vet, get a crate, get an x-pen, a collar, a leash, some tags, some food, some treats, a million plus one toys.....CHA-CHING!

We won't know what puppy we'll get until they are ready to come home at the end of June.

We have third pick of the litter.

Katie is excited and states just about every hour of every day that she wishes the puppy was here right now.

Mikey talks about the puppy, but I think he could take it or leave it.

Huzbend and I bounce back and forth between being excited and wondering if we're ready to go back to sleepless nights and constant supervision.

Sigh.

Changes are hard.

Let's Do April, Shall We?

March was finished out with a bit of swimming.

Although there are complaints every Sunday morning when they have to get in the car and go, they really do enjoy their lessons and have been learning a lot.

And in case you were wondering, Mikey does still occasionally channel his inner superhero....

Katie's tonsillectomy was scheduled for April 14th.

Easter, it turned out, would be on April 20th.

Judging from all that I had read about tonsillectomies and the info I received

 from The Doc, it would take Katie 7-10 days to recover from surgery.

So as not to risk Katie not being able to enjoy her chocolate Easter Bunny, we decided to hold Easter a week early.

It was a beautiful day and the kids were properly attired for the Easter Egg Hunt.

Baskets in hand.

Bunny ears on.

Ready to roll.

It was really hard to get Katie to NOT "help" Mikey find all his eggs.

Then it was time to open the little egg-shaped treasure chests of goodness.

Ponies, Minion Squinkies, Hobbit Chibis and Lego Guys... 

...OH MY!

Then it was time for the main event:

The Extravagant Easter Basket Hunt!

Mikey got what he most wanted; a totally awesome Lego set.

And, Katie got what she most wanted; candy.

Let the building begin!!!!!

Months of worry and fret came to a head on Monday morning when it was time to take Katie in for her tonsillectomy/adenoidectomy.

We arrived early, early in the morning for pre-op stuff.

Katie was really calm about the whole thing as they explained what would happen.

Eventually they gave her some sleepy Tylenol medicine to prep her for anesthesia.

She got really giggly and started staring at the various points on the ceiling.

It was time for her to go back to the Op Room.  

The nurse and anesthesia assistant rolled her away on the bed while she was smiling and waving at me.

The surgery took a little over an hour.  The Doc came out at the end to let me know all went well and she was in the first stages of recovery.  There would be antibiotics waiting in the pharmacy for me and that I should have time to pick them up before being called back to sit with Katie.

I went down to the pharmacy and about 10 minutes after being there got a call on my cell phone from the nurses upstairs letting me know Katie was waking up.

What the what?!?!?  And I'm down in the pharmacy.  Grrrrr.

I dissed the pharmacist and ran back to the day patient surgery center, was ushered back to the recovery area and saw Katie laying on the lap of one of the nurses.

Talk about feeling like Worlds Worst Mom....

Anyways, I took the nurses spot and waited for Katie to wake up enough to talk and drink.

And waited, and waited, and waited.

They called for a wheelchair, since I had to go back to the pharmacy, and off we went.

We made it home.  Katie slept in the car.

I brought her inside and laid her on the couch.  She gave me a panicked look and pointed towards the bathroom.  I picked her up and then she threw up all over me.

Ugh.  Poor girl.  Could it get any worse than to have surgery on your throat and then throw up?

The days after that were a hit or miss owee-wise.

Days 1 and 2 were actually the best days; the days where Katie ate and drank the most.

And it was a whole variety of things: popsicles, oatmeal, ice cream, and instant mashed potatoes.

And then Day 3 came and the no eating/drinking began and the pain began in earnest.

It wasn't so much the pain in her throat as it was pain in her cheek and ear area.

The meds began to wear out faster and faster.

It was not a happy time.  Lots of tears and screaming when it was time to have the meds.

It's kinda hard to choke down Tylenol, Ibuprofen and Amoxicillin when you really can't swallow.

By Day 5, I was ready to take a trip to the Urgent Care center for fear of dehydration.

She was not drinking - only as a chaser after meds - and was eating nothing but an occasional small bowl of whipped cream.

She lived off of whipped cream (Reddi Whip, in case you were wondering) for about three days.

Katie spent a good majority of the time lying down, curled up in a ball with a heating pad stuck somewhere to help with pain.

Mikey would do his best to try and cheer Katie up.

He did a great job being some comic relief in an otherwise very owee time.

He was also a great help to me in that he kept himself busy and understood that Katie needed a bit more attention than he did.

Sometimes, he even got her to smile.

By Day 7, she was doing pretty good during the daytime.

Pain became manageable and Katie began to move around a bit more.

She was still not 100% and needed meds to be able to eat and drink.

And that's when the Night Terrors began.

Sigh.

She'd wake up in the middle of the night screaming and clutching me, saying that she was scared.

Happened for two nights.

It was more horrible heaped on top of horrible.

On Day 9, she built this.  It was the first time she had really built in a week.

I had the feeling we were out of the woods.

Finally, at Day 10, I sent her back to school.

She made it through the whole day with minimal meds for pain.

All in all, it was quite the experience.  Here's Katie's take on it....

Her voice is still not back to normal and still (it's now Memorial Day weekend) has throat pain sometimes from hot foods.

It was a rough, rough week and us parents can only hope that it was all for something.

I DO know that she doesn't snore anymore.

I hope there are some other benefits than just not snoring........

While Katie was at her first day back at school, Mikey's preschool had a visit from some State Troopers.

One of which is the Dad of one of his friends.

Here he is enjoying utilizing the squad cars loud speaker......

That weekend, I went away to a state PTA conference and while I was gone, this happened.

It's a good way for the kids to get out some energy.

I try to ignore the fact that there have been about a dozen injuries since it was installed.

On April 26th, a soon-to-be-member-of-our-family was born!

Our guy is somewhere in that pile o' puppies.

If you'd like to see his mom and dad, you can see them here.

I'll have more pics of puppy awesomeness in my May update.

This is a picture of Katie asleep two weeks after surgery.

As you can tell, she still wasn't very comfortable.

She slept upright and was bothered by a runny nose.

And then on the last day of April an era came to an end.

The motorcycle that has been sitting in our garage for almost 8 years was ... 

 ... DONATED!