Thanksgiving Weekend 2015!

What happened to the past week?! We had such a nice Thanksgiving weekend. The food and company were wonderful. We invited Elijah's bud over the Friday after Thanksgiving and it was so much fun to have her here with us. We did our traditional Christmas tree shopping and spent the rest of the day decorating it, along with the rest of our house.



Oh no, we're the Griswolds. :)



Fish lips!



Elijah of course remembered that Sammy put the star on the tree last year, so he got to do it this year.



Dan and I have been wanting to clean out our HORRENDOUS storage closet for literally years. On Friday as we were decorating, we just decided to start. It became a HUGE ordeal and our house was a complete mess while we sorted through tons of junk. After a couple days of work, storage looks amazing!

The boys have had a good week at school and Dan and I have been working and doing the weekday routine. I'm still working in Cannon Falls and will be there for another week or two. Once I'm done, I will probably be done for good which is both good and sad. It has been such a blessing of a job, but this season is coming to an end.

Because I know I'll want this information next year, we learned that it takes THREE WEEKS for the trauma of daylight savings to wane for Elijah. After three solid weeks, he started waking up at 5:00 instead of 3-4:00. Post daylight savings has brought some rougher days, but overall things are still soooo much better. "Rough" days now cannot be compared to "rough" days a year ago. We constantly see so many areas where great progress has been made. Especially on the rougher days, I remind myself constantly of the progress. One of the big things that we have noticed at home and at school is that he now shows remorse! He still has such a hard time stopping certain behaviors in the moment, but after they have happened he feels bad. This is good! He will now approach whoever he has wronged and apologize on his own (without prompting), which is always followed by, "I feel bad!" This is such huge huge progress!

Potty issues are also so much better. We still have a ways to go, but the progress has been amazing! I still attribute so much of the positive things we've seen in the past few months to medication. He is still taking 18mg of Strattera/day for his anxiety and we are so happy with it!

I can't remember if I mentioned this or not on here, but in the past few weeks Elijah has complained a handful of times about chest pain on the right side of his chest. It lasts for a few minutes and seems pretty intense and the last time it happened it was followed by a headache. That last time I grew concerned and called Dr. G (cardiologist). Based on what I told him, he thought it was unlikely that it has anything to do with his heart. If it happens again, he'd like for us to make sure his heart is beating at a normal rate. If it's not, we'll bring him in. It hasn't happened for almost two weeks, but I scheduled an appointment to get him checked out by his pediatrician just to be on the safe side. That appointment is tomorrow morning.

Ok, some fun things to end with..

The boys have both settled on what they would like their future professions to be. :) Sammy wants to be an art teacher (he'd be a great one!) and Elijah wants to own and operate a bakery! They talk about this all the time and it's so cute. Elijah always says that he will give free donuts to his immediate family, but everyone else has to pay. :) Sammy is already planning lessons for his art students (he wants to teach elementary kids and wants the students to call him Mr. Sammy).

Sammy is SO thoughtful and responsible. Sometimes I cannot even believe the thought he puts into things. Tonight he colored a birthday card for Dan (whose bday is on Saturday) and then hid the card under his little art desk in the loft. When I put him to bed he told me that he made sure to put all of the markers away because if he left them out, Dan might figure out that he had been making a card and then the surprise would be ruined. Sometimes I think he is soooo intelligent beyond his years. He tries to keep up with his brother on so many things and I know he listens in on our homework sessions, but I was so impressed the other day when he wrote the following (without help) on a piece of paper: 100+100=200   200+200=400   400+400=800  His reading has improved by leaps and BOUNDS! His writing, too. He has such a strong little will at times (I have sooo many stories I could share), but I know this will be in his favor one day.

There is so much more I could say. I need to post more often! Signing off for now! Have a great rest of your week.

Tears and happiness

For the past two years we haven't known exactly how much Daylight Savings has impacted Elijah's sleep because everything else was totally chaotic. It was impossible to pinpoint the main pieces of the puzzle because we were basically existing in the middle of a tornado. Now that things are much calmer, we have been able to see that Daylight Savings wreaks havoc on our early bird. That one teeny tiny hour of change sends our oldest boy into a tailspin. We have seen wake-up times between 1:30 and 4:30 for the past few weeks. Today he slept until 4:46 and I practically did cartwheels around the house! We will find our way back to a better place slowly. 

Last Friday Dan and I went to the boys' school to watch Elijah and the rest of the third graders do a Veterans' Day performance. Honestly, it made me sad and I wish we could redo it. Right away I could see that Elijah was upset. His teacher told me that he was nervous, but I know my boy and I could see that something specific was bothering him. I noticed that every kid was holding a flag...except for him. I knew he was upset about this. I frantically looked around for an extra flag that I could grab and bring to him, but I couldn't see anything. Aside from interrupting the music teacher, I didn't know what else to do. I stood and watched my boy cry through the entire performance. :( He stood so still with his arms folded in front of him, occasionally reaching up to wipe tears from his face and not doing a single action or singing a single word. I have been beating myself up, thinking I should have done something! I don't know what, but I should have been able to make him happy! The good news is that when it was his class' turn to come down in front and do a dance, Elijah participated! He didn't just participate...he did GREAT! He did all the actions! That turned things around for him (and for me). 

On Saturday we were so lucky to be able to spend time with my cousin's cutie pie. The boys were BEYOND excited to have Veda over! She is such a sweet girl and they all play so well together. The three of them played "Inside Out" and created some Play-Doh animals and then we headed to see the new Peanuts movie. It was such a fun day!

And on Sunday, thanks to Hope Kids, we were able to watch a live Timberwolves game! KG is back! I worked at Timberwolves games years ago, so I felt right at home. It was fun to watch the boys take everything in.

My silly boys with their pants pulled up just a tad too high! :)

Yesterday after the Twolves game, our boys were TIRED. Sammy was being especially sassy in the car and started doing some uncharacteristic whining that lasted for way too long. I said, "Sammy, can we please stop the whining?" He whined back to me in the longest, most drawn out voice: "WHINING IS WORTH IT!" Dan, Elijah and I exploded in laughter.

The boys got Operation Christmas Child boxes at church on Sunday, so today after school we picked up some goodies to put inside the boxes. I LOVED watching them get so excited about blessing kids who are less fortunate. I let them pick out what to put in the boxes (with some direction) and they took such pride and were genuinely so excited about making other kids happy. Tomorrow they will write letters to the kids and we will drop off the boxes together so they can experience the entire process. I love that they are old enough to appreciate and understand the concept of giving!

We have noticed some definite self-awareness in Elijah lately that is good...and bad. He is starting to see how other kids see him and he doesn't like it. He tells us all the time, "Everyone thinks I'm dumb." It kills me. We do our best to assure him that he is so super smart. That he is SUCH a good boy and so loved and liked by so many people. Even though this hurts my heart, it is also good. It's good that he is starting to look outside himself a bit. This will be a process for him, but we are here to love him and help him through it.

Both boys got their report cards today! Sammy's report was excellent. He is doing so well in kindergarten. We are so proud of him. Elijah's report was great, too! We are proud of how far he has come in the past year (heck, the past almost nine years!) and we see every "little" success as a very huge thing. Instead of getting hung up on current challenges, we see the progress and it encourages us and makes us so happy. There is SO much progress being made these days and we see every bit of it. We see it all, Elijah!

Thanks for checking in! Hoping you all have a wonderful week!