Dinosaurs in Alabama

My 3rd grader went on a field trip to the Anniston Museum of Natural History with her school this past week. Since Emma has started school I have had to go on every field trip to deal with her diabetes. Until this year I have had to ride the bus to and from said field trips,...not that I don't enjoy screaming kids and sitting on a seat that feels like it's padded with rocks. This year I have moved up to being able to ride in a car with other moms!!

A field trip may sound fun, and some are, but when you remember them from your own time in school (Moundville is still the same collection on grassy mounds) it doesn't hold a lot of mystery for you.

I was also dreading this field trip, I knew it was going to be a tough day at work and felt I needed to be there but I'm glad I went because I enjoyed the ride up with three other moms and surprisingly enjoyed the Museum as well. Once we got past all the "Night at the Museum" references from the kids, the displays were very informative. There wasn't just stuffed animals sitting around, they were grouped into groups that told about the different wing spans on animals and how they used them and why animals had different types of beaks. The Egyptian rooms was interesting...the kids loved looking at the Mummies, and of course the main attraction was the T-Rex named Sue.

(Emma, second from right, and friends ready for the Museum)

(Mummies)

(Sue, is the largest, most complete, and best preserved Tyrannosaurus rex ever found. )

The Den

Well, we still have a few things to change...we are ordering our new chair this weekend and we will be able to finally move the old couch out of the room. We also need to hang some stuff on the walls, but all in all, we are done.
Recap...
I loved taking the base boards off the wall, ripping the carpet up, and taking down the bookshelves which I have hated since we moved in. Emma was sick during some of this and vomited on the carpet. I took my box cutter and cut that piece of the carpet out knowing it was going anyway...that is the ONLY way to deal with a mess like that!
We let the kids write on the floorboards while we were waiting to put the hardwoods in. They had the best time!

Anyway, this is what we have ended up with. The rooms looks and feels twice the size and it's so warm. I love spending time in this room.

It's DONE

Well, it took Todd and I (with some relief from my sister Amy) two days to put the hardwoods in Mom & Dad's house but it's finally done. It looks fairly good I must say. I however feel like Quasimodo because I'm hunched over from stapling for so many hours and I've had the urge to yell sanctuary.

This is what the room looks like...There is not enough money in the world for me to do the sanding, staining, and stuff so that will be done by another lucky person.

Fall

I love Fall. It has to be by far the best season. The colors that appear are better than anything you get in the 120 count box of crayola crayons. All shades of yellow, red, orange, and green. I have certain roads I travel during this time of year that offer the most spectacular sight. The view from the interstate looks like a Bob Ross painting. I can almost hear his voice in my head as I stare at the pallet of colors before me. "We don't make mistakes, we make happy accidents". He had a bushy afro and a soft soothing voice telling you to paint "happy little trees".
To look at him he reminds me of Kotter of "Welcome Back" fame.

Extraction

Extract
1 a: to draw forth (as by research) b: to pull or take out forcibly c: to obtain by much effort from someone unwilling

This is the word the nurse at the oral surgeons office sneered at me when I said that Nolan was there to get two teeth pulled. Let's think this through... two teeth are coming out and the lady thinks that it less scary to say extraction than pulled?

They lead Nolan into a room and the first thing he sees is an IV set up in the corner of the room. His looks like a deer in headlights and it takes me a few minutes to reassure him that he will not be getting the IV. The Dr. came in and after numbing up his mouth, literally took what looked like a miniature set of salad tongs and yanked the two teeth out.

Nolan did so good through the whole things he got to eat ice cream for lunch rent two movies and an xbox game! So starts our journey through the braces years!

Here is a picture of the teeth "extracted" from Nolan. He laughingly asked me how much the tooth fairy paid for teeth that had been pulled out; I reply that she just paid $159 to the Dr.

The Poem

Todd here (since you probaby did not recognize my typing). My child Emma has penned a poem that we felt blog-worthy. Enjoy...

Rain, a light shower or thunderstorm...

It rained and rained all day
We couldn't go outside to play
Bam! Crash! it was thunder
I began to wonder
I found a big leak
I was sad that it rained all week
The sun shown bright
I was sad because it was night
Maybe my dad could fix it
Plop plop I just had to sit.

by: Emma Craig

Seeing Dr. L

Today was Emma's 6 month check up with her Endocrinologist Dr. Latif. For those of you who don't know, Emma was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes a month after her 4th birthday. She has been on the pump for 2 years. Almost a year to the day, she was diagnosed with a Thyroid problem, and a year later she was diagnosed with a kidney problem. We now have all of these "under control" (whatever that means) and deal with things day by day. As you might have guessed, I get a little nervous around those 1 year visits.

Her A1C was 7.9 (an A1C is A blood test that measures the amount of glycated hemoglobin in the bloodstream over a 120-day period.) and they would really like it to be in the low 6's or even 5's. She had a trip to the ER 2 months ago and got sick a few days and ran very high blood sugar numbers during this time so the A1C was expected to be higher.

We are going to do an ultrasound on Emma next week to check on her progress in the puberty area. Emma seems to be heading that way a little earlier than we would like. We are also getting referred to an Gastroenterologist to check on why her stomach hurts so much. The three main issues she has are all auto immune related so we did have some test run and she came up negative for the Lupus gene (Thank God)!

There are times that she gets down about how much there is to do in regards to taking care of herself but most of the time she is a normal 8 year old doing normal 8 year old things.

Such as getting bored while wating for 4 hours in the Dr. office. This is the drawing she did.



This is our wonderful Dr. Latif who is Emma's Endocrinologist.