Daddy Pickles and I both attended Catholic schools. We wanted our children to do the same, but I just can't see a Catholic school being a successful place for Dill Pickles with his sensory issues. We unfortunately know that the school closest to our house wouldn't be a good match for him based upon talking to others in the neighborhood. This saddens me, but this will just bring us to do something better for him ourselves.

Starting in a few weeks Dill Pickles will be attending Children of the Lord at my mom's church. It's a Sunday School-like program that goes on during 9:30am Mass. I taught Children of the Lord when I was in high school. It makes me smile to now be sending my son there.

While I am confident that Dill will learn a lot, we will still be doing things at home as well. I was so excited to read a post by Lacy at Catholic Icing announcing that she would be posting a Catholic pre-school curriculum weekly she is using at her child's co-op pre-school. I'm sure I could have come up with things like this myself, but it will be so much easier to use the bulk of what someone else has come up with and tweak it a bit for my own. I think we will do her activities on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. I still have to decide if we will do them right away when Dill Pickles comes home from school or in the afternoon after naptime. We will just have to see what will work best for us!

I've updated our Shelfari with our new library books. Can you guess why we chose this theme? :) We have a few more on request from the library. We hope they come in soon!

Sweet Pickles wanted his own calendar in his bedroom like his big brother Dill Pickles, so I stopped by Dollar Tree a few weeks ago and picked one up. I thought I had more contact paper than I really did, so I had to come up with some other way to laminate the calendar because I promised him he would have it the next day.

I saw this on another blog and I can't remeber where for the life of me. I have a laminator at home and I just used two laminating sheets overlapping each other. Make sure that the sheet feeding in first is on top of the second sheet.

As it feeds into the laminator it will get kinda wonky at the end. I wasn't worried because my cards did not go all the way to the end.

Once your laminating is out of the machine you will see that the wonky part is now a little wrinkly. That's ok. You're going to cut it off anyways. :)

Of course I forgot to take a picture of the finished product. I'll try and take picks of both boys' calendars tomorrow.

Both Dill Pickles and Sweet Pickles start school on Tuesday. I am excited, but sad. As challenging as our summer was, I am kinda sad to see them go. But they won't be gone long. Dill's class is only 2.5 hours long and Sweetie's is 2 hours. Tuesdays and Thursdays are going to be busy days. Take Dill to school, take Sweetie to school, hang out for an hour, pick up Dill from school, pick up Sweetie from school, head to my sister's house for lunch, take Dill to occupational therapy while Sweetie stays with my sister, get Sweetie, head home. Phew. Leave the house at 7:45am and return at 3pm. Wow.

I found something else to add to my Christmas list- this adorable spool doll Nativity set at Holes in My Shiny Veneer. I just had to post it here so I wouldn't forget about it! I should have plenty of time to find spools on sale at Michael's and then raid my mom's fabric stash for the necessary scraps. Yippee for a Nativity set I don't have to worry about the boys breaking into a million pieces!

Hmmmmmmmm.........

I thought had scheduled 2 posts to go automatically but they never did. Hmmm..... maybe I don't know how to schedule posts afterall. I put them up today and I guess I'll have to figure out what I did wrong. I was so proud of myself that I had written stuff ahead of time. Oh well.

Mama Reads Again!

I love to read! For a while I wasn't. The little pickles kept me too busy. I just did not have time. I was not a happy Mama. Then one day I decided that I needed to be happy and take some time for me. I started reading again here and there. There was plenty of reading time while Sweet Pickles was in the hospital. Who can sleep there when you have machines beeping and booping and people coming in and out of your room all day and night. So here's a list of all that Mama has read since June. I think it's a pretty good list if I do say so myself.

Percy Jackson and The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson and The Sea of Monsters by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson and The Titan's Curse by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson and The Battle of the Labrynth by Rick Riordan

Percy Jackson and The Last Olympian by Rick Riodran

The Secret Life of CeeCee Wilkes by Diane Chamberlain

Loving Lefties: How to Raise Your Left Handed Child in a Right Handed World by Jane M. Healey

Rules by Cynthia Lord

Out of My Mind by Sharon Draper

Look Me in The Eye by John Elder Robison

Right now I am reading The Catholic Home: Celebrations and Traditions for Holidays, Feast Days, and Every Day by Meredith Gould.

Books in my 'To Be Read' pile include:
Wild Things: The Art of Raising Boys by Stephen James and David Thomas

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress: A Memoir of Going Home by Rhoda Janzen

Growing an In Sync Child: Simple, Fun Activities to Help Every Child Develop, Learn, and Grow by Carol Kranowitz and Joye Newman


Have any good book suggestions? I am open to just about anything.

Christmas in August?

It is August and yes, I am thinking about Christmas. I've actually been thinking for a while about it, I just have not had the chance to blog about it. As I fell over a toy for the zillionth time the other day I decided that the boys had too many toys. They don't need any more toys and certainly not toys that are loud an obnoxious.

I tried to make my own toys/gifts for Christmas last year and it kinda worked out, but not like I had hoped. I didn't get nearly everything done and this year I vowed to start sooner. Then Sweet Pickles got sick and life was put on hold. I did finally manage to finish making pillows for my sister that were supposed to be her Christmas gift almost 2 years ago. I just gave them to her the other day while they were in town visiting. I forgot to take a picture of them, but they were really nice.

I have lots of ideas of things I'd like to make for Christmas gifts. Alphabet bean bags, number bean bags, softies, card table play houses, pillow pets. I just need to sit down and figure out who is getting what and then get started. I think that will be my goal for the week. I'd like to post them on here so I won't lose my silly piece of paper with my list, but then my sister would know what her kids are getting .....errrrr....... supposed to be getting for Christmas. Think she can keep a secret?

Hello?

Yes, we are still here. It has been quite a summer.

Sweet Pickles ended up being in the hospital for 2 weeks. He was sent home at one point with a PICC line so that we could administer his IV antibiotics at home, but ended up right back in the hospital less than 36 hours later. After nearly another week in the hospital Little Sweetie was finally able to go home.

Once home Mama and Daddy Pickles had fun administering IV antibiotics 4 times a day for the next 6.5 weeks. Finally near the end of July, Sweet Pickles was deemed healthy enough to stop taking antibiotics and the PICC line was removed. Our summer fun was finally ready to begin at the end of July, because, well, there's only so much fun you can have when you are hooked up to an IV for 7.5 hours a day.

We have been busy the past month doing all the things we couldn't do before- swimming, visiting our cottage, playdates with friends, going to story time at the library and bowling. School starts in 2 weeks and we'd like to cram as much fun as we can into our remaining free time. Once we get back into the swing of our school routine, I hope to be posting regularly. I have lots of things rattling around in my pickle jar. For now I will leave you with this picture of Sweet Pickles and his PICC line that he lovingly called his "tubie."

Can we please just get well?

I was sick. I got better.
Dill Pickles was sick. He got better.
Sweet Pickles got sick. So far he is not better. Little Sweetie has been in the hospital since last Thursday with a staph pnemonia. Sunday he was transferred to a children's hospital. Today we learned he has an abscess on his lung. For now they are hoping it goes away with the multitude of antibiotics being given to Sweet Pickles. If not they will have to sedate him and drain it with a needle.

Please send good thoughts and prayers our way. Being hospitalized this long is starting to get tough for the whole Pickles Family.

Yuck!

I think that's the only word for it. I was sick all last week. This week the boys are sick. We've also gone from winter to summer in a matter of days. Yuck!!