Preschool Screening

Ya, ya, ya. I know. It's been a while. I do have a lot to blog about, but it's pretty low on the totem pole at the moment.

Anywhoozle, Cole had preschool screening 2 weeks ago. It went pretty well. I'm kind of glad we couldn't do it back in September. I think he would have had to be re screened at that point. He did everything he was asked except a few things. One was making a +. He made more of a T. He also couldn't stand on one foot, although he can, he was just goofing around. The other thing he didn't do was walking one foot in front of the other on a line. He apparently took some creative liberty with that one and decided to slide his feet down the line. The highlight for me was that we knew 3 of the 4 developmental screeners. We of course ended up with the one that we didn't know. She had stepped out and one of the other teachers stepped in and took us back to her station. Just as we were finishing, the speech therapist walked by and said she had wanted to screen Cole. Cole has never had speech. He's been tested once, but hasn't had a lot of contact with the speech therapist. However, every day she comes in to his preschool class to pull out kids he runs up says "Hi, Mrs. P~! How are you today?" I just wonder who in the world that kid is. He certainly isn't mine!

Beautiful blogger

I was honestly going to ignore this pity award from my sister, but seeing as how I need to find a moment to ignore my sick, whiny child, I'd thought I'd post something. Anywho, thanks Krissy!

I don't have anywhere near 15 blogs to nominate, so I'll do the few that I have.

1. First up is Jennifer who hasn't posted since October, but her blog is incredibly funny, as are her facebook updates. Jenny T, as we knew her growing up, has been a family friend since the 80s and if she didn't already have her own family, I'm sure we would have adopted her in. And just in case she sees this, blog a little bit!

2. Next up is Cathy, who also doesn't blog incredibly often. Cathy was a co-worker of mine back in my horticulture phase. My first impression was that she was really weird, but she quickly became one of my very best friends and has remained so.

3. Next we have Sarah, who like the others, doesn't blog often. I met Sarah back in 4-H and then she transferred to my high school. She's definitely had an interesting life, but sounds like things are normalizing lately :)

4. Lastly, I have Mamie. Mamie is married to a college classmate of mine. She didn't plan on having children, but now one is on the way! I'm incredibly excited for them and really enjoy reading how excited she is to be a mom. It's almost enough for me to want to have another one. I said ALMOST.

5. Ok, I lied. I have one more. Jessica is one of my best friends from college. She and her husband traveled the road of infertility and now have an adorable little boy to show for their journey.

Now for 7 random things about me. I think I can come up with 7 of these.
1. I have attended 4 colleges, 2 of them two different times. That adds up to 5 transfers and over 200 undergraduate credits.
2. I used to think I wanted to be a doctor. Turns out you shouldn't always stick with the career choice you make at age 3.
3. Breastfeeding my second child was a whole lot harder than breastfeeding my first. Pat pretty much made the decision that I was breastfeeding, for me. I was still on the fence when Cole was born. Now I can't imagine why you wouldn't at least try it.
4. I've never struggled with my weight, but my sister has made it very clear that I will blow up like a balloon at the age of 30, so I'm sort of trying to watch my diet now.
5. Being a dairy farmer's wife is the hardest, and lowest paying :), job I've ever had. The benefits are very few, but they're big ones. Guess that's why I'm still here ;).
6. I grew up a town kid and I hated it. I always wanted to live in the country. Now, there are days I wished I lived in town so I could walk to the park or run errands, but those days are few and I'm glad my kids will be farm kids.
7. I am addicted to CafeWorld on facebook. I'm really tempted to try SocialCity, but I'm afraid my husband will divorce me and my kids will be completely neglected.

Spring is coming!

It may not look like it and only slightly feel like it, but spring is on it's way. We calve all year long, but this is my extra special calf. I have 2 red Holstein cows, mother and daughter. Since the daughter was born, 4 years ago, I haven't had another heifer. Last year they both had nice looking bull calves, but my cow laid on hers and killed it. Great motherly instincts huh? Anywho, this year she was 2 weeks late = bull calf. Only her udder started to shrink before she calved, not a good sign. We figured the calf had died and for some reason she hadn't aborted it yet. Pat gave her meds to induce labor, and nothing. Finally, 2 weeks ago, she calved. Bull calf, but it was alive!
My other cow isn't due for a few months and hopefully it will be a heifer. The heifers we keep and they go into the milking herd. The bulls we sell and invest the money for the boys college fund. Their fund is growing but my herd sure isn't.

Anywho, here is how I KNOW spring is on the way. Baby kitties! We had our first litter on Tuesday. Turns out this is a wild cat that is nearly identical to the tame cat we thought was the mother. We've been up petting her and her 4 babies and she hasn't seemed to mind. She wasn't too crazy about the boys messing with her babies.

Why I'm Glad I Don't Work Full Time

I'm exhausted. I spent this week doing my pre-student teaching experience. We have to spend 10 full days in the classroom, this past week, and one more in May. The teaching part was fine. I spent most of the week observing. I did teach one class today and did a game on Tuesday with one class. The hardest part was that my children can smell importance and know how to make themselves sick. Think I'm lying? When Cole was 14 months he had his PDA closed. It meant he had to be put under anesthesia and they inserted a metal coil up through the vein (artery?) in his leg up to his heart. Putting a 14 month old under anesthesia was the tricky part. It means they can't have a cold, or anything that would put their respiratory system at risk. Guess who got his first nasty cold, in August? Thankfully he was on the mend and they did the procedure anyway. A year later we were going to put him under again so that we could get a good echo of his heart. Guess who had an upper respiratory infection? That worked to our advantage. Since he was feeling so cruddy he just sat there through the whole thing and we didn't need the anesthesia. This past September he was scheduled for pre-school screening. Guess who came down with laryngitis and couldn't talk? Those are about the only times the kid has been sick, until this week. The cough started Friday and the fever came Saturday. Today has been the first day since then that he's been fever free. One kid sick and me gone was manageable so Tate got sick Tuesday night and Wednesday was the day Pat and Grandma couldn't stay with them. So I had to miss Wednesday to stay home. I guess they missed me. Today, I'm exhausted and I'm not sure if it's from "working" all week or if now I'm getting sick...

Cheese!

I finally caught Tate's cheese face on camera. He usually says cheese as soon as he hears the camera turn on and then refuses to do it again. They were both "washing" their hands. Cole did manage to pump half a bottle of soap into the sink, so I guess they were clean!