6 year old worries

Cole is a worrier.  I'm sure I've blogged about this before, but he hasn't grown out of it like I had hoped.  This week is the book fair at school.  They did something new this year called Reach for the Stars.  Each child was supposed to read 20 minutes each night for about 2 weeks.  Each night they filled in a star to show that they had read that day.  They got sponsors and half the money donated went to the school for new library/classroom books.  The other half the kids got to keep in the form of a voucher for the book fair.  If kids did the reading but didn't have sponsors, they still got a $5 voucher.  So each kid that did the reading got at least one book from the book fair.  I thought it was kind of a neat idea.  My boys had some sponsors (thank you grandmas and grandpas and aunts!)  so they had a bit of money to spend.  They had all sorts of neat books and Cole picks out Earthquakes and Tsunamis among other less worrisome titles.  It was a factual book, but every page brought a new round of questions along with "can that happen here?"  Ugh!  I tried to convince him to look for another book, but nope, he wanted THAT one.  I tried reassuring him that we are not going to have earthquakes and tsunamis here, but it couldn't wipe that worried look off his face.  He is the kid that you make sure you don't watch or discuss news around.  I'm still hoping he grows out of it.  Enough to not be afraid, but not enough that he stops caring.

Ears

I've got this kid.  He's a good kid; well-behaved, even-tempered, mild-mannered.  He's the one who's had surgery, broken a leg, broken a shoulder, and now has significant hearing loss in his left ear.  My heart breaks for him.  Thankfully, it appears the hearing loss is treatable, but it's just one more thing he has to go through.  He's just that kid that if something bad is going to happen, it's going to happen to him.

At his normal check up in June, he did not do well on his hearing test, but whether it was from too many distractions or actual hearing loss, we weren't sure.  The free audiology testing is only done during the school year, so I figured we'd wait until school started.  Then cross country started so I figured I'd just wait until I was done coaching to take him in.  At about the time that happened, I got a call from the school nurse saying he didn't pass his hearing test.  So in we went.  The audiologist said his hearing loss is equivalent to wearing an ear plug and holding your hand over that ear.  The funny thing, no one noticed.  He never said anything.  His teacher didn't notice.  I didn't notice.  Talk about making you feel like a bad parent.  How do you not notice your kid is half deaf?!?  We see an ENT at the end of this month.  Pray it's an easy fix and he gets to spend the rest of his years as "normal."

Dress Up Day

aka, Halloween.

Last year I decided to attempt to make the kids costumes.  I had always bought them before, but the kids were little and didn't care what they were, so I could wait until the last minute and buy them on clearance and choose whatever was left.  Last year I found instructions for making a puffin costume that looked easy enough and Cole was very compliant.  Tate eventually settled on a shark which was easy enough to make also.

This year Cole came home from school in early September informing me that he wanted to be the black ninja because his name was also Cole.  For those of you who aren't parents of elementary aged boys, the black ninja named Cole is from Lego Ninjago.  Tate thought that he could be the red ninja.  Turns out, ninja costumes are super easy.  Red shirt, red pants, red scarf, red stocking had with a slit cut in it, Voila!  Cole even made nunchuks out of twine string and milking inflations.  Tate used the pirate sword he got from the children's museum.  Super easy!

Having a girl is different.  When Cole was a baby, we didn't do Halloween.  Tate was a lion only because we had to bring him along anyway.  That was not going to be good enough for my baby girl.  She needed to be extra cute!  I found an idea for a candy corn costume on pintrest.  It looked simple enough.  The only problem, I couldn't find the right colored material, so I had to dye it. This fabric didn't dye particularly well, but good enough.  Her costume took a lot more time and money than the boys, but she was awfully stinking cute!

2 ninjas and a candy corn

The sweetest candy corn ever!

Sentimental Value

I had a garage sale last weekend.  Of course, that meant going through tons of baby clothes and deciding what to sell and what to keep.  It's not an easy task.  One of the things I came across was a pair of socks.  I set them aside and when Cole came home from school, he asked why I wasn't selling this particular pair of socks.  I told him these socks had sentimental value.  He wanted to know why.  These are the socks I'm talking about:

This was Cole the day of his surgery to close his PDA (a small duct above the heart that normally closes after birth, technically it wasn't surgery, but they had to knock him out and do procedures and stuff).  If you met Cole his first year of life, you wouldn't have noticed anything wrong with him, but he was small, he slept a lot, and his feet were always cold.  I just chalked the latter up to a family trait.  He always had socks on.  He was the first one in that morning for his procedure, then he had to remain completely flat for 6 hours following, to make sure the site where they went in closed properly.  We lost one of his socks at some point and while I was searching for it, Pat told me to touch his sockless foot.  It was warm.  For the first time in 14 months our baby's feet were warm!

I gave Cole the shortened version of that story and about teared up holding those socks.  We had wondered whether this procedure was really necessary since he never seemed to have any ill effects of that duct, but we did what the doctors recommended.  I guess warm feet were our sign that this was the right decision.

On a side note, one of the socks has gone missing again...

Little Old Men

Cole's kindergarten teacher, Mrs. J, attends our church.  On Sunday I was telling her how impressed I am with his writing.  When he started his first year of preschool, it took days for him to write his name.  Now he wants to bring a notebook everywhere so he can write his words.  I was also telling her how another mom and I are frustrated because our boys can't seem to venture far from the farm.  Everything they write is about tractors, semis, cows, or something farm related.  Mrs. J proceeded to share how she has this group of farm boys and loved listening to their conversations.  She said it's like listening to little old men.  "We finished corn last night, how about you guys?"  or "We started chopping corn stalks today."  It just made me laugh because the image is perfectly clear in my head.

My boys have also become very anti-John Deere.  We have a mish mash of machinery, but only a couple of John Deere pieces, an old 60 tractor that was a gift for my father-in-law as that was his first tractor.  We have an old baler and a seed drill that are also JD, but most of our tractors are red.  The boys take this to mean that John Deeres are gross!  Last year with the dry weather a lot of combines caught on fire, mostly John Deere, so now, according to Cole, if you ride in a John Deere combine, it might blow up.  The boys in his class, and one of the paras, love giving him a hard time about John Deere green.  He had a field trip to the apple orchard, where one of the boys spotted a combine in a shed and Cole refused to look at it because it was John Deere.

Last night on the way to bed I was pointing out everything in our house that was green.  Cole thought he might have to move.  I told him Antarctica was the only way to go since nothing grows there, so he wouldn't have to worry about green plants or grass.  I also told him I probably wouldn't come visit because it is way to cold.  His response: "do phones work there?  Cuz then I could just call you."

The College Fund

I had a garage sale this weekend.  I understand, now, why some people refuse to do them.  I thought I would try it once.  I don't know that I would do it again.  I prefer to just give people my stuff if I know they can use it.  I actually have 4 boxes upstairs waiting for delivery to a friend.

Anywhoodle, Friday night was spent loading the pickup with boxes and totes of clothes and toys.  Since I live in the country, a neighbor and I decided to haul our stuff into town for the community wide sales to generate more business.  After things were loaded, Shelby and I took off to do a little garage sale shopping.  When I got home, Cole had convinced Pat that he was coming with.  I promptly told him no.  He didn't want to know why he couldn't come, but instead wanted to know how else he was going to get money for college!  No money for toys or candy for that one.  It's going straight for college!  So how is it that a 6 year old is planning that far ahead?  Well, remember our pigs?  Our pigs, and any red steers, fund our kids college funds.  So Cole was convinced that he had a ton of money coming to him when we sold our pigs, only to discover that the money was going for college.  So now he thinks all money needs to go for college.  I feel sorry for his future wife, if he has time for one.  That girl is going to have to be completely smitten to take second place to work all the time.  :)

Oh, and as for the garage sale.  I made enough to pay up our neighbor for babysitting Shelby and the advertising and had an extra $5 in my pocket.

Answers

Before you go any further, make sure you read this post.


Did you read it?




Did you make a guess??




Ok, last chance....



Here are the answers:
Top:  My blue eyed beauty, Shelby
Middle:  My future farmer, Cole
Bottom:  My only non-redheaded child, Tate