HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!

Today is the munchkin's birthday and we celebrated with a Woody/Buzz cake and some balloons! He was so excited when I took out the cake and he loves balloons!!! We are getting him a blow-up pool with some stuff attached, like a ring toss game and basketball hoop but we've been lazy and haven't gotten it yet. That's Monday's job.....to get the pool. And since we are going to PaPa's next weekend, he'll get plenty of presents!!

JEB had VBS at our church this week and it was so much fun!! He had a blast!! They have an adult/older teen buddy that goes around with him to help keep him on task and make sure he doesn't run away or anything. I'm so thankful for these buddies that work with him and make it possible for him to come to activities like VBS!

10 years ago tomorrow.....

I simply cannot believe that 10 years ago tomorrow, my sweet little boy came into this world. I remember the day of JEB's birth, quite well.

It was my last, official day of school for the year 2000. It was sort of bittersweet, as the school I was teaching at had decided they must close. Not enough kids to keep it running. Very sad. It was a nice little school. LOVED my classroom....each one had a sink, toilet, water fountain and a whole wall of windows!!! It really was a sweet little school, just had been mismanaged for a couple of years and it went downhill FAST!!!

Anyhow, went to school to finish getting my things all out of my room and to say goodbye to everyone. I had a dr. appt that afternoon and everyone was making sure I would call them when he came into the world.

Well, I was feeling pretty good, just hot. It was south Florida, after all. Went to the dr. and she said my blood pressure was not where she wanted it and we sort of had talked about going ahead and inducing me anyways, so I was to ck into the hospital around 9pm. Ok, I said.....can I eat dinner??? Yes, a small one. Nothing too heavy, the dr. says. Ok......so I have a bacon sandwich and a bowl of Cheerios. Not heavy.....I mean, it wasn't a STEAK!

We got to the hospital and all ckd in, went to the room. HOLD IT....back up. While at the dr.'s office I said to her, "So, when do you think I'll have this baby? By noon???" She laughed, quite a lot actually, and said, "Honey, you'll be doing good to have this baby by tomorrow night!" I told her, just you wait and see. He'll come FAST!!! Now, as they were hooking me up to the monitors and such, his little heart rate decided to dip quite low, several times and the nurse didn't like that too much and decided to call Dr. Green. The nurse comes back and says, "Guess what??? YOU are going to have this baby.......as soon as she gets here. Like tonight!! Like we need to get you prepped for a C-section!"

Now, in all reality, this is what we wanted. Jn is NOT a blood/guts/yucky sort of person, so I had a dear friend there with me to do the labor/delivery stuff. Marsha helped Jn get a duded up in his hospital gear and boy, did he look funny!!!

Then in comes Dr. Green......my only comment to her was...."See, I told you I would have this baby by noon!!!" HA! She laughed and laughed!

So off to the operating room I went.....got my nice spinal!!! Woo-hoo....those are good drugs!!! Jn came into the room and they started with the c-section.

It was going well, until that nice little, mild dinner I had eaten decided that it really didn't want to stay in my stomach.........especially with all of that pushing and rearranging they were doing. I had MUCHO scar tissue from having my appendix removed in college and she had to get thru all of that to get to the baby. ANYWAY, JEB was born at 11:55 pm on the 12th of June, 2000. He cried a little bit, but he had meconium in his fluid and they really didn't want him to cry much.

I remember asking what does he look like and the neonatologist told Jn that he thought there was a possibility of Down Syndrome. I, of course, was out to lunch as they finished up the surgery.

I don't really remember much until they came for him in the early morning for his pediatrician ck. and the neonatologist came and told me that they were going to keep him in NICU cause he hadn't nursed yet and his blood sugar was low and they wanted to feed him. His breathing was also a little labored and they wanted to ck him out and make sure everything was ok before bringing him back to me. I cried and cried......I wanted to nurse him so bad, but he wasnt too interested at the time. I sort of remember him saying something about Down Syndrome, but Jn had gone home to sleep and I couldn't really remember.

When he finally came back, my ob/gyn came in to talk with us and she told us what she thought the diagnosis would be. She felt so sad for us, as we had elected to have my tubes tied and I remember telling her that it was ok. GOD had a plan for this sweet little boy and that HE had blessed us with being the parents to carry that plan out.

He stayed in NICU for 13 days, and while his bloodwork showed he has an extra chromosome, he is perfectly healthy in every way! We are so blessed to be his parents!!! I can't wait to see what GOD has in store for him!!!

We love you buddy!!!

summertime!!

Finally, it's summer. Today was my first real day of summer vacation....and I was up and at 'em early to get JEB off to VBS at church. Of course, he had a BLAST! They are having an adult buddy go with him thru the morning to help him stay on task and not run around crazy. I'm so thankful that he gets to go! He likes the beginning assembly and the end because he gets to dance and sing!!

I also just connected to this cool website.... http://www.littlestheroesproject.org/ It's about taking photos of kids/families with a disability of some sort or an illness that is life-threatening. I think it is too cool. I applied for JEB to have a photo session. I think it would be neat since he'll be 10 on Saturday.

Sorry I haven't written for a while......been very busy those last few weeks of school. Too many things to do.....programs to practice for.......scrapbooks to put together for the kids.......and the added stress of not having a job just sort of piled all on top and blogging was the last thing I really wanted to do. Still don't have a contract yet for next year, but the numbers are looking better. Still praying for about 25 more kids with the majority of them in K4/K5. We know GOD is in the miracle business......so help me pray for one!!!

part two....

(blogger is being weird and won't let me add any more pics, so here are the others!)

The others are just pics we took goofing around! I didn't really mean to put those on here, but what the heck!!!

He is done with school now, but I have one more week with kids and then a couple of work days and I'm finito!!!! WOO-HOO!!!!!!!

I still don't have a contract yet, but that's okay! GOD has a definite plan and I'm really trying to just let HIM be in charge and show me where to walk on this path!!

another year done and gone....now it's SUMMERTIME!!!

Well, as you can see our little man has been busy!! He received several awards at school the other day and we are just sooooo proud of him!!! I was unable to attend the awards ceremony, but Daddy was there but due to some issues with the camera he took, the pics weren't too hot. Sooooooo, JEB sat in the blue chair for me and we snapped some pics of what he received!!!

He got an All A's trophy for the year......even if it was a modified curriculum.......that's ok!! We are proud of all his accomplishments!!

it's almost over.....

JEB is almost done with school. So am I, but I have an extra week to go. He will be done this coming Friday, and me? Well, we go till the 28th and then we have tchr work days the week AFTER Memorial Day???

Whatever happened to starting school the day after Labor Day and finishing up the Friday before Memorial Day??? That seemed to be plenty of schooling for those of us who are in our "middle" life years.....why isn't it good enough for our children???? Hmmmmm????

He got over his sinus infection quickly. Nothing that a round of Zithro couldn't cure. Good thing pediatrician's offices are now open on the weekends....with our pediatrician on call for the weekend too!

All is going well here in GA. Not much really happening. Getting ready for graduation......finishing up with grade programs (ours is this week).......finishing our worksheets.....(what in the WORLD will we do that last week of school? I have NO IDEA!) We are all quite ready to be done with this whole mess!!!

I will miss my first graders, though. They have been a sweet class! They are all so full of information and quite willing to part with it all the second the come thru the door in the morning! And it continues all day long.......it's like they keep remembering things they forgot to say the first time round!!! They are really too funny!!

I'm looking forward to relaxing a bit this summer. I'll be tutoring too, which will be good. JEB will enjoy playing with his stuff, but I really need to find him some buddies to play with. He needs to be around kids. He's so social!! ......I wonder where in the world he gets that!

Have a great weekend! Go outside and enjoy the spring weather!

a sick little boy....

Hey everyone! Only three more weeks to go and we are DONE!!! I'm really looking forward to the summer break. Things are so much more l-e-i-s-u-r-e-l-y......much more to my liking.

This week has been SO frantic and such a whirlwind!! I've been working every night, mostly till way late.....(11:30/12:00AM) on a power point for our First Grade Mother's Day Tea, which was Friday. Took me forever!! Had to sort thru nearly 600 pics from two classes from the year, THEN start working on the pwrpt itself.....THEN burn 40 CD's......THEN help decorate.....THEN make sure all the cutsey little things were done.........AND then after that, we had a FAMILY FUN NIGHT/TALENT SHOW at our upper campus. I was so exhausted last night!!! And to top it all off, picked JEB us from school and he fell asleep on the way home, even though we had gotten his FAVORITE dinner (TACO BELL). He ate, not as much as usual, and pretty much had his eyes closed the whole time. Then he started whining and crying. He felt really warm to the touch.......yep, fever. He sounded yucky......sinus infection!! Good thing our pediatrician's kids go to our school!!! I saw him and told him what was happening and it just happened that he was on call for the weekend!! Went to the office this a.m. and got meds, so he'll be back to his normal self in no time! He only has two more weeks of school to get thru, then it's home for the summer!

I hope everyone has a wonderful Mother's Day tomorrow. Enjoy the time with your children and/or parents. Children truly are a blessing from the LORD!