Christmas Round Up

We're still alive, I just haven't had much of an opportunity to write anything. As soon as I sit down at the computer, Wesley climbs up on the desk and starts pushing buttons. I'm trying to write a quick post now while he's distracted with toys.

We had a great Christmas (with more still to come!). We went to Cambridge to spend a few days with my family up there. We arrived in time for supper on the 23rd and had a great visit. We celebrated Nick's birthday before Christmas Eve church with a great supper of our favourite Chinese food and Nick's favourite apple pie. After church we went to my sister's house before returning to Mom and Dad's to prepare for Santa's visit.

On Christmas morning the kids opened their Santa presents in the morning before we went to my Aunt Joan's house for lunch. We had a great time there with all the Robbins clan (I think there were about 35 of us this year!) and then went back to Mom and Dad's to open family presents. We relaxed at home for a bit and then went to my cousin Judith's house to celebrate with the Haskell side of the family.

Nick had to be at work before 7 on Boxing Day morning so he returned to Windsor on Christmas Day but the kids and I stuck around Cambridge for some more family gatherings.

Friday was our annual games night with some of my Mom's family. That's always a crazy, fun night lasting well into the morning. This year was no exception. I thought the presence of so many kids might end the evening earlier this year but that certainly wasn't the case. There was a large 6 and under crowd but they only served to make the evening more enjoyable. Most of them stayed up with us until past 2:00 in the morning (which I paid for dearly with Darcy's crankiness the next day, not sure about the rest of you!). We had some good laughs which haven't seemed quite so funny when I've tried to explain them to Nick after the fact so I guess you had to be there.

Saturday was pretty laid back and we spent the evening at my sister's house in Brantford again checking out some of their new Christmas toys.

On Sunday we had dinner with my family after church and then drove back to Windsor along with my brother. Nick had driven Brian's car back to Windsor so Brian drove back with us and stayed for a couple of days, even allowing Nick and I a date night, using a movie gift certificate we received last Christmas and hadn't had a chance to use yet. We saw, "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" which we both enjoyed a lot.

Nick is now working today and tomorrow and then we're off to Montreal on Friday. Nick has three weeks of training in Ottawa which begin on Monday so we're timing our Montreal visit to work with that this year. Nick will leave for Ottawa on the train on Monday evening and the kids and I will stick around in Montreal for a few extra days before flying home next Wednesday.

So, that's it, our Christmas so far in a nutshell. Pictures are up on flickr and facebook as usual.

Wesley's Ears

It seems that every time we turn around Wesley seems to be developing an ear infection. He was just diagnosed with another one yesterday, which is his second one is just a little more than a month. I've lost track of how many others he's had. It's been quite a few and some of them have been, in the pediatrician's words, "quite severe".

We are scheduled for an assessment in January to see if there has been any hearing loss and I think to see if we can determine a cause for the infections. I'm not entirely sure what it's going to involve but we hope it will be helpful.

One of the things that makes it hard for us is that Wesley doesn't show a lot of symptoms for the infections. He's generally still his happy self during the day. We start to get concerned when he cried before going to bed at night. He usually settles himself down quite easily so when he starts freaking out it usually means he's in pain. He had two rough nights this week (30 minutes one night, 45 the next) so Nick took him in yesterday and sure enough there was a new infection starting.

So we've got another round of antibiotics for this poor boy. Fortunately this is the kind he likes and takes without a fuss. That makes things a lot easier for us. Hopefully this will be the last infection before the appointment in January!

Pinkeye

We're starting to experience the joys of kindergarten. It seems that Darcy has had about 3 colds since she started school all of which she was kind enough to share with Wesley (one of which he shared with Auntie Stef!).

On Monday after school she went to play with her friend Quinn and have supper at his house. When I picked her up at 6:00 she seemed fine. Around 6:30 I noticed a bit of "gunk" in the corner of her eye. I got a kleenex and wiped it away and expected that to be the end of it. 10 minutes later I looked at her again and it was back and it was worse. We looked closely at her eye and it seemed to be turning a nice shade of pink. It was nearly 7:00 by this time and Nick started calling around to clinics. There was only one still taking patients and it was way on the other side of town but they had to go. We didn't want to wait until morning and let it get a lot worse. So off they went. It was about 9:30 when they got home and Darcy was asleep in Nick's arms.

Sure enough, she had pinkeye. We had to wake her up to get her ready for bed (and to drink the hot chocolate Nick had apparently promised her) and to get the drops in her eyes. I think I would rather give the kids a suppository than do drops in the eye. You feel like you're being so cruel. They hate every minute of it and won't sit still. Darcy kept blinking at the last second making it impossible for us to get the drops in.

She was pretty uncomfortable but she was most upset when we told her this meant she couldn't go to school on Tuesday. You'd have thought the world was coming to an end. "Please, let me go to school! I want to go to school!" In a few years she'll be begging for pinkeye.

Going to the doctor on Monday was definitely wise. I think we really nipped things in the bud. When she got up Tuesday morning we could see a big difference. We called the school to tell them she had pinkeye and ask how long she had to be out of school. I was surprised when they said she could go back after one full day of treatment. Darcy was pretty happy with that news! She has taken her drops very bravely and her eyes look perfect again now. She is back at school today.

We still have no idea where she picked it up. Quinn hasn't had it, none of our friends kids have had it, so it must be school. Nick's eye is slightly pink but we've got some over-the-counter stuff that should work for him. So far, Wesley and I seem to have avoided it. Hopefully it's all behind us now.

French Immersion

We got Darcy's first report card last week and had our first term interview with her teacher. The report card was excellent and we were pleased with the interview as well. Darcy seems to be adapting to school very well and is handling the French Immersion very well too. According to the teacher her pronunciation is excellent (although we can't understand what she's trying to say a lot of the time) and she does well switching back and forth between the two languages. When we were driving to the interview though, she was demonstrating some of her French counting skills for us. She asked us, "What's the French word for 'trois'?" She didn't seem to believe us when we told her that trois was the French word, she wanted us to give her a new word.

She also seems to make up French words when she doesn't know what they are. We sometimes sing a song, "Zoom, Zoom, Zoom, we're going to the moon" at night before bed. It ends with a 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, blast off. Darcy has changed that to, "cinq, quatre, trois, deux, un, bloost off" because that, apparently, is French for blast off. Who knew?

The teacher also talked about how Darcy is adapting socially in the class. I was afraid she'd be easily led and just do whatever the other kids told her to do. Her class is mixed with JK's and SK's and the girl she has become good friends with is an SK. The teacher told us that usually when SK's and JK's become friends, the SK is clearly the boss and the JK is the follower but that's not the case with Darcy and Sam. She said their friendship is really equal so that was cool to hear. Mademoiselle didn't have any concerns with Darcy at all and is really pleased with how she's done so far. That makes us happy!

Darcy also got to go to a pizza party for being the top fundraiser in her class in their recent catalogue sales fundraiser. We didn't really do too much with it, I thought most of the parents took them to work and sold for their kids but we only sold to family and our neighbour. It didn't even cross my mind that she'd get to go to the pizza party. They apparently paged down to the office and called her to go down to the staff room for the party so she really thought she was the queen of the world then!

All in all we're thrilled with how Darcy's first term of JK has gone. We've ordered her class pictures and should have them to show you soon.