January 2011 Newsletter

Wow, it is 2011! That is a little crazy to think about because I don’t really know where 2010 went. I am happy to see 2011 come in and look forward to all the fun things that this new year will bring us.

January brought with it some big changes for our Levi man. We decided to move him out of his crib into a toddler bed. Levi is not a very good sleeper, to put it mildly. In fact, he has been my worst sleeper by far. At almost two years of age I am lucky if he will sleep all the way through the night. Yep, it has been a long two years. So, in the effort to try to help with get him to sleep at night and get me the most sleep we decided to upgrade so that I could snuggle with him in his bed. I wish I could report that it helped, but really it didn’t make much of a change. He loves being a big boy though and for some reason has decided that he likes sleeping on the floor just about as much as his bed. At least a couple nights a week we will find him fast asleep there. Hey, wherever he wants to sleep, I don’t care. Just as long as he sleeps.

January also brought us some challenges with Ellen. She returned to her dance class after the break just to run into problems. Her ballet teacher reported that she did not participate well in class and had started trying to distract the other girls in her class as well. She was basically asked to leave the class (it was done nicely, with a suggestion to try something different offered at the studio.) This got me thinking about her attention span and how she measured up to other kids. So, I started paying attention at church in primary and talked with her kindergarten teacher and we came to the conclusion that Ellen doesn’t focus well. She is smart as a whip, but will have to be reminded a lot to do the simplest of tasks. We are fairly certain that she has ADD, although she is still too young to diagnose. We are not doing anything really for it at this point because it is not getting in the way of her school, it is just something that we will have to keep an eye on. We did move her out of dance and put her in Kindermusik, and she is loving it.

The kids took a trip to the dentist this month and we were able to have all three checked out. This was Levi’s first trip to the dentist and he really enjoyed it, especially getting a new toothbrush. He let the dentist look at his teeth and didn’t really complain too much. Ellen was her usual good self. She let the dentist do his thing and happily watched Toy Story on their TV. Trevor was our biggest success. He has never let them do anything except check his mouth with a toothbrush. He submitted to Xrays this time as well as letting them clean his teeth with their equipment. He wasn’t all that happy about the whole thing, but I was proud as punch of him. We are also proud to report that there are no cavities!!

At the end of January, on Connor’s birthday to be exact, we decided to make a fun day of it and enjoy it rather than mope. Ellen had her Piano Party (her recital) that afternoon where my Aunt went all out. Jean had lots of games for the kids to play and fed us lunch with these very yummy chicken turnovers and sauce. Seriously, Yum! Then the kids were able to play their songs for us. Ellen did great playing her song although she informed me that she didn’t “feel like saying the name of my song” when I prompted her to do so.

After the piano party we loaded up the car and headed out to the cemetery to meet up with Annie and Jason. We released 10 balloons in honor of Connor’s 10th birthday and had Little Debbie’s cupcakes. Then we loaded back in the car and headed to Maple Grove Hot Springs. The kids loved playing in the hot pools. Their swimming pool is just like bath water and they have fun noodles for the kids to play with. They swam around hanging on to their noodles and came up with games. We sat in one of the other hot pools as well, but spent most of our night in the cooler ones letting the kids play. It was good company and a beautiful night, and very relaxing water. On our way back to Pocatello we stopped in Lava and got Thai food at the restaurant there which was also yummy! A very fun ending to the trip.

January brought our family one more thing. We found out that Landon had not passed his class from the fall semester with a high enough grade to allow him to continue on with his program. While this was a little bit of a blow (more to ego than anything), we really decided that maybe it was a good thing. We have been keeping our life on hold for a long time waiting for Landon to be done with school and while this is not quite the ending we had envisioned, we feel like we can finally move forward with our lives. He has a good job with FedEx and has received some invaluable training from them that we hope will be helping us to find a new job. He has been applying for jobs all over both with FedEx and with other companies and we are hoping to find something soon.