From Enbrel to Ibuprofen

We started Lucy's journey with JRA years ago and in January we turned an exciting corner. She had been on Enbrel and once we saw that it was working and she didn't have any symptoms the doctor started slowly decreasing her dosage. In December she had been free of symptoms for 6 months and was on a very small dose. Then last month she was taken off of all meds. CELEBRATION!
These last couple of weeks we have noticed that she was starting to limp a little and was complaining about her toes. We even got a call from school because they noticed that she was walking on her heals. The doctor suggested her taking 10ml of ibuprofen 3 times a day. I'm not too happy about it. I feel a little bit better after talking to the nurse today. We don't want her to be restricted or in pain and the side effects of ibuprofen are much less than the side effects of Enbrel.
To be honest JRA wasn't keeping me up at night. 75% of kids who are diagnosed grow out of it. I've just always felt that Lucy was going to be in that 75%. I'm starting to get a little nervous. She experiences most of her pain in her wrists and feet. If this pain continues it could really impact her progressing. I hate that the only thing we can do to help her is to put her on these serious medications. There's no surgery or anythings we can do to make it go away.
JRA is starting to keep me up at night.

Decisions, Decisions

For Valentines Day my grandma and grandpa sent each of the kids $5 in a little card. The cash has been burning a hole in their pockets since the day it arrived. Last week while Simon and Lucy were at school I took Ian to spend his money. He knew exactly what he wanted. We went to the Cars section and I showed him the cars he didn't have. He saw what he wanted and picked it without a second thought.
Today I took Simon shopping with me so he could spend his money. It was a totally different experience. He wanted to start off in the Imaginext section. Not much there for $5.
Then it was on to Thomas. I lined up the trains that he didn't have and he looked but was more interested in asking how much the bigger items were. I think he was hoping I would cave and give him some more money. Then he wanted to go check out the Cars. We walked through the same process there. Pointed out the ones we didn't have but he kept eyeing the bigger items... Then he decided he wanted to go to the Lego sections. Same process. "How much is this?" "It's $20. You can choose from these." "How much is this?" and so on. I kept threatening to choose for him or to make him wait if he couldn't decide. We finally made our way back to the Cars aisle and he decided on a car he didn't have.
I can't be too hard on him though because unfortunately I'm more like Simon than Ian. Sorry to my Mom and all my friends who have ever been shopping with me.

I'm always surprised on how different my kids are. Simon takes on the world with a totally different view than Ian.

Valentine's Day

There just something that I love about Valentine's Day. I think it goes back to my time as a classroom teacher. I loved the fact that everyone gave everyone a valentine, and families worked on boxes together. I love my kids with every fiber of my being and it's another day where I get to show them that I think they are special. And it doesn't come with all the baggage of Christmas: hype, materialism, and all the running around. It's a simple holiday and I love it!

This year I discovered that Walmart has photo vday cards. I got cards for Simon and Lucy for only $7.00. Lucy choose Tinkerbell and Simon choose Cars 2 (big surprise). Each card had a photo and a message. Easy. I know it would have been good to have them practice their name 20 some times but I went for the easy route since I didn't plan ahead as well. I did have them hand write all of their friend's names though. I decided to write each name in yellow marker and have them trace the letters. It worked pretty well.

That evening we had a little Valentines party with some friends. We had heart pizza and decorate your own cookies. It was perfect.

I was surprised on how easy it was to shape the pizza into a heart. I'm going to try some other shapes just for fun.

I can't wait until St. Patrick's Day!

100th Day of School

Last week Lucy's kindergarten class celebrated their 100th day of school. Each child was supposed to make a shirt with 100 of something on it. We went with 100 wiggle eyes. We glued them on with fabric glue. To my surprise all 100 were still there when she got home. I think her favorite part about the shirt was how it sounds when she jumps up and down. I decided to put two pictures up. On with her in her new glasses and one where you could see our handy work.

Happy Birthday Simon!

Of course I have a million excuses on why I haven't been posting. I guess Simon's birthday is a great motivation to get back in it.

Notice how many girls... we need more friends with boys

I can't really believe he is 5. 5 is so big. I'm so proud of Simon. He is such a great kid. He's loving and kind. He is the perfect middle child.

We had a great time celebrating his birthday. One bonus of living on a college campus is that we get to use the facilities during breaks. We were able to have his party in the game room. It's always hard to decide where to have winter birthday parties. We got out the bouncy house, I made some marshmallow shooters out of cups and balloons, and we had a homemade cake and snacks. Now that I'm staying home and we are on a tighter budget I've had to let go of our Pink Cupcake cakes. Thanks to Pintrest I found some great ideas.

All about Simon:

1. My pickiest eater

2. Still loves Thomas and Cars

3. Loves School

4. Hates to clean up and is hard to bribe

5. Loves tortillas with cheese, broccoli, nuggets, and ketchup

6. He's so excited that he is learning to read

7. Finds wonder in the world. (ie... "I can't believe it yesterday I was 4 and today I am 5.")

8. Currently his favorite show is Octonauts.... it changes often

9. Still on the early to bed and early to rise schedule

10. He is just all around awesome!