Prayers please!

My friends 4.5 month old little boy was diagnosed with an agressive form of brain cancer yesterday. He is about to undergo surgery in a few hours. Please please please send prayers for baby Tristian and his family. I can not begin to imagine what his parents are feeling/thinking right now. :-(

A busy week

It's been a busy week for all of us. Although we did not leave the house all weekend and that was fabulous!!!!

Jay had GOTR practice last Tuesday and Thursday. Then on Friday she had her Jeff City field trip. The kids left at 645am and didn't get back to school til 3pm. She really enjoyed herself but I think the highlight of the trip was the Charter bus they rode in. She brought home her Progress report yesterday and as usual she is doing wonderful in school. Off the top of my head I'm going to say her lowest grade was Math at an 89%. We are very proud parents. :-)

M has been well M. Love that child. LOL Sleep again has been hit or miss. Although Sunday night was pure hell in the sleep department for all of us. OHHHHH I forgot the exciting M news. Our babysitter has been potty training another child there. Friday she heard M start to grunt and asked him if he wanted to sit on the potty. He runs to the bathroom so she helps him with his diaper and he sits on the potty and poops!!!! That's very exciting, especially since we haven't even begun to start potty training him yet. We were going to wait til the summer to do it. We're getting him a potty seat for home, and I think we're still gonna wait til the summer. But if he starts showing more interest we may go a little sooner.

Our ball python "Van Gogh" died on Friday. We've had him for about 7 years now. I want to clarify that I hate hate snakes with a passion, but the husband has always wanted one and his mommy wouldn't let him. Thanks for that MIL. So Van Gogh wasn't our snake so much as dh's snake. LOL He's a little upset about Van Gogh passing, but like a man already on the prowl for a new addition. I have put my foot down hard on this one, because I will not be living in a freaking Wild animal kingdom. He has talked about alligators, lizards, bigger snakes, and bearded dragon's. Seriously this man of mine has issues.

Autism Awareness Month

April is Autism Awareness Month and I felt like it would be important to make a seperate entry. Here are a few Autism facts

Autism now affects 1 in 110 children and 1 in 70 boys
Autism prevalence figures are growing
More children will be diagnosed with autism this year than with AIDS, diabetes & cancer combined
Autism is the fastest-growing serious developmental disability in the U.S.
Autism costs the nation over $35 billion per year, a figure expected to significantly increase in the next decade
Autism receives less than 5% of the research funding of many less prevalent childhood diseases
Boys are four times more likely than girls to have autism
There is no medical detection or cure for autism

Prevalence vs. Private Funding
Leukemia: Affects 1 in 1,200 / Funding: $277 million
Muscular Dystrophy: Affects 1 in 100,000 / Funding: $162 million
Pediatric AIDS: Affects 1 in 300 / Funding: $394 million
Juvenile Diabetes: Affects 1 in 500 / Funding: $156 million
Autism: Affects 1 in 110 / Funding: $79 million

I find it sad that Autism affects way more children then all those disease listed above yet funding is the least amount.

Ho Hum...

My baby boy is back from Ma-ma's. I love my mother, but lady when I give you instructions concerning his bedtime and naps PLEASE follow them. Marcus has always been a horrible sleeper. It's only been the last month after we decided to do some sleep training that things have changed for the better in the sleep department. M is VERY schedule orientated. Whenever you deviate from his schedule everything goes to hell in a handbasket.

So naturally ma-ma did not put him down for nap even remotely close to his normal naptime, which in turn resulted in him not going to bed til 3-4 hours AFTER his normal bedtime. Needless to say last night absolutely sucked! He had no nap yesterday and didn't go to bed til 7:30 last night which is around an hour after normal bedtime. 3:45am guess who is up? Yep he got up at 3:45 and would not go back to sleep. Oy today is going to be a long day.

Jaylin had girl scouts last night, and afterwards we played scrabble apple. I won btw, and she was not happy about it.

On another note things have been really crappy lately. Last week our only vehicle was stolen, and last night our TV went out. WTH the tv was only a little over a year old. Hopefully things start looking up for us soon.

Busy Weekend

Whew after the last 3 days it's almost a vacation day going back to work. Let me layout last weekend for ya.

Friday
Friday morning up at 5:30 as usual to get ready for work. Pa-pa picked M up from the babysitters so he could spend the weekend with Ma-ma, bubba, and Kay kay. 2:00 I leave work to finish getting things together for Jay's birthday party. 5:30 Jay's party! It was wonderful! She had 9 girlfriends show up and the kids all had a blast! We didn't get home from the party til 10pm man it was a long day!

Saturday
No M but for some reason I'm up at 7am....oh yea I remember why Girl Scouts. Jay and I had April Showers with Girl Scouts saturday morning. April Showers (for those who don't know) is an annual event where one Saturday the girls put out bags, then the following Saturday we pick them up. It's usually household items, female products, baby items that all get donated to our local shelters. April Showers this year was ok, not our best year, but our troop did collect 1100 items for our shelters! All the items have to been sorted, counted, and bagged. This went on until about 2pm. After we were finished several of us went out to lunch with the girls. My girlfriend and fellow troop leader decided to leave our girls with her husband and hit up a thrift store close by. It's been a very stressful couple of weeks for me so some retail therapy (even at a thrift store) was very welcome. I ended up getting a couple outfits for both of the kids. Saturday night was wonderful for Jay and I. It's been a very long time since her and I were able to spend some quality alone time together.

Sunday
Again M is at ma-ma's and I am up at 8am. Thanks bladder!!! The kids and I have started going to a new church with friends of ours. As an adult I have had a hard time finding a church I feel comfortable with. While M is too young to understand church, Jay has gone off and on her whole life and really enjoys going. So off to church her and I go with our friends. The service was great and empowering. We went back to our friends house after church. Jay and A played together while us adults enjoyed some coffee on the gazebo. Jay wanted to stay and play for a while so mom went home for some much needed house cleaning and laundry. My most favorite things to do.

It was an incredibly busy weekend! As much as I did not want to come to work today I'm glad I have a few hours where I'm not running around. ;-)

All about us!

I'm mom to Jaylin and Marcus! Two very active and wonderful children. Jaylin is my 10 year old "baby girl" and Marcus is my rambunctious 19 month old. I work a full time job while Jay is in school and Marcus goes to a wonderful in home babysitter. Jaylin is super involved in everything and always has been. I thought blogging about our life and how stressful it can be at times would be theraputic. I hope I don't bore you too much. :-)