my niece, my oldest sister’s little girl, came to visit a couple of weeks ago.  i caught this pic, unposed if you can believe it, while they were mesmerized by the tigger movie.  it was later i realized they had put themselves in order of age.  my little stair steppers… my girl - almost 2, the middlest - 3 1/2, the cousin - 4 1/2, my oldest - 5.  too good!

aah, steroids, sweet steroids!

so i fought some more with the medicaid office and then called my doctor’s office to get a work-in appointment.  i called for 2 hours yesterday morning to get the appt, with only a busy signal to greet me.  (i should’ve had a clue…)  finally decided to get everyone ready and just go set in the doctor’s office until they could see me.  (side note – if you know me, you know this is not normal behavior for me – i don’t run to the doctor.  ever.  so when i pack up all 3 children after a night of NO sleep with a very sick child in tow, then you can imagine the point i’m at to take them to the doctor.)  i finally get to the doctor’s office while on the way there.  they have no appointments until the next day, no, they will not work me in, i can sit in their office, but i will NOT be seen.  i then told her i needed to speak with the nurse or go to the er.  she took the message and hung up.  i then had a complete fall apart while in the car.  crying.  wailing.  losing it.  2 hours later the nurse called me back, said my girl’s rash and fever 2 weeks ago sounded viral and unrelated to the latest issues.  the rash was a “phantom” fever.  viral.  no big deal.  (in other words, i was confirmed in my earlier decision that it was not strep, but just a passing thing – glad i didn’t take her then – i had begun to question myself.)  what she has now is a cold combined with croup.  same croup that my oldest had, and that (thankfully) missed my middlest.  so, can i give her the same steroids i still have on hand from october?  yes.  no problem.  (insert singing of hallelujah)  my girl slept all night – she slept until 3:30am with no coughing, and there was absolutely no throwing up or showers in the middle of the night!  yea!  steroids!  now, i can just wait for the fun of the steroids after several days, but i’ll take what i can get now – if it’ll let me sleep!

onto other things – the house has been inspected.  we’re waiting on the w-2 to close.

we’re kind of back into homeschooling – we dropped 5-in-a-row this week – i have to find a book – another long story with the library – not worth going into right now.  i just decided that’s too much foot work for a week when everyone’s still kinda sick, not sleeping, and we’re knee-deep in this house buying stuff.  but we’re still doing the …100 easy lessons for phonics reading – this is still going great.  and we’re focusing on money counting this week and counting by 2s, 5s, and 10s.  my 3 year old’s working through one of his pre-k workbooks and we’re still reading “the magician’s nephew” at naptimes and teaching everything all the time (ie, hard-core shoe tying!, working hard on our chores – taking care of daisy (yes, she’s still with us!), drying and putting away dishes, setting the table, clearing the table, sorting, folding and putting away clothes, cleaning their room nightly, you know, the norm…)  oh, and i really started working with my 5 year old about taking responsibility for his actions.  this has been a huge issue, even more lately.  last night, daddy and i talked to him about confessing his sins to the one who was sinned against and asking for forgiveness.  we’re trying to connect what he’s doing now with the bigger issues that he’ll need to grasp later with his relationship with the Lord.  and that he is loved no matter what he does, but that the relationship with the one hurt by his actions is strained until he takes the steps to redeem it.  and then complete forgiveness from the one hurt.  he seemed to get this, not like it, just get it.  so we’ve worked hard on this today.   

i have other cutesy posts, but i’m still waiting to get the pics from the camera to the computer.  oh, to be technology literate…  :)