What were up to now....

Playground after school.

Lilly has been enjoying school a lot more. She has been excited to go and enjoying her day. Her only issue now is that she doesn't want Sadie to do anything fun while she is at school. She doesn't understand is that she gets to do fun things at school and Sadie has fun things of her own to do like play group, story time, and running errands with me. She never wants to miss anything ever. We are dealing with it day by day. Some days are definitely better than others and most of them are fueled by tiredness. Unfortunately the past few school days have been very busy for us. We have been running around from the time we drop Lilly off to when we pick her up and sometimes even after we pick her up. Hopefully once all the errands stop we will have a day or two a week that we can be at home while Lilly is in school and get some stuff done around the house and the girls can get a good nap in.  We have been able to let Lilly ride her bike to school, we chain it up, and then she rides it home.
After school we have been stopping at playgrounds before we come home. Sadie and I will pick out some snacks and fill up our water bottles and we have a snack with Lilly and Ruby, and then run around the playground. Today we didn't make it to the playground because it was 109 when we picked Lilly up. Sadie turns so red and gets so sweaty being outside and today was a bad one. Her hands were so sweaty she couldn't hold my hand because hers kept sliding out of mine. Some days when we get home I put all 3 of them in the bath tub to cool off. We have a pretty good routine going and they have been really good when it's time to go to bed. Things can get a little rough when Steven is working and I am trying to make dinner, but we manage. I was also able to find dryer erase/magnet chore charts for the girls and one of their "chores" is to behave so they have been really trying to get their stars.

Her face was the color of her shirt when we got home.

The charts have been great. They really try to earn their stars. If they get 28 stars they can get a book, for 56 stars it's a movie(buy one or go to the movies), and 112 they can get a toy. In a couple of weeks after they get used to the chores I will most likely change the number of stars and rewards.
At school today they had a dentist come in to check all the kids teeth. We already saw the dentist a few weeks ago and he said Lilly has a cavity in one of her molars. The dentist today said he/she(don't know who came to the school)saw nothing and that Lilly has "great oral hygiene". Now I am mad, I don't know who is right, they didn't take x-rays so we'll have to wait. Her Turkish appointment is on Friday so I guess we'll see then. I'll let you know when I know. I just know I am going to be really pissed off if she doesn't have a cavity. Not that I want her to have one, but I don't want her to go all the way to another dentist just to find out the base dentist was wrong.

She woke up wondering where we were.

Ruby is doing good. We are still waiting for her new reflux medicine. She takes Zantac twice a day but she still screams in pain and her face turns bright red. The pediatrician said that her throat was pretty red and that is a sure sign that her medicine is not cutting it anymore. Hopefully the medicine gets her this week and she starts to feel better. If better news, she now has 4 teeth and 1 more that should cut soon. She is still not crawling but she can move herself around pretty well. She rolls, scoots, or does what Steven calls a "gorilla walk". She says bunch of words now, but doesn't like to say them on queue. She has been sleeping in her room for a few weeks now and has been sleeping through the night pretty much every night. I usually have to wake her in the morning. And she has inherited sleep talking from her daddy. She has successfully woken me up in the mornings because I can hear saying actual words. I go in there and she is still sleeping. Lucky me!

She found a dog and played with it instead of running around.

WE NOW HAVE ALL OF OUR PASSPORTS!!!!! Steven is going down this week to start the whole process. We don't have dates or whether we will fly on the rotator or commercially. We are hoping to be in US for the whole month of November. The first 2 weeks in Pennsylvania and the last 2 in Texas. We are all dying to just get on a plane and go already. Sadie nearly asks every day. We'll be there soon though!!!! You'll know when we know because we'll be shouting it from the roof tops! It's going to be a long time coming though!
-K

Lilly's First Day of Pre-K

Lilly started her first day of pre-K yesterday. She had a pretty rough day. She was so excited to go. In true Lilly fashion she didn't she couldn't go to sleep the night before because she was afraid that she was going to miss something. We let Sadie stay up a little later because she had taken a nap and we wanted to let Lilly fall asleep without Sadie bothering her. She has also been waking up a lot in the middle of the night and tries to get into bed with me; sometimes I will wake up when she does and I'll hug her and tell her to get back into her bed, other times I sleep straight through it and she manages to go back to sleep in our bed. That is exactly what she managed to do the night before so when my alarm went off in the morning she sat straight up and asked, "Is it time to go to school?" She jumped out of bed, ran to her room and turned on the light. All of which woke Sadie up and she can be such a monster when you wake her up.  And Lilly has a very sensitive gag reflux. Steven brushed her teeth and accidentally made her throw up. He barely touched the tooth brush to her teeth and she threw up again. I finally managed to get her teeth brushed. On her way out the door I told her to remember to "Be nice" and Ruby repeated it perfectly. She yelled "Be nice" and giggled.

Daddy walked her to school by himself, because I had  yet another monster migraine. I was a little sad but I got to pick her up from school and and it wasn't her first time going to school. After school we met Daddy at the BX and had ice cream cones while she told us about her day. She wasn't her normal happy self when I got her from school so we tried to find out what was wrong. She told us she never wanted to go to school again. She kept saying she wanted to bring the class hamster home and she didn't. I also think that they don't do things like we do at home. All of the girls are pretty specific in how things need to be done or where things go. They even tried to help Steven when he switched to day shift how they get ready for bed. She kept telling me they made her do this and that and I am assuming that things didn't flow the way she is used to or how it is comfortable for her. All in all we think she had a good day. She had both good and bad things to say, she  just needs to get used to the new environment.

She did like her lunch. The school provides the lunch and snacks. They eat lunch in their classroom and it is self serve. They get to put the food on their own plates and they have to at least try a little bit of everything. Lilly has no problem with at least trying things and 9 times out of 10, she usually likes it. They had turkey, stuffing, carrots, tangerines, potatoes, rolls, and milk. She said it was all really good. Hopefully she gets used to her new schedule sooner rather than later because she was so excited to start school again. I am sure she will like it more and more as the days go on.