Thursday, January 22, 2009

New Belts

Yeah! We finally received our belts!! Mine's really hard to tell I progressed. The only difference between a low blue and a high blue is there is a black stipe on the high blue. It's really hard to see in the picture, I'm trying to point to it. Can't wait to get a yellow like Nathaniel's :) His belt is so bright and cheery :) Nathaniel has worked hard for his yellow and I'm very proud of him. He's going to have work harder now as a yellow, his instructors will be expecting more out of him but I'm sure he will be able to keep up.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Build A Bear

As promised, Elizabeth got to go to Build A Bear as a reward for gaining enough weight in the past 3 months. We haven't experienced this before and were a little overwhelmed at first. We just sat back and watched a couple kids go through and got the gist of it so let Elizabeth go at it. She poured over all the different animals available. We had to help her start eliminating some as there were just too many to choose from. She finally settled on a pink bear. Elizabeth was so cute when we got to the stuffing station. The young man working it told her to pick up a heart to put in her pink bear. Then she had to warm it up in her hands. She looked at us like "Really? Why?" Then he asked her to kiss both sides of the heart, make a wish and put it in her bear. Again, the look of "Is he serious?" It was all I could do to keep from laughing out loud :) She hesitantly kissed one side of the heart and told him she didn't have a wish to make. He gave her a funny look then he stuffed the heart in there and sewed the bear up. During this he asked her if it was a special occassion, why was she there? She shyly told him it was a reward for gaining enough weight. He gave us a look like he was asking if he heard her right. I'm sure he doesn't hear that one every day!!! We just chuckled.

With the bear stuffed and sewed up it was time to find an outfit. Oh my gosh!! How completely overwhelming. We thought it was hard to choose from the small variety of animals. There were hundreds of outfit combinations on that wall. We started pulling off outfits and telling Elizabeth how cute we thought it was on the bear's pink fur. I at first was thinking "Wow, what a rip, someone really nailed it when they developed this system of personlizing a teddy bear." Then I found it, the perfect outfit. A little white gi with different colored belts. I so have to have one now. I almost made one for myself but it was Elizabeth's special day so I held off.
So, back to choosing the elusive perfect teddy bear outfit. After several outfits, we found it. A cute pair of pink jeans, dark enough to compliment the bear's fur, and the cutest rainbow colored top. While she was trying those on the bear I went back to try and pick out a couple pairs of shoes for her to elminate more time looking at shoes. That's when I found the perfect shoes, rainbow colored shoes that matched the top perfetly. Now, why can't shopping for myself be so satisfying? I showed them to Elizabeth and it took her like 10 secs to agree with me. Overall it was fun to be in there with her. She asked if she could do it again and we told her she was welcome to come back every three months as long as she was keeping her weight where it needed to be. I may end up regretting that but for now if it keeps her gaining weight like she should I'll do anything :)
Washing her new bear "Fluff".

Fluff all dressed up and looking pretty! She reminds me of spring!

Oh and I am going back for that gi. My friend Lori and I decided we would go make one for our birthdays in April :)

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Life With A Toddler Continued...

After the previous half and half incident in the kitchen I decided we really needed a lock for the fridge. Seth just loves to hang out in the kitchen while I'm upstairs distracted with doing school with the other two. He loves to empty my drawers and get food out of the fridge. I have found half eaten apples now in three different places, all well hidden and starting to rot. I wouldn't be surprised if there are more. So, the lock was working great, a bit of a pain for those of us wanting to get in there but it was doable. Anything to keep Seth out of the fridge. Well, he would have none of that. A few days later I came upstairs after my shower to see that he had helped himself to the cereal and poured a nice pile on the couch. I just sighed and cleaned it up and got on with the day. The next day I came home from scouts to see that he had again gotten into the pantry and dragged up a box of cereal AND a bowl and decided to pour himself a bowl of cereal in the family room. And not just a bowl but a few piles of cereal here and there. Grrrrr!!! I didn't have time to clean it up, I was in a hurry to get Nate and I out the door for karate. After a long night at the dojo I had forgotten about the cereal. Amazingly, no one else noticed it and bothered to clean it up. I can't blame Rob, he hadn't gone upstairs the whole time I was gone. As I was sitting at the table I saw Seth push a chair over to the counter, grab the bread, and proceed to help himself to a slice. At that point I was too tired to care and figured he must be hungry he could have a piece of bread. Didn't think anymore of it. The next morning (yesterday) there was the piece of bread on the stairs with one bite taken out of it. Kids had been running up and down the stairs all morning and, again, no one bothered to pick it up and throw it away. The rest of the morning and evening (nap time was sweet relief yesterday) was spent chasing Seth out of the kitchen and putting back everything he took out or keeping him from trying to climb the stove while I was cooking. Couldn't take it anymore, called Rob at work and we met up and Babies R Us and we picked up one of the really long gates. Rob installed it last night.

Seth was not happy this morning to see that he had been locked out of his favorite play place. He stands at the gate now and cries when one of us goes in and doesn't let him through with us. I hated spending the money for it. I swear they think that if you are desperate enough for a gate that long you'll pay anything. But for now it's saving my sanity so that makes the gate worth it :)

Tuesday, January 13, 2009

It's Over

Phew! Testing is OVER! I never did use the spinning back kick. I think Rob was a little disappointed in that since he let me practice on him so much :) But I did get a couple other good kicks in and managed to get the black belt down. Pretty sure she gave in at the last second though :P I was just super worked up over the kata. Once that was over all the tension went away. Nathaniel also did really well in his sparring. All the kids did really well. We won't know if we passed until Thursday night so keeping ours fingers crossed. As usual it was fun to watch the guys test. They just get so crazy! It's great to see how far everyone has come. So for now, no more stress until the April/May test! LOL

Good News!

Rob took Elizabeth in this morning to have her nose looked at. Sadly, she got that awful cold going around a few months back and it's been running ever since. Which means the polyps have returned. She's been on two rounds of antibiotics in the past month and she's still stuffed up so we know they are intruding on her nasal passage. So, sure enough, a CT scan was ordered and we need to call to set up another surgery date. I am just grateful it's been over a year since the last one, that is a good sign.

Anyway, on to the really really good news! They had to weigh her at this appointment. I mentioned in a post awhile back that if she doesn't gain any weight soon they will be talking about giving her a feeding tube. We just don't want to deal with that. So for the past 3 months we've been trying to get her to eat whatever she can. It's paid off. The goal the doctor gave us three months ago was 48 lbs. That would have been a 4 lb gain. She's now a little over 50 lbs!!! Yeah!! She gained a little over 6 lbs!! She has another visit with the CF clinic next week and we are going to try and get another 1/2 lb on her in that time. She totally earned her reward which was a trip to Build-A-Bear. We will go do that before her surgery so she can take her creation with her to the hospital. I was so excited to hear that and so relieved. I was so sure it wasn't enough. Elizabeth just doesn't like to eat. It's good to know that what little more we were doing has paid off. What a blessing!

Nervous

I'm sitting here making myself sick with nervousness. Tonight is another belt test at the dojo. Nathaniel will be testing also. He's sitting here nonchalantly smacking away at lunch totally unconcerned while I'm trying to choke something down so I don't pass out tonight :) Ug, nothing sounds good. I'm so nervous because I'm not as prepared for this one. I don't feel I've got my kata down. Totally my fault for waiting until this week to practice it like crazy. I don't feel I've picked up much more from my training either and that has me frustrated. I can't get over my fear of kicking my opponent and them seeing it in time to sweep my other leg. Since I have hurt my neck twice now on the same back throw I'm a little nervous about going over backward. I have to leave my other leg unprotected when I kick, especially anything higher then the thigh and I just don't like it. Sensei wants me to practice head kicks while I'm sparring. HAHA. I just laughed at her. For one, not that flexible yet and another, I'm just not fast enough. Sigh. But if I want to move on to the higher belts I'm going to have to do more then just punch and the occasional roundhouse to the other person's thigh. I practiced a different kick over and over last night on Rob. He's so good to me :) He just held one of our couch cushions while I did a spinning back kick over and over and over on him until I almost fell over from gettting dizzy! Now, if I can just do it tonight while sparring that would be great :) So, anyway just sitting here making myself sick :) LOL One of the other students just laughs at me cause she's like It's just a blue belt. Yeah, just a blue belt, with a room full of people watching you spar someone else. Ug. Maybe I could ask everyone to step outside LOL!!

Thursday, January 8, 2009

Life With A Toddler


Hey, I'm just impressed he actually filled the cup up. That takes some skill. The next skill to learn is to stop when it's full :)