Welcome to 2009. I hope everyone is having a good 2009 so far. So, what's new this year?
Well, first we celebrated Mackenzie's 2nd birthday in January. Overall, I would have to say that she had an okay birthday party. She got lots of gifts and clothes, but I don't think her body had a good day. First, there was the dislocation of her arm while her aunt Kellie was playing with her. Oddly enough, we were just having a decision on how easily she can dislocate her arm and how she's done it twice in the last two weeks. Likely, we've experienced dislocated arms many times through the years with all three kids that Michael was able to pop it back into place. Then right before we were going to cut her birthday cake, she got hit in the face by Alex with what we think was a golf club. A long time ago, Zachary bought himself a kid's golf club set and Alex got his hand on one of the clubs. She ended up with a bloody nose. She was not too happy about that. It took a little time to calm her down and you can tell by some of the pictures during the cake cutting ceremony that her nose was quite red.
Besides her birthday incidents, she's doing pretty well right now. She's extremely advance with speaking. She can speak in sentences and you will be amazed at how much she knows. I wonder if it has anything to do with all those Dora cartoons she watches. Last year, right before she turned one, she got this really ugly illness called mouth, hand, and foot disease. I don't know how many of you remember her having it and how painful she was. Well, about one month, she had the same thing. Her whole mouth was filled with these white sores and she was in a lot of pain. She wouldn't eat or drink milk because she was hurting so much. This time, it seem to be a little worse because her gums were all swollen also. We tried brushing her teeth while she was sick, and right as we touched it, it started bleeding. We took her to the doctor and they were able to prescribe some medication to help numb her mouth and reduce the swelling. The only problem was apply the medication because she wouldn't let us anywhere close to her mouth. She barely eat, drank or slept. At night, she was awake every other hour or so because the sores would start hurting. She was a miserable little girl for two weeks. And just when you think she's starting to feel better, she caught the cold and ended up with an ear infection. That landed us another doctor's visit. She got some antibiotics and after a few days, things really started turning around. Her sores were healing and her ears were not ringing. Of course, during this time of illness, she got whatever she wanted. Now that she's all better, we're having some difficulty un-spoiling her.
Nicholas is doing really well. He's so big now. I can't believe he's going to be 10-years old this year. Right now, he's working on a science project for school. The topic he picked was does a plant grow faster in light or in the dark. So, we went to Lowe's and bought some pepper and tomato plants for his experiment. He has to water it each day, take measurements, and what some observations about the plants. So far, he's doing pretty well and should be on schedule to complete his project. As for the rest of his school work, he's doing really well. He doesn't require much help from us on his homework.
Zachary is still the same old Zachary. He's doing pretty well in school too, but requires a lot more help with homework. It's not that he doesn't get it or doesn't know it. It's his patience with sitting down and doing his homework. There are many times when he just doesn't want to do it and we have to constantly remind him of it. Most of the time, we have to sit next to him and softly push him along in order for him to complete his assignments. I remember when Nicholas was in the first grade, he had to do a report about an animal. I'm crossing my fingers that Zachary doesn't have to do the same thing because it's going to take a lot of work and patience to work with Zachary on a report.
Michael and I are doing fine. We both still work at CalPERS. My contract is coming up soon so we'll have to see what happens. I mean with the economy the way it is right now, it's nice to still have a job.
Well, this is about it for today. We'll talk again another day.