Kindergarten Christmas Program

This is my last of 5 kindergarten programs.  I'm a bad mom.  I've never been overly excited to go to these.  They're packed, hard to see, etc., etc.  But, Jaemin had lines that they drew his name out of a hat for.  The kid with speech delays had lines.  I was so worried.  Within a couple of days of us finding out and going over the lines, just a couple of times, with him he had them down.  He's been practicing for 2 weeks.  Tonight was great.  He was great.  He was excited to put on his big  boy belt, and his ribbon (his words for necktie).  He was handsome as ever.

My sweet, sweet 6 year old has sensory integration, speech delays and suspected language disorders (we're still working on).  He usually flaps pretty bad, but he held it in the entire program.  He struggled with the word 'eagerly' as that's really hard to say with a delay, but he did AWESOME!  We walked straight from the program to the high school where his dad was at a wrestling parent meeting because little J has begged to wrestle after going to camp.  He put on his singlet and headgear at home and wanted to sleep in it.  He's SO excited!  I just absolutely adore this boy.  He is truly our unexpected blessing and a real gift.  Seeing the way he sees life is so different from anyone I've ever known.  He's delightful with everything and sees life as an adventure and something of happiness.  He looks forward to every new day and is excited when we turn the calendar to a new month.  He makes me love life.

Halloween 2014!

It was pretty cool on Halloween, but awesome since it was a Friday!  Chase had a football game, so that's where Brian went and Cole hung out with friends....actually, I came home to him and a couple of them hanging out watching movies.  My boss had mentioned he gave out full-sized candy bars.  When I realized he lived in our town, I told them kids we would go there as well.  We drove around for 2 hours....well part of that was stopping at their grandparents and walking the neighborhood.  We went down a street that K has always wanted to since there are about 30 houses.  We ended up with 3 oversized bowls of candy.  It was a LOT of candy.  Jaemin was tired of doing it just a few houses in and after doing the trunk or treat.  By the time we got to the big neighborhood and he was able to just run in the yards from house-to-house he was ready for more.  He was really, really getting into it about the time we were done.  His poor little nose was red and a little snotty from the cool weather.  y the way, the picture below is of them and K is a zombie football player.  She wasn't going to dress up, but then we told her if she wanted to, she could and since Chase's practice uniform was home she grabbed it.  She was going to dress up like Chase, but we couldn't find his beloved Bass Pro hat.  Likely he had it with him at school.  So, yeah the look she's giving in the picture is a zombie.  My little Pocahontas, zombie football player and teenage mutant ninja turtles.

Sweet Slumber

School's very hard on him some days.  This is J when he earns laying in bed at bedtime.  You can tell weather's turning cool.  So cute!

Utter Relief!

So, last week, we were told that our dentist thought Chelsi had internal resorption of teeth 7 and 8.  This is her front tooth on the right and the tooth right beside it.  Reading about this is scary.  It's almost always caused by trauma.  We were supposed to be seen by a pediatric dentist yesterday, per our dentist.  Yesterday morning, I called to ask more questions because it didn't seem logical to see another dentist if it was resorption as that requires an  endodontist to work at the pulp and/or root.  They informed me that they had discussed the case with our dentist the day before and didn't want to see her.  They didn't feel they could treat her, but no one had called us.  I was a little freaked out.  Just a little.  I googled to find an endodontist myself.  I called our denstist, he called back and explained that he had an endodonist that would see us and was 30+ miles away.  He said there were none for her nearby.  I googled him and he had terrible reviews.  Sorry....you're not working on my child.  Turns out, he didn't want to work on her either, after seeing her xrays.  I found some that were 50+ miles away, but had really good reviews.  That's what I wanted.  I took her to one today after I had her xrays emailed.  He felt he could deal with it if it was.  He was really nice, his staff were nice and he was very honest and great at explaining why it wasn't resorption after he took his own xrays.  He did all of this for $60, which is very inexpensive.  He told me that it was more than likely a cavity or something similar, but not resorption. It was not in her pulp.  This is good!  But the cavity, or whatever, was 1/3 of her tooth and a little on the other tooth.  It was only sensitive when they poked the actual spot.  He said to go to a dentist to get it filled.

We left and all I could think was her dentist didn't want her, the pediatric dentist didn't want her and the endodontist helped us as much as he could.  I decided that since he was nice enough to print a copy of her xrays, I would stop at our dentist's son's office since they are no longer together.  I wanted another opinion.  Of course, this was after calling the pediatric dentist back to let them know it was not resorption only to be told it was the fact that it was her permanent teeth that made them not want to treat her.  I stopped in at the office and told them we were not patients, but I was very lost on what to do and having trouble getting anyone to treat her.  I gave them her xray, they looked at it and decided they would squeeze her in for an evaluation.  He was great.  He looked at the xray, checked her out and agreed that it was NOT resorption and was maybe a cavity.  He said it was very different, which did agree with his dad.  Typically, a cavity doesn't invade a tooth that badly in only one year.  That takes years of neglect and she's only had those permanent teeth for maybe 1 year.  They weren't in in the last visit and we go yearly.  He decided he could fill them today.  YAY!  He started and then stopped and explained to me they were all wrong.  It was a birth defect.  Her enamel and minerals in her two teeth weren't right and they basically were malformed.  He said they weren't really rotten or anything, but stuff could still get stuck in these voids and cause cavities down the road.  He filled the holes inside and reshaped the teeth with the resin.  It was hard to see because it was near her gum that basically had a chunk out of her tooth.  It's now pretty and white and perfect!  He said even though that tooth is still pretty crooked, he said he agreed with me that we have time to let her grow and see if it straightens out.  We are going to start helping her clean that little triangle the two teeth are creating because food gets stuck in there daily.  I'm also buying her a travel brush for school, so she can brush during the day to help keep them clean until they realign themselves.  He said once her eye-teeth fall out it will help.  We paid a lot more for those 2 cavities than we probably will for Chase and Cole's 6 between them, but we were an emergency fit and he fixed my baby!  So worth it.   So relieved!

Snippits

Decided to, once again, take some time to change camera settings.  In the evening in the kids' room is best to test.  Just dark enough I have to either open the aperture or or up the ISO.  I did both and finally got some to come out.  Jaemin really is changing and loves to play school and other things.  Before kindergarten he was never much on pretend play.  The kids all had good parent teacher conferences.  Nothing startling, which is good.

Jaemin had mastered everything he should at this point and got a + on every behavior item.  Jaemin's teacher's going to try to get Jaemin some more help.  After having him, in class, for 3 months she says there's no way an IQ of 82 is correct.  I knew that, but nice to know someone agrees.  She said he's in the high reading class and can't help but think he needs language therapy and needs tested for auditory processing disorder, which can't be done until 7.  I'm all for this.  Some other A-parents have suggested ADD or ADHD, but I really don't think that's the issue.  I have an ADHD kid and Jaemin's processing speed has been tested and it's fast like Chelsi's, but only when he understands what you say.  I'm anxious to get to the next step for him because he's already blossomed so much.  He'll be amazing!

Chelsi is the same as always....super high reader as in off the charts.  Very high in math, but not the highest, still great.  Super polite, kind and respectful in school.  She'll be getting the politeness award this week.

Kaelin I was only able too talk to a teacher by phone.  She had the same concerns I did and that's that she's rushing through her math, so we've now approached her and I'm sure it will be fine.

Chase had all As and his homeroom Physics teacher had no concerns.

We didn't even set an appointment for Cole since he's in his senior year and we have no academic concerns.

We took the kids out to eat last night and they got to order anything they wanted.  Luckily, this little place is not too expensive.  The little kids even got milk shakes.  We really wanted to spend a little extra and reward the kids for their grades.  Cole's were the lowest at 3.6.  Pretty good for 5 kids in school.  Then, we got Cole's acceptance to the college of his choice.  It's a 2 year and he will go into become an electrician if all goes well.  All he has to do is send in his final transcripts at the end of the year.  YAY!  Such a huge step....one will hopefully go to college next fall.

On a good note

While I think Cole and Kaelin can definitely improve their grades if they each work a little hard (they're fully capable), they each ended up easily on the B honor roll with 3 high B's and the rest As for Cole and 2 very high Bs and the rest As for Kaelin.  Chelsi, of course, had all As.  We expect that fully if you have no learning disabilities in 3rd grade.  So, hopefully, she'll just keep that up.  She knows it's great, but she knows not to settle.  Chase....duh, duh, duh, duh, played football which requires 3-4 hours/day of practice, work outs and/or games and sometimes more.....had straight As!  That boy worked so hard.  He rarely got to hunt or fish, go out in the woods or carve his lures in the last 3 months because he was either working on football or had his nose in books.  I could not be more proud of his sacrifices this quarter and know that if he can keep this up, he will go SO far!

I told the 4 older kids, though, that one quarter of all As for all 4 would be superb!  Especially at their ages.

One of those days

UUUGGGHHHH!!!!

We're getting close to paying ourselves back for Cole's heart surgery....like maybe a few more months.  I think that just got blown away from probability.  We went to the dentist, which we had put off for a few months because Cole had to wait.  You cannot go to the dentist within 6 months of a heart valve replacement.  Well, Chase has 2 cavities, Cole had 4 and Chelsi has  2 somethings we're not sure of.  The dentist defended the boys and said they were due to pits that were inherited (I'm pretty sure my mom says she has them) and they're hard to clean.  One of Chase's is a 12 year molar that decided to come in in the past year (yes, that's late) and he said the gum lies over it for awhile and traps stuff in there and the 12 years are extremely common and normal to have cavities.  Chelsi has something going on on her front teeth.  One of her front teeth and the tooth beside it.  There is nothing but a chip looking thing from the outside of each, but the xrays show something very different.  Basically, it looks like it's rotting from the inside to outside, so we would have never known.  He said whatever it is is very near the pulp and that's not good at all.  He said it could have been a birth anomaly even though it's her permanent teeth, poor prenatal care or she could have had an injury in the last year while they were erupting.  We don't remember anything like that I would think we would.  However, the side tooth was pretty crooked and has  been pushing on the front tooth, so he said there's a slight chance it pushed hard enough to damage it.  Regardless, he didn't feel comfortable treating her, so he said we had to take her to a pediatric dentist.  Chaching!  We have no dental insurance as we definitely cannot afford it and have always paid out of our pockets, but this is really going to hurt.  The boys' filling are not worrisome.  They'll be about $40 each and we'll be done.  Not pleasant, but doable.  Chelsi will most likely have a visit to this new guy and they usually charge double what our regular guy charges plus a visit to come back for whatever treatment they need to do.  I'm worried what that treatment will be.  He said they can't do a root canal because her roots are not fully formed yet.  Obviously, you don't want her to lose a permanent tooth at this age.  He's hoping it's just something this other guy is more versed in and is an easy treatment, but I'm worried for her.

Definitely not the most pleasant of dental visits we've ever had, but I guess we've gotten off easy over the years, so it's time to pay up.  I think between medical and dental we pay about $6500/year out of our pockets because we max out our HSA.  I'm also behind on paying ourselves back every year, so I guess in reality it's more than that.  I just don't really want to know.  3 years and over $18000 in medical bills.  I'm praying next year we get a break from medical and car expenses.