Maggie had her 18 month check up today. She’s in the 5th percentile for height and 0th (yes zeroth) percentile for weight. The doctor’s not concerned with it, which is good. She’s just Maggie-sized and is growing at her own rate.

She was supposed to get a shot today, but they were out of the vaccine she needed so we’ll have to go back another time.

At the start of the school year, Adam was having a little bit of a rough time adjusting to school. He really loved school and his teacher, but told me he wanted it to only be half as long, because he missed me too much.

I had been putting notes in his lunchbox, but he can’t read and the cafeteria was too busy for him to have someone read it to him. His teacher suggested giving him a family photo to keep in his backpack and sneaking a note into his snack.

So I started putting photo notes in his snack (and his lunch still, but he only really packs once or twice a week). Sometimes I will have a little note on them, but even if someone can’t read it to him he still likes the pictures.

I try to keep it different, once a week I send in a hidden object picture.

Adam also really likes silly animal pictures.

And pictures of his favorite cartoon characters always go over well.

I’ll take some time every other week or so and make up a bunch and print them out. Each one is only about 3×4 inches big so it fits in his snack bag. Most of the time I just look around online for silly animals or cartoon characters eating, things like that.

For Halloween I found a website where I could add our photos to silly pictures. Adam really likes these and his teacher told me how funny she thought the Adam’s Family one was (he likes to show them to the other kids in his class and his teacher too).

Adam looks forward to them each day and it really helped during those first couple of weeks while he was getting used to being away from home for seven hours a day. His teacher was great about encouraging him to look at his pictures if he was missing us (he keeps them all in the front pocket of his backpack).

Plus, I have fun making them.

Maggie is mostly healthy. She’s teething again, working on one of her molars (no fun for her, poor girl).

She’s been quite the little mimic lately. Last night she was running around with a travel-sized bottle of shampoo, pretending to apply it like deodorant.

Luke is still not feeling well. I actually took him in to the ER over the weekend because in addition to the fever, cough, and runny nose that we had been dealing with, he developed a weird hives-like rash and wasn’t eating.

They said it was just the same virus he’s been fighting with, manifesting itself in new ways. We had a follow-up appointment today and can now add ear infections to the list. I hate seeing him feel so poorly.

He’s been spending a lot of time playing quietly at the Lego desk lately (more on that later).

Adam is feeling MUCH better. He’s all done with his antibiotics and went to school all last week. He had another chest x-ray last week and everything is looking good.

I’m so glad he’s doing better. He’s really looking forward to Halloween and has his first party at school this week.

I’m hoping now that the kids are starting to feel better I’ll be able to catch up here.

Also, laundry. So much laundry.

The kids were sick all weekend. Adam was especially bad Monday night and so when he woke with a fever yesterday morning, we decided to keep him home from school. I was able to get all three of them in to see the doctor in the afternoon.

Maggie and Luke both have croup (a barking cough), on and off low-grade fevers, and are all stuffed up.

Adam had different symptoms though. He had a cough, a fever, and a weird rash that showed up a couple of times. He also complained about his head and stomach hurting. The doctor ordered a chest x-ray and it turns out he has pneumonia.

He started taking antibiotics last night and probably won’t be going to school at all this week. He’s handling it like a champ (now that we found just the right bribe to get him to take the medicine – 5 m&m’s and a pack of fruit snacks).

He’ll go back Monday for another chest x-ray and has a follow up appointment on Tuesday of next week. Hopefully the antibiotics will have done their job and he’ll be feeling back to normal by then.

These kindergarten germs are no joke.

Maggie had her hair cut for the first time tonight.

Before:

During:

After:

She was really good and I don’t think it bothered her at all. Her hair didn’t really need much, just to be trimmed up and evened out.

Luke, on the other hand, really needed a haircut. He liked sitting in the batman car and watching cartoons, but did not like the haircut. He protested, loudly, the entire time.

He was happy again as soon as it was over and kept saying, “I like my haircut. I look nice.”

I agree. He does look pretty handsome.

I asked Luke to put his arm around Maggie’s shoulder. This is what I got:

Maggie had an appointment this morning to get her stitches taken out. I knew I wouldn’t be able hold her down and watch Luke. Thankfully, Dave was able to meet us there (it’s only a couple of minutes from his work) to keep an eye on Sherman.

Luke wanted to play with his Legos, so we broke out the kiddie pool and dumped them out. He and Maggie spent most of the day playing with them and Adam joined them as soon as he got home.

They all got naps today (which makes for much less cranky kids). I was able to snap a picture of Maggie’s eyebrow while she was sleeping. It’s healing really well.