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.