Illness, Joy, Books

This past week was a week of illness but there were some bright spots in it too! Here's the good and the bad.

On Friday Allicia texted me asking me if I could watch the kids while she took Ivy to the doctor. No problem. We all walked Nico to school. Allicia called and told me they were heading to the ER so Ivy could get some blood tests and an IV. Allicia's mother in law came to take the kids to Jump Time for the morning, and I met them back at the house at noon. In the mean time I went to see Allicia at the hospital and brought her some supplies.

Got Avery down for a nap and Evelyn off to Kindergarten. But then received a phone call that Nico had a potty accident at the school and that I needed to come get him. Avery was napping so I called Tiffanie and had her come over and sit while I walked over to get Nico. By the time we got home, Allicia and Ivy were back.

Nico had a virus (we think), and he felt good and bad over the weekend. Since things were moving quickly through him at first, he was very hungry Saturday morning, so 3 waffles it is! Then he started feeling sick and late that night he threw up. Sunday he was munching on stuff and felt good enough to request pizza that night and we let him eat what he wanted, which was almost his entire personal pizza. On a good day he eats the whole thing and is stuffed. Guy and I regret that we didn't stop him from eating so much. He had stomach pain all the next day and couldn't get up off the couch. Tuesday morning was much better and he popped out of bed and wanted to go to school. He asked me if I had bought more waffles. He didn't get a waffle that day, in fact he barely ate any breakfast and I was worried about him at school. He looked so tired after walking to school. But he made it, and was happy. We are pretty much back to normal now.

The bad stuff is over! That was quick. The rest is good stuff.

This evening while Nico was getting dressed for bed we were talking about feelings, and he stood and thought for a minute and said. I am feeling... happy, and JOY! God puts bottles of joy inside of me and then he pours them out. I asked him questions about it and while he was bubbling with... joy.. he told me again. God fills up bottles with joy while God's inside his heart. Then God peeks out of his heart ("like this" and then he pretended he was peeking out) and dumps all the joy from the bottles into Nico. Then it just comes out and Nico said "I feel it right now!" Then we sat down on the couch and read through the Life and Work of Rube Goldberg. We flipped to all the pictures of his inventions. For example,

Nico in fact came up with his own invention. While Nico was sick, Guy ran to the library and brought us each back a book. He brought me Tale of Sand and brought back the Rube Goldberg book for him and Nico to look through. They sat on the couch and read through invention after invention, and then Nico came up with his own.  He still needs to draw a picture for it, but here it is..

Mouse (A) sees convincingly real wooden cheese (B) and comes out for a bite.  Biting cheese causes the mouse's teeth to fall in bucket (C). Grabber (D) takes teeth from bucket and into

blender (E) which blends them up into teeth juice, which is poured into glass (F).

Man (G) drinks juice, making him sick and throws up in bowl (H).  He throws

vomit out window (I) and into soil (J), which causes monster teeth plant to grow.

I would show you the picture of the monster plant that Nico wanted in the story but it is very scary. Not one that he drew but one that he found on the internet after Guy searched "monster plant". In fact, if you want to see it, you can search google for "monster plant" and click on the "Images" link and it's the first one.

We also discovered a drawing contest advertised in the scholastic book order form. If you win, then Eric Litwin (the original author of Pete the Cat books) will come to your school. You have to draw a picture of your favorite animal singing a song. Nico got right on it. I provided no ideas, he did it all on his own.

I just showed this picture to Guy and he told me where Nico got this from!! Apparently an episode of StoryBots has a Tiger Song that they had shown me a few weeks ago and I had forgotten. Anyway, watch the video... you will see where the Tiger goes rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr rawr. Hilarious! Nico cracks up crazily at this video, it is so fun to see him laugh so hard.

We sent the drawing off to New York, NY yesterday. We printed out a US map so we could see how far away New York was.

Monday night was Financial Peace University. Guy stayed home with Nico and I went. They had a CAKE for us! The special thing about this cake is that it had a great big ZERO candle on it, signifying that we were OUT OF DEBT!

Allicia told me that she was so excited to hear the news about us paying off debt that she submitted our story through Dave Ramsey's website. It wasn't the fanfare she expected, but a message saying "We receive a lot of these, so listen to Dave's radio show to see if we mention yours!" Dave's radio show is 3 hours long every day, so I'm not sure that's practical, but if you happen to be listening, you might hear our story!

Monday night when I got home, Guy was reading "George's Marvelous Medicine" to Nico. This is a chapter book, and Nico was very interested. On Tuesday at school Nico chose a chapter book from the school library, one of the Magic Treehouse books. We've been kind of slow in reading that one, but the world of chapter books MIGHT be opening up to us. I'm not sure quite yet, but it certainly is exciting!

This week turned out to be a pretty good one despite the weekend illness. Here's to another great week! Love to you all!

Tonight. Bedtime for the banjos!