Our Day

I've kept a journal since we started our adoption process. My intention is to have the journals bound into books to give the kids when they are grown. It might not be something they appreciate now or even then, but I think one day, maybe when they are much older, they will treasure a written commentary on their lives. I've found a place to have the books bound and have been working on formatting the past five years. I've spent most of my time on 2006. I didn't journal regularly then and instead compiled the emails Dan and I wrote to each other while he was deployed. As I've worked on it this morning, it's made me miss writing like I used to. I'm not writing as often as I used to or in the minute detail of our lives in order to not bog down our blog. I think I'm going to go back to it; so you might be wading through a lot of things that are unimportant to you, but will be invaluable for the kids to read about one day.

So...on that note...our day! As I said, I worked on the journal this morning. It was a good morning, mostly, I think, because I got up and took a shower before the kids got up. There's something about having a shower and fixing my hair in the morning that just starts my day off right. Caden and I dropped Allie off at preschool and then raced to Jaelyn's school to check her out for a dentist appointment. I was able to talk with her teacher a little and she feels like Jaelyn's biggest struggle is her focus and if she can work on that, she'll be doing really well. She's capable of so much. I'm proud to tell you that Jaelyn earned her fifth green light of the week. It's the first week in months that's she's had a perfect week. As a reward, she earned a cool pen that has about 15 different colors in it.

Jaelyn didn't really want to go to the dentist. It is one of her least favorite things. She let them clean her teeth last time, but nearly broke my fingers, she was squeezing so hard during the cleaning. Today was totally different. She was motivated by the promise of another reward. She sat still in the chair. She opened her mouth and let the hygenist clean her teeth (with cookie dough polish - yummy) and then let her paint marshmellow fluoride on her teeth. Caden alternated between watching and playing. He really wanted to get his teeth cleaned too. He has an appointment at the same time as Allie next month.

After the dentist, Jaelyn wanted to go back to school. She only had an hour and a half left and I very rarely have her without Allie, so I offered either taking her back to school or taking her to a park. Play prevailed and we headed to the park. It was perfect, cold, but not too cold. The park was desserted. Caden and Jaelyn were able to play for about 45 minutes while I watched and then we picked up Allie. Allie had a great day at school and was excited to see Jaelyn with us. She was jealous of all of Jaelyn's rewards and begged me to take her to the dentist too. Silly girl. She'll have to wait her turn.