Patches

My poor bean. Last night when I picked Emmelia up from karate (SIDE NOTE: She earned her first "stripe" on her belt! Woo Hoo! She got it for learning her first form - step punches), I noticed the sclera of her eye was red and she was rubbing at it a lot. Come to find out there had been an incident involving a stick being thrown at her during her daycare class field trip to the park earlier in the day. Having experienced something very similar when I was in 4th grade, I immediately became concerned about a scratched cornea.

We stopped at the Urgent Care before picking up Maura and the doc stained Emmelia's eye and looked at it under a black light - sure enough, we both saw two little scratches, plain as day. Luckily, the scratches didn't look deep and the cornea heals itself very quickly. Emmelia had to wear an eye patch overnight, but was able to discard it today (for which she was very grateful). I'm just glad the damage wasn't worse. The doc did check her vision and it was still at least 20/20, so that is good. Here's a photo of poor little "Patches" (a nickname she didn't appreciate too much last night, but thought was funny this morning):
We put the stickers on the ugly patch ourselves - and that helped Emmelia feel better about it. she wasn't smiling before that, I can assure you. Maura thought it looked like so much fun to put stickers on your face, that she did this:
Hee!

Well, on tap today is Arabic class and studying about the interaction of radiation with matter, so I'd better get to it.

Still Studying....

That's odd - it looks like I didn't ever post the layouts I made a week or so ago about Em's graduation and last year's Halloween fun. I didn't set out to do a Halloween layout, specifically, but the daughter of some friends of ours is having a birthday party this weekend and wanted a witch party (long story, has to do with pinatas). I offered to make the invitations and was looking through my scrapping supplies for witch-related themes and decided to just scrap the Halloween photos, already.

Here are the credits for Preschool Graduation and Halloween 2006.
So I didn't go to the nurse-in, after all. Some friends called and wanted to get together and so we spent Saturday morning cleaning the house. It desperately needed it, so it felt good to get the clutter under control again. The birthday parties were fun for the girls, but not that well attended. I guess Father's Day weekend is a bad weekend to hold birthday parties. Who knew? Our Father's Day was pretty boring - in fact everyone pretty much took a long nap in the afternoon (I finished my novel for my book club - The Time Traveler's Wife. Next we read The Life of Pi). But the Deac enjoyed the new John Mclean book we got him and the gifts the girls made for him at daycare (peanut-based gifts seem to be popular at the daycare):
Later in the day we went out shopping and ended up with new soccer balls for the girls, as well as adorable little purple and pink catcher's mitts that light up when you catch a ball. So the Deac played catch with Emmelia while Maura and I kicked her new soccer ball around the yard. It was a nice day.
Well, only 20 days left until the big exam, and I've got more lectures to cover. Wish me brain power!

Nurse-in!

Never in my 5+ years of nursing have I had an opportunity to be a radical lactivist. Part of me thinks I should before my kiddos wean, you know? Anyway, all that to say I'm debating whether or not to take part in a nurse-in at Elitch gardens in Denver tomorrow. Here's the news story about it.

We do have TWO birthday parties to go to tomorrow, so I'm not sure it will work out time-wise. But we'll see how we all feel tomorrow. Not to mention the fact that Maura is one of only 3 children out of about 30 in the toddler rooms at daycare to not yet develop the symptoms of Hand-Foot-Mouth disease that is going around. I may not want to hang out in the sun for hours tomorrow, particularly if she doesn't feel well. Maybe I'll just never earn my lactivist label...

Last weekend we hung out in the sun a lot. On Friday, I went with Emmelia's pre-K class on a field trip to a local pool. It was a lot of fun, but I got sunburned, as I do every year on that field trip. Seems to be how my body adjusts to summer - first, it has to burn. Then on Saturday we went to Arvada for Field Day for the kids from our parish. We all had a great time playing relay races, tag, and parachute in a park all afternoon. There are some fun photos from that in my flickr badge if you want to check it out.

This week I went with Em's class to the same place she had her 5th birthday party - the place with lots of bouncy castles for kids (& adults) to play in. I figured it would be good to see how my newly healed tendons held up and they did great! I also went swimming with them this morning. Other than that, I've been busting a hump studying, studying, studying for the CHP Exam. Three more weeks and it will be over. I have SOOOOOO much more to learn and memorize! So if I'm not around much before July 9th, you know I have my nose in a book or glued to the computer watching video lectures until then. I probably won't be able to justify any scrapping between now and then, either.

I have been learning a lot in my Arabic class, but will learn a lot more once I can devote more brain space to it. It's not really that complicated of a language. It actually makes a lot of sense, but has a complicated alphabet. So far, I'm finding the class is helping de-mystify the Arabic language for me, and that's good. I can learn all the Arabic I want from the folks at my parish, but having a basic understanding from the class will help immensely.

On that note, I have the second half of a lecture on Shielding and Activation to get to. Hope everyone has a lovely weekend, whether or not you see me breastfeeding my 3-year-old on the news!

God Grant the Deac Many Years!

The Graduate

Graduation went well - the ceremony was appropriately short but very cute. The center director said a few words, the kids marched in... they recited the pledge of allegiance with the audience. Then they said their poem. It was a modified version of what was on their diplomas:
This was SO cute. I was impressed the kids had really memorized the whole thing. Then each child was called up individually to receive a (fake - they got the real one later - just like a real graduation! lol) diploma and a "class ring." These were little golden plastic rings that say "ABC". These were PRIZE possessions, let me tell ya! As each child came forward, the center director asked them what they want to be when they grow up. Emmelia said "a ballerina (that was a popular one among the girls), a swimming teacher and a nurse." Now, I've been working hard on stressing to Emmelia that she can also be a doctor. A nurse is fine, too, as long as she knows there are many options. She really likes the character of Dixie McCall on our DVDs of the old "Emergency!" show and I worry that she's being influenced by this show from the 60s. I'm sure it will be fine by the time she's grown up, though. Here's my cutie saying that: The Deac and I gave Emmelia a matching graduation robe and cap for her new Hello Kitty doll from Build-a-Bear as a present, along with $5 and a card. It was hard to figure out how to put the little mortar board on Hello Kitty's giant head! But the Deac jury-rigged a solution with thread and velcro. He even had to add velcro to the hat itself so Hello Kitty's bow would stay on. He did an amazing job and Emmelia really liked it. I mean, how could she not? It was pretty cute - even the tassel color matched: And, here's my little graduate. It's so hard to believe she's going to be starting kindergarten in just about 2 and a half months!
Well, in other news the girls finished their tumbling class and I'm glad it's over. It wasn't that great of a class and Maura never did warm up to hers and participate. We also had karate this week and Emmelia is really loving that. I think it will be a good experience for her. I had a really productive week at work and also finished up the Parish Directory. It was a great project, but also a big one and I'm glad to be done. We hand them out this Sunday. That means next week I ought to be able to concentrate on studying physics!