Gymnastic pictures

Finally, here are some pictures of the girls' gymnastics class:

They are supposed to hang from this beam, and do a straddle at the same time for three seconds. Meagan got distracted by me, and looked my way instead of hanging the right way.

Dismounting from the beam.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this is, but they sit in it like this while waiting for their turn on the straddle beam.

I think this is one of Meagan's favorites: they get to swing from this ring back and forth, and she just seems to have a blast. She often has to be reminded to get down for the next person. Then they jump from star to star to the next spot of the course.

This was a new one today. They were supposed to walk on the rope behind Meagan, which was kind of hard for them to do--the rope kept moving, and it was hard for them to stay on. Then they climbed up the triangle Meagan's on, and slithered through a tunnel on their bellies--at least, they were supposed to slither, but ended up just crawling.

Here's Bethany's turn at the straddle beam.

I timed this picture a little slow. Bethany just finished going hand over hand on the beam just above her. She did it all by herself for the first time today. She also did a somersault from a straddle position all by herself for the first time today, too, but I don't have a picture of that.

Meagan was supposed to jump over the white barrier, but she's so tiny, she kept knocking them over instead. She'd just pick it up, go on and step over the next one.

This is supposed to be a cartwheel station. They stand on the the little carpet, then do a cartwheel over the rope. The best Bethany managed was to put her hands down, then kind of hopped over the rope, which was much better than Meagan. Meagan just kind of squatted and jumped over the whole thing.

Sorry this picture is so dark, but I took it from kind of far away. This is the start of one course--they grab hold of the rings, jump to a squatting position, then walk down the pile of mats and jump off the end. Bethany has done the jumping squat, but more often jumps then goes to a squat. Meagan just climbs up.

I'm not sure yet what I'll do when the girls are done with this month's lessons, because of school. I still need to find out when Bethany's school will be, and if the gymnastics will be offered during the day. If they're only at night, then that will be a problem. They really enjoy it, and are learning, so I hope we can keep it up.

Mmmm...fistburgers for dinner

So who needs a pacifier when a whole fist will do?

"I know everything..."

Nate is gone for the week at scout camp. He called this afternoon, and while talking to Bethany, he told her that he loved her. She said, "I know. I know everything."

All tied up

We have a bunch of strings around the house, mostly from a pack of lacing cards that the kids never really played with. Lately, though, Bethany's been playing with just the strings, and taught herself how to tie knots. She's practically obsessed with tying things up now, and ties things up all over the place. Here are a few examples: (one I didn't get a picture of was a laundry basket tied to the filing cabinet)

Yes, this is Flounder, from Little Mermaid. Bethany calls him her "best friend" and takes him with her everywhere. Obviously, she hasn't learned that friends don't tie each other up.

This is a bug net with a toy Woody from Toy Story inside.

This is a string tied all along the top of the changing table.

Here's a chair tied to the computer desk, with a grinning Bethany beside it.

Once again, here's Woody and Flounder. It looks like the sheriff got hung. Hmmm...I wonder what he did.

We should just move into the hospital

Wow, I'm really tired of going to the doctor's office. It feels like we've been there a ton lately. Let's see, Sean had a checkup, Bethany's had all her let's-see-if-she-has-Asberger's/ADHD appointments, Meagan went in for a very infected finger, I went in for sciatica, and today we went back again for Bethany. All the kids have been sick with colds or the flu or something for the past two weeks, and I thought it was finally getting better, but then Bethany started complaining about her ear hurting when she went to bed. I've had my fill of the ER (the only after-hours care open to us here), so I just gave her some Tylenol and made an appointment early this morning to take her in. The good news is that she's still being very cooperative, except with the blood pressure cuff--she really doesn't like that. The bad news was that they had to dig around in her ear a bit to even see it. As soon as the doctor touched it, she started to whimper. The first doctor (a resident) couldn't see much because of too much wax in her ear. She tried to get some out, got a bit, and said from what she could see, it didn't look too bad, we should just watch her over the next couple of days and see if it got better. Then she went to talk to her attending physician, who came back in with her, got a bigger stick and dug more wax out of Bethany's ear, took another look and said it was very inflamed, no doubt about it. Poor Bethany. It took us forty minutes at the pharmacy to get her medicine, while she cried off an on that her ear hurt. Of course Sean got fussy, because it was time for him to eat. Finally we got the medicine, went home, I drugged her up with Tylenol and everybody was happy.

We ended the day really well, though. Meagan fell asleep in the afternoon while watching a movie, so she was in a good mood. We had a good hour and a half after dinner before it was time for bed, and the weather was beautiful, so I decided to take them to the park. A friend was there with his kids, so I chatted with him for a bit while the kids played. It was a new park, and Bethany and Meagan had a great time. It was a really nice way to end the day.

So confused

Bethany had her follow-up appointment today for the ADHD screening. The nurse called us a few days ago, and said that it looked like she was going to get a positive diagnosis for the ADHD, and set up an extra long appointment so we could discuss it with the doctor and choose a medication. I had mixed feelings about medicating her, but Nate and I went into the appointment expecting to at least talk about it. Unfortunately, we saw a different doctor from the one who ruled out the Asperger's. That one had PCS'd (i.e. moved on to another base--apparently, we were among the last people she saw here). So the new doctor comes in and says, "So what are you here for?" Grrr. She hadn't even looked at the questionaire we filled out, or the nurse's interpretation. So we had to sit while she looked through it, and then go over our whole story and observations again. She decided that Bethany was only borderline ADHD, and some of the behaviours can be explained away by her young age--sometimes you don't know if they do what they do because they're young, or because there is something wrong. I completely agree, but it's a bit aggravating to go in expecting one thing, and come out with another. The end of the story is that we're just supposed to watch her for a while, and see how she does, see if another year of preschool will help her, and maybe get her reevaluated in a year or so.

In the meantime, I did some reading about ADHD, and got a few suggestions of ways to help control it that would be good for any child, whether they have ADHD or not. Things like more outside time (they called it "green time", playing in the grass is supposed to be better than a playground over asphalt, or whatever), less TV/computer time, more structure, getting kids to repeat your instructions when you tell them something, etc. So I'll try to do some of these things and see if that will help too. In the meantime, I guess I need to try not to worry. Yeah, right.