Stitches

I got a phone call the other morning from John asking if I had talked to the school. Confused, I said, "no, why?" He proceded to tell me that the school nurse had been trying to reach me for the last half hour because Hunter had had an accident while walking into school. Apparently he wasn't paying attention to where he was going and had walked into the gym door and split his eyebrow open. I felt like the worst mother in the world for leaving him in the nurses office for that long with no response! We got new cell phones about a month ago and I never hear it ring. We hadn't had a land-line hooked up yet and were doing a trial run with just using our cells as our home phone. After this episode John called the phone company to hook one up. When I arrived at his school and saw the damage I didn't even think he'd need to be checked out but the nurse said it would be a good idea. She had put on two little butterfly bandages and the cut seemed to be holding together nicely. After calling the doctor's office from the car to see if they could put stitches in if needed they referred me to urgent care. So off we went! When the doctor took off his bandages I realized the cut was pretty deep. In the end Hunter needed two stitches and I learned that keeping four little boys entertained for several hours in the ER is tricky business.

Randomness at the Collins household

What I just heard happening in the basement while cleaning up the kitchen...

Brody half-way crying
Hunter: "Oh...you got an owie?"
Brody: In his sad voice..."yeah."
Hunter: "No...I'm not going to kiss your butt."
More crying from Brody
Hunter: "Okay, I'll kiss your butt."
Not sure what that was all about.

And another something I didn't want to forget...Brody has been stealing bites of food off of Tyler's plate and while he does it he says, "Yoink!" He definitely learned that from Daddy!

Lastly, Hunter's conferences were this week and Mrs. Nickel said Hunter is performing at above grade-level (second grade) in reading and spelling. She said he is so much fun in class and while he is very bright she loves having him in class because he still loves to learn and isn't "too cool for school" like some of her previous students who excel like Hunter. She showed us some of his journal entries called "small moments." They write these "stories" every day and then share their best work with the class occasionally. Hunter wrote one about the time he got "grounded" for going outside in his socks. Let me give some background info on this. Hunter has been struggling demonstrating his listening skills and while I have asked him numerous times not to go outside with his socks on he hasn't obeyed. So I finally broke down and told him that the next time he would be grounded from going outside for the rest of the day of the offense if he was outside with socks. His journal entry went something like this..."Yesterday I was grounded for wearing my socks outside. I just went to get the mail and didn't know Mom was in the garage. Suddenly, she caught me. Then there was drama." She thought that one was particularly entertaining.

During the first few weeks of school the parents were invited for an information night in the classroom with their child's teacher. This is to familiarize parents with procedures at school and such. While John and I were walking down the hallway we noticed a bulletin board with pictures drawn by Hunter and his classmates and sentences down below the drawings. These all started with "In first grade I hope to..." and most of his classmates wrote "learn to read" or "make friends." Hunter wrote "learn to drive a car."

Fall fun!

We have ventured out twice in the last week as a family of six and things have gone swimmingly! On Thursday night we went to the Halloween Haunts at the Wehr Nature Center and walked through the forest lit by hundreds of hand-carved pumpkins on either side of the path to meet the creatures of the night for their annual program. We love attending this event but were worried about how Tyler and Brody would handle being out at night in the forest. They handled it just fine! I had Greyson in the sleepy wrap and he slept the entire time and John and I held Tyler and Brody's hand to guide them through. They weren't scared at all and seemed to enjoy it. The people at Wehr recommend this program for ages 4 and up but we still don't have a babysitter in our new community so we braved it and thank goodness it worked out! We all had a great time!

Then this afternoon we hit up a new pumpkin patch closer to our new home and I'm a big fan! I got the recommendation from my boss, who lives out this way. If anyone is looking for a good one it's called Ebert's in Ixonia. The boys had a blast! They each picked out their own pumpkins, which was the highlight I would say, and Hunter played some games like pumpkin bowling, golf and a fishing game. Tyler and Brody didn't quite understand that they each got to pick ONE pumpkin and kept going back for more to put on our cart. On our way out we asked a stranger to take our first family picture since our new little addition joined us and amazingly everyone is looking at the camera (with the exception of Greyson who is sleeping in the wrap). Everyone was having so much fun that I had to go buy a bag of popcorn to lure them back to the van without a big fight. Whatever works!