Bathroom Adventure

In "Goose Girl" Ani tells her story to Enna backwards. I think I'll try it with this one just for fun.

The whole dentist office was happy to see us. Sammy had been rescued from the bathroom! It's an intense thing, messing with doorknob insides that you know nothing about with your child stuck inside. I called to let the office know we were working on getting there as soon as we could. Sam and I poked and prodded upon getting the doorknob off after I passed a screwdriver to him under the door. He was crying and crying about being stuck in the bathroom when I came into the house to see what the holdup was, because the other kids and I were in the van waiting for Sammy so we could go to the dentist. We were even leaving early!

We ended up only being about 7 minutes late. They all thought it was pretty funny. While we were there Carolyn needed a potty break, and after I headed her in the bathroom the receptionist asked, "Did you lock her in?" Ha! Ha!

Sammy is toting it as his first "real adventure." We're just really really glad Erin or even Carolyn weren't the ones that got stuck. Dumb that the screws to get the doorknob off were on the inside. Not so with the new doorknob!

Sammy Sammy Sammy

Sammy is such a great kid.



He does cool things like this (airplane built with NO instructions, notice the prednasone cheeks):



and this (he has all the Indiana Jones Lego sets except one, and has been working on some fun Lego videos):



But recently he's had to do things like this:





That's not to mention the colonoscopy (which wasn't too bad either). And blood tests, which don't make him happy. At all. Thank goodness Primary Children's Hospital is such a happy place. He's been such a trooper. So far he's been diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease (the ulcerative colitis end of it), but Wednesday he was in all day for a liver biposy to see if they can figure out why his blood tests have been showing liver issues.



This guy, Brad, was fun. We learned two awesome jokes from him, and he explained like crazy. He even showed Sammy his heart.











Everything went really beautifully for the most part. He never complained about pain, and slept almost entirely from the time they started the biopsy till we left. He didn't wake up while Grandma and Grandpa Hall were there visiting, or when Dr. Guthery (his doc there) stopped by to talk to us. Even when we left at 8:00 that night he was only awake long enough to get in the car, then he was outcold again. He woke up more when we got home, but one of the meds he was on made him dizzy and he threw up a few times because of it. He was running around trick-or-treating with us Friday.

Now we're just waiting to see what they learned from it all.

Update: Got a phone call from the doc the Wednesday after, and it looks like he's got Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis (PSC), so now we're trying to get our feet planted on the proper road ahead. Don't look it up, the things you'll find sound scarier than what we're told will happen (if you do, the doc said that just happens in the minority of cases and after decades of progression), but the big comfort is that we're catching it really early and can keep him good and healthy for a long time.

And for the record, I mainly wanted to add Primary Sclerosing Cholangitis to see what fun it would bring in my google analytics stats.

Discovery

Sammy came up to me today and asked if we get to choose our jobs. I told him yes, of course. He said, "Then when it's time to tell the guy what job I want, I'm going to tell him I want to be an archaeologist." I chuckled to myself then asked him if he would like to hear how people get their jobs. "Yah!" I walked him to my bedroom so we would have a quieter place to talk, then I told him how when I was young I wanted to be a teacher, a writer, and a mom when I grew up. That I went through elementary school, junior high, and high school learning all the things they wanted me to there, then when I went to college I could study things that would help me get to those goals. I told him how I started by majoring in education but decided that wasn't for me, moved to computer science, then literature, then finished off in technical writing, and told him that I was able to choose what I wanted to study.

His eyes were shining the whole time, but he got even more excited when I told him that since we homeschool if archeology is something he is interested in, we can start learning what he needs to know and study about now instead of waiting. We got on the library website and put 8 books on hold, found a kids archeology magazine he's thinking about using some of his birthday money on, and some interesting looking kids archeology websites.

This was all brought on by Indiana Jones, though we read on a website several months ago that he's a treasure hunter more than an archaeologist (because he's just trying to make his museum better than everyone else's). I don't know how long it will last, but we'll run with it while we can.

Speaking of discovery, I'm working on some fun ways to keep Carolyn and Erin entertained while trying to have even 5 minutes of conversation with the older three. Today I dumped a bag of mixed soup beans into a plastic container, gave them some little paper cups and some spoons, laid a tablecloth on the table knowing there was going to be a mess when they were done and hoping that would make clean up easier. For the hour it kept them busy, the clean up was nothing. Next time I think I'll put the tablecloth on the floor and let them play there on it. Less droppage.

Jumping into Summer

Summer officially began June 21. Sammy brought that in with a bang... and 7 stitches. He was playing across the street at a neighbor's and took a forehead to the edge of their open truck door. He got the stitches out yesterday, everything is looking good.

Today Erin got bit twice by wasps (they had a nest on the swingset seat she was sitting on), and Carolyn swallowed a penny.

Hooray for summer!