Week 21 at Home: Eyes Wide Open

So...this was a week. Ava has decided not to pursue the National Team for baton, and will be staying with the Performance Team. We're totally okay with it, as we didn't really want to pay for the national experience if her heart (and desire to practice) wasn't in it. I'm really glad we have that decision made, so we know how we'll proceed this year.

G had a bit of a rough week. He got into some trouble at the Y program for hitting and pushing someone, so he was suspended for 1.5 days. We had a long chat with him and it came to light that there are some older kids there who are calling him names, so I need to setup a meeting with the site director. I was fairly irritated by the entire situation this past week, so it's good that I'm giving myself some time to calm down before reaching out to the site director. Good times!

There is one interesting anger management technique that I brought up to G this week. He's doing great playing Mightier and using cool down techniques to lower his heart rate, but I think when he gets into a situation, his top gets flipped and he forgets what to do. So, I've tried partnering counting to 10, and also asking him to open his eyes wide open while doing so. It sounds ridiculous, but I was provided with an article that gave the reasons why it works. All I'm going to say is that it's really hard to stay angry if you open your eyes wide open. We've tried it a few times now and by the count of 3, he has stopped his "angry face" and is smiling again. So, thank you to my friend who provided this to me...sometimes it takes an idea outside of the box to make a difference!

Taking a break for a bite of pizza at a birthday party lunch last weekend...super red tongue from Gatorade!

Limited access to electronics resulted in a sleepy boy by Friday afternoon

This should be a good weekend...I left work a few hours early on Friday so I could get things wrapped up for our short trip out of town to see our dear friends. This is our first visit staying with someone else since January, so I'm a little nervous (from a health aspect) but will stay my distance, as needed.

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Goodbye Sweet Spanky

This is a post that I'm not very excited to write. As you probably know, our oldest dog, Spanky, had struggled with health issues (ear infections, seizures) his whole life, and recently, his health had severely deteriorated. He hadn't been eating, his ear infection was so severe his face was swollen, he had a hard time getting up the stairs, and he very rarely wanted to play. Last week we got a few tail wags from him, and he ate a few bowls of food, but it was a 50-50 chance that he would actually keep the food down. On Thursday, we made the decision that if he wasn't any better by this weekend, we were going to put him down. I know Scott didn't want to make that decision as Spanky was a very special dog to him - he truly was his little buddy, following him around everywhere, wanting to be wherever Scott was, and howling his sadness whenever Scott would leave him. Throughout Friday night, it became clear that Spanky wasn't going to have a miraculous recovery...

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26 Hours in a Day

Just yesterday morning, I was thinking to myself that I could really use a few more hours each day. We don't sleep a whole lot, both work long hours at our jobs, try to play with Ava as much as we can at night and on the weekends, and then we have to do all of the adult-stuff...paying bills, grocery shopping, cleaning, work on side jobs, house projects, etc. If there were only 26 hours in a day, we could: *Sleep just an extra 30 minutes - we need it since the dogs have been waking us up each weekend day at 5:30am. What could be SO urgent that they need to get us up then?!? You'd think we only feed them once a week, or something. *Spend an extra hour with Ava...we could go to the park every night, take an extra long bath, read a few extra stories, and just enjoy the giggles and chattiness. *Take 30 minutes to talk to each other about how things are going. With Scott leaving for work each day before 5am, and then all of the craziness that ensues wh...

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