I recently planted my phase 1 of my garden!  I did it a full month earlier than I did last year in hopes I will get better yield this time.  It was so warm last year (and this year!) that the tomato crops (all over, not just at my house) were poor.  So, I planted tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers and lettuce as these are my favorite things to eat.  

I am working on planting in an additional area, but we are still filling it with soil and getting the irrigation working.  Hopefully, I can plant that area this week or this weekend.  I also found the awesome talaveras strawberry pot shown above and hope the strawberries will like it.  The kids have been monitoring daily the tiny little green strawberries that are already growing!  Gardening is such a fun thing to do with the kids.  They helped me dig holes and put in the plants or seeds.  I think it is important for kids to see how food grows and that it does not come from a box at the grocery store.  Plus, who doesn't like to play in the dirt!!

I also planted a cool little succulent garden in a planter I have that does not receive much water.  Everything I plant there dies, so I'm hoping to have better luck with these, plus succulents are really beautiful!  Here it is:

My youngest had yet another bout of asthma about a week and a half ago.  She was sent home for throwing up, but was having trouble breathing, so we took her to the doc where her blood oxygen was low due to difficulty breathing.  Since the asthma flares up when she gets sick, it must have been the beginning of whatever yucky bug made its way through our house.  She took all the meds and then that nasty little bug decided to make itself at home.  As soon as she went back to school she was sent home with a fever which lasted for about 4 days and was as high as 103. 

My husband and son were also suffering from coughing, sore throat and general yuckiness, and then my other daughter got the bug pretty bad.  I've never seen her look so sick.  She couldn't stop coughing, she had a fever and basically laid on the couch for two days, which is completely the opposite of her energetic self.  She was out of school for four days as well.

Everyone appears to be better at this point.  Fever has been gone for 3 days and all the whining and fighting has resumed, for which I suppose I should be thankful.  Either way, I'm exhausted from the whole house being sick.  I didn't get a decent night of sleep for about 10 days and I didn't get much done around the house.  I just hope the bug decided to spare me this time around.

Since my youngest had a febrile seizure when she was 11 months old, I'm very aggressive in giving ibuprofen and acetaminophen (per doctor's orders) when she has any kind of fever.  Usually, a fever doesn't warrant a doctor visit, but sometimes it's hard to tell.  Here are some good fever reference sites:
When to Worry About Fever
Fever in Children
  

We seem to have several kinds of woodpeckers in the area, and they like our yard and bird feeder.  I tried to get some pictures this morning, and this was the best I could do in the small amount of time I had (I'm nursing 2 sick kids back to health today).  I used this Woodpeckers of Texas website to identify them.

This big guy is a Pileated woodpecker.  He (she?) flew from tree to tree poking his beak in different holes. There are at least 2 I've seen flying around.  They are big and awesome!  

I believe this one is a red-bellied woodpecker.  There are several of them as well!

After greasing up the bird feeder pole with a cayenne pepper/vaseline mix, I bought a squirrel feeder.  I could not resist the cute little picnic table!  I actually like watching the squirrels, but I also like watching my birds, so I'm hoping this will be a happy solution for all.  The vaseline seemed to work, although I did see little scratch marks in it.  However, I have not seen any more squirrels at the top of the bird feeder.  So, anyway, I put up the new squirrel feeder on the tree closest to the bird feeder, and I finally saw a squirrel on it the other day!  Let's hope it lasts!  The yellow thing is a squirrel log made from corn products, and I bought several together with the feeder since I get free 2 day shipping with amazon prime.  They seem to dissolve a bit in heavy rain, so in the future I will probably get plain old corn cobs, but we'll see how long they last.

Yesterday my youngest decided yet again to get really sick.  The husband dropped her off at school and about an hour later I got a call that she had thrown up everywhere (including 2 teachers).  I called my husband who quickly picked her up because he was closer, I had just gotten home from Crossfit (and desperately needed a shower),  and I was expecting a furniture delivery in about 20 minutes (which actually arrived on time and I would have missed if I left to get her).  She arrived home and seemed much better, so we decided to go run an errand we needed to do together.

We had given her a couple breathing treatments in the morning because she was wheezing a little, and they really weren't working so we called the doc and got an appt right away.  And, it's a good thing because they checked her blood oxygen and it was 92%!!  That is really bad, and I just couldn't believe how fast she went downhill.  So, they gave her two breathing treatments and several prescriptions including 2 inhalers and a steroid.  The doctor said she has reactive airway disease, which is usually asthma before they call it asthma (according to my doc).

We ran our errand then got her medicines and gave her the oral steroid right away.  They take several hours to kick in, and so she struggled a bit until it finally kicked in.  We did the inhalers and everything and she finally got a decent night sleep, thankfully.  

The thing about steroids is that they cause kids to act strangely.  Sometimes they get crazy and angry, or sometimes they get extra lovey-dovey.  Well, this morning, my little almost 2-year old was bouncing off the walls!  She was literally jumping on the furniture, climbing on tables, talking non-stop and running all around and at a very quick pace.  She normally tries climbing and jumping on furniture but is slower about it and better to stop when we tell her to.  Not today - it's like she had an all-nighter then drank 14 cups of coffee to help her get through the morning.  

I took her to Target and she was laughing and saying nearly every word she knew pretty loudly and nonstop, and then wanting to hug me every few minutes or so.   Thankfully there are few people at Target on Friday morning at 9am, and most of them are Moms or old people who are hopefully a little hard of hearing.  Then we came home.  I went to the bathroom for like a minute and I walked out to find she had let herself out of the house and was running around the car in the driveway holding paintbrush and laughing until she tripped on her shoe at which point she began crying.  Note to self: lock door at ALL times . . .

She will take these steroids for FIVE whole days, so it looks like my crazy steroid-filled toddler will keep be keeping me quite busy.  I am glad that she is NOT one of the angry ones!, though, and I'm VERY glad she can breathe.  There's not a dull moment in my life.  Not a single one, unless of course, I take a Mom-cation outside of the city.  I just hope the excitement will soon stop revolving around my baby's asthma attacks!

I worked at a huge high school my first year of teaching.  I had 150 students in a make-shift science classroom far from all the other science teachers because they had run out of lab classrooms.  I didn't really have a clue what I was doing, and I worked so hard that I came home almost every day the first few months and took a 2 or 3 hour nap before resuming grading and/or planning.  All day long squirly little freshmen were calling my name, coming to me about grades, coming for help, crying to me to return their cell phones or asking advice.  I loved every second of it, but by the end of every week I really needed a few stress-free moments.

That was when I discovered how much I really liked to just hang out by myself every once and a while.  Oftentimes I would head to my favorite crowded sushi restaurant and sit at the bar in the middle of the Friday happy hour chaos.  I would order a drink and some happy hour sushi and just sit there, nearly invisible to the entire bar except for the fact that I was taking up a seat.  And I LOVED every second of it.  No one was calling my name.  No one needed me.  No one was mad at me for confiscating their lifeline to the world.  And for an hour or so I enjoyed that I could sit in the chaos and no one would really pay me any attention.  It replenished me and strangely enough calmed me from a crazy week.  I would usually meet up with my husband and friends later, but I relished my 60 minutes of solitude.

As a Mom, I definitely feel similarly.  Someone always needs me.  Two of them are always fighting.  Dishes need to be done.  Dinner needs to be made.  Laundry needs to be done.  Etc., etc., etc.  I love it all (well, not the laundry party), but every now and then I need a break.  So, I'm enjoying my first solo Mom-cation.  It is coinciding with a friend's going away party, but for one night I get to be alone, in my hotel, with no one needing anything from me.  I can do whatever I want without consulting with anyone, and I can sleep all night long without anyone waking me up for anything.  I brought a book to read, some notebooks to write in and my computer.  I may do some sight seeing or I may not emerge from my room until I have to meet up with my friends, but it doesn't matter because it's just me.  All me.  For 48 whole hours (except for the party, but that will be really fun!).  

My husband is so awesome for encouraging me to do this, and I hope I can do this at least once a year to recharge my batteries.  I took a girl trip once, when my middle daughter was about 6 months old, and I've been wanting to have another little weekend getaway ever since.  This time it's solo, but maybe next time I'll take my sister-in-law with me or one of my friends.  Either way, it's refreshing, and I encourage other Moms to do the same if they can!!

I spend quite a bit of time at my kitchen sink catering to the needs of my household.  Luckily, my kitchen sink is directly under a large window that looks out into our side yard, which is filled with lots of trees and nature that helps me forget I'm doing dishes.  Several months ago I put up a great bird feeder so I could look at some exciting bird action while I wash away.  There were a few issues with the whole set-up, but problems are now solved and it works like a charm.  Cardinals, blue-birds and many others show up to feast, and I love it! 

The birds have come in swarms, and so my food was running out pretty quickly.  Then, the other morning, I looked out my window and a damn squirrel was sitting at the top eating away!!  I couldn't believe it!  I thought these were not supposed to be easy for them to climb!  Then, the next morning we saw that he told his friend and they were both hanging around, but left when I went out to try to snap a picture of them.  So, I'm currently trying to figure out how to stop the squirrels.  

In the meantime, though, since it seems we will be going through lots of bird food, I decided to make my own since it's pretty expensive at the store.  I did a little reading online and here's what I came up with - so easy and MUCH cheaper than store bought bird feed:

Generic cheerios (can be crushed a little - I crushed some with my hand)
Shelled Peanuts (chopped them in food processor)
Shelled sunflower seeds
Dry oatmeal
Dry corn kernels (bag of popping corn)
Raisins

I've got some of the cheerios and oatmeal left over for next time, and will try to buy some of the other things in larger quantities next time.  I used one jar each of the peanuts and sunflower seeds, one large bag of corn, and some 
I put it all together in a huge bowl and WAH-LAH!  Cheap bird food!

I found this great blog post about making your own liquid soap.  It looks pretty simple, and I'd like to try it as soon as I get the ingredients!  Liquid soaps can be pretty expensive, so this is a great way to save some money and make a good product!  

Let me know if you try it!