LOVE like I have never known...: Respect, The Patch & Thanksgiving

Most of you know Jaaten is in kindergarten this year. She struggled a bit with following the rules the first couple weeks. She has been doing great lately though. We have BOTH learned A LOT! One thing I have learned is Jaaten is so much more grown up then I often give her credit for sometimes. ;) For example, Jaaten was SO tired on a Thursday evening and was begging me to wear school colors, blue and yellow, the next day to school. She was crying saying she wouldn't be able to eat with the principal if she didn't wear school colors. It made no sense to me. My thoughts were: 1. I have very few cute BLUE and YELLOW things for her to wear. Ha! 2. I didn't receive an email, note, etc about it being spirit day 3. She must just be tired. :( LUCKILY, I listened and sent her in blue and yellow! This little girl was selected by her teacher with one other kiddo from her class to eat lunch with her principal. AND they had to be wearing school colors to be eligible!! They chose her for being Respectful!! #proudmama 11.20.15

THE Patch!! I took our little Steely Man to the pediatric eye doctor the day before Thanksgiving to get his eyes checked. I had noticed his left eye would sometimes look as though he was looking away from me when he was actually looking AT me. We waited three months to get in to see this doctor. ;/ The doctor ended up telling us Steel is losing vision in his left eye. ;(((( Amblyopia aka lazy eye is when vision in one eye is reduced because the eye and the brain are not working together properly. This affects 2-3 of every 100 kids and is best treated in the preschool years. If untreated, Steel could had irreversible vision loss in his left eye. SCARY!!
Steel wears an eye patch for 3 hours each day on his good eye in order to strengthen his weaker eye. Steel has been such a trooper about wearing the patch too! The first day he wore the patch was probably worse for me than Steel. I think I cried most of the day. I just felt so sorry for him. Steel only got through about 30 minutes with the patch the first day before he fell asleep. His left eye was just having to work so much harder than it was used to and it was really watering. It was hard for this mama to watch. The GREAT news is we can already see improvement in Steel's eye strength just after 10 days of wearing the patch. We will retest in 6 weeks to see if his vision has improved. ;( 11.25.15

First time wearing the patch. ;(

FlipSide is an arcade/attractions place for kids down the street from our house. The boys have watched Jaaten be able to ride these bumper saucers a gazillion times. They ARE FINALLY BIG ENOUGH to ride them!! They were SO excited! 11.25.15

New baby cousins!! Uncle Joe (Jaafe's brother) and Aunt Kim had Kleeton on 10.9.15. Baby Kleeton made an appearance at Thanksgiving this year and our kids could not have been more excited. Steel is by far my baby lover! Steel was so in awe of how little Kleeton's hands, feet and ears were....he could not get enough. So cute! 1..26.15