The Sickies Have Landed!

Ahhhh! We've been invaded by Sickies and let me tell you, it's no fun despite the fact that I felt no guilt in watching Kung Fu Panda at 7:00 am this morning. Greyson has been holding on to this cough and mild fever for a few days now and Linus has had a stuffy nose for a week but it all seemed to come to a crux for everyone last night. Cameron and Greyson both woke up in the middle of the night unable to breathe and needing a nebulizer treatment. Cassia woke up feverish in the night and decided to sleep on the couch. At sunrise her fever shot up to 102 and she instantly regurgitated the liquid Tylenol I tried to give her for it. Not a happy camper. She was able to keep down a melt-away tablet though and then some toast and tea. Everyone seems to be feeling better now, but I keep waiting for the meds to wear off and everyone to be miserable again.

The worst part is that we had a little girl over yesterday morning and I fear that she's going to be miserable now because of us. :( I'm watching her two days a week so her mother doesn't have to put her (just 2-1/2) in daycare. I think she would've been better off in daycare yesterday! I had left the mother a message the day before saying that Grey seemed to be getting worse, but she didn't get it in time. So now I'm feeling bad that I didn't try harder to get a hold of her or even turn them away at the door. Neither of us are ones to hide from germs, but still....

Anyway, enough of giving myself a guilt trip. Wednesday we spent the morning at the dentist. I have a broken tooth that is going to need to be pulled. *sigh* Luckily, there is a wisdom tooth right next to it that never surfaced so it should move right in to take it's place. Cassia had a couple of cavities starting in the back. Maybe now she'll believe us when we say tooth brushing is not a race, lol. The boys were fine. Of course. (I hate my teeth and one of my great fears is that the kids got my teeth. I guess I should be happy that it looks like it is just a girl gene.) Greyson was soooooo curious while we were there. He peeked into every office and asked the dental assistant about all the equipment in the prep room. That boy likes machines!

Then we came home and did two sections of science. We studied energy by watching a ball bounce and a paper windmill spin. We thought of all the different ways that a windmill can be made to spin and what the source of energy is for that. That particular unit is one reason that I am glad that we do follow a curriculum, however loosely. I never would've thought to do that and the kids really enjoyed stretching their brains to come up with solutions. The second section was about how the energy of the sun is the original source of energy for living things. (The sun gives it energy to plants which are eaten by herbivores which are eaten by carnivores.) I think we have touched on that concept before but it's still fun to go over it officially.

Next Cameron did some math. He's excited to finish this book and has been doing two to three exercises every time we do math so that he can move through it quicker. Too bad we are only doing it once or twice a week, lol. Also too bad that I didn't order our new books earlier to inspire this work surge. While he was doing that, Cassia and Greyson were playing on Starfall. Greyson was so into it. I wouldn't be surprised if he taught himself to read very early on.

I think that was all we did before the heebie jeebies and hacking started creeping in. Thursday we didn't do anything except watch T2 in the morning. Cassia and Grey did a little on Starfall and Cameron built a lot with K'Nex, but mostly we just watched movies. I'm wondering if I should mark that as an official "sick" day. I do like to keep track of days when the kids are truly too sick to do school in our attendance records but don't Starfall and K'Nex count? On a healthy day I would say, "Absolutely!", but when they're sick it's just a relaxation activity. I know, I know. All my unschool friends are shaking their heads and wanting to smack me about now, but I can't help but ponder such things and classify it all. If we had read a book or two I would consider it all school, but we didn't. I really wanted to too but no one was in the mood. We have James and the Giant Peach here that we were doing really good at reading for a while but then it got misplaced in the back of the minivan and we got out of the groove of reading it. I'd really like to get back to that and if I can manage that today I will count it as a school day.

In other plans, I would like to bake some bread today and maybe make a lamb stew for dinner. I have some library books of my own that I would like to get to. One that I'm particularly interested in is on whole grains and the other is a pressure cooker cookbook. It's a cold drizzly day today so we aren't missing much by sticking around the house. Yesterday we did miss Parent Watch day at Cassia's ballet class - the one day a year that they let the parents in - but there was no way she was up to it. Hopefully everyone will be better by next week. We have a big week planned including Star Week at gymnastics! Star Week only comes once every 8 weeks and is the only way they can advance. I know they'll be crushed if they can't do it.

OK, enough rambling from here. I just wanted to make sure that I got more than one post in this week. :)