Par lay v'oooo fron-say?

So - Jacob took French camp this week at the YMCA.  It was run as a program in partnership with the school district, and due to low enrollment they combined the 1-3 and 4-6 grade groups.  Notably, one of the two older kids did not show up after day 2.

Let me start with being totally happy that Jacob was even interested in French camp.  I was surprised he wanted to do anything other than sports, sports, sports.  So, yay Jacob!  However, I found the whole thing... well, I don't know how to say "somewhat wrong" in French.

Day 1 - this was the craft:

I was - I kid you not - trying to keep from laughing so hard I was simultaneously trying not to cry and/or pee at the same time - holding it all in because Jacob was so proud (he doesn't really DO crafts).  Jacob's head, on a toilet paper roll painted like the French flag, with a handlebar mustache and a beret; a baguette in one hand and the French flag in the other.  Because - and I quote - "more French people have mustaches than Americans, so I wanted to have a mustache."

Um - stereotype much?  But, yes, it's totally on the mantle because it IS that awesome.

Then, each day they played a sport for an hour.  On the second day we were requested to send in their swimsuits on the third day.  So, it was really 1 part French, 1 part playing around at the YMCA.  But that's kindof OK.  I get the activity break.

Day two - Jacob came home and requested nutella on a croissant for dinner.  Oddly, we had those things.

Day three - I was presented with a "special French treat" - cornflakes covered in chocolate.  Now, I'm no expert to say that is NOT a French treat.  However, I'm pretty sure corn flakes are quite an American invention compliments of Mr. Kellogg who set the course of the American breakfast away from a balance of protein, fat, and carbs compliments of your eggs bacon and toast - to the sugary boxes of marshmallow filled goodness that breakfast is today.  I was curious of all the possible French foods to introduce the kids to - how they ended up with cornflakes and chocolate.  

Days four and five were pretty uneventful.  Jacob made a pom pom and a scrapbook page.  He learned a little French (my name is Jacob, Grandma and Grandpa - or at least that was all he was willing to say for me).  

The sad part is probably not the funny French Jacob or the cornflake treat... but the fact that Jacob said camp was "fine" but he was "not doing another language camp at the Y."  Though he was excited to start, he was happy to have it end, and I'm not entirely sure I blame him.

Scheduling Fail..... (s)

Funny story - last week I got home from dropping Allison off at Ninja camp only to have my phone beep at me.  What's that?  A text?  Nope - a automatic reminder for a meeting at work in 15 minutes.  Whoops.  Grab Jacob, grab tablet, and be thankful that I live close to work.

Then Monday I got home from taking Jacob to French camp (why do I kids pick these things?) when the phone beeps.  Guess what - another meeting in 15 minutes that I totally forgot about!!

So what if I don't pay that much attention to my work schedule during the summer.  I have the home schedule totally under control.  Right?

Except.... I have been checking the phone all week waiting for the call reminding me when the kids dentist appointments are.  No calls.  Not that weird, we don't get many.  Until I looked at the phone yesterday afternoon and saw that it was out of batteries.  Plug it in. Wait.  Charge the phone then check for messages - yep - two.  The first telling me the kids had appointments yesterday and the second asking me where I was because we missed our appointments.

Which wouldn't be sooooo terribly bad if these weren't the appointments I rescheduled because I missed the appointments I scheduled a few weeks ago.  I'm not sure they'll take us back.  #fail

Sporting Season Interim

Last night Jacob had his last soccer game (in the 90+ degree weather).  He played great!  Since he played soccer almost continuously since last September, he's shown great improvement.  He was going after the ball, controlling it up the field, passing it nicely and to his teammates.  He is signed up for fall soccer with park and rec, which doesn't start until September again.  So, we're on a soccer break!

Baseball also wrapped up on Tuesday.  Based on their playing last week, they made it into the championship tournament and were seeded high.  Despite looking... well, distracted... in the game Monday, they pulled out a win and advanced to the round of 8 teams Tuesday.  Tuesday they still looked distracted and were facing a much tougher team.  Needless to say, they lost 8-11.  There were some, let's say "questionable," calls on the field.  Jacob was involved in one where he hit a double and was thrown out at second.  But he didn't really look like he was out and he was pretty sure he wasn't out.  I suppose there are always close calls in baseball and umps are human.  It just seemed like every close call went in favor of the other team and (shockingly) called by the other team's umpire.  The exact same play that took Jacob out happened to another player two innings later.  I think the umpire might have been calling that the player tagged the base, but if it's not a force out, they have to tag the runner.  But, in the end, despite my whining to the contrary, it was not Jacob's team's best game.  They looked flat, they played flat, they made some 'early season' mistakes.  If they had been clearly better than the other team - the 6-7 hokey calls wouldn't have made a difference.  But, if they would have won, they would have been guaranteed at least the 4th place trophy, which would have been cool.

We did see a little of the championship game last night, since it was played at the same complex as Jacob's soccer game.  He and his friend wanted to go watch for a few innings.  The teams in the championship looked good.  They were hitting well, fielding well.  It was kindof neat to watch.

Allison has two more baseball games before her season is done too.  Last Monday, they had a visit by the Timber Rattlers, including the mascot Fang (again - in 90+ degree weather).  Allison got her picture taken with Fang (will have to post once I sync my phone), but was more-or-less indifferent to the four actual baseball players there too.

Growing, growing... not growing

Well, yesterday we took the semi-annual trek to Madison to check in with the endocrinologist.  As I briefly reviewed what I wrote six months ago, it seemed very upbeat.  Her BMI had been up (still up!), her weigh was closing in on 50 lbs (still almost there!), and her growth rate had slowed a bit.  Apparently, it slowed a bit more.

She grew slightly less than a centimeter and a half in the last seven months.  Since she's now not only growing slowly, but growing ever MORE slowly as time goes on, we've ventured into the "time for action" phase of this adventure.  Raising her BMI hasn't helped spur growth - so we're going to dig a little deeper to understand why.

And of course, the not growing was covered with the giant blanket of "there's clearly something going on which hasn't yet (and might never be) traced to a single root cause/diagnosis."

So, we're going back in a few weeks for a growth hormone stimulation test - which is basically that they'll give her a pill that should cause her body to produce growth hormone.  They'll then take a few blood samples and timed intervals to capture the "spike" of hormone output.  They'll also repeat the bone age x-ray.  Then we'll get the results and go back in to decide on a course of action and find out if we need more tests.  If she is truly hormone deficient (which wasn't really suggested by the initial screening - she was low, but bordering on normal), then they would do some additional tests including an MRI to get a picture of her pituitary gland.  If the results are mixed or normal, we'd have to decide on trying to stimulate her growth with either growth hormone or a low dose of androgen.

The doctor seems to think that the growth hormone is probably most appropriate.  And luckily, we're all on the same page that we're not trying to make a "tall" person, our aim is to keep her from being debilitating-ly short.  The tests she's taking will give us an indication of the strength of her growth system (stimulation test) as well as the time frame she still has to grow (bone age).

We really won't know more few a few months.  So, I'll have to shove it back to the bin of Thing I'm Not Going to Worry About Now.  As a funny aside, the procedure of going to the pediatric clinics involves seeing a series of people.  There is a nurse that checks you in, a nurse that comes into your exam room, a pediatric fellow, and then the head doctor, and then a nurse again.  Each one (except the doctor) made a comment about how the text size on the computer screen was "not what doctor likes" and then tried to adjust it.  The nurse made it bigger, than the next nurse made it even bigger, then the fellow made it smaller.  It was just sortof funny that they all commented on it, all tried to fix it, and none of it was to the liking of the NEXT person who looked at it.  So, I don't really know what font size the doctor truly likes.  He didn't say anything about it one way or the other - so maybe the fellow got it right.

Blog Avoidance

I think I've been avoiding the blog because I've been in a bad mood and feel than any post will turn into a whiny "oh-woe-is-me" post or a disjointed "what-is-she-ranting-about-now" post.  So, I thought maybe I'd get it all out in one foul swoop.  Then move on.

Yeah, right.  You all know me.

Anyway - in no particular order:

- so, it's really NOT ok for the neighbor's babysitter to go home in the middle of the day for three hours with 1-2 of her charges so that they can watch TV (as the neighbor's don't have cable) thus leaving the 1-2 non-home-visiting kiddos at MY house.  Sure - I'd love to feed them lunch.  

- um, it's hard to do WORK in the summer when there are two kids running around and - oh yeah - I'm not being PAID.  I find that deadline extremely pressing.  Oh I missed it?  Shocking.

- yep, that's me, answering the door for the utility guy at 9am in my pj's.

- why are adults so clique-y?  And why do they still have the ability to make me feel like I'm an awkward 13-yr old?  Decided that having kids the same age in the same school/sports team/camp/neighborhood does not mean we have a single other thing in common.

- what is it with the pervasive notion that everything good that kids do comes from parents and everything bad is learned from peers (who obviously learned it from their crappy parents)?  Kids are their own people and I can no more take the credit for Jacob's double in the baseball game than I can take credit for Allison saying Thank You to the guy at the cookie counter at the grocery store.  Yes, parents can set up expectations for kids and help them practice, but at some point the kids are people too.  And don't judge ANYONE by their 2 or 3-yr old.  EVERY three year old wants EVERYTHING NOW.

- landscape people - when will you be here?  Our backyard is starting to look like a bad back-water hillbilly movie scene.

- bathroom, I'll come back for you.  Just wait.  Your half-painted walls will be complete soon.  Just like the half-painted walls in the laundry room.

Baseball

Monday night concluded the regular baseball season.

Since opening day the first weekend in May, his team has had exactly zero practices.  It's a catch-22 because we're pretty busy and I don't want to give up more evenings to baseball - but I also assume that signing up for Little League comes with at least a little instruction and better-getting.  

 Jacob went through a bit of a transition going to a heavier bat mid-season, but hit well in this game.

The umping was a bit awful.  But then I've been the umpire before and had to make calls where at least one team was going to be unhappy - so I get it.  It was - however - probably the worst outfield umping (other team's) of the season and the umpire was pretty sure of himself when we called things.  Our umpire (Brian) rocked.

Jacob's team did win the game and ended the season with a winning record.  Next week is the round-robin part of the playoffs and then the following week is the elimination round.  I predict they get seeded in the top bracket (there are two) but then lose early.  Not that it's what I'm hoping for - but they are exactly as good as they were on the first day, and lots of other teams have gotten better.

Strawberries

Sunday we went strawberry picking.  We tried out a new place with organic strawberries.  It's also much closer to our house, so the extra $$ on organic is lost to the lower $$ on gas.  Also - organic!  For those of you who had strawberry season like, 3 months ago, welcome to Wisconsin!  I was jealous of all the strawberry pics in May.... but now we get them in July!

 We rode the tractor out to the fields and waited patiently to be assigned our rows to pick.  Unfortunately, another family was not so versed in the etiquette of strawberry picking and also decided to pick our row - ahead of us - and then proceeded to need to walk back and forth down the row past us several times (the rows are not that wide).  A-holes.

 Anyway, they only wanted the monster big ones, which are not necessarily the tastiest ones.  So there were still plenty for us.  Also - we got some odd shapes.  Jacob wanted me to take a picture of this one which "looks like a butt with a turd coming out."  Oh how I love 8 year olds!

 Then we took the tractor ride back in.  We've gotten a lot of rain, so it was a muddy and bumpy trek.  We got our $40 in strawberries.

Which looked like this when we got home.  I think they multiplied in the car because they didn't look like that many when we were in the fields.

So, we spent Monday making strawberry jam x 4, strawberry pie (my favorite!), dried strawberries (will have to do more of these next year - it was an experiment this year), frozen strawberries, and sliced berries for shortcake once we finish the pie.  

Even more pics from Kellen's visit

Ninja camp involved a lot of obstacles.  The kids were very happy to stick around and help put stuff away.  Why doesn't that happen at home?

 The last night we went out to Badger Sports Park to play a little mini-golf, mini-bowling, go karts, and batting cages.