Lately...

It's been two months since I last touched this space. Two very busy months.

At the beginning of October I was home with Michaela for three days because she had pneumonia. At first it just seemed to be a case of the sniffles (thank you, preschool), but when her fever spiked over 104* I took her in to see the pediatrician. Thankfully, it was quickly remedied with a round of liquid antibiotics and a couple weeks of Singulair.

Unfortunately, she is just getting through round two of pneumonia this week, and this time Michaela refused to take the liquid antibiotic. She preferred to go in for an injection three days in a row. Ouch! Hurts my pocketbook, too. Three additional office visits will surely cost me much more than the $13 the prescription cost me. It was a learning experience for me. I've learned that you can't reason with a three year old, and that losing my temper with her doesn't get us anywhere either. Sometimes it's hard to find the balance between maintaining a reasonable amount of parental control in the relationship, and allowing her to be three. It's times like that (actually, it's all the time) that I wish Michael were here to step in and help me handle things. His temperament was much different than mine, and it took a lot to get him upset.

Back to October...

We made our annual trip to the pumpkin patch at Irvine Park in mid-October. We met my cousin Stephanie and her little girl out there one afternoon, and the girls had a lot of fun running around. They especially enjoyed the maze!

Since the time change comes so late in the year now, we enjoyed walking in the neighborhood in the evenings to see the fall/Halloween outdoor decor our neighbors had up. Some things were more "child friendly" than others, of course. Michaela began to tell me that, "It's only pretend, Mama." I'm so glad she told me that, because some of those skeletons were pretty creepy.

While we didn't trick-or-treat, we did have a couple of occasions that we dressed up for prior to Halloween. My teachers' association hosted a party one weekend, and we dressed up like Indian princesses for that. The next day we attended the birthday party of Michaela's cousins, and she went as an Autumn Fairy.

November 4th was a very good day for me, professionally speaking. After campaigning for two school board candidates endorsed by my association, it was very satisfying when they were elected to my school district's governing board that day. My school district has been under the leadership of a board majority that was not cooperative with the teachers (and parents) for too long. It has been seven years since our last pay increase, and I think that board majority would have denied us another seven years had they had the opportunity to do so. There are other issues beyond our contract that need to be addressed, but now we'll have a new board with a new perspective to lead us. I am hopeful we will move forward in a positive way and that moral (and paycheck$) will improve.

The weekend after the election my parents took us up to Big Bear for a long weekend. It was the weekend of my wedding anniversary, and I was very grateful to get away. My mom found a really nice cabin to rent just down the hill from Snow Summit, and although there was no snow it was a lovely weekend. It was cool enough to have a fire in the fireplace every evening, but the days were warm. We visited the local zoo there, and the highlight was seeing their wolf pack. The wolves let everyone know that it was lunch time, and Michaela joined in the howling. Another outing we all enjoyed was a trip to the Alpine Slide. Michaela and I rode down twice. She's still talking about it. We are going to have to go back to Big Bear.

This past week was Thanksgiving Break. I had lots of plans, but we were slowed down by my cold and Michaela's pneumonia. Nevertheless, we did manage to get a Christmas tree, decorate it, and decorate the house for the holidays. We spent Thanksgiving with Michael's family in Santa Monica. His youngest brother has a penthouse apartment with an incredible view of the beach north of Santa Monica. I think we could see all the way to Malibu from there. It was the first Thanksgiving I've spent with that side of the family since 2009 - Michael's last holiday season with us. I'm really glad we were able to be there with them.

So, there you have it. That's what I've spent the last two months doing (when I wasn't working, of course).

My next post will be about my last two Stitch Fixes!