Much needed update

Wow my early New Years resolution is to update more often! It will help that I have to update my classroom blog (if you want an invitation just shoot me a comment) weekly so I vow to at least update with some highlights. This is especially important since I tend to use this as Roman's sort of baby journal! Ok big highlights...
Started work. Week and half of prepping room (HUGE task as we had to clean out the old stuff, move in and unpack ALL brand new stuff, then organize it all!) and then three weeks of teaching. The kids are great. I've got a couple of pistols and LOTS of chatty cathys but every one of them is sweet. And one pistol and one chatty cathy just moved this last week so we'll see how the new year goes...I'm bound to get new kids very soon in our military school. I have a wonderful full time aide (Ty) who is a saint. I know this even more now after not having her the last week of school and doing everything solo. For my teacher friends: kindergarten here is different. We have full time aides yes but that's because they don't have lunchroom/recess monitors for kindergarten so the aides go with them to lunch and recess as well as going to the "specials" classes (PE and Host Nation for kinder. No music or art. Weird...) with them. So when there's no aide then the teacher goes to all of that with them so you have zero break all day long. Exhausting! Most days though I leave with a smile on my face and that's what counts.

Roman has been staying with his "Aunt Jen" for now but come January he starts daycare. Not super excited about that but at least the daycare is right across the street. Speaking of Roman he is recovering from his first illness. Yesterday early morning (1am to be exact) he started waking up at night which is weird for him. He's been sleeping through the night since he was 3months with the exception of a couple of days of growth spurt (babywise is the shiz. read it.) but that night he was up 1-2:30am, 5:30-7am, then awake for the day at 8:30am. We thought he was having another growth spurt so when he woke up for the day we gave him a morning serving of food. He's been doing rice at night since 3.5months but lately he's not been spitting alot of it out so we figured he's tired of the taste (or nontaste I should say). Anywho he's a week away from five months so we decided to start veggies. I wanted to start while we're both on vacation in case there's any major problems. So we gave him peas and cereal for breakfast and he was eating ok but then just puked it up. While I was cleaning him up I noticed he was hot and sure enough he had a 100.4temp (which for babies is considered a fever). He ran a fever all day until the evening after taking a long nap with Mommy in her bed. Then he woke up happy and playful for the first time that day (he had been sleeping on either Mommy or Daddy all day long). But then during his bath Matt was cleaning out his ears and he started wailing. And kept wailing while Matt was drying him and dressing him. He stopped (sort of) and Matt said it started while he was cleaning his ears so I went to look at his ears and when I touched the right one he began screaming again. Several times I tested and yup his ear was killing him. Since there was no more fever we decided to wait til morning to do anything but he woke up at 11:30pm and was still in pain so I gave him tylenol, fed him, then we went to the hospital. 2.5hrs later and no infection just pressure build up from being congested. So we get back home and Roman slept in his car seat for the remainder for the night (2:30-5:45am) woke up to eat and went back to sleep in his crib til 11am!! Then he woke and ate a 6oz bottle and a serving of peas and went back to sleep for another hour. His appetite definitely hasn't been affected by any of this. We've been fever free for almost 24hrs thank goodness but if his ear still hurts in the morning I'm calling our Dr.

In other news we've decorated for our 2nd German Christmas. We were supposed to be coming home but that didn't work out with the Army. Oh well we will be together and that's what counts. Matt and I are both on vacation for the next two weeks so we plan to visit Christmas markets and get much needed errands done this week (check up for Mom, refinance car so we can sell it and buy a new one!!, make our wills, deep clean this house, etc). Next week we plan to go to Berlin for at least one night, maybe two. I promise to update before the vacation is over!!

PS sorry this blog is so boring with its lack of pictures. for some reason the uploader HATES this blog! It works for my teaching one with no problem...weird!

Posted in: Germany