Halloween pics

We took these at the (rather lame) halloween party we went to last weekend.  Not sure if the kids will want to dress up again tonight since Z is not feeling well and they both already had a halloween celebration at school.  Jackson's duck butt barely fit in his chair!

House of little sickies

Zoe has been feeling ill since Friday evening.  Super-clingy, feverish, fits of crying alternating with fits of coughing, and refusing nearly all food.  Poor little babe.

Jackson doesn't seem to have a fever but he was pukier than normal yesterday.  We went through 4 shirts and 2 pairs of pants (and I had to take apart his wheelchair to clean it).  It may have been that I gave him straight formula rather than blending real food for him as I normally do.  So today I blended for him and so far he is holding everything down.

Hopefully everyone will feel better tomorrow, but I'm thinking Zoe may need another day to recover.  No fun to be sick on Halloween!

Look at my cutie now

She is getting so big and gorgeous.  At school they put her hair up into pig tails often.  (Lee gets her ready in the morning.  He does a great job but he does not do pig tails!)  She had on a super-cute outfit today and adorable pig tails.  By the time the pics were taken one pig tail had come out...still cute though.

Hi Ho Hi Ho

Before Jackson got sick I had been a special ed teacher in a Chicago high school.  Once he got out of the hospital I had to go on leave and eventually to quit to take care of him.  This was more than 5 years ago.  Now that Jackson is doing so well in his school (I don't feel I have to be close by "just in case") and Zoe is old enough not to need me quite so much (ha ha!), we decided the best thing for our family was for me to start looking for a job.  I had been looking since the beginning of the summer and finally found a position recently.  I started last week.

It's been a big adjustment for all of us, especially Zoe.  We found a great day care only a few blocks away.  The director is a parent of a kid who goes to Jackson's school so I kind of knew her already.  Zoe really likes going to school, but she has been a bit of a terror at home (yes, even more than normal).  Plus she has had a constant runny nose since she started there which is no fun.  This weekend we really had to crack down on some of her more out-of-control behaviors and it seems to be working a little already, thank goodness!

Lee has been taking on more of the stay at home role...he gets the kids ready for school after I leave for work, gets Jackson on the bus, and drops Zoe off at school.  Then in the afternoon, he hurries home so he can meet Jackson's bus.  We are not sure exactly what we are going to do about after school care for Jackson but until we figure it out, Lee is the man.

Jackson wants to be WHAT for halloween?

So I was trying to figure out what Jackson wanted to be for Halloween, which consists of me asking him a lot of questions and he will touch my hand when the answer is "yes" to each question to narrow things down.  He said he wanted to be Donald Duck.  Hmmmm, that's not what I would have guessed at all.  Really, I am very dubious at this result.

I made Lee try again with him to be certain that is what he wanted.  He absolutely positively without a doubt wants to be Donald Duck.  Okay...

It's not a very popular costume with the bigger kids.  It wasn't that easy finding a decent Donald in his size that we can afford (plenty of full size mascot costumes for hundreds of bucks out there in adult sizes though in case you were wondering) that does not have a mask (he would gag if we put a mask on him for more than a few minutes).  But we ordered what appeared to be a good one in his size...it didn't have a red bow or legs though.  So I also ordered some yellow sweatpants (which are not that easy to find either!) and I think he is going to be a pretty good Donald.