A (sort of) special day

First a photo. This is Keenan and Isaac at the Niceville Library yesterday. Aren't they just the sweetest? The outfit Isaac is wearing was a gift from Joan many moons ago. The shirt, which has a bus on it, has been Isaac's favorite for the last month, but the shorts were too big for a long time. Yesterday he could finally wear them together. Every day when we go to his closet Isaac says, "Bus, bus, bus ..." I've even layered it over long sleeve shirts so he can wear it when it is cold. I've also made a point to wash it is as quickly as I can so that the tears when I tell him he can't wear the bus only come every other day or so.

Anyways, so that photo from Joia was taken on Friday when I decided to head to the Niceville Children's Park with the boys. I had an errand to run anyways and since the park is mostly matted, I thought it would be a good first-park-attempt for me. I've taken the boys to small parks where I can quickly move between them. But I have never taken them to a big park by myself.

Overall, it went well. Elijah still managed to find patches of grass that allowed him to do some eating. He has also learned how to climb onto things but really doesn't comprehend that gravity will work against him when it is time to work in reverse. This required me to run nearly full speed a few times to stop a downward tumble once an upward point was achieved. Elijah also found a nice older woman who agreed to let him share her bench swing.

Another time a man helped Isaac down from an apparatus while I was tending to Elijah. He told me that Isaac looked like he was going to jump from about six feet up. While I doubt that was true, it still bothered me that I wasn't there if this was a possibility. Isaac is always very cautious. He tackles everything but in a very slow and thoughtful manner. As a result, I find myself getting a little lax when watching him. In other words, I think I trust him too much.

But this park was completely fenced in and so I was able to observe pretty easily. It is still hard with two that really still need complete supervision. But I did pretty well. Especially with Joia there to help me. (Although Moriah (aka "the climber") was keeping Joia pretty busy herself.

As for our Saturday, we made an attempt to do our "special day for JB" again today, but things, once again, didn't work out completely as planned. Although we did get a bit closer to the reality of the concept this time. The idea was that JB would wake up, I would make breakfast, and he would have a few hours to totally lay around, read, play with the boys, whatever he wanted to do. Then we would go to dinner and a movie with Joia taking over our charges.

Unfortunately, while JB is on a pretty easy rotation (geriatrics) hours-wise, it requires him to be the "doctor-on-call" at the local retirement home. If there is a new patient that comes in at any point, he has to go and work up all the admissions for that patient. There was one last weekend. And there was one this morning. So off he went from 7am until we were ready to take the kids over to Philip's and Joia's at 11:30.

We dropped the boys off and headed to the movie. We saw Avatar. Folks, I am not really a sci-fi girl. I like some of stuff. I watched Star Trek growing up with my Dad and everything. But it's not really my thing when it gets right down to it.

That being said, I must recommend that all of you take the time (and the $10 bucks for a 3D movie) to see this movie in the theater. Waiting for it on video would be a big mistake. It is long. But it is, honestly, one of the most amazing movies I have ever seen. Without much competition. It was absolutely fantastic.

I don't want to give anything away, but I do recommend that as you watch it, you keep in mind the parallels to what our people did to Native Americans. This is obviously an intended comparison.

Not only was it good, but it was relatively clean as well. JB and I agreed that we would allow our boys to see it when they were pre-teenager age. It is rated PG-13 for "intense epic battle sequences and warfare, sensuality, language and some smoking." However, I thought the language was a lot better than a movie like this usually lends itself to.

If you have never been to Focus on the Family's website, you need to take some time to browse it and see the resources they have available. It has detailed movie reviews for nearly any movie you can imagine. Check out Avatar's here. Keep in mind that this review is breaking down every tiny little thing. But it will bring up things you may have never thought of. I think it is a great thing to view before you allow yourself and especially your children to watch a movie.

Before I get off on a tangent about movie ratings which was not something I planned on doing when I started this blog, let me return to our day.

Unfortunately, that was the end to our "special day." I got a migraine about two-thirds of the way through the movie. (Not from the movie as some people have complained about with 3D movies.) I have been taking Zomig to successfully combat these migraines for quite a few months. However, recently, I've begun to have to take the Zomig everyday. There is a possibility therefore that I have developed a dependency to the Zomig (something that has happened to me in the past when I was doing IVF). So the idea is that I go off the Zomig cold turkey. We decided to do it today, a Saturday, since I would have JB around for two days to help with the boys if things got really bad.

During the movie, they got really bad. By the time we picked up the boys and reached the house, I was nearly debilitated. I stumbled into bed. I was able to take some Tylenol, Ibuprofin, and even some T3's throughout the afternoon, but not the Zomig that has been kicking by migraines each time. We are hopeful that it will only take a few days to get these migraines behind me. At least the rebound part of them, if that is indeed at play.

Let me end this blog by giving a big shout out to Scrubs who stayed out by himself again today. Good dog! This was his longest attempt yet at nearly five hours without any destruction or boredom indicated. Strong work Bubby!