My little guy turned six this year, and as a result, decided himself, that it was time to change to a "big boy" room. He's had a big boy bed for quite awhile, but alas, "Winnie the Pooh" was still sticking to the walls. He started removing the border himself (and without our knowledge) in order to get our process under way.
After many attempts on picking a theme (the best was when he told us he wanted a 'Batman' train-dinosaur room- and I was fretting how I was going to pull that all together), we finally decided on Outer Space. Phew! Now, that was something we could work with! So, off came Winnie the Pooh and the gender neutral green walls, and up went the ocean blue paint with orange (yes, I said, orange) trim!
Getting bed linens was the easy part, but surprisingly, I couldn't find many decor items that I wanted to bring the theme together. This is still an ongoing process, but we are nearly done. We did find a really great remote control moon that we hung on the wall and it lights up in stages (quarter, half, or full moon phases), and comes with an educational CD (the teacher in me LOVES this), and J loves the extra bit of light in his room at bedtime.
Lastly, I was looking to find outlet and lightswitch covers (again, Winnie the Pooh was nixed by J). After, not finding anything that I really liked, I decided to take some old wallpaper border that my mom had leftover from when my brother was roughly J's age, and I used it as a covering. Here are the finished products!
If you folllow me on facebook, you will already know my views, but I feel the need to express this further. It is something I feel very strongly about and am having a hard time trying to make the right "mommy" decision here. Luckily, I have an extremely supportive husband by my side, willing to back me up on what I want. The subject....vaccinations. Let me just say, I am not anti-vaccinations. I completely understand that our children need them to stay healthy and to ward off horrible, terrible, deadly diseases. I remind myself of this every time I watch the doctors stick my kids with needles. However, I think, we, as parents, should have the right to decide on non life-threatening disease vaccinations...such as, the flu vaccine, chicken pox vaccine, etc.
As a personal choice, I do a delayed vaccination regime. It can be more "inconvenient" because you need to schedule extra appointments, but in my opinion, I'd rather make two or three trips to the doctor's office than have my precious little ones stuck with 3 or 4 vaccines at a time. And, now, with the "combo" shots, they can have up to 5 or 6 viruses at one time! No way, no thank-you.
These are my kidlets, we get one shot (pardon the pun) to do this right...once it's done, there is no turning back. So, here's my dilemma....
Our state, as of this year, is requiring all children in Pre-K between the ages of 24-59 months to have 2 rounds of the flu vaccination, if not previously vaccinated against influenza, and one round if they have had it previously. The state is saying those who do not receive the vaccine, will need to be excluded from school for the entire flu season (January 1-March 31).
My little missy is a peer model in a wonderful integrated pre-k program. I have looked into exemption, (medical or religious) and she doesn't "qualify" for it. So, now I'm left with the decision of taking her out for the duration of the flu season. This is a decision I really didn't want to make. Part of me feels, that by taking her out, I'm doing what I need to do to keep my right as a parent to make these vaccination decisions. I will be contacting my Congressperson and the Department of Health to see what, if any, options we may have, but I'm thinking I better start dusting off my old lesson plan books for an at-home pre-school this winter!
Okay, so I'm not sure what I was thinking trying to make this a "daily" blog, it's going to be more of a "weekly" blog. I'm too darn tired at night to think creatively (or at all for that matter), and my munchkins don't leave me much downtime during the days. I'm sitting here typing away as I try with all my might not to go pick up the tiredly crying little L. All mommies and daddies know exactly what I'm talking about...that "I'm too tired to actually give it my all cry." I'm tellin' ya, my kidlets would rebel against naptime to the very end of time. However, they have a stubborn mommy that will go to great lengths to get them the sleep they need.
On to other things...since, time is precious! We are working on our "fall fun tree" and have had two leaves fall. We attended a fall fair (The Big E, of course!), and the kidlets had a fantastic time (as did Corey and I). Little L rode her first carousel and loved every second! J and K wanted to go on the more daring rides, and it was great fun to see them so excited. We had lots of cotton candy, pie, and fried dough. All of the things that go along with a traditional Big E experience. I am looking forward to many more memories that that one.
We also made a dinner involving acorn squash from our local farmstand...which was super yummy. J is eager to make the leaves fall, he loves to take it off the tree and tape it to the bottom. He is a hands-on learner for sure!
We will be adding more leaves to the ground this coming Columbus Day weekend. With an extra day to play, there is no telling what may happen at our house!
