Jaw Surgery...

So I am sitting at the hospital with my twin sister, Karen. She had jaw surgery yesterday afternoon. She has had problems with her teeth all her life and since she never got braces as a kid she has spend the last few years trying to correct them all.

She has had braces for a few years but she still needed the surgery to fix some other problems. The surgery was only supposed to take four hours and it took almost six. Once they got in there they realized that her jaw was very delicate and they had to be very careful. When she was done she missed her seizure medicine because she was still asleep.

She did have a seizure last night, and since they didn't want her to be alone, I am here giving my brother-in-law a break to go home and get some sleep.

She is going to look really different I think. She is very swollen right now but I can already tell that she is not going to look like the sister I've known for the last almost 35 years. She will be off work for three weeks because she won't be able to drive, and she won't be able to eat real food for four. Talk about a crash diet!

She appears to be in some pain, and luckily they gave her some liquid pain meds and she is asleep now. So for me it's daytime television for a few hours!

Friendship Bracelets...

Last night I volunteered at my daughter's Girl Scout meeting, and got to help our troop make friendship bracelets. It's been quite a while since my last friendship bracelet, but it brought back fond memories.

Let me just say that it is difficult getting eight and nine year old girls to pay attention long enough to teach them the technique, but they all seemed to catch on with more or less help.

If you'd like to relive some childhood memories, here's a link to make your own.
http://www.makingfriends.com/jewelry/macrame.htm

The design on this link is a little different than the ones we made last night but it looks like it would be a good project as well.

Twins

So for almost eight years I have learned of the challenges of twins. I am a twin myself and I thought that would prepare me for the situations that arise when you are dealing with two children of the exact same age. Boy was I wrong.

School has been difficult. When you have one twin that breezes through school work and another that struggles the entire time you have to make hard choices. My kids are young, their birthday is in August and we started them in kindergarten when they were five. If I could get a do-over that is probably one thing I would do differently. The thought has come up of repeating a grade, but to make it easier on one makes it more difficult for the other. I can have one kid that is completely bored and another that is right where she should be, or I can have one kid that still does above average in their current grade, and the other that struggles all the time.

Today presented challenge as well. One got invited to go to the zoo with a friend, the other was not invited. How do you try to make it fair for both of them when they aren't doing the exact same things all the time. As a twin I do know that they won't have all the same friends and won't do all the same things all the time but it's hard to try to make it fair when they do different things.

So Camy is off to the zoo and Carson's friend is on her way over. Maybe they will be excited to see each other and maybe be a little nicer to each other after a day apart.

Boot Camp

So the Y in Norman is having a six week boot camp. I saw the sign up for it last week and for some reason thought it would be a good idea. The cost is only $60, which from what I have heard is dirt cheap.

I got to meet with the instructor and discuss my goals, and today I am going to meet with the nutritionist about my eating habits. (I am not too excited about that!) I am not looking to loose weight, I think that I am at a good weight for me, I don't want to have to fight with it. I know what I should and shouldn't eat and I'd like to have the things I shouldn't have in moderation. (The whole moderation is my problem though.)

As I am very much a morning person and always work out in the morning, the 5:45 am time is perfect for me. I seriously didn't know what I was getting myself into with this. On Tuesday for the first class, we did push-ups, sit ups, lunges, squats, some sort of bear crawl and another strange thing where we had to be on our hands and feet (not your knees) and push a towel across the basketball court.

At 6:40 am, on my way home to get my kiddos ready for school and myself ready for work, the pain was already setting in. I have sore muscles in places I never realized I had muscles! I would stretch one way and another muscle somewhere else would hurt. If I thought I was hurting on Tuesday, that was nothing compared to what I felt like when I woke up on Wednesday morning. Not only did my legs still hurt, but also my arms, shoulders, neck and back!

I forced myself out of bed and went and walked two miles on the treadmill. By the end of the day at work I decided that I needed a good yoga class. So I went and did that last night. It's a good thing I did, too. I was able to walk almost normally this morning, just in time to get back to the Y for the second class. Today we did dips, push-ups, squats and all sorts of torturous exercises.

I am fine sitting at my desk, but when I go to get up the pain sets in again. I think I am getting better since the more I move the less it hurts, but it's hard to be too active when you sit at a desk all day!

So two classes down, ten more to go. I also have to get in two weight training sessions and one tread mill workout each week, and I don't think I'm going to give up the Yoga either. That class made me feel good.

Gymnastics Class

So I have discovered what is wrong with America. I am sitting outside my daughter's gymnastics class and I think that what is wrong with this country is all right here.

When did we become a country full of adults that thought my kid is going to be the next best...fill in the blank. I just watched a dad with his daughter that couldn't be more than six make her do push ups before her class even started. In the middle of the waiting room. Then there were demands to see her hand-stand, and then yelling at her because when he wanted her to stretch she wasn't keeping her body straight enough. This was a man that looked like he could stand to do a few push ups himself.

This week, like many weeks past, I have witnesses people letting their children run wild in the confines of the waiting room and then getting mad at their behavior. What are these children learning? Not good behavior, that they can push and push until their parent starts yelling, or better yet until they grab then roughly by the are to try, and I mean that loosly, to get them to behave.

Is it easier to parent that way? To push and push and let them push and push? I do know that my children aren't perfect, neither is my parenting for that matter. I do like to think that I have always been able to take them in public and have them behave for the most part. If you let your kids run wild then they will be wild.

Crazy Television

So last night, I was too exhausted to commit myself to any of my favorite Sunday night shows. Thank god for my DVR, I can watch everything when I am less tired!

I was flipping around and came upon a show on TLC, something about "I didn't know I was pregnant!" I was instantly sucked in to this show. It was very entertaining with the high drama re-enactments. It did get me thinking though, how in the heck would you not know you were pregnant? It is completely mind boggling to me.

When I think about my own pregnancy, and the 36 weeks of nausea and throwing up, the laying on my left side, the inability to drink water becasue it tasted like crap, the craving for Root Beer and the inevitable hiccups. How could someone not know they were pregnant?

How can you give birth to a child in the toilet at your work, or in a dirty camp ground bathroom? I just don't get it. All I can say is that it was amazing that all the children seemed to have turned out okay.

I might be more likely to have another baby, not that my two aren't more than enough for me, if I didn't have to feel like I was pregnant!