Mimmy's visit

Once again some of the pictures will be out of order! Mom came for a visit to celebrate Mia's birthday week. Her flight came in on the 18th of August and she stayed through the 26th. That also happened to be the week that Mia and I started school. It was nice to have Mimmy around to watch her while I was in class!

About halfway to the top of Pikes Peak

Four years young!

Having some fun with The Lady Bug Game

Braiding her hair

Story time before bed with Mimmy

Playing songs from her beginner book

Setting up her muffin and candle at her birthday. We claimed a spot early on Saturday at the Julie Penrose fountain. It's at America the Beautiful Park and at 10am, it turns into a water park! The water falls from the sprayers at the top of the loop and the water winds down around the base and into a reflection pool. It's very shallow and a lot of fun!

On Sunday we took Mimmy up to Pikes Peak. I forgot about the winding mountain roads, so it was white knuckles for all of us!

Having a famous high altitude doughnut

We also celebrated Mia's official birthday at home. Grandma Dollman had sent a few Tinkerbell items ahead to decorate with.

Chris and Angie gave her a rolling carry on for our trip to Virginia in December! The little pig can come out of his harness and you can fill him with sundries through a little zipper in his back.

She got a full cowgirl outfit, complete with more pink boots!

Grandma Dollman's "monies!"

The card "from" daddy

Mimmy and her cowgirl

All of the cards...that we could find!

A cow in downtown COS

Taking Mia to preschool

We had such a wonderful time and feel like it ended too soon. We dropped mom off at the airport and shared a soda with her before driving up to Denver to meet with the pediatric rheumatologist. He felt that there was nothing much that suggested anything autoimmune other than her ANA workup. He did run a few tests when I told him about the blisters that she will develop on her knuckles.
We saw the immunology doctors again and they had some interesting news. A few weeks ago we had a consult with them and they collected blood and swabs to run through genetic testing. The testing was of no charge to anyone because they aren't necessarily commercially available, but more along the lines of pet projects that National Jewish is working on to one day make them available. One of the cheek swabs came back positive for Fillagrin, so named for the protein in your skin that helps the skin barrier keep allergens and other unwanted things out. Apparently she is deficient in this protein which is why her eczema was so severe and is so easily exacerbated. There is no cure for it, just the maintenance that we've been doing. It is mostly helpful with the big picture, knowing that kids that have this gene mutation do not outgrow the eczema as quickly as non Fillagrin would, if they ever do. Basically we have to continue to be proactive against flare-ups and infections. Piece of cake. The downside of the gene mutation is that it means that the likelihood of other mutations being present is higher, and they have collected more blood for more genetic testing. The things they want to test for are usually male specific, but there have been mutations that allow females to acquire the diseases as well. Ultimately we're looking for T-cell disorders.

Mia is loving her classes at Patriot Elementary's preschool program. They are slightly more academic than Ruth Washburn which is just fine. It's still a play-based curriculum and they paint and draw every day. I'm glad I learned the clothing lesson last year at RWCNS, because now I'm smart enough to put her in clothing that can come back looking like Jackson Pollock designed them. Right now she is the only girl in the class which worried the teacher at first. She was afraid that Mia would be upset, but I assured her that she probably wouldn't notice and I was right! I think she's just gleeful at the fact that she gets the pretty dress up area to herself. There might be another little girl coming in the next couple of weeks, hopefully Mia will not be territorial! I don't want her to be one of those girls! She's doing very well with her words and writing. She can write her name on her own, though sometimes it's backwards and upside down. She can identify some words like "boy" and "ball" and "house". There is a great little Eric Carle board book where the pages are split in two. The top half has a word in lower case letters and the bottom half has a picture of a word and spells it with upper case. You have to match the top page word to the correct bottom page picture and word, and I believe that is responsible for this recognition.

Classes are going well for me, too. I started off with three courses, two in classrooms and one online. I had to drop the online course. It was not a good idea for a computer illiterate person to take a computer literacy course online, at home on a computer she barely knows how to navigate. Since my tech support is in Afghanistan and Georgia, my best option was to bow out gracefully before obliterating my GPA. Now I'm taking Math 030 (yes, the lowest math possible. I'm aware of that) and Basic Nutrition for Nurses. The nutrition course is fascinating. When I got home from class this week I went to my pantry and pretty much rid it of anything with dye. It's the same stuff that you use in your printer! The same stuff that colors fabric and carpet! Eeeeeew! This class is going to turn me into one of those obnoxious health nuts. Better than the alternative! In a few weeks an online Psychology course is supposed to start and I hope that my transcripts from UMUC will be entered by then, because I'd like to take that as well. I want to knock out as many of these pre-recs as possible so I can start interviewing for the program by next fall. I'm concerned about what will happen if we have to move again, in the middle of my studies. I have heard that it's hard on kids, it's probably just as hard on the big students!

One thing at a time...

The Lords Dinner

Every quarter the church volunteers at a soup kitchen night held at Sacred Heart Catholic Church in West Colorado Springs. We buy about 57lbs of chicken to fry up, potato mini wedges, salad, fruit cocktail, rolls and fresh fruit. In the past, Gary has been around to wrangle Mia and her little friend, Grace, while we cook and set up. I was debating on whether to stay or not and decided to bring a few things to occupy her, just to give it a shot. She behaved very nicely and we only had one event that required time out. She helped clean up and put chairs away and stayed in her little corner of the kitchen for the most part. I'm proud of her! We always feed about a hundred people, more in the winter time. Unfortunately there has been an increase in the homeless population, a lot of people are literally living in their cars and roll up to eat then roll off to sleep.

It's such a humbling experience, because you can't help but catch yourself trying to remove from the situation, the possibility that that could be you one day. You can tell when someone is new to the lifestyle, they won't make eye contact, their clothes haven't been worn out yet and they almost seem ashamed to accept the plate.

Gary's Adventures

Everybody flying in "full battle rattle"

Sitting in the "seat" of a C-130 on the way to the FOB

He was lucky enough to sit by a window, but turning to get the picture was difficult because he still had EVERYTHING on.

More countryside on the way to the FOB

His first "living" space. He said you could pretty much touch the walls from side to side and your head and feet could do the same lengthwise.

Standing on one of the roofs, he said that those are 15-18,000' hills

An old Russian MIG that was left after they pulled out of their 10 year war.

I don't know what it is, but it had better not come home with him.

I sent some digital thermometers and as you can see, they work very well! The inside temp is for the room where the computers are and the outside temp is pretty self explanatory!

Mamma's been busy!

Well, I had originally intended to share some pictures of Mia at the table, asleep and covered in the sweet potatoes that she fell asleep IN... However I cannot find them, I'm afraid I may have deleted them instead of putting them in a folder.

So, here are a few pictures of my latest projects instead:

Mia's new hoodie fleece

I was quite proud of my first backpack, but Mia insisted that she wants a PURPLE owl. After I finished this one she decided that it was acceptable and pestered me about wearing it until I had sewn the lining in.

I can't seem to throw scraps away so I decided to use them for the lining just to make a dent in the scrap box.

Rocky Mountain Top Childrens Museum in Breckenridge

I took many pictures that day but they weren't of good quality once I looked at them in ACDSee. These are the few that didn't end up looking like bad modern art.

The expandable plastic orb thingy was an endless source or amusement

Mia the Puppet Master!

The dressup corner kind of skeeved me out, but she had fun.

We were in Breckenridge over the weekend with Helen and John. They had an adventure race to attend and needed someone to stay with the kids. I don't need a lot of sweet talking to go to Breck, so it was a win-win situation for everyone! We just hung out at the museum and the pool. Those crazy kids even wanted to swim in the wind and rain! Well, I make it sound like a hurricane, really it was breezy and sprinkly. They had a good time, though trying to swim with a three year old and a four year old clinging to each side for dear life makes it very hard to move! Caden had fun doing cannonball after cannonball and made fast friends with the other kids. It was a nice weekend!

We went to see Mia's dietitian on Monday and the child has LOST a pound. Very little has changed in her diet, so we're not sure what's going on. I'm still keeping food journals so she went through and did a lot of calorie counting. She determined that Mia is getting about 230 calories per day from actual food, for a grand total of about 1330 calories per day with the formula added in. That has been the same for a couple of months, so we're worried about the sudden weight loss. A pound isn't a big deal to an adult, but to a preschooler who weighs 29 lbs when soaking wet it's bad news. I've been adding safflower oil, sugar and amino acid powder to her hot cereals, but she wretches if the taste or texture are too different. Once she wretches, good luck getting her to eat!

I'm nearly finished with class registration, simply waiting on UMUC to send my transcripts so I can get my psych course. I stupidly thought that my transfers from UMUC to Alaska U would show up on the AKU transcript. Not so! I couldn't figure out why they didn't want to give me credit for my English 101, very glad that they accepted my second lit class in it's stead. So far I'm taking Math 030 (go ahead and laugh), a basic nutrition course, computer literacy and a psych (human development/behavior). After I get more of my pre-requisite classes knocked out I will have to get a nursing advisor and from what I gather, you actually have to interview for the program. Now we just have to hope that this new GI bill gets signed this week so that Gary can transfer the rest of his to me, otherwise this is going to be an expensive semester.

Happenings

Pikes Peak or Bust Rodeo Parade, with her little friend Laney

Looking sweet before ballet class

Playing outside after ballet

Jazz in the park, dancing in front of everyone with Grace

Rose's birthday at Cave of the Winds

A little bit of free play at Iron Horse Park

Helping Mommy with the gardens

Chalk art!

"My Project"

"Mommy it's you with crazy hair!"

"Just this guy with two heads"

3.5 Hours in a doctors office, according to Mia

We have found a numbing cream that she can actually use!