Rain, Rain GO AWAY!

It has been a wild two weeks for me, 1st the daughter diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes, we are getting used to our new daily routines and picking out foods she can eat, and checking everything and taking insulin and everything is all good. Then the 2 yr old gets RSV last Thursday, she gets to stay with the inlaws since she is running a fever and we don't want the 6 year old catching anything if at all possible. Fast forward to Monday and the 6 yr old is coming down with something. Her sugar is high indicating an infection of some kind. Leave school early to take her to dr, she now has RSV. So I take off yesterday to stay home with her. Kinda thankful though cause due to the extreme amounts of rain we have experienced the past few days and no end in sight, school dismissed at 10:30 yesterday, I hate early dismissal days, kids go crazy, some leave earlier, have to wait on buses from our other school to run before they get to us. It's a headache anyway you look until they are all gone, then you get to go home. So I was happy to be home while all that was going on yesterday. 

Today we are out again due to flooding over 40 roads in the county I live in are impassible and the rain is STILL coming down. The way it looks we could possibly be out tomorrow as well. 

Anyways so what I have been up to when I have been in class. I have been implementing more partnerships since coming back in January. The kids are loving it. I still have students who are confusing the difference between author and illustrator, so I had a thought to make an anchor chart to help them. 

I paired them up and had them work together to create a sentence that the one being the author could write and the other being the illustrator could illustrate. It turned out great.

I am NOW a mommy to a Type 1 Diabetic 6 yr old!

So my life has been turned upside down since lunch last Friday. My daughter had been constantly drinking and would down a drink in no time, then started getting up in the middle of the night to use the bathroom. We finally decided to get her a dr. appt to see what was going on. Well I decided to google extreme thirst is children....and the only thing that came up was juvenile diabetes. I was thinking I hope that's not what this is but we will see. 

So Friday morning I call and make her an appt for 3:00 that afternoon. Well one of our teachers is a gestational diabetic and I passed her in the hallway and asked if I could borrow her blood sugar checker to see what my daughter's was before she went to lunch. I knew it wouldn't be very accurate, but thought I will have a number before she eats and then they can do it again at the dr. office and compare it. Sadly we didn't make it that far. 

When I checked her at lunch, she was 516! I was a gestational diabetic with my 2nd child, and knew that was a high number, but it didn't dawn on me how high it was till I went and told the school nurse. The look on her face confirmed my fear. I lost it, right there in the middle of the school office! She finally got me settled down enough to call the dr. office back. I told them what was going and and was told get her to the ER now!!!! Of course that got me going all over again. My little girl has a chance of having a lifestyle change and there is nothing I can do about it. When I finally get settled down the 2nd time. I got my things and her things and off we go to the ER. 

I called her daddy on the way there and told him what all was going on. I had mentioned Type 1 diabetes to him the night before, so it wasn't out of the blue. He pulled in right before I did. Once we filled out the initial paperwork, they immediately called back to the ER and told them they had a 6 year old with blood sugar of 516. I knew right then that this is not good. We sat maybe two minutes and were called back. When the Dr. comes in and introduced himself and then started with "She has Type 1 Diabetes." My heart stopped, I couldn't believe my ears. But you didn't test for anything else? Is what I wanted to say...but nothing came out. He said they would start an IV and he would contact our family Dr. to see where she wanted to send us, since the nearest pediatric diabetic Dr. is an hour and a half away. 

Thankfully, my daughter was medically stable enough that we were discharged and told to drive to the Children's Hospital where the closest pediatric diabetic doctors were. That enabled us to go by home, get some clothes, and activities for her to play with cause we didn't know how long we would be there or anything. 

We finally arrived and went through the triage pretty quickly since the hospital we had already visited had sent paperwork and they were anticipating our arrival. She was placed back on IV for fluids and given her 1st insulin shot. She did great not a flinch, nothing. Which made it so much easier on mommy and daddy. We finally got a room upstairs around 9:00 that night. She received another two insulin shots that night followed by dropping too low at 2 a.m. due to the overlapping of the insulin. 

The next day we met with the diabetic educator and a nutritionist who explained some of everything we had to learn. I was so impressed with my baby girl. When it was time for a blood sugar check she would have her finger stuck out and already be pointing to where she wanted her insulin to go in. She tricked a few nurses who couldn't believe she was a newly diagnosed diabetic. That makes for one proud mommy and daddy. Plus it made it much easier on us. 

We had to have 2 days of teaching and they didn't teach on Sunday, so we finished on Monday and came home that night. 
We kept her at home on Tuesday, wanting to make sure we could handle checking her sugar and giving insulin before sending her to school. We had a good day. 
Wednesday was our first day back....all I can say is I am super happy that I work there because I don't know if I could have handled not knowing how she was doing. Thankfully for me she is three doors down the hall. She had a good morning, but dropped before lunch, so we had to check and give a quick snack. The rest of the day went well. Today was pretty much the same as yesterday. She dropped before lunch. I am talking to the Dr. tomorrow about adding a morning snack so she won't get so low before lunch.
This is my new life. She gets checked four to five times a day(right now we are still checking in the middle of the night) and she gets insulin shots four times a day. She is a trooper, she has struggled with it some since coming home, but I know there are going to be good days and bad days, and we will have every kind of emotion possible, but in the end I am extremely thankful that it is something that can be managed!

~Heather~

January Currently

I can't believe it's January already. The school year is half over. I am linking up for my favorite linky ever!!! It's Farley's Currently. So here you go.

I am listening to the Florida State Seminoles go into halftime with a slight lead of 14-3. Was hoping it would be bigger so I could go to bed. 

I had the best shopping spree ever a few days ago. I went to Maurices and racked up. I received an email saying clearance was 75% off, so I thought I would check it out since I had gotten a $25 gift card from my mom for Christmas. Well while I was going through the purse finding the gift card I also found a coupon for 15% off total purchase clearance included. I was very excited. So in I go knowing anything I found on clearance was 90% off! I tried on a ton of clothes, I finally decided on 5 dressy shirts, one blazer, a pair of black dressy capri's, a red skirt that I would typically not even think about getting but for less than $5, why not give it a try. So I go to checkout and what do I find in my purse......a $10 off coupon from where I have used my Maurice's Take Ten card. So 90% off and $10 off, and my $25 gift card, I only shelled out $1.75. I was an extremely happy girl!

I go back to school tomorrow, and am very excited to see my 19 kiddos. I love spending time off with my girls, but I am not a stay at home mommy for a reason. It drives me crazy, not having a schedule.

I do not make new year's resolution's due to the fact I have never been successful at them. I do attempt to make goals for myself and have a better chance doing them longer than resolutions. So this year I want to be more organized: at home, at school, my calendar, you name it. I want organization. We will see how well that comes.

I am needing SNOW. I know some of you have already had a ton, but my entire break was rainy, dreary, and cold, but not cold enough! Last year, I think we only used about 3 of our snow days at school. I would love to use around 10. No more though, as we have a couple days without kids towards the end of the year, and I don't want more than we have, since that resulted in Saturday School two years ago. So I need snow also so my girls can play in it. We didn't get to last year because of sickness. 

OLW: LISTEN I want to be a better listener to my girls, to my hubby (who swears I never listen to him, and is mostly right), to my kids at school so I can learn more about them, to my friends cause I don't have that many and I need to be a better friend, so I feel listening will get me there faster, to nature. I want to take more hikes and bike rides with the family this year and I want to hear my surroundings. I am lucky enough to live just outside the Great Smokey Mountains, and I want to teach my girls to listen to nature, because we never know how much longer we will have it. 

I have thoroughly enjoyed this month's Currently like I do every month, but it being January it puts certain topics into perspective. Thanks Farley!

Now it's your turn... What are you Currently up to?

Silence for Sandy Hook Elementary

What we have been up to (photo dump)

So I have meant to do blog posts on each of these events, but every time I found time to my camera card was at school, not home, or I even lost my camera at one point. But all is good now and I have time while the oldest is at dance and the youngest is actually playing by herself:) So here goes: Enjoy!

So this is the bulletin board I created after my evaluated observation. We had been studying numbers 6 and 7, prior to my observation and it was right before Halloween. So I decided to do a ways to make 8 with a spider. The students had to show eight different ways to make an eight and record it on one of the 8 legs. They loved it and I scored well on my observation, so it was a win/win. 

Here are a few closer looks at their creations.

Here is a picture of the last minute poster we finished the day before they were due. It was for Fall Festival and during report card testing, so I really didn't want to do it. But came up with this super cute idea and the kids did a great job with it. We won a pizza party from it!

This is a picture of my daughter who is in another kindergarten class. They dressed up as nursery rhyme characters and she was the little old woman who lived in a shoe.

Here is what happens when you send your daughter to the classroom and a chart is on the easel. She writes a message. 

 The turkey jumped with a thump. The banana fell with a thump. REd! (yelling she says) blue! yellow!

We turned out housekeeping area into a Restaurant complete with a Thanksgiving Special. We worked together to sound out the items for our menu then each student had to illustrate an item. They enjoyed working the tables after it was up!

We are currently working on changing it to a candy shop to go with our gingerbread we are studying now!

These last pics are posters my wonderful art teacher drew for us. I have implemented Marsha over at A Differentiated Kindergarten's Ball lists to encourage students to learn their dolch words. I have been super impressed by how well they have done. We have only been working on them since the middle of October and they are doing great. I have 13 out of 19 who have already mastered baseball words the 1st list. They mastered Top Banana a letter recognition incentive the week before Thanksgiving and earned a banana split party which they LOVED! 

They are so eager to learn the words. I have them placed on rings on one of my bookcases and have to tell them to quieten down because they play while they practice and get so excited they become very loud. 

So that's it for now! 

~Heather~

Currently

I can't believe it's December already. I am teaming up with Farley over at Oh' Boy 4th Grade for this months Currently.

We had our city Christmas parade today and the weather was amazing. It was in the middle 60's and extremely nice. My girls got more candy today at the parade than they received at Halloween. Something is wrong with that picture. Needless to say hubby's coworkers will love it because we pick out a few pieces of candy for the girls and he gets to take the rest to work and share! Therefore no nap for the 2 yr old and now very whiny and tired. Bedtime in the very near future.

LOVING: My hubby and I were able to pay off my student loans this past month and his truck. I am one very happy girl. We now only have utility bills and a house payment! 

Wanting: I would love to get more organized at school. Every time I try, it just doesn't work. I hope to work some over Christmas break to get closer to where I want to be.

Needing: I need to go away for a weekend! We didn't go anywhere this summer, so it has been since last October that we traveled anywhere. I don't care where, just out of my little old town for a weekend.

RAK: The hubby and I have talked about doing this for some time. The next time we are out at a nice place to eat, we want to pick a table and pay for their meal. Pay it forward. 

Don't forget the rule of 3! And be on the lookout for bloggers from the same state. I love meeting new TN bloggers. 

Merry Christmas everyone!

~Heather~

A look at what I am buying....

So I don't have a TPT store, and honestly don't intend on it. I dabble making creations for my classroom, but my theory is that I would rather pay for things others have made, than take the time to create myself. I honestly don't see how many of you do it! But I am happy you do!

So I am joining Shuna over at Pocket Full of Kinders for a fun linky just in time for Cyber Monday and Tuesday. My wishlist has 43 items. I would love to get them all, but here are what I am looking at right now.

 Chit Chat Morning Message Set 1: Aligned to Common Core. By Deanna Jump

 Writing Through the Year Unit 1: Deanna Jump and Deedee Wills

 Blasting Off with Reader's Workshop: Kim Adsit and Michele Scannell

 Powerful Partnerships Reader's Workshop: Kim Adsit and Michele Scannell

 Kindergarten Common Core ELA Pacing Guide Checklist: Marsha McGuire

 Kindergarten Common Core Math Pacing Guide Checklist: Marsha McGuire

 RTI: 125 CBM's for Progress Monitoring Foundational Literacy Interventins: Jennifer Jones

I am also looking into the Chit Chat Set 2, Writing Unit 2 & 3, and Reader's Workshop 3,4 & 5. I am worried about purchasing all of them at once and them not being what I am looking for. The reviews are amazing as I would except from these amazing teachers!

So if you have any of these, can you please let me know your thoughts on them? 

~Heather~