15 Days ... My Reason for Taking a Break From Blogging

Last fall with an O2 tank bigger than him!

My five year-old son spent 15 days in the hospital, including two surgeries, six in-room procedures and countless tubes, IVs, pokes and other fun things ... so here is the entire story.

First off, I will preempt this by telling all my lovely readers that my middle daughter has a history of chronic illness, and usually when these kinds of things happen, they happen to her. My son does have a history of Reactive Airway Disease (RAD) and has had pneumonia three times, but two of them weren't bad at all and the third was associated with lab-confirmed H1N1 last fall. He did end up on in-home oxygen with that one, and they talked about hospitalizing him, but never did.

So, here is the story of our little adventure this fall ....

On Wednesday October 13, my cute little five year-old boy started off a cold with some sniffles and a little bit of a cough, but nothing seemed too bad, according to his dad (sidebar- my kids go every other month and every other weekend between their father and me, October was their month with their dad). Saturday morning his dad started getting more worried about him, he was spiking high fevers, throwing up almost everything he ate (including medicine), and had a really good, unproductive cough ... Sunday morning my son was taken to urgent care, they said that he sounded clear, his O2 Saturation was in the low 90s, which isn't bad ... they told my

The Cataclysm Cinematic Has Been Released ...

The commercial aired for the first time today ... followed by the release of the full cinematic ...

You know what's hard?

... changing shoe laces in your kids shoes, in a house with seven cats ...

... just sayin' ...

Compassion .. a message for all ...

I was raised in a church where we were taught compassion ... where acceptance was taught as one of the main principles of scripture ... where empathy, love and compassion for our enemies, for those of different faiths, or no faith, different cultures, different political views were to be respected, as fellow members of the human race .. we were taught to show love and empathy by example ... and not force our views or scripture on to other people ... we were taught to examine other religions ... we were taught to do this in an academic and respectful manner ... in my confirmation classes we read pieces of the Torah, the Quran, the Aqdas, the

Labeling our children ...

I think there is a fine line between encouraging and nurturing the strengths of our children and labeling and pigeon-holing them into something, somewhere that is unfair to them ... so here is my confession/struggle ...

Hi, my name is Erica and I just came back from parent teacher conferences, and this is where I find it very hard to not "label" my children ... those of you that have read my muses page, know that I do it somewhat there as well ... so let me start out by saying that all three of my children are bright ... all three of them have areas they stand out in and areas they don't do so well in ... but ... here is where the issue lies ...

My oldest is "the creative one" ... she naturally draws better than I did when instructed by high school art teachers ... she is musically inclined, I have never heard her sing horribly off pitch ... not always perfect (and I'm a tough judge with three years of vocal music major fun stuff in college) .. but she is a decent singer ... she is interested in musical instruments and drama ... and writing .. which is about the only academic thing she is interested in ... she has already had plenty of F's and D's and I's and "needs improvement" and "below grade level" and other such negative comments on her report cards ... I fear her parent teacher conferences ... and
today ... was no different ... below grade level in two major subjects ... at grade level in the other major two ... problems with responsibility, problems with focus ... although she is a social butterfly ... she is, in my mind, and in the minds of many others ... an artist ...

Academics are not something she cares about ...and even I, the queen of the run-on sentences and the "..." in my