Ainsley girl

Gymnastics

We’ve been doing pre-team for a little over a month now and it is quite a jump from the recreational class. My eyebrows were raised during the warm-up when they were doing burpees and push-ups, along with pike sit-ups. Whenever she looks over, she has a big smile on her face, so she is really liking the pain! She has a bit of catching up to do, especially in the flexibility department, but has made huge strides already. She practices at home all the time and overdid it a few weeks ago. Too many backbends will give you a back-ache, so we took it easy and it healed quickly. The doctor said to try and moderate her at home and maybe that will keep her from overdoing it. I hope so! It is not a good feeling to know your child is having back pain :o(. She goes 2 days a week for 2 hours per time and it absolutely starving when she’s finished. We quickly learned to snack on the way and have part of dinner on the ride home. It is amazing that a 5 year old can do what she does and have the attention span for that long. It is really fun to watch her and I am glad she loves the sport :o).

She does this all over the house, every single day.As you can see from her attire, Ainsley is quite into fashion (usuallly her own fashion). Skinny jeans are her favorite and her latest interest is belts. She had to go to the bathroom yesterday and put her belt over her shirt (not even attached to her pants) and came running to me with her underwear and pants around her ankles...."Mom, I can't get this belt off and I have to go to the bathroom." I tried explaining that she had a bare bottom, but it wasn't clicking, so I had to quickly take the belt off :o). Did I mention she is very stubborn???? We go round and round with hair on gymnastic days but I think she has finally figured it out (she had to learn the hard way that a pony tail really hurts when you are doing backward rolls and handstand forward rolls).
We babysat a friends’ 2 month old the other night and Ainsley was very excited. Unfortunately, the baby was pretty fussy, so Ryan and I had her most of the time, but Ainsley fed her and was happy to entertain her with cartwheels!

Gymnastics video (go to www.arrtwade.blogspot.com to view):

Fun Times....

Before braces: After braces:

We picked Reggie up from school early yesterday to get his braces! We finally get to retire the dreaded retainer :o). We saw his original molds and his mouth has widened a good 1/3 of an inch, but he still has a crossbite on one side and if we didn't do the braces, his top teeth would hit the bottom and cause problems. He was very nervous and complaining about his ear when we got him. Poor thing looked like he was going to cry. We stopped at home and gave him some Advil. He was much better after the braces were on and was great the rest of the night...happy that his teeth didn't even hurt.

At 5 a.m., he crawled into our bed and Ryan noticed he felt warm. Sure enough he had a fever and was still complaining about his ear. First thing in the morning, I made an appt. and we headed out to get in the car. As I was grabbing for my keys, I remembered I left them in Ryan's car, but since we had a spare, I just got that. The car turned over and started a couple times, but would die immediately. I knew I had to get him in because he was complaining of his stomach and just looked terrible. My friend Laura came to the rescue and we were only about 15 minutes late. The doctor said there was a virus going around with ear ache, cough and fever and I was so hoping that wasn't what he had. Luckily, it was a double ear infection that gets better quickly with antibiotics. It was a pretty nasty one and Reggie never complained about his right ear, which was much worse than the one he was complaining about. It was already deformed due to the bulging (not sure what this means because we've never had ear infections before, but it didn't sound good at all!). It is strange because he had one last year or the year before and it came out of the blue like this one. The kids have had colds, but nothing major, so it was a bit of a surprise. He never had a single ear infection as a baby, so it seems even more strange to me.

We finally got back to the house just in time to send Ainsley off to school. Once she was off, I had to figure out what to do about my dead car. I called Ryan and he was wondering if it was the key. A quick call to Honda and sure enough if the key isn't programmed the car won't run. Only $160 to solve that problem!

Once Reggie started feeling better, he noticed his teeth really hurt. Thank God for Advil!!! I looked at his teeth tonight and I can see why they were hurting....the gap in the first picture is completely gone and the tooth is pulled forward, matching the other side. So, I guess we can get them off now???? I'm actually not sure how long we are going to be able to keep this up with the braces because Reggie has the perfect space in his back molars to collect anything and everything. We have always flossed because he has a second meal sitting back there almost every night. We've been spending a good 20 minutes the past 2 nights trying to floss the 2 upper back molars and we haven't been all that successful. So, we might have to decide, good bite or rotten molars....such fun we've had since yesterday.