Playground Incident

Back in October, I got a call from the school office asking if I could come to school. Reed had been involved in a mishap on the playground.  He and another boy had collided and his head was bleeding quite a bit. Luckily, Bob was still at home working, so I was able to leave the girls with him and rush to the school. When I walked into the office, two teachers were attending to him. Reed was white-faced but acting very bravely. In the time that it had taken me to get there, they finally stopped the bleeding. His shirt was covered in blood. What I hadn't realized was that he had been wearing a fleece jacket that was also blood-soaked, otherwise his shirt would have looked worse.

I took him straight to the Pediatrician's office. Of course, it was their lunch and they were having a conference. Luckily, after the receptionist saw him, she asked a few nurses to look at him and they said they could help us. Thankfully, no trip to the emergency room!

The doctor popped in to look at it. He couldn't see the cut because his matted, blood-soaked hair had dried over it. Two nurses cut away at the hair-blood mass for probably 20 minutes and probably spent another 10 minutes trying to get it shaved for the doctor to examine it.

Reed feeling a little squeamish; that's mommy's boy.

Whoop, there it is.

The cut turned out to be more of a puncture wound. The third grader that ran into Reed knocked his front tooth into Reed's head, cracking his tooth in half. Reed did not even end up needing stitches. They just super-glued the spot closed.

The other boy, a boy we know, didn't get off so easily. When I hurried into the office, everyone was huddle around Reed tending to him. I looked over at a table and saw the boy quietly sitting at a table by himself with his head down. Later, he went to the dentist for a partial root canal. He had to go back two more times in the coming days for more root canal treatment. He had cracked a permanent tooth that hadn't fully developed so the treatment was much trickier. It's amazing that boy took the whole thing in stride. Later, I found out from his mom that he was chasing a girl. I think I'll need to use that as a future warning to Reed to stay away from girls. ;)

We ended up so lucky. To top it all off, I didn't even faint.

Back to School 2014

Fall 2014 Back to School was exciting for the Mihelich Family. Reed started First Grade and moved to the big hallway at St. Thomas More. Cora started school officially. She joined the 4 year old preschool at St. Thomas More. Kate started back at the Braun Family Daycare after a break for the summer. When she returned in the Fall, Cora was no longer there. It had become only her school.

  

 First Grade-Mrs. Hansen

4 yr. Preschool-Mrs. Kathy

Braun Family Daycare

Since this is a retrospective post, I can update that halfway through the school year all is still going well.  Cora is excited about the prospect of Kindergarten, but she is very nervous about the shot that she still remembers Reed getting.

Summer Vacation 2014

In 2014, we took our (nearly) annual trip to Copper Harbor, Michigan. The exciting thing about our trip this year is that Granny and P-pa joined us! The kids had both sets of grandparents as well as their cousins to play with. Bonus!

 Bob in front of his Grandpa's old butcher shop in Calumet.

 A view of Copper Harbor Lighthouse from our sunset cruise 

 Our three best berry pickers

Strolling on the rocky beach with Granny 

Just dipping their toes in Lake Superior with P-pa 

Cora doing some sunbathing 

I thought we were just dipping our toes?! 

Just a few more inches, kids! 

Bob paddle boarding.

We also kayaked and fished. It was picture perfect. Kids caught fish after fish. The water was still. We had the lake nearly to ourselves. Unbelievable!

It wouldn't be the same without a trip to the ice cream shop with the cousins. 

...or the Candy Shop with Grandma. It's pretty much the highlight of their trip.

Cousin fun!

New Years Resolution

It makes me sad to look at what has become of my blog over the last year...only a few scarce posts. What makes me sadder is to think back at all the fun things we did and to know that they aren't documented here. But what truly makes me the saddest are all the things that I've already forgotten because I haven't taken the time to blog.

I'm not a resolution maker, really. But I guess I need some accountability and if a New Year's Resolution will do it, then so be it. Note: It is already the 19th of January and this is the first time I have taken the time to take to it. Regardless, here I am. I'm back. Hopefully for good this time!

The next few posts will highlight the second half of last year. Vacation, starting school, the holidays. I can't wait to relive the fun!

Hide and Seek

Another one from the "unpublished" archives is Kate's very best Hide and Seek spot.  A spot like this and you'll win Hide and Seek every time.

Then again, maybe she just liked spending time with the bread machine.

Kate's New Shoes and New Smile

As I dusted off the old blog, I found a couple posts that I was going to write but never did. I had basically just uploaded some photos, never wrote anything, and they sat unpublished in cyberspace for many months.

Ah, Kate's fascination with high heels. I guess it has been going on for quite some time now.  My "favorite" memory was walking into the dining room and discovering Kate, who wasn't much older than a year, standing on the dining room table wearing dress up high heels. Talk about having your heart jump out of your chest...and wanting to laugh at the same time.



I'm so fancy!

And this "smile"... now a thing of the past, but hilarious nonetheless. Literally, you would tell Kate to smile and this is what you would get.

Example 2...

I do miss that cheesy top teeth only smile.

The poor abandoned blog

I have always loved having a family blog. I am terrible at completing baby books. I am not a scrapbooker. I do, however, love to have documentation of all the wonderful and crazy happenings of our lives. I always tried to do about a post a week or at least a few a month...

Then the reality of having three active young kids hit. Almost every day, I feel over my head. Taking care of three demanding kids all day and night is like sensory overload. My quiet evenings are no longer catching up on "me" things, it's often still catching up on "them" things like piles and piles of laundry. Some nights, I am not looking for a little personal, creative fulfillment, all I can muster is a vegetative state on the couch. I can't catch up on long overdo emails to friends or return phone calls. I can't even bear to retell the most adorable tales of adventures that the kiddos got into that day. I relish them but some nights, most nights, there is nothing left.

I couldn't admit this for a long time. Maybe I can now, only because I feel like things are starting to ease up a bit. I can see around the corner that it's not going to be this hard forever. Some days the mental exhaustion seems to ease enough that I can put more than two consecutive coherent sentences together and I feel like a normal adult momentarily.  These are the things that they don't tell you about motherhood. You will lose your brain capacity for a while because it can't deal with so much simultaneous stimulation.

I am here to say, I am back. The last 7 months did exist.  I am very sorry that I didn't document them here, but as sorry as I am that those memories aren't layed out for the world to see, I am more happy that I was present in those moments than sitting behind a computer screen ignoring my children. 

Maybe I'll go back and highlight a few things, like holidays and such, but I'm not overpromising here. We'll take each day as it comes.