April 9, 2008

Not much! :)

Today was the first day in I don't know how long that I did not have to wipe a running nose...other than blowing my own nose. The boys seem to have gotten over their colds. I am still not feeling great though.

On Saturday I thought I had beat it. I was feeling much better, had a lot of energy and just wanted to enjoy the day. I bought some flowers and spent a good amount of time planting them in the front flower beds. Before I was finished, I could tell I had over done it and I have really not felt very well since then. By last night, my voice was almost gone but it is better again today.

We had a very bad thunderstorm Monday night. We have one of those emergency radios that will come on with an alert anytime there is a severe thunderstorm or tornado threat. It woke us up during the night and we turned on the local weather channel to keep up with what was going on out there. They sure have great technology for tracking bad weather these days. They can tell you down to the street level, where the hail is or where there is a possibility of a tornado or whatever. It really is amazing.

My husband and I watched the reports on TV for a while, trying to decide when we should go up and get the boys and bring them down. We were watching the worse part of the storm move straight towards us. When the local tornado warning siren went off, we decided that was probably a good indicator that it was time to bring them downstairs:). I have heard that siren go off every Wednesday at noon for the weekly test since moving here but this was the first time I had ever heard it for real.

We woke up the boys and carried them downstairs and put them in bed with us. We kept watching the news to determine whether we needed to go hunker down in the small downstairs bathroom, which is the safest place in our house for a tornado threat. As it turned out, the spinning area that was causing the tornado warning ended up going north of us so we did not have to hunker down. We did end up getting to see quite a spectacular hail storm, with some pretty big size hail. It was not golf ball size but it was not too much smaller than that. Sadly enough, it did quite a number on the flowers I had planted and the huge amount of rain will probably finish them off. Oh well (I say this so often, the boys now say it quite frequently for me:).

The boys were in our bed for about two hours and then around 4:00am we took them back upstairs. They were little troopers, went right back to sleep and slept until 9:00 am.

It looks like we are going to be replaying this scene, maybe multiple times, over the next couple of days. I can already hear the thunder starting up again. It's that season here in Oklahoma.

On the flip side, everything here is so beautiful now. The flowering trees are all blooming, there are tons of flowers everywhere, the grass is turning green again, the leaves are coming out on the trees and there is beautiful color everywhere you turn. My azalea's have little tiny red buds all over them and will be exploding into color anytime now. Hopefully we will get to enjoy them a bit longer this year than we did last year, when they were cut short due to a late ice storm. I love this time of year.

We have not been very successful in switching the boys to their new beds so I am thinking our approach must be flawed. In the beginning, we would put them in their new beds every time it was nap time or night time. Inevitably, Ben would get up and sometimes Nick would get up. The rule has been that if they get up, they have to sleep in their old bed (crib). The getting up became so regular that we decided to make them sleep in their old beds (cribs) for a few days. Starting yesterday, I decided I would let them try to sleep in their new bed at nap time. They lasted less than 5 minutes. Today we tried it again. I waited outside of their door and in less than one or two minutes they were opening the door to come out, so I put them back in their cribs. I'm not quite sure what approach to take to make them stay in their new beds. I really think that if Ben would stay in his, Nick would stay in his. Nick has slept in his new bed several times but Ben has never slept in his because just won't stay in it long enough to fall asleep. I think it has become this kind of game for them. They are not climbing out of their cribs though, so that's a good thing.

I'm not sure if we should change our approach with the new beds or just keep doing what we're doing until they get to the point where they really do want to sleep in their new beds. What do you think? On that note, the boys are awake so I must run.