May!

Drawing fish was an important thing for awhile.  These were courtesy of Benjamin.

As I mentioned earlier, we had to miss Charlotte and Claire's birthday party.  We visited Claire after the fact to bring her birthday gift to her.  These pictures are backwards, but this girl knows what to do with a Duplo cupcake!

She is super cute, right?

Hopefully the out-of-order pictures help you to use your imagination.  Sigh!

Mohawks were also a very important thing in May.  And a team effort.  These kids cracked me up!

She just needed to pose like this.  And my mom made her this skirt out of a curtain.  Really!

The fire department visited the kindergarten, and another mom sent me this picture.  So fun!

So, this was the main part of May for me.  One evening, when I was sitting at swim practice with Jonathan - he had finished his hour and the youngers were swimming for their hour - I noticed some specks in Jonathan's hair.  Upon looking more closely, I found what you already suspect:  head lice.  I was APPALLED.  I made some calls/text to teachers from both schools and found out whether the kids would need to miss school after I treated them.  (They wouldn't.)  Of course, I found the head lice in the evening, and of course, Jeff was out of town.  I found them on Benjamin (although less on him than on Jonathan) and none on Grace, but of course, I had to treat everyone - all of us - as if we had lice.  We stopped by the drug store on the way home to get what you see in the photo above, and also my teacher friend, Kim, share what she had with us.  We spent a late evening treating all four of us.  If you've ever read about the life cycles of lice, you know that I had to treat and retreat and retreat for the rest of the month, whether I found more evidence of critters or not, because the chemicals do not kill the eggs.  It was just awful.  I was super careful about making sure that we wouldn't be re-infected by bedding, pillows, etc.  And although I'm confident I eradicated the disgusting lice, my head itches to this day (and I am blogging this in October.)  I should note that Jonathan had been scratching his head for weeks before this, and I kept looking for a cause but couldn't find it...until that fateful night at swim practice.  It's hard for me to express what a level of stress this added to an already stressful month.  I'm so thankful it's over, but I still have what seems to be PTSD because I still itch.  And I can't find any reason for it.

On to happier news...

We had decided a year or two ago to get a new entertainment center, and we had set the money aside to do it...so we finally did it.  Our armoire that we got out of the newspaper want ads had served us well for something like 15+ years and is now in a happy home elsewhere.  Here's how the new piece looked as it was delivered.  Note the couches that have sheets over them to prevent possible spread of disgusting lice.  I was extra cautious.

Time to hook things up!

He was just making a suggestion.

And here he is drawing the fish from the beginning of the post!