Pollen Counts

Oh my goodness the pollen put a wallop on our family this past week. Two weeks ago was my Spring Break, which we enjoyed tremendously by doing absolutely nothing at all. It was glorious. But then, right at the very end, we all got the sniffles. Penny woke up late Sunday night/early Monday morning with a 104.5 fever. That was very frightening. She was breathing very fast and labored, almost like a dog panting. I called the doctor on-call that night and we got the fever down, but a trip to the doctor's office confirmed that she had a sinus infection and what looked to be the beginnings of pneumonia. It hadn't really "flowered" yet into her whole lung, but her doctor could hear reduced breath sounds. Anyway, she got antibiotics and has been doing progressively better this week. Right as she was getting better, I was getting sicker. I ended up canceling all my classes for the week because I had a fever and cold symptoms and was just generally miserable. On Thursday, I went in to the doctor with a sinus infection. Tray's been sick too, and we are all just so, so ready to be well again. Penny drew a picture of pollen on her chalkboard. She made a bunch of yellow scribbles and told me that she really doesn't like pollen. Me either.

PreK

We enrolled Penny in a pre-K program for next fall. She'll be attending Park Memorial Methodist, Mondays-Thursdays from 8 to 12. There are no public-school preK's in Troy or Pike County. The only secular option is a local private school (of the no-people-of-color-allowed variety), but classes are all day, everyday, which we felt would be too much since she's never been to school at all. In fact, that's the main reason we are trying to send her to pre-K at all: the kindergarden options are all full-day no matter what, so we figured we'd better get her used to going part time this year. So, anyway, that left half a dozen or more choices of church schools, and we liked Park the best of the two we visited. I think she'll really like it there. Plus, her bff Ally will be going there next year too (although she'll be in the 3yo class). Park doesn't have a kindergarden though so we'll be going through the decision making process again next year. Joy.

Webpage Updates

I updated my webpage a little bit. I know I could make a much fancier one using a web page developer, but it's fun to try to write it myself. If you can't tell, I discovered Google Webfonts. I am addicted. Help. :)

Bee Sting

Yesterday Penny received her first bee sting. It was a honey bee that had somehow gotten into the house. She said, "Ow, Mommy something poked me." It swole up a little, but was completely gone in a hour and now you can't even tell where it was. I didn't even give her any medicine or anything. So, there were no lasting effects, but she was relentless last night asking me all about it. Why did the bee sting her?, she wanted to know. I told her because it thought she was about to squish it. She said, "But I wasn't going to squish it." I told her that I knew, but that's what the bee thought. Oh, but we must have gone 18 rounds with that line of questioning. She was totally offended that this bee had stung her.

When Alligators Attack

Penny's obsession/concern with alligators has been long-lived. The other night while I was laying with her as she was going to sleep, she asked me if we could build her cage for her bed. I'm thinking, "?" I asked her why she wanted to sleep in a cage. She said so that the alligators couldn't get her. We had talk number 1 million and one about how there are no alligators in our house.

Then the next day she asked me what do alligators eat. She's asked me this before. I said what I always say, "fish, mostly. Sometimes turtles. A deer when they can get one." She asked me if they eat people. I lied and said no. She nodded. And then asked me if I was afraid of alligators. I hesitated, but said, "well, if I was swimming in a lake and one came swimming over I might be afraid." To which she replied, "Don't be scared, Mommy. If an alligator comes swimming over you just say, 'let's become friends.'" So there you go. Child's going to have a job at the UN one day.

Sweetheart

I've been sick with a cold since Thursday, but Penny has been so sweet and understanding. One night over the weekend I was laying with her in bed before she went to sleep and she hugged me tight and said, "I'm sorry you had such a rough day, Mommy. Maybe tomorrow will be better." And then the next night she hugged me and said, "You know? I'll always be here for you." I cracked up hearing her repeat these things we say to each other and to her sometimes. She was so sincere though. Such a sweetheart.

Website

I set up a website through the University: spectrum.troy.edu/searnest. I just started it today and I'm teaching myself to code with html rather than use a template, so it doesn't have much content and isn't very physically appealing yet. This semester I am teaching a course called Web-Based GIS which will involve having my students create and publish maps on the internet. This new site will be the space where I post my own maps to demonstrate for them how things work. I've got one up there already that uses the Google Maps API to show the Troy Campus. Right now you can zoom in and out and pan around, but later I'll add other capabilities. I intend to show them how to do the same thing using Yahoo maps, Bing maps, MapQuest, and Google Earth.