Our Little Kindergartener

Sugar made the transition into kindergarten last Tuesday flawlessly!. (I, on the other hand, had a little difficulty!) She has a fantastic teacher who has so many amazing things planned for this year and she loves going to class each day. Paprika, once again proving his superior mental capacity, told Spice that she would be going to Grammygarten each day while Sugar was at kindergarten, which seemed to appease her quite nicely. We are so excited to see our Sugar blossom into a confident, independent little girl and we can't wait to see all of the things that she will accomplish this year.

Sugar, The Artist

Sugar loves doing craft projects, whether it involves coloring, painting, foam stickers, or whathaveyou. So when we found The Art Barn this summer (thanks, Michelle!) Sugar was hooked. She has thus far made a bowl for Grammy, a pumpkin plate for Nana (sorry, no photo of that one!),
a rainbow box for her cousin's birthday next month (shhhh!) and a unicorn box for herself.
I even joined in the fun and made this tile collage cross.

Our First REAL Emergency

On Tuesday night, we experienced our first SERIOUS child-related emergency since Sugar was born a little over five years ago. As we prepared to go to Nana's house after dinner, the girls went out to get in the car ahead of us. Spice took the opportunity to play for a moment and was bitten by some type of ant (we think) as she stood in the grass by our driveway. As I was coming outside, Sugar was racing into the house to tell us that Spice had been bitten. We put some StingEze on her foot, gave her a bag of ice and proceeded to head over to Nana's house. On our 5-minute drive, Sugar began to complain that her 'lip wouldn't go up'. When I looked in the backseat I thought that her lip had gotten numb because she was putting the ice pack on her mouth. As we neared Nana's driveway, she began to complain that her 'eyes were going down'. I looked in the backseat again to discover that her face appeared to be swelling. When we stopped, Paprika jumped out to check her, while I ran into Nana's to find out whether she had any Benadryl on hand. She didn't. So Paprika, being the level-headed, rational person in the family, thought to rush back home and get a hefty dose of Benadryl in her before we attempted to go to the nearest emergency clinic. The Benadryl had the desired effect....her swelling did not worsen...and the CareNow clinic physician prescribed a steroid, which we were able to fill the next morning. Two days later, her swelling has almost disappeared, and she's back to her normal wild self. Thanks be to God for His faithfulness to us and His care for our little Spice! And now here's Spice's version:

And They Swam And They Swam All Over The Dam!

For the last couple of weekends, we've had the pleasure of spending Sunday afternoon swimming in the pool at my brother's best friend's parent's house. Got that? The girls just love going 'swimming', although neither of them can swim yet. Sugar would still rather die than go under water, and Spice isn't too much better about it. However, I am finally seeing some progress and now have hope that maybe one day they will actually be able to swim. Look at Sugar floating on her back and swimming all over the pool! She even jumped into the shallow end by herself. (Okay, I bribed her with the Swan Lake Barbie movie, but it still counts!) There's just a tiny section of Spice doing her thing, but that's because everything you see in that section is everything she does in the pool. She's just gotten comfortable floating with the life jacket in the last couple of weeks...up until then she would have a panic attack when she couldn't touch bottom any more. So she's making progress, too. I predict that we'll have a couple of swimmers next summer!