Have a Better Life

This was not an easy week. Regarding my son’s incident at school on Wednesday he got better really quickly. On Thursday I visit him at school at lunch time to check on him and apply some cream on his foot and he was really better.

On Friday morning he woke up and just started throwing up, then he was fine although with some tummy ache. He went to school, I went to work and during my lunch hour I received a phone call from school saying he was worse.

To shorten this up…I informed in the office I was taking the afternoon off, I picked my kid at school and went home. Tummy ache and head ache was a constant. I wasn’t too worried because I thought it was something he had eaten the day before so I just gave him water with sugar to stop vomiting, he was able to eat a few toasts and them sleep for 2,5 hours.  When he woke up I gave him a pain killer for his head ache and 10 minutes after he started vomiting again. Oh boy…

I had a med at home to stop vomiting and against his will (he hates taking meds) he took a spoon of that plus two lollipops (good to stable the stomach because of the sugar). Didn’t eat at all the rest of the day, slept all night and in the morning he was another boy. First words: “Mom, I’m starving”.  My boy is back.

The reasons of this? I don’t know.

I got a little scared today at lunch time with a phone call I received from school.

Well, two days ago a friend of my son gave him a kick and my son got hurt on the right foot. Nothing serious, a little swelling, no big deal. Today during lunch break he was playing soccer at school and during a ball move my son fell and hurt his right foot, the one that was already hurt. The swelling appeared in two places and the pain was a lot, so school personal called me and said it would be better to go to the ER with him.

I picked him up at school, he was barely walking and in pain. We went to the local IR but immediately he was sent to a nearby hospital to get an X-ray.

I called my husband, my boss, my co-worker to informed them of what was going on and that I didn’t know at what time I would arrive at work.

Hospital ER…here we go and after two hours and one X-Ray we were informed that all the bones were intact and that the problem was only a sprain of one foot ligament but nothing serious at all. Treatment: Ice, pain killers and rest.

The doctor said that he could go to school tomorrow as long as he doesn’t run and play around. Of course my son is saying that going to school means that he can damage the foot more, that it can get worse, bla, bla, bla. The question is that he wants to skip school tomorrow and stay in daycare to play games!!!

I’m glad he didn’t break a bone or something worse and that this will go away in a few days.

This Giveaway is Closed!! Thanks to those that participated:

The Winner was Karen!!! Congratulations Karen!!!

One of the first releases of the year is the movie “Inkheart” adapted from the book of Cornelia Funke also named Inkheart. This is a simple story that attracts both adults and children with a mix of fantasy and reality.

When Mortimer ” Mo” Folchart (Brendan Fraser) reads a book aloud he has the power of bringing to reality the characters of the book and when that happens one person from real world goes to the universe of the book. He does that once and he ends up with the villain Capricorn in the real world and his wife in the book universe. He raises his daughter alone always trying to find the book he has to read to bring back his wife to real world.

Along the way several characters show up and give this movie a light and funny touch that will glue kids and grown-ups to the screen.

Now here comes the Giveaway part: I have a $20 Fandango gift certificate to giveaway. This gift certificate can be used to watch Inkheart or any other movie you are interested in.

How can you win the $20 Fandango Gift Certificate?

One entry: Leave a comment on this post and let me know which movie would you like to watch using the Fandango Gift Certificate. Please leave your name and a valid email address so that the Voucher can be email to you if you win.

For extra entries:

• Subscribe to my feed (in feed reader or by e-mail)
• Post about this giveaway on your blog with a link back to this post
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For each extra entry please leave a comment saying what you did. In case you are already a subscriber just leave a comment saying that. Also if you tweet the post let me know your tweet ID in a comment.

This Giveaway starts Now and will last until next Monday. Winner will be announced next Tuesday 26th.

My daughter will be five in March and still sucks her thumb. Sucking her thumb really calms her down and it’s really a comfort for her to be able to do so. She was a baby that never wanted a pacifier and she only started thumb sucking at the age of 2,5 years. I remember quite well that it was summer and she started being interested in the babies that were in the day care nursery. Some of them slept sucking their thumb and out of nowhere she started doing it also.

I know that I shouldn’t concern myself unless it continues after the age their permanent teeth begin to appear, around six years old. Experts say that the act of sucking implies some strength that can cause deformation of the teeth and in the future braces might be needed. My daughter sometimes just puts her thumb passively in her month and doesn’t do it aggressively, but I’m still concerned with the implication that might have in the future. For those who doesn’t know how your kid do it just closely monitor your kid and analyze her/his technique. If the child seems to be sucking vigorously, you may start thinking about curbing the habit earlier.

Punishing or nagging our child to stop won’t help, believe me, I’ve tried that several times. I thought about putting some stop nail bite on her thumb, I even tried that once, but is was too painful for her and me. She felt I was punishing her and I felt awful, especially since she indulges in the habit for comfort and security.

I’m going to follow some advice I found on the web and from some expert people I know. I’m going to try to find some alternatives to comfort her as a soft blanket or a teddy bear she loves. The key is to offer an alternative.

I’ve already spoken with a dentist (a local one not a Washington DC dentist) and for now everything looks just fine with her teeth so he told me not to worry too much and that with time she will give up the habit.

What about you? Do you have any advice for me?

I must confess, I collect stamps since a very early age. It always fascinated me all those different stamps from all over the world. I used to spend hours preparing the stamps to put in albums, everything organized by country, by price, by collection. I have thousands at home but due to my busy life I don’t have the time to organize them, maybe when the kids are older or when I’m retired! Collecting stamps is my only passion but there are people that have two or three hobbies and they have some quality time doing them.

I compiled a list of hobbies that can be done by kids and grown ups together so that the family can have fun together. We can call them activities but doing them on a regular basis can be turned into a Hobby.

• Butterfly Collection: I’ve tried this one with my kids but we always give the butterflies back to freedom
• Collage Making: My daughter loves this one and when she thinks about a theme she cuts all the magazines she finds that have pictures matching the theme.
• Cooking: Both my kids love cooking with me but we only do it together once in a while because it can turn up very messy and delay the meal.
• Drawing: My daughter is an expert in drawing, she does it on a daily basis. She’s an artist. My son…well…it’s just like his mother…better not draw anything.
• Gardening: We all love gardening, I like to plant new plants and flowers, water them. My daughter loves to pick up the flowers to give to someone, so my garden is always a very “naked” garden.
• Scrapbooking: This is something I have done only once and that I would like to do it more.
• Writing: My daughter loves to make up stories and I just write them down. I’m going to turn this one into a hobby and maybe one day I can publish a book with her stories.
• Sleeping: What a hobby!! I know this is the favorite hobby of a lot of people but I have a special opinion. With so many interesting things to do in life why spend so much time sleeping?

Feel free to leave me more suggestions. They are welcome.

People talk about quiet time for kids. Some families have quiet time in the morning, in the afternoon or both. I have during the night. When my kids are sleeping is their quiet time. It’s difficult to have a quiet time during the day!!

I recovered a little from my sad state of mind that I mentioned on previous posts. I’m trying to organize stuff around the house to reduce stress, but there is always so much to do that I always feel I’m not good enough.

Content…content is something I need to write, the problem is that when I’m feeling down, depressed I just feel like sleeping and I don’t feel like blogging. Working full time doesn’t allow me to do a lot of stuff I like, like using twitter but I’m trying to make a selection of the best and of the most interesting bloggers and following them on Twitter. It’s great when we have replies from huge bloggers!! Twitter can also be time consuming but I learn so much from it…

I’m downloading free reports and reading posts about affiliate marketing but I find it difficult to accomplish when I have so little time to improve my skills.

I also I’ve been very hesitating about what I’m going to change on my blogs, template changing is a settled point, I’m just looking around for the right template (if I ever find it), and I probably will merge two of my blogs in only one.

This blog definitely is going to be my main blog. It will be healthier, greener and more helpful when it comes to the “Have a Better Life” overall idea.

I’m going to put on this blog more of my personal experience of life and use my lifestyle to present the posts I’ll be writing. So the theme of “Have a better life” will be more personal and will involve my family, home and lifestyle issues to help you and me to have a better life.

Why not subscribe now to my feed and stay in touch with the new posts I’ll write.