Beilman Boys Learn to Ski

Aunt Christy was in town for a visit last weekend and she helped Sean take the boys skiing!  It was Davis's first time on skis and Carter's first ski school experience, so it was a busy day.  I was working, but Sister kept me updated via photo texts, so I felt like I was sort of there. From all reports, it was a great day!  Davis was so happy that he finally got to ski like "Tarter" and Carter was proud of being in ski school all by himself.        

Guess I will have to get some new boots and dust of my skis if I'm going to keep up with these guys!!

Sean & Davis

 Ski School!

 Go Carter, GO!

Sister & Davis

My Valentine

This year, we kept our annual tradition of going out to dinner on February 13th, to avoid the crowds and high menu prices reserved for Valentine's Day craziness.  My evening started off with Sean surprising me with flowers!  Now, if you know Sean you know that he is not Mr. Romantic.  He usually "thinks" compliments for me but fails to complete the loop of actually saying it out loud for me to hear.  BUT, this year he turned on the charm and had flowers and TWO cards for me.  Then we went to dinner at one of our favorite local spots where the food was yummy, as usual.  Nothing fancy or super extravagant, but we were beyond thrilled to spend the night out, sans kids.  Thanks for the flowers and date, honey!  I love you!!!!!

 Am I a lucky girl, or what!?

 Sean's highlight was seeing this Tesla Model S parked in the lot outside the restaurant.  He said it was "fully loaded" and cost about $110K.  Not too shabby...

This was the V-Day card from my boys.  I think it is supposed to be a picture of me, but Carter got distracted half-way through, so to me it looks like a woman pushing a baby out in labor.  Maybe it's only funny to an L&D nurse... 

Solar Power

Our solar panels have been installed and we are all set to generate 95% of our energy consumption from the sun.  Totally amazing, right?!  We are still on the grid, but it is nice to know that our house lined up just right to be the perfect host roof for lots of panels and good sun exposure. Namaste has been an awesome company to work.  We have already gotten a lot of neighbors, friends & co-workers interested in adding solar to their homes, too.  Pretty exciting to see this trend really catch on and go mainstream.  The lease options are making solar so much more do-able for us regular folks.  

Three days of seeing this van parked out front & we were all set!

The hook-up. (Still needs to have the meter transferred by Xcel energy.)

The finished solar array.  

Big Scare/Our TV Debut

**Update: I called the Hexbug headquarters in Texas today (2/12) to speak with someone in their legal department about my safety concerns with the button batteries in their products.  To my surprise, they had already seen the story on 9News! The head counselor said "Are you the mom that was on TV last week?"  Wow, news travels fast!  He was very polite & shared my concerns about the batteries but was unsure how to go about putting that into a packaging warning.  I told him that I felt it was important enough to warrant a blurb somewhere on their product. (He pointed out that anything on their packaging has to be translated into 6 languages, so it couldn't be too "wordy".)  Anyway, apparently there is a big toy fair in NY today, so all the head honchos are out-of-town. But, he assured me that it would be put onto their radar when they returned from the show.  I hope so!!!!  I'm not looking for lip service.  I will be following up with this and keep you posted!
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We had a scary incident on Monday afternoon that has turned into a public service announcement for other parents who were clueless about the dangers of button batteries, like we were.

Carter was trying to change the battery on one of his Hexbugs (unbeknownst to me) while I was in the bathroom (and no, I did not share that part on TV).  He later told me "I just wanted to see if it would fit in my nose." He freaked out when he put it up his nose & soon realized he was not able to get it out. Thankfully, he is a worrier and came to tell me immediately.  He said it hurt & he couldn't breathe, but I could tell that he was breathing just fine through his mouth.  I tried to clear it by blocking his opposite nostril and having him blow out through the nostril with the battery.  That didn't work and I resisted my urge to go get the tweezers to pull it out because it was lodged so high up I was worried I would just push it in farther, making the situation worse.  So, I called our pediatrician and they told me to take Carter to the ER immediately as they did not have the proper instrument to do it in the office.  My next call was to Sean to get home ASAP so he could stay with Davis. (I really did not want to deal with both boys in the ER, especially with all the respiratory and GI bugs that have been going around!)

On our way to the ER, Carter sneezed a couple of times & I thought "Great, this will clear it out!" No such luck.  So, on we drove.  Once at the ER, we were seen fairly quickly and within 15 minutes we had the Nurse Practitioner telling us that if she was unable to remove the battery with a balloon catheter, we would need to go immediately to the main Children's campus to see an ENT doctor.  That was scary.  I had told Carter what she would be doing & we had a chance to look at the catheter ahead of time (my Child Life Specialist skills came in handy), so he did well staying still as she fed the tiny tube up his nostril, just past the battery, then inflated the balloon and pulled out the tiny battery with the balloon.  Success! It was only after the fact that she told me they had a 3-year-old patient who died less than 24 hours after ingesting a button battery.  I actually think the aftermath of the whole event has been scarier than the actual event!   I was still in shock driving home thinking about all the potential disastrous alternate outcomes.  We are SO fortunate that this did not end differently & wanted to share that with other parents out there in an effort to  prevent this (or worse) from happening again.

On Tuesday night, I submitted a news tip to our local NBC affiliate, and on Wednesday morning I started getting calls from them to do a story about what happened to Carter.  In all honesty, I did not want to be on TV.  It's just not my thing and I get really nervous about being on camera.  I was just hoping they would see the value in our learning experience and do their own story on the danger of these batteries.  However, Dave Delozier is seasoned photojournalist for the TV station and he convinced me that going on camera was the right thing to do.  He is a new grandfather and was genuinely interested in getting our story out there to other parents & grandparents of young children.  I think he did a wonderful job and am so grateful to him for his interest in our story and making it happen. Here is the story on 9News.

Here you can see the battery after it was removed from Carter's nose.  If you look very closely, you can see that the rim of the battery is already black (this was after I cleaned all the gross stuff off of it) from corrosion and burning tissue.  And yes, I cleaned off the balloon catheter/syringe contraption and brought that sucker home!  After all, we paid for it and they can't use it again.  Let's hope we never have to use it!!  Incidentally, Carter continues to do well and we are putting Bacitracin ointment inside his nostril every night before bed.  It seems to be healing well and he only has a tiny bit of bloody discharge from that nostril now. Thank God our story has a happy ending!

Coming Soon: Master Bedroom Makeover!

We I am finally getting around to decorating in the master bed/bath room.  This space has been bothering us me since we moved in, mostly because 1) it is a so freaking white and 2) there is no bathroom door, which means the two rooms have to tie in together somehow.  I found the inspiration pillow (grey chevron with coral flower) from Home Goods several months ago, and have been slowly finding things to go in the room since then.  Well, it is finally time to paint!  Enter Sean's role: painter extraordinaire.  He can hopefully start tackling that project this weekend.  I am so excited to see the finished results and will post pics when it all comes together! 

Outnumbered

Megan & I had planned to take the kids to the zoo last week but found out at the last minute that it was a "Free Day" (free days = crazy busy crowds).  Since we both have zoo memberships, we decided to go to Plan B which was: take our picnic lunches to the mall and let the kids run around the mall play area for free.  Megan had to run a quick shopping errand, so I took the four big kids to the outdoor playground.  They all were such good listeners and played very nicely together.  (Well, Davis smashed someone's sandcastle, but other than that we were incident-free.)

 Action shot of all four!

 Building castles (before the smashing started).

He looks so sweet & innocent, doesn't he?

Big Day for the Beilmans

Let me just start off by saying, this may not be interesting to anyone but our family (mostly the grandparents) so I apologize for the length of this post.  Feel free to skip it.  I won't be offended.

We had two highlights today.  #1) We closed on our refinancing for the house, saving us several hundred dollars/month.  I know, I was a little speechless when I found out too.  (Sean did all the work to make this happen.) We were thrilled that the appraisal came back at almost 50K above what we paid for this house 19 months ago.  We knew we had gotten a good deal, but we weren't sure how it would hold up against all the new construction to the West of us.  Our old house didn't appreciate at all over the five years we owned it (As in: we fenced the yard, finished the basement & landscaped the back yard and sold it for exactly what we had paid for it.), so this was a welcome surprise for both of us.  

#2) Sean & I were finally able to meet with Carter's Preschool teachers & director, as well as the Instructional Coach for the elementary school to discuss Carter's test results. (To back up a bit, the Instructional Coach (IC) met with Carter over a period of days before Winter Break to get to know him and observe him in the classroom.  She then gave him a standardized reading and comprehension test to see what his reading level was.)  The meeting was good and we were able to get some insight into Carter's strengths and how we should move forward with him for Kindergarten.

The tests showed that Carter's reading level is that of a child at the END of their 1st Grade school year.  He is able to comprehend 100% of the reading of fiction material at that level, but scored lower when the reading material was non-fiction.  He was able to read it, just not able to comprehend the material as well.  Because of that, they really want us to focus on non-fiction and foreign language reading material.  Carter has already taken an interest in Spanish, so we are excited to expand on that.  We have recently started reading the "Magic Tree House" series with Carter as a means to transition him to higher-level reading as they are simple chapter books with exciting story lines.  We weren't sure if he would like them because there are very few pictures.  However, he has once again surprised us by making connections and visualizing the characters and story in his mind, even with the lack of pictures.  His teachers said this was a very important concept for him to grasp. 

Moving forward, we are having Carter tested for "Early Access" through the school district.  What this means is that they will give Carter a standardized testing of sorts, to see if he scores above the 98th percentile for kids his age.  Basically, you need to be two grade levels ahead in order to qualify for this program.  IF he qualifies, that would enable us to skip Kindergarten and move straight to 1st grade.  This is not something we are interested in.  So, the second option would be for the school district to make an "Advanced Learning Plan" (ALP) for Carter, pulling him out of his regular Kindergarten class and putting him with 2nd graders for reading, or whatever they deem to be appropriate to keep him challenged.  The school explained it much better and emphasized that they treat every student as an individual, so Carter would not be singled out as being "different" from his peers.  This made all the difference for me.  Plus, if we get through Kindergarten and feel like things are not working out, Carter could then be transferred to a different school in the district that specializes in meeting the needs of kids who perform above grade level.  Basically, a gifted school.  Seems strange to use that word, but that's what they are telling us.  

Let me just say, we are SO proud of Carter and the person he is.  We have been handed a big responsibility to make sure our son is getting the education he needs while also keeping his social and emotional needs in mind.  I'm not complaining, just hoping we are up to the challenge and are able to do it well.  He deserves it. We are excited by his love of learning and hope it continues for many years to come. We love you, buddy! 

To celebrate our big day, we went to Olive Garden for dinner! (Where else?)  

Daddy read stories to the boys after we got home & then everyone crashed.  It was quite a day!

In-House Entertainment

I'm not sure if this video is actually funny to anyone besides me, but the boys were cracking me up the other day putting on a "show" with the robot puppets they made.  Davis has been making up voices for inanimate objects almost since he started talking.  It is one of my many favorite things about him and always makes me laugh.  Carter played his natural-born role of being "the boss of Davis" and Davis played his usual role of going with the flow.  A perfect pair, these two.  

Having Fun Staying Warm

January has proven to be VERY cold so far...too cold to play outside most days, so we have been trying to stay busy inside.  One of our favorite indoor activities is craft time!  We made a trip to our local Hobby Lobby and loaded up on some fun new projects.  First up: painting plaster vehicles-what could be better?!

 Davis put so much paint on his that I thought it would never dry. But, we learned a valuable lesson...if you put all the colors together, you get black.  Carter was very bothered by the fact that Davis kept mixing the colors.  To each his own...

 We also bought a bunch of these biodegradable foam pieces that you can stick together.  The boys had fun constructing letters, butterflies and even flowers for Mom!  They honestly can be very sweet sometimes.  I love those moments.  It makes me feel like I'm not totally failing them in the charm department.  

This week, we had our favorite girls over for lunch & the boys had fun entertaining baby Alina.  She is a sweet girl & I could just snuggle her all day.  

 Crafting with the girls!

Megan getting big smiles from Alina.  So precious!

 After a big day of crafting, it was time to chillax on the couch for some Leap Pad game time.  Carter has enjoyed helping Davis figure out the games and Davis loves getting to play on his very own Leap Pad!

Child's Play

Today was the last day of our school break, so we decided to make the most of it & spent the morning at the Children's Museum.  The boys loved exploring the new Kinetics area.  Next time, we'll have to take Sean--this is right up his alley!

 Turning the knobs and wheels to get the plastic balls into the cage overhead.  They then dumped into a large plastic tub that poured balls over the kids every few minutes.  That never gets old!

 The bubbles are always a hit!  I loved that the kids all wore safety goggles, so as not to get soap in their eyes.  The boys looked like mini-engineers.  Adorable.

 Surrounded by four bubble walls.  Cool!

 Just doing a little shopping & pizza-making.  Who's hungry?

 We ended our day fighting fires and saving the day.  (PS: Doesn't that dog look real?!)

 Fire fighters in action!

Looks like a future hero to me!

Happy New Year!

Happy 2013 to all of our family and friends!!!  May this year bring us continued good health, happiness and fun times with all of you!  Hope you enjoy the goofy hat photos from NYE. *Davis was napping and missed out!