Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds

We brought Lucy in to get her teeth cleaned last week.  While she was under they got rid of a large cyst on her leg that could’ve ruptured at any moment.  Is that too much to read this early in the morning?  You know – about a nasty ruptured cyst.  Sorry.  Couldn’t resist.

Anyway, they sent her home with some pain medication and she went from this:

to this:

Closer look:

Austin Wildlife

After growing up in Arizona, one of the things we are enjoying most here in Texas is the different wildlife.  

Let’s start out with the first new animal I saw and perhaps the only one I didn’t enjoy seeing. We found him on the rest stop bathroom entrance. I’ll post him small… I can’t bare to see it any bigger than that.  *shiver*  CREEPS me out.

Next we saw some deer at the soccer fields at dt’s work.  Every day we pick him up we have to drive by and see if they’re out on the field.   We’ve even seen them leap into the air when they spotted us!

Many times we’ll see the fawns over by the baseball diamond.  They’re smart and are placing the babies where they’ll be protected. Awww, such good little mommies. Here is a mom and her baby:

(Kevin, you may want to turn away for a moment…)

You may remember the gecko we found that I posted awhile back.  No AZ brown bumpy lizards here!  Mostly we see these types of geckos.  A lot of them are bright green too.  They mostly come out at night and take care of all the bugs on our back patio.

(You can look back now, Kevin.)

There is, of course, the sweet little birdie on our back patio, too.  It’s not there every night, but we still see it occationally.  Also, most mornings there are a couple of blue birds screeching their hideous song in our front yard trees.  (Not all birds sing beautifully, apparently.)  But there was a song bird we heard the other day singing away.  It was awesome!  

A couple of weekends ago, we found a snake in our yard!  We were looking at a gecko and all of a sudden Jr shouted, “SNAKE!” (I think the snake was scoping out the gecko, too.)  At first I thought he had to be mistaken… but lo and behold, there it was. 

Here he is peering up at us with his wee beady eyes!

I don’t mind the snake and will take that over the taranchula any day!  We think he may live in the bush out in the backyard… since that’s where he slithered off to hide. (duh)

Yesterday, while we drove by they field to check for deer and we were pleasantly surprised with armadillo!  We were so excited to see real, live armadillo.  Usually we see real, dead armadillo by the side of the road. So this was such an awesome sight to see our first bunch slowly grazing around. They are so cute and reminded us of little bunnies with the way they move.  I think I’ll name this one Hank.

I just love it!  All of these new little creatures to check out and enjoy! We also see lots of butterflies, dragonflies and our neighbor has a frog living in his front yard.  So cute!

Most mornings when I do my daily singing and spinning outside by the creek they all gather around and sing along.  What a great way to start the day – Texas is glorious!!!

What, that doesn’t happen to you?

Space Ants

Jr received his ants in the mail for his Space Ant Farm on Monday!  We’ve been watching them all week – it’s been really fun!

The box told us it could take 24-48 hours for the ants to start making tunnels.  Not our bad-ass ants!  It was within a couple hours!  No lazy ants in our group.

Five days later and look what they’ve made so far!  

It really has been so much fun.  It’s the first thing Jr wants to see first thing he wakes up in the morning or gets home from school… and the last thing he wants to see before he goes to bed.  I am so glad we got it and I would definitely recommend getting one to any family with boys! And I’m sure girls will love it too!

Jr Update

I think after my moment of being overwhelmed last week I was able to pull myself together (or God helped settle my nerves) and start thinking about positive steps in moving forward.  I re-looked at the items in our house to see if anything could have triggered behavior and the yogurt I had been giving him every morning and every evening with his supplements are not in the diet.  I had assumed that it was okay because it is very natural and organic, but they contain natural salicylates.  (I’ve long suspected he has a salicylate-intolerance)

Also, when his teacher called she had said he drank some lemonade in science class that they had made and she was really sorry (knowing his diet was restricted).  I assured her that lemonade is actually normally okay so not to worry about it.  I didn’t really think much about it after that. Then a few days later, when Jr wanted to show me how they made the lemonade he informed me that it was PINK lemonade.  They had put drops of Red Food Coloring in it.  I KNOW that the food coloring is why he became more destructive.  It was only an hour or two after that that he wrote on the carpet.  Once we took out Artificial Food Coloring and Flavors last year his aggressive/destructive behaviors stopped.  So he consumes Red Dye and lo and behold!  Here it is back again.  I know that is not coincidence. Normally, I wouldn’t think twice about what they put in foods, but some of it can be pretty horrible.  Just please be aware of what you are really giving your kids! 

But besides ADHD, there have been fun things going on too. Here are a few pictures of Jr last weekend.  He caught a gecko in the backyard and was very VERY excited about it.  We were planning on keeping it and went to the pet store to get supplies.  That is where we discovered that lizards need heat lamps and stuff we weren’t prepared to get and realized we know nothing about taking care of a lizard.  We had pumped it up and he was so excited and so we bribed him with an Ant kit in exchange for letting the lizard go.  Sometimes you have to do what you have to do as a parent.

Here’s video of him showing it off:

He also built an awesome Marble Run contraption that weekend:

Look at that smile!  He was so proud!