Charlie's Back (-ish)

Here is Rowan when we told him that Dad was coming back home that morning and we had to go to an airport to get Daddy. Rowan misinterpreted to mean that everyone was going on an airplane. He kept chanting "The babies [Rowan and Anastasia-Naturally] are going on airplane!" He was excited at the thought of seeing airplanes again. (I think he misses the F-35's that flew around our old house near Hill.)     

This was Anastasia being reunited with her panda bear named Baby.  There's a big back story to this picture. You see Anastasia needs the following in order to even contemplate falling asleep; 

-Baby the panda bear

-Maggie. Maggie is really a Minnie Mouse stuffed doll, but Anastasia calls it Maggie. She stole Maggie from Heidi Anne. 

-Her premie baby blanket, super soft and given to Anastasia by a co-worker of Char's, Diana, if I remember right. This lovely woman basically provided Anastasia with the whole premie wardrobe.   

-Her flower quilt. Another item Anastasia has usurped from Heidi. 

During the shuffle of moving, EVERYONE of those above items was accidentally left in an upstairs bedroom at Grandma's house. We learned our mistake the first night we moved. We were at the hotel room trying to settle everybody down. I go to tuck in Anastasia and she politely asked for Baby. Yeap, I didn't realize they were missing until 400 miles away from the items that help her sleep.     

We found a small, cheap Maggie that was discounted due to the holiday purge on the 3rd night. We dug through the stuffed animal box and found a small panda puppet. They helped reduce the tears but we were still missing the blankets. I put different types of blankets on her until she settled for 2 temporary blankets. 

Fast forward to the moment Char was off the plane. I'm looking around for Char and Anastasia shouts "BABY, BABY, BABY!!"

-insert happy giggles-. She was more thrilled at the sight of Baby she ignored Char's return. Once Baby was given to her she kissed it, hugged it, tucked it in for bed. 

We've been having a little battle over, Rowan's placement in special needs pre-school. First off, we weren't able to register him until moved out here. Then it was winter break. Then his old schools' had a longer winter break than here. It's been a big mess. Basically, they are trying to determine; what class containment he'll need, if he goes regular preschool hours of 4 days a week at 3 hours a day or if he qualifies for their Level 2-Level 3 autism class of 5 hours a day at 4 days a week. No preschool on Wednesdays here since it's a half day.

Char got back Monday morning and that afternoon he began his classes for his Doctorate of Nursing Practice (DNP) in Psychiatric Mental Health. In many states, a DNP has to work under the supervision of a medical doctor.  However, in Washington State and most of the west (minus Utah and California) DNP's have the ability to work for themselves with full practice abilities. We won't see much of him due to coursework, clinicals, study groups, lectures. Yeah, he might be in the home but his workspace is far removed of the daily chaos. I send him the occasional text or a picture of what the kids are up to. Along with food offerings at lunch and snack time. Most of our upcoming adventures won't feature him due to grad school. It's not because we secretly divorced ;-). 

Rowan was begging to color with me and just me. I waited until Anastasia went down for a rare nap and broke out the crayons. Before we could color Rowan had to line up all the crayons in a nice and neat row. Once you used a crayon to color, it had to be returned to that exact same spot in the row. 

Here's Anastasia in her beloved "purple corn" (purple unicorn) dress that she got for Christmas. She shouts "pictures!" whenever she sees my camera and then demands to see ones of her. The main problem is the kid is always on the move! So her pictures come out as a blur or she smiles at the wrong time. Thus we end up with some funny Anastasia faces.