A Day Off From School....

...but not from anything else. On Tuesday, the girls did not have school due to Teacher Work Day. Jason and I worked out a schedule that he would go in to work early, we would perform the 'parent swap' and then I would go to work in the evening. Of course, I scheduled those 'dreaded appointments' that always seem to need to be done, but there is limited time to do them. I was dreading yesterday because we needed to get the girls second Hepatitis vaccination and we decided to get the girls a flu shot as well. I also needed to get Livi's mandatory vision screening done before the first of the year. We decided to get Josie a vision test done as well since she had was not able to read some small print one day that I could read.

We started off the morning by taking Cody to the groomers. He, of course, was terrified to go, but luckily he's only 5 pounds so it wasn't much of a wrestling match. Round 1: Mom--Cody went.

After that, we went to the clinic for the girls to get shots. I pre-warned Josie but there was no way I was telling Livi about our plans until the last possible minute. We went and the schedule had gotten messed up (apparently they thought we were supposed to come last Tuesday (I would not have agreed to that since the girls had school) but they were able to squeeze us in anyway. There was a LOT of whining and close to tears from two girls. I had to physically lift them both and 'hug' them in order to get the shot done. I found that I can still wrestle them both, but there will not be too many more times that this occurs since each weighs 55+ pounds now. Round 2: Mom--done, but not gracefully :)

We don't buy the girls toys often, but we made an exception for this day. Bribery is useful on days like this where we leave the house at 9am and will not be returning until after 5pm. Livi has NEVER had stamina--we usually have a 2 stop limit to our day before the meltdowns occur. It has been this way for the last 3-4 years and so now it is just part of our routine. We schedule short trips that are broken up by rest time. I took the girls to Wal-Mart and let them pick out a toy. We then met Jason for lunch at Chili's. From there, we dropped some books off at the library and I took the girls to the park to play for a little bit. Round 3: The Girls--they totally scored off of my bribery. I got to eat lunch out and they behaved so it was not a tough loss to swallow.

The eye doctor was scheduled at 1pm. When I walked in, I told them I didn't have a lot of concerns about Livi's sight, but reassured them that they would not get a completly accurate picture because of her difficulty following directions (especially wordy directions from people she's not familiar with). I expressed concern that Josie was having trouble seeing small print--at lunch, she was not able to differentiate small stars from small triangles. Essentially, we just needed the doctor to sign off on both of those. Josie will need to wear glasses for reading and school work. They also saw a cataract on her right eye. Obviously I'll have to look into this more although the eye doctor said it was probably congenital. He said there is nothing to do about it right now. Round 4--I'm claiming round 4 as a victory for mom because Livi REALLY wanted to leave there with a pair of glasses. She got whiny about it but never progressed to a fit. The girls were cooperative and we got the examination done as much as we could.

We did not get Josie's glasses picked out yesterday, as they dilated her eyes and she couldn't even really see the choices. We definitely wanted her input on something that we would expect her to wear everyday. We will try to get those picked out this week. Jason and I met at the eye doctor and I went home to change for work while he took them to ice cream :) Round 5--The girls scored some ice cream and so did Jason. We'll make it a tie.

After that, he took Livi to her speech appointment, picked up Cody and finally went home to make dinner. I worked until about 10pm and then came home. The girlies were pretty worn out, but did very well since they do not get a lot of practice with all-day activities. They are finally getting bigger and growing up a bit. It's nice to see.