New with Maddox

It's hard to do an update when it's been so long.  I forgot to write about our trip to Tennessee over Christmas, so I'm going to have to do that soon too.

Maddox has been really good sofa this year.  Yes I realize it is only the 2nd of February!  We've had a couple little run ins with illness.  The first being what we thought might be Hand Foot & Mouth while we were down in Tennessee.  Maddox ended up developing a staph infection in two of the blisters around his mouth.  After being home for a little over a week, I brought him in to the doc to get checked out.  After some oral and topical antibiotics he was as good as new.  He still has a bit of a scar from one of the sores, but otherwise, all infection is gone.  Then about a week ago he came down with a cold.  I was a little nervous because it hit really fast and he had a near 104 fever.  We were at the doc for Faye, so I decided to have him checked for flu.  We were going over to my mothers and I figured it was probably better to just rule it out than possibly pass it on to her and then to one of the residents at the nursing home she works at.  He turned up negative and after three days of a high fever, he was feeling much better.  Glad it was a long weekend and he only missed one day of school.

The picture attached to this post is of Maddox the morning we had him tested for flu.  I felt really bad having to drag him around when he felt so terrible, but Faye needed to go in to the doc and it was his only day off from school.

February is 'I Love to Read' month.  Maddox is in a read-a-thin fundraiser at school.  I keep forgetting to ask his friends and family for sponsorship and donations.  I better get on that!  Maddox's goal is to read a minimum of 17 min per day.  So far he is doing great.  He has several days that he did way above 17, but we've also missed 3 days, so we're just about on track.

Of course all of this reading has his reading skills going way up.  I hope that after the fundraiser is done I can still get him to read even just half this much every day.  He is doing so awesome and it is so amazing to listen to him.  He is reading books from school, BOB Books, and some older (or just plain old...) 1940-60's books from great grandma.  It's kind of entertaining to listen to him read "the red book", he has never really heard names like Gus, Ed, and even Ann.  And he wonders why they keep talking about guns!

Also for 'I Love to Read' month, I get to go into Maddox's class and read them a book.  Hopefully.  I still need to make sure that I have a babysitter for Monday.  It's so hard to volunteer in his class.  I need to have people take off work just so I can help out every once in awhile.  I really want to go in though and I think it's very important for Maddox to see that his school and class are important to me.