Fall Break, The Croup, and The Ark.

This week Alex had Fall Break (don't ask me why the school district does this), so I had a few things planned so that he wouldn't get too bored at home. As is often the case, most of those plans were never implemented because someone got sick. Charlie came down with croup. The doctor prescribed a steroid and albuterol but I discontinued the albuterol after a few doses because from what I could tell, it was actually speed. I was told that it might make him a little hyper, but that was an understatement. He would repeatedly grab at his wrists like they were itchy, and whenever I would pick him up he would try to bang his head against my head. Plus he couldn't calm down enough to sleep, and this was after three or four nights of little sleep already. I stopped giving it to him and he's doing fine. He's still on the prednisolone (steroid) and you should see his biceps.

Earlier in the week we were at the grocery store when Alex lost his second tooth. Alex was helping push the cart while Charlie was kind of grabbing at Alex's face. I guess he grabbed just right and all of a sudden Alex gave out a yelp and started looking around on the ground for his tooth. He found it. He says he wants to show everyone at school how he looks like a jack-0-lantern. I think it's a popular look in his class.

And on Friday Charlie was doing well enough so that we could get one fun thing in this week. We went to see the Noah's Ark exhibit at the Skirball Center (a Jewish museum). It came highly recommended by a lot of people and I've been meaning to go for a long time. I'm glad we finally did. The animals were made from everyday items from whatever part of the world that kind of animal is from. Some of my favorites were the crocodiles, which were made from violin cases and tires. I didn't get a picture of those while I was there, so I'm taking these from the Skirball website.

It was very interactive and the boys were interested and involved the whole time. Benjamin's favorite was loading the animals into the ark.

Charlie's favorite was cleaning up the fake animal poop.

Alex liked pulling the rope to make the elephant trumpet (is that the right word?):

He was also pretty good at building things with these tubes.

There were a lot of fun puppets to play with:

Possums, sloths, and a black widow:

We really enjoyed it and anyone who is near L.A. should definitely check it out if they haven't already. We even got free cookies on the way out.