ftmomma

Mama (in-law) said we'd have days like this

After Ian was born, my mother-in-law, having raised two boys in the city of Columbus, wisely gave me instructions about how to get to the Children's Hospital ER calmly, and to save an extra garage token in my purse or car to make life less stressful on those inevitable trips. Apparently Matt had one year when they had to make 7 different visits.

In the past six years with our boys, I've made that trip several times now - sometimes for appointments/ scheduled procedures, twice for emergency reasons. Nothing serious has ever come of it, thank you God!

Today thankfully didn't end up with a trip to the hospital or urgent care, but the thought crossed my mind a couple of times. Usually the culprit/victim is Ian, but today it was Caleb. Early this afternoon he looked as though he hyper-extended his back falling in a play area - he was in pain for a few minutes, but then went back to playing normally. He only complained about it once since then. Then this evening he tried to ride big brother's skateboard down the driveway on his tummy, and ended up rolling over two fingers with the wheel. I'm used to the dramatic screaming over minor injuries, but I started looking closer when the scream sounded... different. There was a piece of our driveway that had punctured through the top of one of his nails and was stuck in there. Yeah - ow. I'd have probably been close to screaming myself if it had been me. The cold pack didn't calm him, bear blanket didn't calm him, a bath didn't calm him. I wrapped him up in a towel and just started rocking him, and Ian came in about then. He was such a good helper. He kissed Caleb and brought him Ibuprofen, he brought me the phone (Caleb wanted to talk to Daddy), he brought stuffed animals, he turned on quiet music, he wanted to hold Caleb while I went to get first aid stuff and applied it. Caleb was calmer then, so we decided to try to get some smiles out of him while waiting for Daddy to come home. I happened to have the camera close by:

(by the way, the chunk o' driveway eventually came out, and the finger is sore but on the mend.)

oh all right

I'll just blog it. As if anyone ever sees this anymore... seeing as my blog fell asleep there for (quite) a while. But I have been sending some stories out this morning for a certain loved one who is feeling under the weather, so it's the easy transition back into keeping up with this blog - copy and paste. :-)

(Yesterday) I had a downright hilarious conversation with the boys over lunch. Ian asked me how many more days it would be until he could see the baby. I said, about 150. He looked shocked and said, "what? I thought we were going to get to see the baby and know if it was going to be a boy or girl sooner than that!" I realized he meant the ultrasound and told them that would be in about 20 days. He asked if we could make a countdown calendar for that and expressed again, as he often does, that he has a feeling he is going to get his way and get a baby sister. Then he said he wished we could just feel the baby through my belly and feel if there was a wee wee or not. I explained that even when the baby is really big inside me, that you won't be able to tell the body parts except maybe some of the big areas that have bone in them. He says, "but wee wees don't have bones in them do they? But they do have that hard stuff like sharks have in them right?" Okay, scientific question, scientific answer... "well no, not really. They do get hard sometimes but that is because of extra blood flow. They are unique that way aren't they?" "yeah. sometimes they get hard but they don't have bones. When I see skeletons I never see wee wee bones on them."

Mischevious smiles.

"That's true. Now put your pizza in your mouth."

:-)

>>>>>
Courtesy of grandma, we get a Ladybug magazine for the boys every month. They often include internet links for various stories, so yesterday with the snow burying us we got online and played around with several different things we hadn't taken the time to look at before. January's edition had a section about African drums in it.

We ended up here: http://www.ladybugmagkids.com/activities/games/play-drums
and then here:
http://www.pulsebeatmusic.com/index.html

If you go into the "media" section of that last link, you can see videos and listen to music. Well the boys and I were curled up on the couch listening, which is right in front of the sliding door and a good view of the yard. We were choosing which drum beats and tempos we thought went with the falling snow the best.

Turns out, we are at just the right combo of baby being able to hear certain things and react in utero, and the bones are hardening, so I can feel a lot more of those reactions. Baby likes the drum music!! The boys were tapping their own feet each with one hand on my tummy trying to feel what I was feeling - the littlest one tapping from the inside. So far Caleb is the only one who has actually felt some movement. Matt and Ian haven't yet had any luck.

Another baby on the way

Click here to view this photo book larger

Having fun in spite of sickness

Our jack-o-lanterns:

All lit up:

While boys watch in the darkness and hear scary stories from daddy:

The following night, Iron Man made an appearance,

and Mario. The mustache lasted for about 10 milliseconds. :-)

trouble

Lots of ingenuity + serious lack of judgement = trouble!

In our house on Saturday mornings we usually let our boys play together while we sleep in a bit. I am a light sleeper so I usually am aware of where they are in the house and what toys they are playing with, but I'm still dozing. We typically have no problems with this - they create crazy contraptions out of couch cushions or elaborate train tracks or sweet pictures with paper and crayon.

I wasn't sure what they were doing this morning, but I heard both of them laughing gleefully and having a great time, so I figured it was hot wheels cars on the trick tracks or something. WRONG.

Ian has figured out how to get up and get the things I put on the tip top of the bookshelf in the playroom. This is almost to the ceiling. He got down the aquadoodle sheet. It's a sheet that they can color on with water, and dries and is reusable. Pretty harmless. Except when they forego using the pens, and want to get the whole thing to turn dark blue. So they spread it out on the kitchen floor and proceed to dump "about 15 cups" of water on it. Or so I'm told. Then they run and slide through in order to spread it around.

We wised up when Caleb slipped and fell of course, bashing his forehead and proceeding to scream. It took Ian two beach towels and some parental assistance to get it all cleaned up. I asked him if at any point in the process he thought maybe what he was doing wasn't such a good idea. He said, "I didn't know water could damage the floor mommy." Well, now he knows. (Thankfully, it didn't do damage, because it was cleaned up in time)

In days to come, the boys will be staying in their beds looking at books until we are ready to go downstairs together! And, Ian gets to learn how to do the load of laundry with those beach towels in it later today.