Playing Catch Up

The days are busy and the weeks are flying by!  And as a result, my poor blog has been neglected.  Not by choice, per se, but more so by necessity.  Sleep trumps blog always.  Plus, I've added in this fun thing called the gym (grumble), which steals away more hours of my week with, so far, little pay off (another grumble).  It's also FINALLY been nicer out so we're spending a lot more time outdoors, which means the days of blogging during naptimes are over because naptime is now used to do laundry, clean dishes, dust, vacuum, etc.  Tis life, I suppose.  I find myself leaving little post its around or notes on my phone of certain things I want to remember so I can write about them if/when I actually get some time!

SO, to kind of catch up here.. let's start with Aidan's surgery.  He can finally hear like a normal person!! At least, we think!  Surgery went really well for the most part, despite him vomiting 7 times between the car ride there and home.  This motion sickness is a BEAR.  Ugh.  Once we got there and got him ready for the procedure they came in to give him giggle juice, which is, as you probably guessed from the name, supposed to make him giggly.  It did not.  He continued to glare down every nurse or doctor that came within a few feet of him.  One nurse even said "well, I guess it can't make everyone giggle".. lol.  He is such a serious boy when he wants to be.  Taking him back was tough, he definitely pitched a fit initially, but once they got behind the closed doors we couldn't hear him anymore.. so I just tell myself he settled easily.  Literally, from the time they took him out of my arms until the doctor met us in the waiting room to tell us how it went 8 minutes had passed.  So fast!

 Recovery actually went better than I had expected, and better than the anesthesiologist had prepared us for it to go in the sense that he wasn't hysterically screaming or inconsolable.  He was out cold when they brought him out of surgery, and stayed asleep for a good little bit.. the nurse kept saying just let him sleep it'll help the medicine pass from his system.. and then after a while she was nudging him and poking him trying to wake him.. my boy enjoys his sleep!  When he woke, he was grumpy, and clingy, and cried a few times here and there, but overall he did really, really excellent.  The procedure is normally done with a mild anesthetic (because it's so quick), but given Aidan's history with motion sickness, they did it via IV so they could give him some anti-nausea medicine, too.. I'd like to say that it worked great, but it did not.  Despite Daddy sitting in the back with him, he still managed to yack all over himself and my car.  So much for the wishful thinking fixing the ears may help the motion sickness!


 Did I mention it snowed?  Yep, as you can see here in the background it did indeed snow on March 20th.. hello spring.

Once we got home and fed him he was pretty good.  Crazy on his feet, stumbling all over the place and walking into walls and such, but after a good nap he was pretty much back to normal.  He had some gunky junk come out of his ears the next morning, but other than that he seemed perfectly fine and not bothered by the procedure at all.  Good to know in case any other or future kids may need this!  The ENT told us that it's totally normal for children with tubes in their ears to have discharge come out of their ears instead of their nose when they get sick.  What a weird thing to expect.  I keep waiting to see Aidan sneeze and see gunk shoot from his ears.  I really hope that doesn't actually happen...!

Aunt Mimi purchased the kids a swing set for Christmas this year.  I thought we were going to have a nice end of March day on weekend so I invited my parents down and put my Dad and Jason to work setting up the swing set.  Except, it turned out to be cloudy and cold.. like, really cold.. hands numb kind of cold.. ground so frozen you can't stake the swing set down kind of cold.  Oops.  In my defense, the initial weather prediction said it was supposed to be warmer and sunny.. I can't help the fact that they're always wrong!!

One of the perks of living where we do is having the woods behind our house.  The kids LOVE to explore.  Owen has a new obsession with some of Daddy's TV shows.. in particular, Mountain Monsters and Swamp people.  So, he thinks it's the coolest thing to go out in the woods and look for Bigfoot.  "Gotta get him, Dad.. DAD!  Do you see him, Dad?!  Mom!  Look!  It's BIGFOOT!".  He cracks me up SO much.  When you ask him about swamp people he talks about how the alligators are in the water and then BANG, they go nite nites.  

This little lady.  She has the most amazing smile in the world.  With this adorable little dimple in her cheek.  Even on the crummiest days, she can make me smile and feel a million times better just with that smile of hers.  She's doing so well sitting up.  Still not crawling or mobile at all yet, but I'm sure that will come in the next few months.  She's a watcher.  She likes to just sit there and take everything in.  Watch what the boys are doing.. what we are doing.. what the dog is doing.  She just enjoys seeing the world.  I guess she didn't really have a choice in that matter.  Being baby #3, she was and still is left to entertain herself every once in a while when I'm off helping out one of the other two.  She kind of had to adjust, and that she has.  Don't get me wrong, she still very much has a voice and will let you know if she needs something, but for the most part, she's quite pleasant.  Those 2 bottom teeth that have been sitting at the surface for months now finally broke through, too.  I thought she was my earliest teether, and here we are over 6 months and just now seeing them surface!

We've started putting her in the walker lately.  While I'm cooking dinner, I task Owen with the job of pulling around Miss Amelia.  He loves it almost as much as she does!  She laughs and giggles at him, and he gets such a kick out of that.  Best little buddies.  I will say, if there is one thing all 3 of my children have mastered (aside from their ability to eat enormous amounts of food) it's their ability to give the dirtiest looks in the world!  I believe this one in particular is because the sun is partially in her face, but she shoots them at me every once in a while for no good reason at all..  I've been told I tend to give not so nice glares at people, too, so I guess they inherit that trait from me.



Finally with the weather breaking we're able to start spending more and more time outside.  My boys have so much pent up energy from the winter months, it's amazing how much better our days go when they're able to get outside and burn that off for an hour or two.  One of the down sides of the boys being so close together is their ability to team up on me..!  They encourage each other to do bad things, and pretend Mom doesn't exist!  But, the benefit is this incredible bond they have between them.  I remember when I told my former manager at work that I was expecting again (with Aidan).. and I said to her that I was so excited for them to be best friends.. to which she responded that her and her sister were very close in age as well, and they were never close.. they actually don't even talk now as adults.  That was the first time I had this panicked feeling of omg.. what if they don't get along.. what if they don't like each other.. I can happily say, though, so far that has not been the case.  And, seeing the joy they each bring one another is absolutely incredible!  And then you throw Amelia into the mix and see how much she adores them and how much they adore her.. seriously.  My heart can barely handle all the love they have for one another!  Both the boys just randomly come over and hug and kiss her.. Owen will tell me, "Mom, I love Miss Amelia".  It just.. incredible.  I pray that closeness sticks with them forever!

       

It's amazing how quickly these kids are able to master a skill.  When we first got the swing set, Owen had zero concept of how to swing like a "big boy".. Aidan couldn't figure out how to get up the steps of the slide.. and neither one of them had any idea what the point of the teeter-totter was.  One weekend my in laws were over and I was at the gym.. I came home and Owen was swinging like a big boy with no problems at all!  I was in shock - he barely would even sit on it with me, and here he was holding on tight, asking to be pushed higher and higher!  Since then, there's been no turning back.  He tells me he wants me to push him so high he can touch the moon.  Aidan swings in the "baby" swing.  It surprises me SO much that he doesn't get sick being pushed, but so far he hasn't.  We've slowly worked on mastering how the teeter totter works.  It's difficult for me to do it with them alone because neither quite understand the concept of not letting go and not being able to just jump off at any given moment.  The last time I tried, Aidan dove off, which caused the teeter totter to drop down and caught Owen on the back of the leg which then instilled some fear and he's refused to try it again.  I'm sure it won't be long before they're willing to try it again and they'll master this, too.

 Can we take a guess as to what's going on here in this picture?  Aidan has become a frequent flyer of timeout.  I honestly don't even remember what he was doing that caused him to have to visit the time out chair, but it was probably total disregard for me telling him no to something, or a complete melt down over something, or likely a combination of the two.  Regardless to where we are playing, I must always have a time out location because almost always Aidan must visit it at least once.  I remind myself all the time that strong personalities are good as an adult... it's just as a toddler I tend to call him stubborn, defiant and mischievous!  I will admit, though.. sometimes Aidan gets in trouble when really it wasn't all his doing.. I've caught Owen a few times setting him up.. "Aidan.. Aidan, climb on that chair and get the remote".. or "Aidan.. it's okay, get the iPad.. get the iPad Aidan".. He's also entering the "what" phase.  I'm sure I wrote about this before with Owen.. every time you address him the response you get in return is "whaaaaaat".  It's funny, I hear it so much that I barely even noticed it anymore coming out of Owen, but it drives Aunt Mimi crazy, so whenever she's here and points it out to me I realize how he would say it ALL the time.  And, now Aidan, too.  

It's amazing to think how much my life has changed in 3 years.  It's amazing to think how much a tiny little person (or 3) can change your life.  Whether we're trapped in the house or running around like crazy people outside.. whether everyone has cooperated and taken their naps or we've dealt with tantrum after tantrum.. life is still incredible.  Some days I absolutely feel like my head may burst from so much stress.. but I can promise you one thing.. there isn't a single day that goes by where my heart isn't overwhelmed with the amount of love I have for them.