4 Miles

Remember me mentioning that cold that the boys had? I came down with it Saturday night.  Sleeping Sunday & Monday helped me get better quickly (thankfully it was a cold that came & went fast for all of us). Odd how each of us had such different symptoms. I feel we have spent most of February with at least one of us sick or injured. Oh I'm so glad this month ends today. For being a short month it seemed to go on a LONG time.

Alex went to the Orthapedic Specialist/Surgon yesterday.  He was given a "Looks Good but we want to see him in 3 months to make sure his growth plate wasn't affected" (instead of a clean bill of health–just a large bill in this case).  That Dr. felt he'll be able to go off the IV antibiotics on Thursday. We'll see if the Infectious Disease Specialist will agree with him.  We are praying he will agree, James and I are tired of doing the IV treatments every 8 hours. 

I also mentioned seeing robins a few weeks ago. I still see them but think they are wondering "Why did we fly back here?"  Every time we get a hint of a warm up it gets cold again. We have a warm front comging through tomorrow (temps in the 50s! and thunderstorms!) only to be followed by another cold front and fridgid temps again.  Just another thing I'm tired of around this time of the year. 

Will got some peanut butter/chocolate hearts from his preschool teacher. He got to have them after lunch on last Tuesday. I told him "Oh, this looks like you get peanut butter and chocolate together." He took a bite and then said, "Mommy, this is AMAZING!". I realized he's probably never had the two together. The way he said AM-A-ZING cracked me up, as if he was in awe how well his two favorite foods worked together.

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The last few weeks Alex has been amazing me with how much he is eating. I'm thinking he won't be fitting into those 18 month clothes much longer. We got together with friends and Alex ate more then their 6 year old, 4 year old, or Will. As you can see in the picture, he really enjoys the food he eats as well! Everytime he's done eating, I'll ask him if he's all done or wants more (signing the words as I say them).  He usually signes for "More" at least one or two times. I didn't realize how often I was saying "MORE?!?" (in disbelief) until Will started to say the same thing with me. I'm not looking forward to feeding two teenagers!

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Tonight James and I had a late Valentines Day Celebration. Between Alex being sick and a blizzard that canceled our date night, it was a bit too hard to get out without the kids.  We got to go out to a FANCY place.  It was VERY good.  VERY, VERY good. Don't think we'll be going back anytime soon, it was also VERY pricy.  The road it is on is under some major construction, so we took advantage of their "Construction Special" to get a 4 course meal for much less then normal.  It was an enjoyable time and well worth the wait.

 Not quite sure how they figured this out…I think based on number of "hits", different visitors, etc.  Glad I don't get my worth based on money (the blog I saw this on was worth $18,000!)

All the boys in the house have various stages of a cold. Alex is doing better, but Will and James both feel "yucky".  Will told me he was sick and couldn't go to preschool–that is sick!

Speaking of preschool, on Tuesday they had their Valentines Day party. It was supposed to be last Thursday but snow caused the school to be closed. I had wondered if they were doing to do it…maybe Thursday of this week?  So Will went and when I picked him up the teacher told me how since he didn't have Valentines in his bag he helped her pass out other things and he had a great time. He didn't even think about the Valentines we had for his classmates until he saw them at home and said "Mommy, we forgot these!"

How did all the other parents know they were going to do it Tuesday? I guess now that I think about it a bit more, it makes sense, but really–I was the ONLY one who didn't think of that? I felt like there is some parenting code that I'm missing out on sometimes.  And then to see how some people went all out with candy gift bags! I was glad a few others had the same paper Valentines you fold in half (and you could tell how many boys were in the class–half of them were Car related)!  The other thing that surpised me was how many of the kids could write their name already (one even wrote Will's name on the card!!!). This hasn't been something we've really focused on. Will can recoginze his name and we have played around TRYING to write it, but it's not something we force or make an issue of. (Usually, we work on the 'down-up-down-up' of the W. Instead he does 'up-down-up-down' and ends up being "Mill".) 

So I'm curious, for you parents out there (or Heidi, in your work with kids)–do you remember about what age your kids started writing their name?  I'm not worried or stressing out about this, just feel like it's another thing in this parenting gig I'm trying to figure out. I don't want to be a pushy mom, but if it is something we should be working on, we can do that!

This morning it was 40 degrees as we left the house for preschool. (Warm enough I didn't need a jacket!)

It was balmy and we could hear the birds singing.

If it weren't for the foot of snow in our yard still, I'd think spring was on its way!

Alex just walked! (That means his foot is getting better, in case you weren't sure.)

According to the National Weather Service, the total amout of snow in our city that fell between Monday-Wednesday was 16.3 inches.

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The groundhog did not see his shadow, so we're supposed to have an early spring, right? Or maybe that was only for PA, since it was their groundhog. That must be the case because this month has been VERY cold and VERY snowy…probably to make up for such a mild December and January!

But, I saw my first "robin of spring" one day going into the hospital. Ironically, that was before the winter blizzard. We are now getting more snow to "pretty up" the snow that was getting dirty on the ground. It's the big, fluffy pretty flakes. James took Will sleding for the first time…it'll be interesting to hear what Will thought of that. 

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Alex can tell the difference between an airplane and a car.  He'll make the same sound for both right now, but the airplane he keeps in the air as he goes "Uuuuuunnnnnnnnnnn" and the car he'll drive on the ground (or any other avaliable flat surface).

This is now what we do 3 times a day. We have discovered it works best (in the daytime hours) to have him in the high chair so he's contained and can't crawl away from the IV pole.

The box in the back is the box all our supplies came in–for just this week. (And the antibiotics get to stay in the fridge.)  We have our own IV pole now–if anyone ever needs one, now you know who you can borrow it from. ;-) 

We usually start by getting out all the supplies (here's a picture of all we get to use). We start with our first "flush", then the antibiotics (in the bag, dripping via the IV)–that usually takes 10-15 minutes to go in. Then we "flush" again (using a tube of Sodium Cloride/water solution) and then instert a tube of Heparin to keep things from clotting up in the tube.  All these easily "click" into the IV tube they put in him at the hospital…no needles, nothing hard involved. The hardest part is keeping him from tugging on the tubing or crawling away. The other hard part is administering this at 10 pm. We have to do it 3 times a day, 8 hours apart (give or take an hour).  He's woken up the last two nights. I'm a bit concerned he's going to develop a habit of waking up at 10 from this–oh wait, he already HAD that habit, and we had to break it by making him cry it out. 

The one good thing from all this, he now is sleeping in his crib, not the pack 'n play in the office/guest room. We had moved him there for the crying it out process and he got rather attached to it and wouldn't sleep in the crib. Now he has no problem sleeping in the crib.

They are calling this the Blizzard of '07 or February Blizzard.  We were surprised to see clear skies this morning, they had predicted snow throughout the morning. The parts of the driveway Mom has already shoveled are melting or dry (but we have a blacktop driveway so it just soaks up that radient heat). We ended up with totals of just over a foot.  When I unpack the cord for the camera I'll put up a picture of Will standing next to one of our bigger drifts (that is taller then him).

Heidi asked about our Dad. He flew into Chicago last night and was told it would take 2 days to get a flight to Indy. So he rented a car and started driving. He stopped at a motel last night in Merriville and left again this morning about 9.  We've heard on the radio the major interstates were snowy but drivable this morning, I think with the sun out he'll start seeing pavement where there isn't blowing and drifting. So, I figure he'll be here sometime after lunch and then he and mom will head home.  It's been great to have her here but I know she misses her house.