Me and My Boys

I'm going to have 20 two-turning-three-year-old kids in my nursery class at church! That's more than a kindergarten class! Can I just scream and pull my hair out now in joyful anticipation?!? If you're in my ward and you're reading this, feel free to drop in at any time to lend a hand because I'm sure I'll be needing it!

I've already got some great ideas brewing for how I'm going to make it work (rotations/stations), but my ideas won't work unless we have at least 3 leaders in the nursery including myself (ideally 4 would be awesome!). This would require people to say yes to this calling. Why does everyone think nursery is so bad/hard? I've been in for almost a year now, and have really enjoyed it, except for the occasional really, really, really bad days. If there is good structure in the class, things run smoothly and it is not a difficult calling. Hopefully I'll have some help in my class come January!!!

We took a field trip to a botanical garden for preschool last week. Caleb and Dallin enjoyed all the beautiful flowers and butterflies that we saw. We talked about colors, smells, and staying on the path. They had a lot of fun.

The other week Matt called in on a radio show and won some football tickets. It was his first time to win anything off the radio! Last Thursday, he was driving into work at 6:30 in the morning and came across some other opportunities to win on the radio. The first was a country station that was giving away a Carrie Underwood CD as well as having your name entered into a drawing to win a trip to see Carrie Underwood live--all expenses paid for. He thought, why not give it a try? So he calls and wins this CD. (I've really enjoyed listening to it!)

He flips over to another station, classic country, and they are giving away 4 tickets to a nutcracker festival to the 10th caller. Thinking he has the calling strategy figured out, he calls again, and is caller number 10.

Starting in October, we started a new curriculum for the boys. (My sister and I teach preschool together for our boys who are 6 months apart.) We are using the book, The Toddler Calendar, and we are liking it a lot better than the curriculum we were using off the internet. Some of the activities are a little advanced still for our boys, but it gives us great ideas for projects/skills we can work on. We meet twice a week for an hour and 30 minutes that includes stories, songs, as well as a craft or activity from the following areas: math, science, social studies, taste, listening, and smell. (The stories cover our language area.) It's been difficult to persevere some days when one or both are in grumpy moods and don't want to do the activities we have planned, but we've seen great improvement in them both.

This Halloween was a lot more fun for Caleb because he understood things a little better than last year. We had practiced saying words like "ghost", "pumpkin", and most importantly "trick or treat", so he was all prepped. The costume I bought for him, Caleb refused to wear, so we settled for clothes we already had as a baseball player (it was the cheaper route anyway). Unfortunately our ward didn't do a Trunk or Treat, which I was really bummed about, but Caleb went out that night with his cousins (I went with Caleb and Matt stayed home passing out candy). Caleb can be very timid and shy in new situations, so having his older cousin, Drew, there helped a lot. It doesn't take long to catch on that this is the coolest holiday of the year...going to stranger's doors, saying 3 little words, and getting free candy! He said "trick or treat" and "thank you" at pretty much every door, and his "trick or treat" is adorable if I do say so myself :o). We didn't record it on video camera, but I'll do a post soon of new words Caleb can say so I have a record of how he used to say them.

Somehow Caleb ended up with another bug bite on his upper left thigh. He had one there about 2 inches from this new spot about 3 months ago. This was the bite that I assumed was an ant bite that we treated ourselves instead of taking him into a doctor. That's why when he got his last ant bites we were sure to take him in and have a doctor's diagnosis rather than treating it (and by that I mean popping it) ourselves. This time around, I was so confused how he could have ended up with a bug bite all the way up his thigh when he had been wearing long pants for 4 days previous to when the bite showed up (and we get our house sprayed on a regular basis for bugs). It didn't make sense, but being a pro with how to work with his ant bites now, I started the Benadryl to help with the swelling and started the ointment with band-aid. After three days of the bite not getting better, but a red ring growing progressively larger, I finally called a nurse to see if I could get a refill of the oral medicine we gave with his ant bites. I described the "bite" to the nurse, and instead of helping me get a refill for the prescription, she said I better come in and see the doctor. My immediate thoughts were, "Typical answer. They always say that...they're just trying to make money off of me." Well make money off of me they did, but I'm glad the nurse told me to come in.

As I failed to take a picture of Caleb's leg, here's the closest picture I could find on the internet of what it looked like (I actually only looked at a few pages of google images before I thought I would throw-up):

It worked out that my mom came with me to the doctor's appointment because she was going to watch Caleb that afternoon so that I could go get some blood work done for my pregnancy (check for down syndrome, diabetes, and whatever else they check). I'm so glad she was there! While the doctor was washing his hands preparing to look at Caleb's leg (and by the way, Caleb is screaming his head off--nothing good ever happens at the doctor's office and he freaks out every time starting with the moment we walk in to get his weight checked), I start rambling to the doctor about this bite on his leg, except I don't know how he could have gotten a bite due to the long pants, and hopefully the doctor could help diagnosis the bite. He took one look at it and said it wasn't a bite at all, but a staph infection.

Whoa! My immediate thoughts were, "What have I done wrong as a mother? I bathe my child every night and sometimes twice a day because he loves to jump in the shower whenever Matt or I do." So I asked the doctor how he got the infection and how to prevent them in the future. I wasn't prepared for his answer that there was nothing I could do, although I felt slightly relieved that I wasn't doing anything wrong! Everyone has staph all over their skin, and some people are just prone to infection more than others. Looks like Caleb is one of the lucky ones.

I explained to the doctor how Caleb had had one of these before on the same leg and instead of taking him into the doctor, I confessed that Matt and I treated it ourselves by popping it as that seemed to help the situation to relieve the pressure. Although Caleb screamed bloody murder when we popped it (and by we, I mean Matt), you could tell he felt better afterwards. Again I wasn't expecting the doctor's answer that that is exactly what you're supposed to do with staph infections, squeeze the infection out...preferably by a doctor, however. (I had horrible feelings of guilt whenever Matt popped the infection remembering all past doctors' counsel of not to pop blisters, bug bites, zits, etc.) He explained that I should take Caleb to the doctor anytime it happens again (duly noted) because if it ever gets to the point where Caleb can't walk or use the limb where the infection is and he has a fever, then we have an emergency room situation where it could get serious real fast. I think at this point I started a cold sweat remembering how with the other staph infection on his leg, there was one day where he would not walk on his leg at all, and I had to carry him around like an invalid all day.

After all the talking, questions, and answers, the nurse gave him some Tylenol Codeine to help drug Caleb up, and then twenty minutes later it was "surgery" time. Caleb knew something bad was about to happen and was acting completely terrified. I had to pry him from my arms to lay him down on the table, all the while singing songs as he clutched his trains in absolute terror. The nurse held his legs down, while I held Caleb's arms. Even through the process of cleaning the wound where there was no pain yet, Caleb bawled and kept saying "all done". Then the doctor got ready to lance the wound and squeeze out the infection. I positioned myself so I couldn't watch because I knew I would break down. The doctor told me that he wasn't going to be as "nice" about it as my husband probably was and that Caleb was not going to like him after he finished. My mom watched the process though. The doctor got a sample of the infection to test for the type of staph, and then squeezed out quite a bit of goop.

Afterwards, Caleb wouldn't go to me ("How could you let him do this to me?"), but would only go to my mom. Needless to say, the whole process was heart wrenching and traumatic. It's not fun being a parent sometimes. To continue to take care of his leg, we have had to give Caleb yucky, yucky medicine 3 times a day (1 1/2 t each time, which is quite a bit) plus give him bleach baths along with regular baths twice daily. During each bath we are supposed to squeeze the wound to see if we can get anything else out of the infection. We're on day 4 of 8 days of doing this, so we're halfway there of being done! His leg looks a lot better already...healing much faster than the last time he had staph.

Overall, not fun. I hope that the infections are infrequent from here on out, but of course none of us would complain if we didn't ever have to do this again! I'm afraid that might be wishful thinking.

Matt's trying his hand at gardening while I applaud from the sidelines. We decided to start small and have only started with cauliflower and broccoli.

At a past Relief Society activity, we had a craft night and had the opportunity to make several different decorations. I chose to make some jewelry and a Family Home Evening board. The jewelery-making was a lot of fun, and much simpler than I expected it to be. I'm excited to have an FHE board. I thought all turned out well although I do regret using stamps to put our names on the FHE board rather than doing it freehand. Maybe one day I'll paint over it and re-do our names.

We've been experiencing quite a bit of rain this week. The previous week, Caleb had done some swimming in our backyard in the baby pool, and I hadn't put it away yet. The pool filled up about halfway from the rain on Wednesday, and after dinner, the boys wanted to go outside and play as they had been stuck inside all day. (My siblings and I eat dinner together 3 times a week and take turns cooking once a week.) The boys were enjoying going down the slide and ended up with wet tummies and pants. Eventually Caleb wandered over to the baby pool filled with water and started playing with a ball...throwing it in the water to make a splash. My brother-in-law and I joked about how funny it would be if the boys actually jumped in with their clothes on. I told him I didn't think Caleb would do that, when out of no where, Dallin makes a bee-line from the fence and jumps tummy first into the water--shoes and all. Of course Caleb joined in the "fun" soon after.

Probably the most exciting times in Caleb's day is when he hears either the ice cream truck or the garbage truck in our neighborhood. A big smile hits his face, then he grabs your hand pulling you towards the door and says, "Come on, come on." He doesn't even know the real excitement of the ice cream truck...the fact that it has yummy (over-priced) ice cream. He just knows that it plays cool music and loves to follow it around the neighborhood. The poor driver can't ever figure out if we actually want to purchase anything or not.

Getting rid of the pacifier has been a work-in-progress since Caleb was 15 months old! At Caleb's 15-month appointment, the pediatrician told me straight up that it's time to be all done pacifier when she saw Caleb had it in his mouth (which I normally didn't bring out with me in public but knew he was getting shots and would need something to comfort him). She said cold turkey was the best method and to just throw it away.

Matt and I didn't act on her advice right away because sleeping has been our biggest trial with Caleb. The first time Caleb slept through the night was when he was 3 1/2 months old, and that was a fluke. I recorded in Caleb's journal any time he slept through the night because the nights were so infrequent!!! (When Caleb was 5 months, I have an entry expressing my frustration of waking up with him twice during the middle of the night every night!) It was more than just sleeping through the night that was so difficult. Getting him to go to sleep by himself took forever/5months (I did start some bad habits in his first few months of nursing him to sleep which didn't help matters...I didn't start reading books on sleeping until he was 3 months and realized everything I had been doing was wrong!). I remember how I used to dread putting Caleb down for a nap or down for bed because it was so hard! There was always lots of crying/screaming involved not just for a few minutes, but for 45 min. to an hour. When he became attached to his pacifier, there were no complaints on our end simply because it made nap/bedtime so much easier.

So at 16 months we took away the pacifier cold turkey. He actually did okay as long as we were in the room with him (usually holding his hand) until he fell asleep. However, a week later, he caught some sort of cold virus and was the sickest he'd ever been with fevers, stuffy nose, etc. We finally gave in and gave him back his pacifier so that he would actually sleep. After he was better, we noticed most every kid older than Caleb at church still had a pacifier, so we didn't worry about taking it away anymore, but made sure he only had it for naps and for bed.

About a month ago, we decided that he better be all done pacifier by the time he turned 2. So we tried cold turkey again. I guess he was ultra-attached by this point and after listening to my toddler cry for 90 minutes, my nerves just couldn't take that twice a day (nap and bedtime). Instead we tried snipping his binky, and that's what ended up working for us. I snipped it just a little at first, and then once a week I would snip it a little more. It got to the point where he didn't like his pacifier anymore, which is what we needed.

The glitch in this plan happened when we made our impromptu trip to Utah. Caleb wouldn't sleep and was preventing his cousin, Dallin, from sleeping as well. As if a road trip is not hard enough, throw 2 crying, cranky babies on top of that where the parents never get a reprieve from trying to entertain their children, and it will drive anyone crazy! After 2 days of driving to Utah and wanting to pull my hair out (as well as knowing everyone else is miserable), we finally gave in and gave Caleb his cousin's spare binky for the rest of the vacation. It made things 10 times easier with getting Caleb to take naps and sleep in an unfamiliar environment, and the drive home was much more pleasant when the babies actually took a 2 hour nap and slept well at night.

I was worried about starting from scratch again when we got home, but Caleb only had a tough time that first night going to sleep. Now sometimes he'll still cry for 10 minutes or so, but generally he will just lay down until he goes to sleep.

Mission accomplished!

As a weird side note, Caleb has called his pacifier a 'na na' since he was about 18 months old. I have no clue why he calls it this. Dallin, Caleb's cousin who is 6 months younger than him, has started calling his pacifier a 'na na' as well, much to his parent's dismay :o).

We made the long drive to Utah on Saturday, August 1st in order to attend the graveside service of my grandfather who passed away on July 31st. Most of the extended family was there for the service, and it was good to catch up with family and celebrate my grandpa's life. One of his greatest talents was painting and sketches. I get so many compliments on the sketches he has done of Matt and I when we got married and 3 different sketches of Caleb at various ages. We have two beautiful scenery paintings that he has done for us as well. Although I didn't know him as well as my older siblings (because we moved to Texas when I was 7), I know how much my mother admired and looked up to her father. His passing was expected and a relief as his quality of life had gone down significantly.

Because we were going to spend 4 days driving total for this impromtu occasion, we decided to make as much of a vacation out of it that we could. We visited a museum with the kids and went to an indoor pool with lots of kids' activities. The kids were also able to go to the zoo with my parents, grandma, aunt, and cousin while the kids' parents attended the Salt Lake temple. Thanks to my cousin, Ali, for being the photographer so we could have lots of pictures of the outing! Probably the most memorable activity that we did with my family was to go to a park and sit in a circle and talk about all our favorite memories of my grandpa. It ended with a rousing game of red rover, which the kids enjoyed immensely. Here are some pictures of the trip. Unfortunately Matt is only in one picture as he had to fly home early for work.

Daniel who talked about the power of prayer

Last Saturday we were invited to attend the circus by some friends who got free tickets from work. Neither Matt, Caleb or I have ever been to the circus, so it was such a treat. Between the tigers, elephants, and other acrobatic acts, Caleb was mesmorized and behaved very well! Matt and I were really impressed with the 7 motorcyclists who survived being trapped in that too small ball while riding around. We also loved the amazing tricks and stunts by the acrobats. We were thoroughly entertained as well. Thanks to our new friends Lauren and Peter! We had a great time!

My sister and I are still running in this beastly weather right now, and I got my FASTEST time ever this morning! We run/walk a 4 mile stretch every day, but only time ourselves for 1 mile of it since the mile is actually marked out in a forest in her neighborhood. This morning I ran it in 6:24!

I also had my best couponing grocery trip ever yesterday. I spent $35 and saved $47. For the experienced couponers out there, this is probably not a big deal, but this is the first time I saved over 50%. Wahoo!

Figuring out how to use our video camera to upload videos to our computer has been a work-in-progress. The video always turned out jumpy. Now the videos just look blurry. Any advice from you tech. genius' out there? Despite being blurry, I'm going to post anyway because I'm excited to actually show Caleb's personality instead of just telling about it. So here is Caleb in our most recent video at 22 months.

(saying "bless you", "thank you", and counting...he can say "1, 2, 3, 5, and 10" although in the video he just says 5 and 10)

Caleb has recently learned to open the fridge. My first thought is that this new skill is going to be absolutely disastrous. To my surprise, 2 weeks went by without any mishaps. Caleb's newfound ability actually makes things easier for me because Caleb was going to the fridge several times a day asking for milk. It got very tedious. Now he is able to get his milk when he wants it and put it away when he's done. No more worries for me about trying to remember where his milk ended up so I can put it in the refrigerator. Caleb is very observant and wants to be very helpful. When his milk sippy cup needs to be refilled, he will pull out the carton of milk, set it on the floor, and take the lid off of the carton...all ready for me to do the rest. Unfortunately this one time, and hopefully the last, he got a little anxious and decided to try it all by himself.

Scenario: I'm busily making dinner and rolling out rolls. My back is to Caleb as I'm working, but I am aware that he has gone to the fridge for his milk. He must have drunk all his milk and needed more. Instead of waiting for Mommy's help, he decided to be a big boy and pour his milk into his "big boy" cup (his sippy cup was in the dishwasher) all by himself. Recognizing when to stop pouring is not an easy task, however. As soon as I hear his adorable "Uh Oh," I knew things were not going to be pretty:

Caleb has the neatest magic trick! He is able to make his right shoe disappear! **Notice that in every picture, his right shoe is missing. Why is this the case? I'd like to know too. He is constantly sliding off his right shoe (no matter what type of shoes he wears), and I feel like I'm constantly looking for two matching shoes so we can go out in public! Interestingly enough, he doesn't mind walking around sort of lopsided with one shoe on, but being a paranoid mother (I don't want this to somehow mess up the length of his legs), I'll either keep putting the shoe back on him or just take the other one off.

Question: What do you do to survive the summers in Houston?

Answer: Don't go outside!!! It is imperative to remain indoors at all times if you want to stay dry! If you do need to go outside for a little boy that constantly says "outside?", then be sure that water is involved. You're either going to be soaked with sweat or water...your pick.