This Will Be: An Adventure

Last night there was a cricket in our house, which Peanut pointed out to us with great excitement ("Buggy!!"). I handed a plastic cup to Little Man and asked him to take it to Mama so she could catch the buggy and put it outside. Brave boy that he is, he walked right up to it and attempted to put the cup over it himself... at which point the cricket beat a hasty retreat under the couch. I told the kids to say, "come here, buggy, so we can catch you in a cup!" It was the most precious thing to see Peanut bending down to look under the couch, calling "come, buggy! catch cup!" over and over while Little Man squealed "outside! outside!" I'm going to miss these days *sigh*.

Exhibit A

When I walked in the door, Peanut started jumping up and down saying "Happy! Happy!" with a big smile on her face.

Exhibit B

Little Man had one hand behind my head, and the other behind S's shoulder, and kept pushing us together saying "mmmmua" like he says when he gives kisses.

We had our annual company picnic this week at work, and since the kiddos are in daycare on campus, we decided to bring them along for the festivities. Most of our coworkers hadn't seen them since they were 6 months old, so it was lots of fun seeing their reactions to our big, walking, talking bundles of energy. The kids quickly gravitated toward the bucket that was holding cans of soda, and spent the better part of an hour splashing around in the ice water. They even recruited some other children, and everyone ended up soaking wet and giggling.

When they weren't dousing each other with freezing water, they were bopping along to the tunes spun by our resident DJ. Both of our kiddos love to dance, but Peanut is more of an in-the-living-room kind of dancer, whereas Little Man can't seem to contain himself whenever he hears music. He just has to dance!

One sunny Sunday afternoon (two weeks ago), Little Man and Mama (Sylvia) fell asleep on the couch just minutes before we were planning to walk out the door to run some errands. Ever the go-getter on the weekends (ha!), I went ahead and took Peanut out with me to take care of our to-do list, leaving Little Man and Mama napping at home.


Two hours and one frantic phone call later, I arrived home to this:


The culprit? A tiny smidge of hummus Little Man had requested from Mama.

So now we're on the road to finding out what, exactly, Little Man is allergic to. We saw our pediatrician earlier this week, who said that from the pictures (thankfully I happened to have our camera with me) and how we described it, she figures he was "near anaphylaxis." She confirmed that we should have taken him to the ER instead of just dosing him with benadryl, washing him with cool water, and waiting it out (which is what we had done, per the on-call pedi's instructions). After impressing upon us how very serious his reaction was, she prescribed Little Man an epi pen and sent us home with a stack of information and a DVD that shows how to administer the epi pen.

Little Man's appointment with the allergist is next week, so Sylvia and I are combing back through our collective memory and assembling a list of all the foods Little Man has ever seemed to have a reaction to. Turns out-- as we found out when Peanut had her allergist appointment yesterday-- that they won't test for any foods the child hasn't already demonstrated an adverse reaction to. They tested Peanut for chickpeas and sesame because of Little Man's reaction to the hummus, but wouldn't test her for peanuts or anything else. We want to get the biggest bang for our blood-test buck, so we need to make sure the list for Little Man is as comprehensive as possible.

In the meantime, it's one foot in front of the other. Sylvia is still quite shaken by the events of that day, and my stoic nature is, I think, disconcerting to her. Add that to the fact that we're both processing a hefty dose of mommy guilt (her for having fed him the hummus and me for having had a carefree attitude regarding ingesting large amounts of potential allergens while pregnant and breastfeeding), and the result is two exhausted and emotional mommies.

I'm sitting in the nursery, enjoying a few minutes of alone time* while my wife feeds the kids dinner. With all the stress and exhaustion (and attendant bickering), I regret to say that sometimes I forget what a wonderful wife and mother she is. It is soul-satisfying to hear her in there with them, making them laugh and eat their carrots. Sylvia, my love, for everything... THANK YOU!

*I took two cranky, teething, post-daycare babies to the doctor by myself this afternoon... I SO needed the break!

I passed an ambulance coming out of our neighborhood today, and I was instantly transported back to that night when the twins were ten days old and Little Man stopped breathing. I was there again, in the ambulance, strapped to the gurney with my 10-day-old son in my arms. Thirty minutes before, I had found him-- limp and blue-- in the bassinet beside our bed. All the emotions I felt while we fought to keep our boy alive came flooding back, and I drove the rest of the way home in tears.

I wonder how long it will be like this.

I think we may have let our dog into the kitchen to clean up under the babies' high chairs one too many times. Last night at dinner Little Man kept yelling "doggie! doggie!" while throwing pieces of chicken on the floor.

Oops! :)

Peanut is developing quite a sense of humor. Her new favorite thing is to go over to the corner where we put their shoes and socks after school, pick up a dirty baby sock, and take a big exaggerated whiff. This of course prompts us to say "oooh, stinky!!", which makes her giggle and do it again.

Little Man hasn't quite gotten in on the game, despite the many times Peanut has toddled over to him and stuck a sock under his nose. Poor boy, I wouldn't want to smell stinky socks either, lol!

Cribbing from a chat board post, so as to have it here for the record...

Peanut and Little Man had their ENT specialist appointment yesterday. We went because Peanut has had a persistent ear infection (it took 5 rounds of different antibiotics-- back-to-back-- to partially clear it, but she still has it). Little Man was pretty much just along for the ride (he has had some ear infections, but nothing near what Peanut has had).

After talking with us for a bit, the Dr. ended up sending both kiddos for hearing tests (we were at Children's, so luckily this just meant waiting there for the audiologist to be available). This was mostly to assess Peanut's hearing to help us decide whether or not to do tubes.

As it turns out, Peanut's hearing is ok, but she does need tubes because her membrane is not flexing properly.

What really shocked both Sylvia and I is that the audiologist found that Little Man has "significant" hearing loss. The Dr. said he can hear, but it sounds like he's under water and someone is talking to him from above the water.

Little Man is behind Peanut in language acquisition (he says 3-4 words to Pnut's 10+), but we never thought it could be because he can't hear!

The Dr. said there is a surgery they can do to try to help, so we're going to go ahead with that. LM will also get tubes at the same time to help ward off ear infections so we can preserve the hearing he does have.

Anyway, so that's where we are at this point. We're both upset about it all, but grateful that we found out about J's hearing loss now instead of months/years from now when he showed evidence of being further delayed.

This morning, Peanut was sitting on Mama's lap fussing because her brother had a toy she wanted. We asked Little Man to get Peanut's paci and bring it to her. Our sweet boy looked and looked for it, and when he found it, he went running over to his sister with it and handed it to her. She said thank you ("tank ooo") and smiled. It is so wonderful to see sweet exchanges like that!

Peanut signed "more" for the first time yesterday! Exactly "more" (which looks like this)-- not a rough replica of it, but the exact sign. Yay!!

Of course, after a couple of rounds of "more" while there was still dinner (pasta with sauce) languishing on her tray, I am relatively convinced that "more" means "Rice Chex" to her (she kept making the sign then turning to look at the box), but hey, I'll take it! :)

Little Man loves music. He's always the first one to pick up a beat, and has this adorable little dance he does, bopping to the beat of just about any music. We take the kiddos to a music class every Saturday, and he *loves* it. After one class in which all the grown-ups were tapping out a song with our feet, he started dancing by moving his feet up and down, almost like he's running in place. He looks so proud of himself while he's dancing-- it's too cute.

Within the past two weeks, Little Man has added new dance to his repertoire. There is a song on the music class CD (which we play at home and in the car) called "Dancing with Teddy," which is about spinning around, dancing with your teddy bear. Whenever it comes on (or whenever we sing the song), he starts dancing in a circle, looking intently at the floor and spinning around. It is so sweet. His little serious face makes it all the more precious.

I am struggling with what to do about breastfeeding at this point. I think most of the people who read this blog (all three of you, lol) see when I post things on a message board I frequent, but just in case anyone else wanders by, I wanted to cross-post some thoughts...

I've been cutting down the number of times I pump, and am down to pumping once a day now (in the afternoon at work). The babies nurse in the morning and evening. Really, only Little Man nurses; Peanut has not wanted to nurse for a couple of days now :(.

I'm thinking about dropping that last pumping session. I am making so little milk that it takes me three days of pumping to make 2 four-ounce bottles. By the time I've collected enough to make their bottles, the early output of the batch is going bad (I have lipaise issues, but don't scald the milk).

I don't know why, but I am having a hard time thinking about being done pumping. I guess because I know it means the milk will go away completely soon, and that makes me sad. I have fought so very, very hard for so long to give the babies what milk I could, it seems strange to knowingly give up the last little bit.

*Sigh.*

Peanut's new favorite thing to do is to *wave* hello at the phone when someone first answers. She doesn't make any sound; just waves. It is too cute! I love that the kiddos don't know all those little things I take for granted-- like knowing that people can't see you through the phone. It makes me smile and grounds me to see their innocent, fresh perspective.

I realized recently that my biggest chunk of "me time" (and therefore potential blogging time) is when I'm sitting in the car with a sleeping baby (or two), waiting for them to finish a nap or waiting for Sylvia to get everything set up for us to roll them into bed. I usually surf the web or catch up on news. I think, however, that I will be able to post from my phone (or if not post, at least write and save to post later). So I'm turning over a new leaf, encouraging myself to be okay with posting tiny snippets of posts, and hopefully starting to get down on paper (or... uh... into pixels) some of the tiny little things I'll undoubtedly forget as the months and years fly by. Here goes! :)