Jealousy At Its Cutest

Finn, apparently, is somewhat jealous of whatever it is that might be taking my attention away from him. The main culprit is Deacon, especially when I'm trying to change Deacon's diaper and/or help him get dressed. It doesn't matter if Finn is otherwise happily occupied on his own, as soon as I lay Deacon down on the couch, and start to do whatever, Finn's head turns towards us, his laser beam eyes focus on us, and he crawls over at warp speed. Once he's in our area, he's not content enough to just sit there, on the floor, and have me talk to him. Oh no, Finn will pull himself up by using my legs for balance, and then sort of "hop" up and down on his toes, doing his sort of grunty-whiny noise. Kind of like this:

"Mommy pllllleeeasssseee pick me up!" This will continue until he either falls over at some point (usually because I've shifted my body to better do what I'm trying to do with Deacon), causing him to then cry because his feelings have been SO hurt that I would clearly choose Deacon over him, or until I pick him up:

Neither result is really ideal for me. In the first one, he's crying, and that gets old quick. In the second, he's happy, but he's also on my lap and in my way. And because he's usually not content enough to just be on my lap, he likes to get right in my face so I'll know, beyond the shadow of a dobut, that he's there and he wants me to play with him.

While I am, somewhat, flattered that Finn always wants to be the center of my attention (when someone else requires my attention that is), I feel kind of bad for Deacon. Because now, instead of a diaper change taking all of 30 seconds, he has to waste 3 minutes of play time laying on the couch, waiting for Finn to get over himself. Oh, that youngest Walter boy.

To Tweet, or Not To Tweet?

That is the question I've been asking myself lately. See, when little things, that strike me as really funny, happen around here, I usually text Josh and a friend or two about it then move on. But as I'm texting I think, "maybe I should just get Twitter, then tweet this." Things like when this kid:

came out of the playroom yesterday and said, in regards to a booger he just pulled out of his nose, "Look! I caught a big one!"

I could blog about them, I guess, but they really are just little things, and not really things that would make up a good blog post (at least not for the "format" I have for this blog anyway). I try to save a bunch of them and post them all at once, but by the time I get around to posting these kind of little things, I have forgotten most of them.

So, now I'll ask you. Do you Twitter? Should I Twitter? Would you follow me if I Twittered? Does any of this even make any sense?

Puke Puss

Finn got sick again this past weekend. He woke up around 3:20 Sunday morning, crying. I changed his diaper, put him back in bed, and went back to bed myself, only to hear him crying again 5 minutes later. I got up again, fed him a bottle and we both went back to sleep a little after 4am. By 4:10am he was crying. Again. After an hour of soothing, rocking, singing, etc I finally got him back in bed. Five minutes later he was crying again. This time Josh got up with him. After another little bottle, Josh put Finn back in bed then took a shower. While he was in the shower Finn got all kinds of upset again so I got up and we laid down together on the futon in Finn's room. Josh went to Walmart (we needed some kind of pain reliever for Finn, since I was banking on the pain being from his teeth). Eventually, finally, whateverly, around 8am, Finn threw up. On Josh. He seems to be Finn's target. Once Finn threw up though, he was able to rest easier - so long as he was resting on me.

Therefore, Finn and I did not go to church on Sunday. Josh went with the bigger boys, while the little one and I stayed home and just hung out. After throwing up and getting some good sleep, Finn seemed to be doing better. He was sort of "off and on" the next two days, and by dinner time on Monday, he was getting cranky and icky again. He didn't throw up again, but he refused to eat and just wanted to sleep on me again. (Not that I mind that part terribly, of course.) We finally got him to bed Monday night, and when he woke up Tuesday morning, he was perfectly fine and good to go. Josh, on the other hand, was so worn out from it all that he was a bit on the happy side to go back to work on Tuesday.

So, here's what I think happened. I think Finn had a double ear infection. I think the double ear infection caused him so much pain that he couldn't sleep, and it was the pain that caused him to throw up Sunday morning. At some point on Sunday I think his left ear ruptured, releasing some of the pressure, causing him to feel somewhat better. I think this because Sunday afternoon there was a bunch of earwax in his left ear, and it looked sort of clogged, like I couldn't see all the way down his ear like I could on the other side. Come Monday evening, I think the right side was starting to really get to him, which is why he stopped eating, and just wanted to snuggle. Tuesday morning, if you remember, he woke up good to go. My guess is that at some point Monday night/Tuesday morning, Finn's right ear ruptured, releasing the rest of the pressure and pain, along with a bunch more earwax (you can see some of the spots of wax on his bedsheet).

By then end of Tuesday, both ears looked pretty good, if still a little bit waxy. But then, he's always been a bit of a wax head. So, there you have it. And Josh gave Finn a big kiss Sunday morning and said, "I'm not afraid of your puke puss" which is where the title of this blog post comes from. Perhaps one of the "funnier" parts of this little adventure was the face Finn would make, usually in his high chair, to try and pop his ears to relieve some of the pressure himself (Amity figured this out, I just thought he was being funny).

Nice face, right? He wasn't crying or even really making any noise at all. He'd just go from normal face to this face back to normal face like it was nothing out of the ordinary. But now he's fine, his ears look good (to me anyway), and we have another ear infection story for the books (or blog, in this case).

Farmer Zeke

Zeke's class made these little books based on Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?. They're really cute, and hearing Zeke "read" it all on his own to Deacon was just so sweet I had to share it. The video is a little long, so if you don't watch it all the way through, I'll understand. Unless you're one of his grandparents. In that case, you better be glued to your computer screen for the whole 1 minute 18 seconds. Tee hee!

What To Start With?

A bunch happened over the last week that I want to blog about. Part of me feels like I should write about them as they happened. Part of me feels like I should write about them in order of "importance". Then there's part of me, which is the part I'm going to go with, that says, "Whatever. Just write about them as you want." Therefore, today I am going to write about the haircut Deacon got on Saturday evening (mostly because I just spent so. much. time. on flickr putting up and labeling the pictures I have from February so far, and I'm tired of being at my computer, and this shouldn't take too long to write up).

So, yeah. Deacon got his hair cut on Saturday. Apparently Josh and I had different ideas as to what we wanted done to to his head since I wound up feeling kind of sad at the end of it all. See, I love Deacon's hair longer. Yes, it was getting a tad too long, and definitely needed some help, but I think longer hair is a little truer to his personality (if that makes any sense?).

Josh, I guess, felt his hair was way too long and needed to be gone. I'm sure it didn't help my case any that I would pull it back with some of my elastics and headbands and stuff. I'm also sure it didn't help when the security guard at the hospital mistook him for a girl, most likely only using his hair as an indication of his gender.

Now, while Deacon does, in fact, look quite handsome with his haircut, I am still a little bit sad that it's all gone. I know it's only hair, and that it will grow back, but still. I wasn't ready for such a different look, and now I feel like he looks way too grown up. I guess I'm happy though, as long as he likes it.

And I'd have to guess that he does.

Photo Op

On Valentine's Day, all 3 boys wore red shirts. Not intentionally though. Zeke picked his shirt, 2 hours later Deacon picked his, so I grabbed a red one for Finn. After naps, we had some fun playing with my camera.

Zeke took some pictures:

Deacon took some pictures:

I tried to get some of the 4 of us (yes, I wore red too...why not?):

I did get one of the 3 of them, though, that I'm pretty happy with:

My Stressful, Successful, Unlucky, SUPER Lucky, Pretty Good, Ending on a Sad Note Valentine's Day

Oh Valentine's Day. What a day you turned out to be.

Stressful:

The started off somewhat stressfully as Zeke woke up bouncing all over the place, and at quite the loud volume. I think he had been out of bed for all of 3 minutes before I was wishing for the arrival of the bus.

Successful:

After Zeke was off to school, and the other two had been fed breakfast and dressed, I piled them into the car and took Finn to the clinic to get his 6 month immunizations. (I know he's already 9 months, but that's how it goes sometimes.) We got there, got in and got out rather quickly. So quickly, in fact, that I decided to take the boys food shopping while we were on post so that Josh wouldn't have to do it himself after work. We got our food shopping done quickly and with enough time left over so that I could get gas for my car, and still be home well before Zeke got home from school (he gets home at 11:30ish and I managed to get all this done and get us home by 11:00).

Unlucky:

Shortly after arriving home, I went to get my phone for some reason or another and realized I could NOT find my wallet. Anywhere. I then had a sinking suspicion that I had left my wallet on top of my car when I got gas and never put it back in the car when I was finished. I searched the backpack and my car twice before determining it was really gone.

So now I'm freaking out. Part of my freaking out was because my friend here is due to have her baby at any moment (seriously, any moment) and I'm on call to take care of her other kids while she goes in to have said baby, and I didn't have my phone. Another part of my freaking out is that in my wallet, obviously, are all my credit cards and my ID card and my license and all that stuff that I would NEED to call people about if they were, in fact, missing. The 3rd part of my freaking out was that we didn't have our land line connected in the house. We didn't have enough plugs and since all we got were telemarketers anyway we just decided to unplug the phone. SO I plugged it all in, but it took FOR-EV-ER to connect and get working. Of course, Finn coming over and pulling on it didn't help, nor did Deacon coming over and knocking into things. But finally, FINALLY, I got the phone to work and called Josh in a true state of panic.

My gracious husband, left work and went back to the gas station to look for my wallet. Unfortunately, it wasn't there and no one had turned it in. So I told him the route I had taken from the gas station to get home, and off he went, searching as he drove.

SUPER Lucky (or where Josh got to play the hero for the first time this day):

However many minutes later, Josh called back. HE FOUND MY WALLET! Apparently it stayed on the roof of my car until I got on the Glenn Highway and accelerated to 65mph. Once I got up to speed, it must have fallen off, then most likely got run over by a car or 4 because when Josh got there just about EVERYTHING was in pieces.

But I didn't really care because he FOUND it all. When I asked him how many credit cards he had found he said, "How many cards or how many pieces of cards?" Har. Har. Har. Some of the cash that was in there is gone forever, but again, that's okay, because he found all the important things and now I can rest assured that there isn't someone out there with all my information. Of course, I don't have all my information either (such as full credit card numbers for any of my cards). And now I have the task of getting in touch with all these places and getting new cards and things sent to me. Yay.

But ALSO super lucky is that I got a new phone. When Josh took my smashed iPhone to Best Buy they told him that it was neither returnable nor repairable. I think they totally underestimated their abilities to fix things.

Be that as it may, since my phone isn't due for an upgrade until August, Josh was going to have to pay for a new phone for me. And since he was going to have to buy a new phone anyway, and since they were willing to work with him on it, Josh bought me a brand new iPhone 4. Yeah, baby! It's very exciting, even though it's very much like my old phone.

Pretty Good:

The rest of the day went pretty much the way it usually does. Naps (which neither big boy really took...sigh), playing until dinner, dinner, movie, etc. We got all the boys in bed, I read some of my book, Josh played some WoW, then we made some popcorn and started to watch Hawaii Five-0. Aaahhh....

Ending on a Sad Note (or where Josh to play the hero for the second time):

Sadly, around 9:45ish, Finn started crying. Like, really crying. So I went in and tried to soothe him, figuring he wasn't feeling well from his shots that morning, being somewhat upset with myself for not having any sort of medicine for him in the house (I did have some but apparently it had expired...last April). After a few minutes, Josh came in and took Finn from me, pretty much right in time for Finn to vomit. And oh did Finn vomit, all. over. Josh. Poor baby. (Poor Daddy.) So I went to fill the tub and while I was in the bathroom for all of a minute, Finn vomited all over Josh a second time. (That's the second heroic act of Josh - getting thrown up on so I didn't have to deal with that as I am not very good with throw up.)

So I bathed Finn quickly (he was shaking too much to enjoy his time in the tub), snuggled him in my big, fluffy, warm towel for awhile, dressed him, and lay on the couch with him for a bit, while Josh cleaned himself up with a nice shower. Eventually Finn seemed to be okay and sleepy, so I put him back in bed (he was fine the rest of the night), and then slept terribly.

So there you have it. That was my day yesterday. Another Valentine's Day for the history books, if ever there was one.

Maybe The Swords WEREN'T A Good Idea

A few days after Zeke got a shot in on Deacon's face with a sword, Zeke and Josh were sword fighting. This time, they each had a sword so they were a little more evently armed. Apparently it doesn't matter, as Zeke managed to get another good swipe of the sword in and truly busted up Josh's finger.

(Not the greatest picture, but the best we got.) At first, Josh thought it was broken, but by the end of the weekend, he down graded it to a sprain. Needless to say, Josh was in quite a bit of pain all weekend (it happened Friday evening). Also needless to say, I could NOT stop laughing at him - poor guy. It was really funny, I couldn't help it.

Saturday morning, while Zeke and I were at speech, we had this conversation during his session.

Me: Hey Zeke, tell Miss Kathie what you did to Daddy last night.

Zeke: I hurt his finger.

Me: How did you hurt his finger? (snicker)

Zeke: I hit him, on his hand, with my sword.

Yeah you did Zeke. Yeah you did.

I Tried

I tried to tell him that a goldfish


was NOT a good choice of weaponage against 2 swords.



He didn't listen though.



And now my poor baby has a little busted lip.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPhone

For Your Viewing Pleasure

Finn is now 9 months old. Crazy, right? Lately I've been trying to give him more and more food from what we're eating. It's hard to know what he can/can't handle when he still has only the two bottom teeth, but he does quite well with bananas, peas, and McDonald's french fries. The thing is, feeding himself has become quite the thing to do, and so meals go a lot more like this now:

What happens now is Finn will happily eat his baby food, spoonful after spoonful, when all of a sudden, and for no apparent reason, he starts flailing his arms about, banging on his tray, until I give him food he can feed himself. And he's quite persistent about it too. He's also started the "fake cry" move, which reminds me so much of Deacon when he does it. So, meals are so much more "fun" now.

Also fun? Watching my boys watch The Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. I especially love watching Deacon (and sometimes Zeke, as you'll see in this next video) sing/dance to The Hot Dog Dance at the end of each episode.

OH! Another thing that's fun? The sun made it over the lower part of the mountain today! There was sun, COMING IN MY WINDOWS, for about an hour today. It was wonderful. It's funny, I didn't realize just how much I was missing the sun until I got so excited about being able to see it again from my house. Good times all around.

So, This Happened Today

Josh placed Finn in his bed for his morning rest time. Before Josh could turn around and get to the door, Finn had pulled himself up to a standing position. He'd been pulling himself up to his knees quite regularly the past few days, and I was getting set to write a post about it, but I guess I didn't move fast enough on that.

So, while Zeke and were at speech (and Old Navy) this morning, Josh and the other two boys put the crib back together. I had mentioned it to Josh last night as something I'd like to have happen soon, basically so he'd have a little more room since he's getting so big. Josh decided today was the day after Finn stood up in the pack-n-play. Basically, Josh got worried that soon Finn would be tall enough to send himself falling out of the pack-n-play head first since Finn's head weighs about 74 pounds (Josh's estimation, not mine).

So naptime was our first run with the crib, and he did fine with it. I'm happy because now he has more room. Josh is happy because now he's less worried about Finn flinging himself headfirst out of his crib. I'm not sure how Deacon's feeling about it since the crib was in Deacon's room, minus the bars, serving as a second bed for Deacon, should he tire of the one he's currently using.

And Finn, well, Finn obviously is terribly upset by the whole ordeal. It really is a shame how depressed my little baby is. Maybe we should get him some help for that?

PS...The Superbowl is tomorrow. In case you missed the post I wrote on what special thing we're "doing for it" this year, click HERE. Go team!

Did You Know?

Did you know that Daddy is the best piece of movie watching furniture ever?

Okay, in this last picture they weren't watching movies, they were pretending they were on a train, but it fit so perfectly with the rest of the pictures, and I just had to share it.

What You Said?

The other day, when Josh asked Zeke how school was that day, Zeke said, "Good." He then went on to tell Josh how a couple of the other kids in his class had started crying that day. When Josh asked Zeke why, Zeke responded, "I don't know." So I said, "Did you hit them?" (He'd been hitting Deacon a bit more than usual lately, which is why I asked.) Zeke looked at me and said, "No. I don't hit my friends. I hit Deacon." He then patted Deacon on the head and walked away while Josh and I laughed. Well, I laughed, Josh used the opportunity to remind Zeke of the spanking he had recieved the day before for hitting Deacon. He hasn't really hit Deacon as much since then. Hmm....

* * * * *

One day, maybe a week or two ago now, Zeke and I were discussing his day at school while we ate lunch. He was telling me how they had made dog food that day (whatever that really means I have NO idea). I decided to tease him and asked, "Do you eat dog food?" He laughed and said, "NO! I don't eat dog food!" Then he got real serious, looked straight at me and said, "I don't eat play-doh either." I...really wasn't sure what to do with that. He told me later that one of the other boys in his class ate some play-doh. Good job then son.

* * * * *

Here's a little video of Zeke and Josh playing "Ring Around the Rosie". Well, Zeke had made up some of his own words to go in the part he didn't know, which I love since now he sings

Ring around the rosie

Pop goes the weasel

Ashes ashes

We all fall down!

* * * * *

Now for some health related news on the boy. This pretty much involves his bum and rashes and bowel movements, so if you'd rather not read on, I'm okay with that. It's why I put the sweet stuff up front. Come back tomorrow for more cuteness. For those of you that want to read on though, here we go.

Last week, as I was helping Zeke clean himself up after pooping, I noticed there was some blood in his poop. I didn't really think anything of it because this poop was HUGE and so I figured he probably tore a little bit pushing it out. (I tried to warn you this part would involve too much information.) But here we are, a week later, and there is still blood when I wipe him, and he's only pooped twice since then, when usually he goes once a day.

So yesterday I called the clinic to see if I could get a quick phone consult with a doctor. Twenty minutes later (which is a long story in and of itself) Zeke had an appointment to see a doctor this afternoon. My friend, Marci, was gracious enough to come stay with Deacon and Finn (while they napped) so off Zeke and I went.

I told the doctor what happened and what I thought, and she said I was probably right, but she wanted to look anyway (um, yeah, that's why we're here). She took one look at his little bum and said, he's awfully red and raw. I think he has strep. She took a culture, and sure enough, my sweet boy has the butt strep.

I need to backtrack a little bit here for a moment. See, about a month ago, my "friend", Amity, dropped off her two little ones since I was watching them for her that morning. As she was getting ready to leave, she said, "Curtis has a little diaper rash, just in case you have to change his diaper." I thought nothing of this because that's what kids in diapers do, they get rashes occasionally. Fast forward to later that day (or maybe the next day), and Amity calls to say that his diaper rash is actually butt strep. Lovely. Not soon after she lets me know this, Zeke develops a rash on his bum that looks like what she described her son's to look like. But I put some ointment on it, and it cleared up in a few days so I figured it couldn't have been the same thing, because well, how could my ointment have cleared up butt strep and done it so quickly?

Apparently, it was butt strep, and my ointment only cleared up the rash, but didn't get rid of the virus. So now my sweet boy is on antibiotics for the next 10 days. You'd never have even known anything was wrong with him since he's been perfectly fine all this time. Kids are so strange some times.

Wow

On whatever Tuesday evenings I can, I go to evening PWOC (ladies Bible study). Every time the group finishes a book, we go out to dinner. Last night, was a dinner night. A few of us met at Jalapeños in town here and had a lovely time. Since Josh was still at work when it was time for me to leave, I brought my boys with me (that's Christine, a new chaplain on post, holding Finn by the way). Josh joined us shortly after we got there, and so we all had dinner at Jalapeños. And since Josh had come straight from work, he was in uniform throughout dinner (that's important for the rest of the story).

As we were finishing up our dinners, a older lady, who was also eating dinner at Jalapeños, stopped by our table, put down a billfold (that is what you call the little book thing that they bring your bill in, right?) on our table and said, "All this is paid for." Then she patted Josh on the arm and said, "Thank you for serving." She then walked away and out of the restaurant. Wow, right?

It was such a cool thing that she did, and also kind of humbling. At least I was somewhat humbled by it. Of course, at first Josh and I both had the same thought, wondering why this lady was leaving her check with us instead of on her table if it was all paid for. But when she thanked him for serving, that's when I realized what was actually going on.

So, to the kind lady who paid for our dinner last night, that was really cool of you (especially since Jalapenos is NOT a "cheap" restaurant, and we can rack up quite the bill there). Seriously though, thank you. You, and your gesture, will not be forgotten.