Brady Rocks the ABCs

I am SOOOO glad this playground was in such disrepair that Curt walked home to get the camera so we could ask management to fix stuff.  If not for that, i never would have gotten this (even if the quailty is a little pixl-ated) . . . Enjoy :)

Just Call Me the Next Prophet

So, almost 48 hours to the minute Aidan got his temp, Brady got his at 2AM on Tuesday night. He was 40.1C when we were getting the other two up for their next meds, so curt stripped him down, put wet cloths on him as we gave him meds for fever. Then of course, we just needed to put him back to bed as there isn't much more to do for him once he's calmed down, except wait for him to cool off. On wednesday morning i am finally with it enough to look at Toddler 411 to see it says after 4 days of fever you should bring a kid in. Gavin has now had 5 days. so I take him in to see our Dr. (who politely asks me to wait only 3 days in the future) who tells us that he thinks it's a virus as well (like the ER Dr. said), he thinks the seizure was probably only related to fever, nothing long term to worry about and What have we here?! a double ear infection! The funny thing is Gavin hadn't been giving any of the classic ear infection signs, so i hadn't even thought that was a possibility. he barely had a runny nose! Dr. Ihab thinks that the bacteria had taken advantage of a diminished immune system and set up shop in his incredibly clogged ears and that was why he still had a fever after so many days - the body still trying to fight things off. So after only 1 dose of antibiotics, his fever is down and he is approaching his former happy boy status.

Aidan is now fine, if not insanely jealous that his brothers get car rides with mom/dad to the store or dr. and brady spent 130 AM on in bed with us last night. I went to bed starting to feel sick and was up enough during the night to be able to track the illness as it settled in my skin, ears and throat. awesome. brady has spent the morning laying on me as we both have been in and out of fevers. the fever part has sucked, but it has been nice to slow down and chill out with him for a bit. i just wish we felt better!

The two funny parts of Brady's first day with illness were that 1) he asked several times to go to the Dr (since Gavin had "gotten" to go). and 2) around 330 AM last night when curt got up to check gavin to see if he needed fever meds again as he came back in Brady sits up in our bed and says "Monster!" (presumably to curt's shadow entering the room). I said "Brady, honey, there is no monster, it's ok." and he goes (in a scary monster voice) "I WANT CANDY! CANDY!". curt and i dissolved in giggles.

All in all, a crappy week. Send us your get well vibes . . . :)

Spooky Weekend

Our Three Soccer Players & their first pumpkins (G,A,B)

Happy Halloween! Well this weekend has been awfully spooky for a number of reasons .. . Friday morning we were all in the back yard enjoying the finally nice weather. Gavin had pushed their airplane around the corner and we figured was just playing quietly. After a few minutes Aidan says (as he looks down the side of the house) "Gavin? Gavin?". I get up to see him laying on the ground the way he usually does when he is driving his cars up and down in front of his face, only his head is sort of IN the bushes. so i walk over to him and realize his head is actually IN the bushes and he is not playing, something is wrong with him. He has his eyes closed and he is sort of moaning and barely moving. as i pull the airplane off of him and pull him to a sitting position, i can FEEL heat radiating off of him and he is FLOPPY. I realize he must have had another febrile seizure and pick him up as i yell to curt about what has happened. Of course, we have no idea just how long he was over there, even if it couldn't have been more than a few minutes. still scary and still makes me feel really bad about it, especially because of how he looked.

This was the best shot I could get - the boys were running around the house holding hands - it was ADORABLE(A, B, G)

We get him inside, strip him down, take his temp and sure enough he is 39.5C/103.1F. Literally, he had not shown ANY signs of fever or illness at all that day, or even in the preceding days, and he just had a seizure. He was still convulsing a little bit, but he had started to open his eyes as we began putting cool wet cloths on him and gave him motrin. we called the schellenberg's and ryan was over to take care of the other two within 10 minutes (thank goodness again) and off curt and i were to the ER. While we had been packing for the Er, gavin had fallen asleep on the couch - he just looked so little and sad sleeping like that. He was definitely feeling better by the time we got there even if he HATED the cool sponge bath they were giving him. We were distracting him by feeding him goldfish and raisins (snacks of champions) and by the time the dr. saw him he was pretty much himself again. He did take a decent nap that afternoon, but basically the dr. said he had a raw throat and he figured it was probably a virus and we just needed to treat the fever for the next 3-4 days.

Brady and Aidan color their first pumpkins

Saturday night was the halloween trick or treating around the compound, but we just dressed the boys in the track uni's they got for christmas last year (thanks for the costumes uncle chad and aunt erica!) and they hung out waiting for trick or treaters. it was very cute b/c some of our first were monsters and curt said at one point that "Monsters like CANDY" in a scary voice. Brady was the first to start this, but all three have gotten into it - they now say in a scary monster voice "CANDY! LIKE CANDY!". Even as we put the bowl together for trick or treaters Brady said "I like candy" i said, how do you know? you have never had candy and he said "wanna try it?" :) smart kid. They had their first candy - a fun size bag of M&Ms for each - it was a hit after dinner that night. Aidan was the only one brave enough to actually try to give kids candy in their bags, and then he would always bring me a piece and say "open it?" as he squished it in his hands. I think they now know what candy looks like. Before we could pretty much not worry about it since it didn't look like food, so they didn't know to lust after it. We are now in trouble. :)

The tub is almost to small for all three of them (sniff sniff) (B,G,A)

Anyway, so we continued to treat Gavin's fever day and night friday, saturday and sunday. Saturday night curt and i stayed up too late talking about our next plans after Doha (and when that would be for sure) and so when my alarm went off in the middle of the night to give gavin his meds, i frigging overdosed him on tylenol(i forgot that what he had gotten earlier was what i was giving him then. the bottles are now labeled more clearly thank you). THANK GOD FOR 24 HOUR POISON CONTROL NUMBERS. The woman told me she was pretty sure based on his size and what i had given him, he would need to drink WAY more than that to even come close to an OD. But of course she recommended i not give that to him again.

Sunday night, Aidan began to feel hot before bed, so we gave him fever meds too. Around midnight he began crying and when i went to get him he was HOT and he had vomited on himself. So curt cleaned up his bed, got new sheets, while i cleaned him up and tried to cool him down since he wasn't due for meds for another hour and a half. Then got up to give him meds at 130 AM and his brothers were not really sleeping. by 230 AM we had had intermittent bouts of crying from all three - with Aidan's being the saddest since we were not giving him a lot of water for fear of more puke, but also he was still SO HOT. And yes, fears of him having a seizure were always there. By 230, i decided to try to rock him in the rocking chair, hoping the quiet would help gavin and brady to go sleep. it didn't. finally somewhere between 330 and 4 am, we had had enough so we brought aidan into bed with us, where he proceeded to sleep like a ROCK until about 630 AM. when we woke up he was ON FIRE, so i took his temp - 40.2C/104.3F folks. So i put him in the tub to cool down, only we still don't have any cool water in our faucets (probably one of the things i despise most here - i HATE brushing my teeth with warm water) so it took a good ten minutes for it to cool down enough to actually help begin cooling him off. and of course, since he was so hot, it felt cold, so he CRIED the whole time.

Aidan found these "monster hands" under the kitchen sink - and loved chasing us with them!

By this point, curt and I are both FRIED. not to mention curt has one of his busiest weeks at work the whole fall semester and my work just being a game of catch-up every day. The good news is he did not have a seizure. the bad news is he and Gavin were still running fevers ALL DAY. so far, Brady has been able to stave off illness. I give him 48 hours from when Aidan got sick . . .

Bye Bye Binky

Let me start by saying that I had a pacifier until school age. I only used it at night and i don't remember it being that big of a deal that i 1) had it and 2) eventually got rid of it. I do remember it tasty dried out and funny one day - i'm guessing it was well worn by the time i got rid of it.

Anyway, it really doesn't bother me that our boys still use pacifiers at nap and bed time. they usually willingly give it up when we ask them to after a nap and in the morning. However . . . i AM sick of them waking up early from a nap when they realize they have dropped it/kicked it out of the crib and then CRYING and waking up their brothers and not going back to sleep themselves when i could REALLY USE THAT EXTRA HALF HOUR. I mean REALLY use it - to rest, finish cooking, work out, whatever. They do it in the 5-530 Am range too, but it's usually dark enough in their room that they will go back to sleep with us just giving them another one. So on Saturday when Aidan had woken up the second day in a row at 2:30PM and CRIED like he was being tortured i decided i had had it. I looked it up on the internet, found a site that looked like it wouldn't be too painful for us or the boys and we put it in action that night. Saturday I poked 7 holes in the end of every pacifier we have. gave it to the boys without saying anything and they had the "new", hole-y paci's for two days. Last night we went to step 2 - cut off the very end of the paci. Curt and I tried them out ourselves and there is a definite difference in what it feels like between even the hole-y ones and the snipped ones. We are supposed to proceed with cutting a little bit more off every day until 1) they don't ask for them at all and 2)there is no more nub to suck on. Wish us luck! :)

In truth, this does create some sadness for me - it means they are growing up and we are losing their baby and toddler time. Don't get me wrong, some days are longer and harder than others, but I really do just feel so fortunate to be their mother and to go through these experiences with them. There are times when we are playing, reading, etc that I take a mental picture/video of what is happening RIGHT THEN. Like those home movies in TV shows that somehow capture the just right moment without disturbing the scene or interaction. Their laugh, their wide-open smile, the way they put their hand on my leg, whatever and think "Aaah! This is so great!" I want to be able to remember those times, knowing that they too will fade away. I guess that's part of what this blog is for too. With the hope I can keep some of those little moments in my head long enough to pour them onto my keyboard so that in 3, 5, 10, 20 years we can all come back and remember those special moments. :)

THUMP!

The boys like their Bilibo's from the Busch's! (A,B,G)

We had our first escape. Though he didn't mean to. Not at all. At 5:46 AM this morning, the boys were chatting each other up and I figured it was because of lost pacifiers. The nasty secret is that if I go in, they will usually whine and cry and make an even bigger racket if it's barely light out. If curt goes in, he has some calming ability to make them settle down and shut up for the next 45 minutes so we can sleep in a little bit . . . I said (more like grumbled) to Curt, "Do you think if I go in and give them pacifiers they will shut up?" and Curt said "no." So I laid there and tried to mentally block out their chatter.

THUMP! and a huge scared and a little injured cry. Curt and I BOLT out of bed to find Brady, laying on the floor with his feet up on the side of Gavin's crib with his puppy, froggy, monkey and pacifier on the floor. Yes, he apparently was going for the pacifier and he fell out of his crib. Since all of their matresses have been at the lowest level since last summer, we don't really have anywhere to go if they decide to do this again. The good news is he was telling us all about it all day. "Brady fell out of bed. Scared. Getting paci." and so on. :) Hopefully he is enough of a cautionary tale for himself and his brothers that he will chill on getting pacifiers when they drop out of the crib. We did find out that the compound will provide twin beds if you request them, however curt and I would REALLY like to leave them in cribs as long as we can. It makes life much easier (or at least we assume it does). I may spread some blankets on the floor before bed tonight, or at least a few large pillows in case Brady tries this stunt again.

No, Gavin is NOT resting his knees on the floor, he is hanging from the counter. Tonight I saw him try to pull himself up like this. Crazy.

In other news, there isn't much other news! We did take the boys in for what I thought were 2YO immunizations, only to find out there were no necessary immunizations. As of 3 weeks past their 2nd birthday the boys measure up as follows:

Aidan is all tuckered out after the 545 AM wakeup call

Aidan:

head circumference - 19.48 inches

height - 33.46 inches

weight - 26.01 lbs

Brady and puppy, getting their groove on - check out Puppy's shoes :)

Brady:

head circumference - 19.68 inches

height - 34.64 inches

weight - 29.54 lbs

The day we sold all three highchairs - can you BELIEVE how big Gavin is in it?!??!?! He wanted one last goodbye I guess :)

Gavin:

head circumference - 19.68 inches

height - 34.84 inches

weight - 32.85 lbs

As you can see, we still have Small, Medium and Large. It's funny because Aidan seems to be the one who initiates roughhousing (pushing, rolling around on his brothers, etc) and he is the FIRST to decide he is unhappy as the other two get into the game. Brady isn't as good about listening when his brother (or more often, WE) tells him that he is now unhappy with the game. Gavin will usually bounce off somewhere else, but it seems to egg Brady on hearing his brother whine. Which Aidan does very well. This of course is concerning, but sometimes you can't help but laugh since Aidan usually initiates it to begin with. Today after we came back from the pool, I had changed Gavin back into his regular diaper and turn around as I hear Aidan whining "Brady! Brady!" to see that Brady has laid on top of Aidan and is giggling his head off. He didn't push him that I could tell, he just laid on top of him, but then wouldn't get off. This seems like it will be a delicate line for us to follow - if one starts it, how far do you let another brother finish it?

Lazy weekend morning - time to jump on Mom! (B,A)

At the pool today we had 4 adults for the 3 boys and it was completely necessary. Aidan has taken to trying to jump in even if you aren't ready for him, and at least once he nearly jumped in NO WHERE NEAR us. not cool. Gavin on the other hand is a VERY good listener. He was jumping off the side to me and we got into quite the routine of me counting to 3 and him jumping. There were several times when Aidan would just walk in front if Gavin and jump into my arms, ignoring his adult swimming buddy. Gavin would wait patiently until I would count for him and was clearyl ready. Smart kid. He then began the swan dive he usually saves for our bed where he basically puts his arms out to the side and falls flat on his face. It was basically a belly flop and made him giggle uncontrollably the entire time. It was adorable. We must have had him doing that for at least 15 minutes straight. I definitely got my shoulder workout in . . . Brady loves the pool but is still a bit more cautious than his brothers, which works for me. Aidan seems like he might be our first swimmer - he will lay back if he is feeling just right with his head and bottom supported, he kicks like a natural and (as i mentioned above) is so excited to jump in that he doesn't always pay attention that you aren't quite ready for him. Good thing he has nearly mastered blowing out and hardly ever takes on water.

Uncle Pete is . . . AWESOME!

Brady was Uncle Pete's SHADOW while he was here.

We just completed Ramadan 2010 (woohoo! no one died from crazy drivers just before sunset!!!) and a lovely Eid break with my brother coming for 5 days before he made his way on to Israel to see a friend. The boys absolutely LOVED Pete. Brady and Aidan were basically his shadow for 5 days. "Uncle Pete go upstayas. Go upstayas?" and Brady would go upstairs where he would proceed to open and shut Pete's door to his bedroom, lie on the bed next to him as he was listening to arabic/hebrew, jump on him, etc. Aidan also got into the fun until we basically had to ask Pete to come into their bedroom before bed so we could wrangle them all into cribs.

Aidan and Gavin thought he was pretty rad too.

The day Pete was leaving the boys were finishing lunch as i was going to take him to the

airport. Brady says to me "Uncle Pete sit there" and I told him that Uncle pete had to go home and I was taking him to the airport then. Brady stuck out his sweet little bottom lip and his eyes got REALLY big and he says "Uncle Pete go airport? go airport?" i asked if he wanted to go to the airport and he shakes his head yes and immediately begins calling to "get down". so the entire family took Pete to the airport, even though Brady and Gavin fell asleep in their car seats on the way there, so they never got (had?) to say goodbye. it was very cute. Uncle Pete introduced them to cashews (we still get calls for cashews for snacks),peanut m&ms (only once, he didn't have them around later) and dragon fruit (bright purple fruit that doesn't taste like much of anything but MAN does it give good purple mustaches!). Basically they would eat or do anything Uncle Pete did or encouraged them to do. So sweet.

This was the entire family taking Uncle Pete to the airport. Brady and Gavin fell asleep on the way there and Aidan is trying to wake them up by holding hands! :)

Now that he is gone, his guest room is like when hotels put signs up like "Elvis stayed here" - we walk by in the morning to go downstairs and inevitably we hear "Uncle Pete sleep there". Yes, Uncle Pete slept there honey. :) We also have a ladder up to the top of our house which Pete climbed up to help try and find our ant invasion (literally hundreds coming through the ceiling in the bathroom and dying all over the floor. yuk). Since Pete left, Brady pointed out that "Uncle Pete go up there" and all three boys have tried hard enough to climb the ladder that we pushed the bottom rungs up (it's like a sturdy fire escape ladder in this respect) so they can't climb it/fall from it. I'm guessing this just means we will soon have crib escape artists. Right now they try to climb in the crib at night (well, really just Gavin because he wants to go to sleep, but Brady tried to climb in Gavin's crib tonight, and he nearly got his chest over the railing too!)

Aidan has such a purposeful walk when he wants to. Playing on the green spine in EC.

Curt and I had Tess and Arianna come in for a day so we could go to the desert with Pete (yes, it's still over 100 degrees F here during the day), see the local sinkhole and hit up an old fort we hand't seen on the north western side of the country. We had a great time playing tourguides while he was here, hopefully he had fun too. :)

Brady has discovered all the noise mom's heels make. This seems to be his favorite pair. And they make him feel pretty. :)

Gavin REALLY likes homemade popsicles.

Aidan likes to tuck himself into our broken cushion cover while Brady and Gavin look on.

Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-dum play in the pool (A & B). This an old dog pool given to us from someone whose dog was afraid of it. Lucky us! :)

The boys also got some new trucks from some friends here for their belated birthday. A group of folks (with a nice shipping benefit with their jobs!) pooled resources and got these AWESOME Tonka trucks shipped here for the boys. They could hardly believe their good fortune (neither could we - thank you guys!). :) And yes, they are such good toys that at least one had to be taken from them the first day due to fighting over what the other brother had. THAT'S how you know it was a good one! :)

Birthday Party Pics!

The AWESOME Cake our friend Jen made for the boys - cake and new cars to play with - this RULES!

Aidan found a new way to use the basketball hoop from Grandma and Grandpa V!

This birthday was much easier on Brady than his first one - no tears! :)

Brady helps Aidan get ready for the party

Gavin makes sure to get every. last. bit. of. icing. off.