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.

Happy Birthday to You!

Brady, Aidan & Gavin play in their new house from mom & dad

Aidan, Brady and Gavin are turning two today! It is amazing to think that just two short years ago, i was enormous and my water broke sending curt and i on the ride of our lives! Recently we took the boys to the park after dinner (it was moderately cooler) and I said to him "Just think, a year ago the boys couldn't WALK! Now we are trying to make sure Gavin doesn't go home with someone else!" The leaps and bounds by which these boys have grown is always startling and amazing to me.

Who the boys are today:

Aidan - what? Are my shoes on the wrong feet or something?

Aidan: Our oldest son. You are a dare devil, you are a momma's boy in the best sense of the word, you take forever to eat, but you eat pretty much anything all the time, you love having your back gently tickled when you wake up (as well as your tummy tickled before you go to bed!), you LOVE your rabbits and take them nearly everywhere we will let you, and you seem to have a deep seated need to be carrying multiple things with you all the time. I love your sweet giggles and your funny hats, how much you love to stick stickers anywhere you can and that your first action with a marker was to sit and draw on yourself, the way you ask us to wipe your hands while you are eating and how much you love to accessorize with hats, shoes, and sunglasses.

Brady gets ready for the party!

Brady: Our middle child. You are probably the most sensitive to how we respond to you. You are mischievous in the best sense of the word, you are funny, you are the family narrator and you are getting better at that every day, you KNOW that you are funny and you are becoming more confident every day as you become a little boy. I love your hair that sticks up all the time, regardless of how long or short it is, how you instigate play with me ("Mommy fall down" as you push me so you can crawl on top of me for snuggles), how you ask about all of the family members and friends (and their pets) whom you remember so that you can get a run down on their day because you love them, how you laugh that guttural, adorable laugh, even if you are just making yourself laugh, and how you freely give your brothers kisses just for fun.

Gavin can't BELIEVE Elmo came to visit him on his birthday!

Gavin: Our youngest son. You are one of the strongest kids i have ever seen. You are passionate and energetic, you love to dance and listen to all types of music, you love to figure out how things work, and you play by yourself very well (sometimes too well - we want to play with you!), you are loving and snugly and have the most outrageous laugh! I love that I can see your back muscles, that you love books as much as I do, that you love tickles and kisses and even when your passion takes over, I love that you are passionate. I love how much you love animals, and your push and ride airplane (with spinning propeller), and Elmo (or ernie, bert, oscar, etc whom you have mastered their names).

For all three of these boys I am at once excited and petrified of when they will eventually go to school or day care. What if other kids are mean to them? or they don't feel included (even by their brothers one day)? or school is hard for them? or a girl (or boy) they like doesn't want to be their friend? what if (ok, so i probably need to say "when") they grow up and don't "need" mom and dad any more? What if they don't live long enough to fulfill my hopes for them - that they are able to live a long and fulfilling life as adults doing whatever will make them most at peace and happy?

On your birthday, mom and dad wish you all the joy you bring us and more. Happy 2nd Birthday Aidan, Brady and Gavin!

Ole!

Aidan, Brady and Gavin LOVE homemade popsicles!!!

Today two of our RHDs held a "fiesta" dinner at their apartment. After we ate our dinner, we took the boys over to hang out. I had promised I would bring them with mustaches (completely non-PC - we were told to bring or wear anything "Mexican", hence the mustaches) :) but I had forgotten to use eyeliner on them. Luckily, they had some water based markers i used to draw on Brady first. He looked HILARIOUS and adorable and as soon as I brought him out of the bathroom, he was a huge hit. :) It of course made him a bit shy for a bit, but eventually he and Aidan and Gavin were pointing at their smudged mustache faces and saying "mustache" very proudly. i'm sure in the US this would be grounds for a call from child services. :) And no, they did NOT come off that night, OR the next day. oops . . .

Brady, not so sure about the mustache, Gavin getting his done . . .

At one point in the evening, Gavin climbed up on a chair vacated by someone that happened to be RIGHT in front of the plate of brownies - RIGHT at EYE LEVEL. His eyes got really big as he then began to reach for the plate. Someone saw him and pointed out that he picked the right chair to sneak into and everyone started laughing because he looked so cute (he did have the more Hitler-esque mustache). He immediately stopped and thought people were laughing AT him and started BAWLING. Poor kid. It was only a few minutes of snuggles in the bedroom to get him to stop crying.

NOW, Gavin is into it . . .

Aidan, loved the sombrero

I met a mother of triplets (2B,1G) in the mall the other day. Hers are 5 months old and she is from New Zealand. It's kinda fun to have some "useful" info, but just in talking with her it amazed me how much I had forgotten that I thought was burned into memory forever (feedings, sleep schedules at that age, etc). the other great thing is we can get rid of some of the bigger items that the boys are outgrowing - high chairs, a walker they now fight over as they climb into it, etc) sweet . . .

We had a consult from our dear friends the Carroll's the other night on how we can stop going right up to the edge when Brady pushes our buttons. We have begun trying some of the suggested options for when he decides he wants to hit, or throw or ram his motorcycle into a piece of furniture, etc. Today was a great one where I gave him the options of driving his motorcycle around the table, or into the TV area and instead of ramming the furniture, he then tried to run over Ariana. Rather than naughty mat or talking to him about why what he did wasn't nice or yelling and losing it, i just quietly picked him up from the motorcycle, put the motorcycle on the table and then ignored him. He stood there stunned for a few minutes and looked a little sad. He then walked over to the furniture he had been ramming, opened the door and asked to play with one of the toys (and said PLEASE!). he got the toy, i wasn't dragged into the downward spiral with him and there was no meltdown. it was CRAZY. and soooo good.

Gavin has been awfully snuggly lately - he wouldn't let go for almost 10 minutes before work in this picture

In other news, it is Ramadan again. Shorter work day, really frigging hot and unfortunately since it is earlier every year, the sun doesn't set until nearly the boys' bedtime. which means restaurants don't begin serving until the sun sets. which means until Ramadan is over, no going out to eat as a family. You have NO IDEA how annoying this is when we eat out once a week just to have something to DO in this nasty weather (we go and play on the indoor playgrounds before dinner at the different restaurants and can still get home in time for bed).

Moving Day - our three little convicts begging to get out of the backyard (A, B, G)

After moving out of our apartment the other day we had to go back over and make sure we had looked under all the furniture, taken off the furniture corner pads, etc. Curt realized that Gavin had put ALL of the animal magnets from the "fridge farm" under the old fridge, so we dug all of them out and brought them to the new place. The next night during bath time, Curt says "Guess who put half the animals under the fridge again?" of course, I said "Gavin, urrgh." Curt goes, "I guess he wants them to be free-range." I nearly died laughing.