Playing at the park

Today we took the boys to the "blue park." They call it the blue park because the slides are blue :) They have a lot of fun feeding the ducks.

Always advertising for Farmers Insurance Group:)

I just had to post this picture because Harrison's expression in the background cracks me up. And William's expression is pretty funny too.

What did you give up?

Scott and I were having a conversation about Lent last night.

Scott: "What did you give up?"
Me: "Alcohol. I know it's an easy one but I didn't really think of one. How about you?"
Scott: "yelling (with a smile on his face)." {if you are a parent of two toddler boys, you know why this is impossible!}
Me: "Oh that's a good one. I could probably do that too." Thinking about it further... "well besides today." Thinking even further..."well and yesterday. But the two days before that I was sick so I didn't really talk so that works. And the two days before that, the boys were sick so I didn't yell at them then."
Scott: "yeah, I don't think you can use that one."
Me: "You really think you can give up yelling for 40 days? One little slip and you are done. Pick something else. How about chocolate? I'm not telling you to give up sweets, just chocolate."
Scott: "yeah that's good." Thinking further..."but I can still have some in certain things right?" :)

Yeah we are no good at this.

Toddler Talk

We are on the up and up. We are all feeling good! Well Scott thinks he may be coming down with it but it hasn't hit him yet. I think he is just scared. I chloroxed and disinfected the whole house today. We have professional cleaners coming tomorrow to clean, deodorize and sanitize our furniture. He told me he could get the smell out. Thank goodness because nothing was working for me. It is nice outside so we went out to play for a while. It is so hard to keep William from running.

As he runs down the hill in our front yard, he screams:
William: "It's William to the rescue!!!"
Me: "William, stop running. You cannot run in your casts!"
William: "But I want to go to the rescue Mom!"

And you can't keep a kid down. I think I posted in my last post that I was letting William wear diapers because I was scared of him getting pee in his casts and it smelling. Well I knew that wasn't smart of me because he is trained and if he has an accident, so be it. He didn't have any accidents yesterday thank goodness so he was just taking advantage of me by asking to wear diapers :) And this is a shot of him I got today while playing in the front yard. Yes I said FRONT yard. The kid cracks me up. I took this picture with my phone as I laughed and hoped nobody was looking out a window or about to drive by. I guess he was too busy to stop and go inside!!!

Feeling overwhelmed

Wow, this has been a very hard week. First I worked myself up stressing over William getting casts that I gave myself a migraine. A migraine that lasted almost 3 days. William has been doing really well with his casts. They have become weapons in our house. Those things are dangerous. Potty training in casts is not that easy. William was completely potty trained besides wearing a pull up at night. Now, not so much. He had an accident and got pee on his cast the first day so I let him wear a pull up. Now all down hill from there. He wants to wear his brother's diapers and he is refusing to go on the potty. I feel at a loss.

Second day in the casts and he gets the worst stomach flu ever. And 3 year olds do not understand to run to the bathroom when they get sick. Instead Mom gets to clean up the mess all over the house while trying to comfort the sick. Luckily it was just a 24 hour bug. But if anyone knows how to get the vomit smell out of a couch, PLEASE let me know. I have cleaned it over and over again. After cleaning so much, I have febreezed and also tried baking soda overnight and nothing is getting the smell out. Harrison started throwing up the following day but luckily he didn't get down. He threw up a couple times playing and just kept going and that was that. No more sickness for him.

Now as for me, I caught the bug Saturday morning. And I don't know if I am a bigger baby than my kids or if I got hit the hardest because I honestly couldn't move. I don't remember being this sick. Every fiber of my being hurt and ached. I lost 6 lbs in one day! Talk about a whole body cleanse. Yuck and no fun at all. Sunday I started feeling better but was extremely exhausted and got worn out very easy. I thought I was feeling 100% last night but this morning I wake up and feel nauseous all over again. I have chest pains and anxiety. I just feel like I can't catch a break right now.

Here are some pictures from Friday and last night.
Feeling lazy (we watched Madagascar and took a nap together). The boys said they were tired so they pretended to fall asleep on Belle's bed.

I hope everyone else has a great week and hopefully we are all on the mend although Scott just texted that he is not well-oh no!

And wouldn't you know it?

Guess who caught the worst case of the flu? Yep the kid with trash bags wrapped around his casts now. It has been a very rough day!!!!!

The start to a long process

Update: Last night was a little tough. We have William sleeping in his bed now but he still likes to sneak in our bed at night. Well he wasn't so sneaky last night. He wiped out hard 3 times. So we just let him sleep with us instead of getting hurt. He wiped out again this morning. I guess this is the time I wish we had carpet because he slides everywhere. He is complaining his feet hurt but he is doing rather well. We do need to go buy some basketball shorts or something because his pajamas won't go over his casts. On a good note, Harry slept through the night. He woke up the last 3 nights for about 2.5 hours and that has been tough. I am still suffering a horrible migraine. I really need to take a shot for it but can't till Scott gets home. Original post:

Yesterday William had his fitting for his leg braces. He chose blue straps and he could chose two characters for each leg brace. But he was stuck on Thomas on both of them. For the fitting, they take a mold of his legs in the cast but then cut it off. So tonight when he got his casts on, he kept telling them to cut them off.

I got myself worked up today stressing over this so I have had a horrible migraine all day.

William chose blue casts. He cried most of the time they put them on. It took two people to put them on. He had to have his feet in the most stretched position and then casted. Basically his toes are pointing up now. He is in some pain but is managing. He keeps telling me to take his "cool boots off because they are too big." The good thing is that they aren't as big as we thought they were going to be. They only go half way up his leg so I hope his braces are like this too. He has to either walk on his heels or can walk flat footed IF he can teach himself to walk in a squatting position. He doesn't have a lot of balance but he is getting used to them. He is not allowed to run or jump in these casts because they can break if he does so that part is going to be hard. Wish us luck!

Valentine's Day

It was a nice Valentine's around here. Scott and I went out on a lunch date and saw the movie, Valentine's Day on Saturday. I don't remember the last time I saw a movie the opening weekend! Scott and I looked at each other on the way home and said, "it was weird spending the day together alone. When is the last time we did that?" We have never had a day date without the boys. It was a nice change. Then we came home and I spent time with my other little Valentines. We made Valentine Cupcakes and Brownies together.

There is a little problem with having Christmas, birthdays and Valentine's day so close. This morning William woke up and said, "where are my new presents today?" William got a new Thomas the Train while Harrison got a dump truck and an Elmo book. The boys picked out presents for me. Harry got me the little stuffed elephant and William got me Toy Story candy. After two minutes Harry asked me to open up the elephant so he could have him:) And ten minutes later William asked me if he could have my Toy Story candy-ha. The boys stayed home with Scott to watch the first NASCAR race of the season. How could you miss that, right? I headed off to church where I volunteered to be the host of Fellowship time. I purposely picked Valentine's Day :) My table looked like Valentine's threw up in there ha. I had pink and red table clothes with large heart decorations and "LOVE" signs. And a few pink balloons. I brought in bagels and cream cheese, crackers, nuts and then the more important pink cupcakes with heart confetti, brownies with red chocolate and chocolate covered strawberries. Yummy. It was a beautiful day yesterday- about 85 degrees. I love this weather. Hope everyone had a wonderful weekend.

Pomegranates in Dark Chocolate

Who knew four little pieces could turn out like this?

Poor William

Ugh. I will start on a lighter note. Harrison went back to the doctor Tuesday and his ear infection isn't gone. He was started on a new antibiotic that he hasn't been on before so hopefully this will knock it out. We really don't want to put tubes back in so our fingers are crossed. The news gets worse. Today we went to a pediatric orthopedic surgeon for William. I blogged earlier that he is a tippy toe walker. His achilles tendons are short/tight and that is why he does that. It is not out of habit rather than a need to. So we have tried everything on our end from stretches, exercises and massages. As time progressed, he has only gotten worse. He walks on his tippy toes almost 100% of the time including standing or with shoes on. SOOOO, he is NOT going to have a fun upcoming 18 weeks. He will spend 6 weeks in hard casts that go up to his knees. She told me the worst part is that he won't be able to run. To me, the worst part is going to be trying to clean the kid. After that, he will be in leg braces for 6 weeks 24 hours a day (he gets fitted for those Tuesday morning). Then the following 6 weeks he can take the leg braces off to sleep if they see correction. He has to get fitted for the braces first so they will be ready before the casts come off. So this whole process should start in about 2 weeks. We are hoping that it won't interfere too much with the summer activities. I feel so sorry for him. I don't really see this as the end to his medical problems as he has really bad gastrointestinal problems. I see a lot of complaining in my future :( And I don't blame him. Poor guy!

Good book?

Or could it be that he woke up at 5:30am and decided against a nap? Well at-least he was in HIS bed and asleep by 8pm (his bedtime).

Funny story

The other day I had a good friend watch the boys as I went to my neurology appointment. Driving there William was so excited saying how much he loved Miss Shawn's house (although I doubt he remembers being there prior since it had been a while). But when we got there he was crying that he didn't want to go in. It didn't take long after they saw all the toys that they didn't care about me anymore. In fact, when I picked them up William pushed me towards the door telling me to go back to the doctor.

Here is the funny part of the story. Shawn gave William and Harrison a very large CAT tractor since her boys had outgrown playing with it. It is really cool, motorized and talks, etc. So Shawn hands the tractor to William and says, "Here you go William. Here is a tractor for you." And William's reply...

William: "No Miss Shawn, that is NOT a tractor. That is an excavator!"

Her mouth dropped and asked, "how does he know what an excavator is?"
Well William loves his dirt diggers, tractors, etc. He knows everything there is to know about them and I learn new things everyday. So if it's not a tractor, he will let you know what it is (backhoe loader, excavator, bulldozer, forklift truck,etc).

Toddler Talk

On the way to the gym this morning:

William: "Mommy, I have the snipples."
Me: "William, it's the sniFFles."
William: "No, it's the sniPPles!."
This goes on back and forth for a little bit. Then
Harrison: "No the nickles."

Can't argue with toddlers

Catching up-Revised :)

Wow, I've been bad about posting lately and by the sounds of the fight the boys are in, this one won't be long either. This weekend was pretty uneventful. I had a horrible migraine. They are back in full swing lately-ugh. 3 vicodin wouldn't get rid of it so I had to give myself a shot. It's a lose/win situation with those. I hate giving them to myself because within 10 seconds of injecting myself, I feel worse. I feel like a ton of bricks basically paralyzed. BUT I have learned to only give it to myself if Scott is around and if I can give it to myself in bed. So after a few hours of sleeping, it's gone! So it's worth it I guess. I had an appt with my neurologist today. He said the more I take them, the less side affects I will feel. It doesn't help that I somehow have a muscle issue on my head. Who knew that is even possible? So that is where a lot of my recent migraines are stemming.

I don't think Harrison's antibiotics worked because he has been grouchy lately. He goes back to the doctor tomorrow. He is starting to talk a lot more now. He likes to repeat his big bubba. Scott and I were talking last night saying that Harry needs to catch up to Will. Last year at my dad's birthday we sent him videos of William singing happy birthday and the ABCs and he knew every word. This year I would be lucky if I just said each word and Harry repeated me :) He is catching on fast though. He is funny and a mimic. Harrison has also become a big daddy's boy. If daddy is around, he will have nothing to do with me. It makes me sad at times but that is ok because I get to cuddle with him throughout the day (that is before Scott gets home).

Since William skipped his terrible twos, he is trying to make up for it in his 3's. I just have to remember this is the stage where he has to do EVERYTHING himself with no help at all. So I just have to plan for things to take a little bit longer if we go somewhere. He likes to help. He is still a mamma's boy for sure.

Harrison has been doing really well without his pacifier. We did the same thing to his paci as we did to Williams. The only difference is that this year Harry has someone telling him that Mommy and Daddy broke his pacifier. William has been doing ok with sleeping in his own room. Some nights are easier than others to put him to bed. On average it takes about two hours and 15 times to put him back in his room. He comes up with every excuse in the book. We do, however, wake up with him in our bed around 4am. At-least we are making progress. He is doing really well with his potty training. He only wears a pull up at night. And last night he even woke up at mid-night to go to the bathroom and then right back to his room! William has a doctor's appt Thursday for his feet. I will update on that later.

I've been bad on pictures lately. In case you need a fix, here are the boys eating lunch at their favorite table.