Good Times

We have had a busy couple of weeks. I think these next couple of pictures were from MLK Day. I cannot even remember what we did that day, but I guess we did some playing outside! Anyone else have major mommy brain??? I can't remember anything!

 

Friday night, Joel and I got a date night! Joel's birthday was the 28th, so we celebrated a few days early. He had never been to Firebird's, so that is where he wanted to go. I had never been there for dinner, but it was really good!

Saturday, we had a little bit of shopping to do at the outlets and then decided to go to the Irondale Cafe for lunch and to see the trains. I have been wanting to take the boys for a while and it was such a hit! We probably saw 10 trains go by in the hour we were there. We ate lunch and watched the trains out the window the whole time, and they have this really nice porch area built by the train tracks and I think the boys could have stayed there all day! I wish we had gone before now!

Hudson was mad when we had to leave so I told him that we could come back anytime. He then said that we would be coming back after naptime. Ha! He LOVED it. And, Harrison loved it too! We will definitely be going back.

Saturday night, I got to have a fun night out with friends! The girls in our Sunday school class had a Favorite Things party. We each brought five of our favorite things, and then got to go home with five different favorite things! It was such a good night out. This is only half the group. I think we had around 30 people there! Love these girls...

 

Sunday night was circus night! I think we crammed a bit too much into one weekend, but we were all looking so forward to it! This was Hudson's 3rd circus and I thought this year was the best yet. It never disappoints! We left Harrison behind, but I can't wait to take him next year. I know he will love it just as much as Hudson did!

Hudson literally ate a whole tub of popcorn and a huge sprite. He never left his chair though--no bathroom trips, no fidgeting, nothing. He is the perfect spectator and is so fun to take to these things! The next morning, Hudson came downstairs and this was our conversation:

Hudson: "Mom, I have a tummy ache. I ate way too much popcorn."
Me: "I'm not surprised, buddy. You did eat a lot."
Hudson, lifting up his shirt: "Look at my fat tummy, Mom. I need to start running again."
Me: Dying on the floor laughing! He's heard Joel say that way too many times!

It was a fun night out though!

The "Cavin"

We finally made it up to the cabin this past weekend (or as Hudson likes to call it, the "cavin"). The boys and I had planned to stay until today, but we had to come back yesterday due to some plumbing issues at the cabin. It ended up being a quick trip because we got there late Friday night and left around 10 am yesterday, but it was still so nice to get away. My parents are always so nice to let us just relax as much as we can when we go up there. They are so willing to help with the boys and Mom would not let me cook at all so it was nice being fed too! :)

 

The weather this weekend was absolutely perfect! I haven't been able to say that in a while! We tried our best to spend every second outside. Saturday morning started bright and early. Hudson was so excited to get to play at the cabin that he was up at the crack and ready to go outside to ride the big and little gators. Then, we headed to a nearby state park and saw a couple of beautiful waterfalls!

 

 

 

 

It was a short hike to the bottom of one of them so we decided to venture down there, boys in tow. We had hardly started before Harrison flicked his shoe off and it went over the railing and about two feet from the drop off. Oh and I have to mention that the area that it went was covered in snow and ice. We had decided to just leave it and not take our chances in getting it, but next thing we knew, Joel was over the rail going near the ledge to get it. I could not watch. But, he made it. Superdad!  

 

 

This picture below looks like it should be a postcard or something!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We headed back to the cabin for lunch and then ventured outside again. I thought we were just going to ride the gator down to the creek, but it ended up being another full blown hike to see yet another waterfall. Yep, that made 3 in the day! I married quite the outdoorsman and having two boys, I'm just gonna have to get used to this! Even the tandom pee break that ensued along the way. No picture of that one. :) Hudson thought that was just the coolest thing in the world.

 



 

 

 

Monkey see, monkey do. Harrison threw a fit because Hudson had gotten on this fallen tree trunk, so we had to put Harrison up there too! He loved it!

 

After that adventure, it was nap time for the boys, and I got to sit in the sun and read. It was fabulous.

 

Now, we are at home today celebrating MLK Day. We've had a good day so far! Loving this great weather we are having!

Snow!

Yay for some snow! At least is was something different from the rain that we have been getting every.single.day.

Harrison's first snow experience! He wasn't so sure. When I gave him a snowball though, he sure did know how to use it!

 

Hudson had his first "taste" of snow too--literally! He kept eating mouth fulls! Said it tasted like ice cream!  

I had this grand idea to go sliding down our hill on a pan. Epic fail. It did not work at all. I needed a cookie sheet (I have no idea why I do not have a cookie sheet). Maybe we'll be better prepared next time.

 

 

And my personal favorite...

 

 

Yep, I got nailed!

 

Now I'm ready to see some SUN!

More Ear Issues

Well, poor Harrison has been put through the ringer the past two days. He has had constant drainage from his ear for the past 6 weeks. It would clear up for about 3 days at a time and then just come right back. We found out last Monday that he was growing staph in his ear (which is not uncommon and explains why other antibiotics and drops were not working). He was put on the antibiotic that will kill the staph, however, 7 days later, his ear was still draining. Yesterday, he woke up with a fever and the drainage was worse. So, it was back to the pediatrician yesterday morning. I love our pediatrician. Our appointment with him was at 10:15 and he was able to get us in to see the ENT at 1 that afternoon. That is absolutely unheard of if you have ever been to the ENT at Children's South. If you want to get in immediately, you have to get your pediatrician to call and even then, it is usually a week or so later. Never the same day. Had I called it would have been a month! Poor Harrison needed to get in yesterday.

The ENT gave us three options: admit him to the hospital and give him IV's to kill the staph (which would be torture for Harrison and also very expensive to have to stay at the hospital), invasive surgery which involved putting an incision behind his ear and I swear he said drilling a hole in his eardrum to get it all out (and then sewing it back up), or doing a vacuum of his ear and putting in a new tube with antibiotics in it and taking out his adeniods. He recommended option 3 for now and said he could squeeze us in this morning. Again, I never thought in a million years that this would all happen so fast, but it did. Unfortunately, Joel had to be out of town on a day trip today for work, but having been through this 3 other times, I felt like I could handle it and if anything happened, he would be back within a couple of hours. And, I'm thankful for my mom that came to our house at 6:30 this morning to tend to Hudson and get him to school.

As I'm driving to Children's South this morning at the crack of dawn, the nurse called and said our ENT was sick with the flu. First of all, the FLU?!?? Geez, exposed again. She said we could reschedule or just let a different doctor do it. We were already on the way so I just told them to have another doctor do it. Of course, changing doctors added a whole heap of time to the procedure--why do they have so much paperwork??? Then, Harrison, who is already running a fever and is just a pitiful little baby that can't have anything to eat or drink, starts throwing up in the waiting room. I'm sure all those people around us were freaking out. One really nice mother went and got me some paper towels and helped me clean it up. I promised her that he was not viral at all (at least I hoped he wasn't!). Then, they had the wrong ear written down for the surgery so it took a while to get that corrected because of course they couldn't take my word for it. It had to be checked by 10 different people. And because Harrison was congested and had a fever, we saw 4 members of the anesthesiology team. He was cleared thankfully (with a warning that he may have to be taken by ambulance downtown to Children's if his oxygen dropped--scary!).

The procedure was quick as usual though and he was back in my arms in no time at all. He has been asleep ever since. Poor buddy. I really hope that this does the trick! I'm ready for him to be well! This is a sweet picture of the boys laying in bed watching cartoons, but unfortunately, this is not reality for Harrison--he won't sit still for anything so I know he was not feeling good! And yes, we still wear Christmas pajams around here.

Lately in Iphone Pics

Well, it's January. I haven't gotten out the big camera once since the holidays ended and I definitely have not had the urge to blog, but hopefully I got the break I needed! I have been needing to get the pictures off my phone anyway, so I'll just update with those this week.

 

 First up, this big boy got his first haircut on Friday! I had not planned to go alone because I knew I would need all hands on deck, but he needed it cut and Friday was the only time I had to do it. Obviously, there are no pictures of the actual haircut. That would be because I had to hold him in a head lock the whole time while he kicked and screamed. Between that and Hudson wanting to get all in the middle of the hair cut as well, I had worked up a good sweat by the time we got out of there. I remember Hudson's first hair cut so well--he was around 15 or 16 months as well and he just sat there in the chair by himself and let them cut whereever they needed to. I took tons of pictures of the monumentous event. How different these boys' personalities are! Oh how cute Harrison looks though. And, he suddenly looks more like a big boy! It just might be a while before we go back! :)

 

 

After the hair cut, I decided we needed to all go let out some energy. It had stopped raining and the sun was peeking through, so I thought we would go try out our new zoo membership. I have a feeling we will be using this a ton, so thank you Migi and Pops! It was a bit of a bummer trip this time though. None of the animals were out. We did ride the train though and finally got to see one elephant. This made our day because the elephant was performing. He was playing in the mud and since we were the only ones on the train, the conductor stopped for about 10 minutes and let us watch him play! The boys just loved it! Unfortunately, as we were on the train, the rain came back and we got soaked trying to get back to the car. Oh well!

Saturday we had a birthday party at McWane. It was Harrison's first time to really experience McWane and he LOVED it! He wore himself out (so much so that lunch out afterwards ended up being the biggest restaurant disaster EVER--never taking them out again)!

 

Hudson always has to find the costume to put on...

 

 

 

I could not get Harrison away from Clifford the dog!

 

How in the world does he get out of his shirt in the carseat?!?

 

 

Here are some more Iphone pics from the past few weeks.

 

Being silly--what does it take to get a normal picture these days?!?!

The picture below happens to represent one of our parenting failures. He is waving his AUBURN shaker yelling, "Roll Tide Roll." We do NOT say those words in this house. I doubt he will be saying it again anytime soon after Joel and I got done with him! :) Too many Bama fans around this past week!

 

 

A little green with my orange and blue--too bad Notre Dame didn't show up!

 

NOOOO!!!!!!

Joel and Clint took the boys to the monster truck show last Saturday. I'm not sure who loved it more, the kids or their daddies! I got to hear all about Grave Digger, Batman, and Scooby Doo monster trucks. Oh and the $15 monster mug that Joel bought (who spends that much on drinks?!??). They had a blast though and I'm glad they got to have some daddy/son time! This was the only decent picture I got--figures with men!

 

 

If you have never done colored baths, you should do it! So much fun for these guys! (And how Hudson sits like that, I will never know. He sits like that all the time!)

Petting zoo fun!

 

Harrison loved this duck even though it kept snapping at him!

 

15 Months

Harrison turned 15 months yesterday. I'm a day late posting about it only because I wanted to wait until after his checkup today. I did not forget. :)

 

Weight: 27 pounds, 10 ounces (90th percentile)

Length: 32.5 inches (90th percentile)

HC: 19 inches

 

The appointment was total chaos. Harrison started screaming the minute we walked in. His weight is really just a guess because he was flailing about so much that the nurse couldn't get it to stay on one thing for more than a millisecond. So, really, his weight is somewhere between 26 and 28 pounds! Still my big boy. Just for comparison, Hudson was 26 pounds and 31.5 inches at his 15 month appointment. Harrison is definitely bigger (but proportional at least--ha!)! While we were trying to get Harrison to stay still, Hudson announces that he has to poop. I made him wait, but then he couldn't wait anymore, so while Dr. C. is in the room doing Harrison's checkup, we have to hit the pause button and go to the bathroom--where it takes.him.forever. Seriously. Anyway, back to the room and I could not get Hudson to stop playing with the stirrups. Nice, huh!?! Dr. C. and his nurse couldn't stop laughing and of course Hudson just ate that up. Neither of them even knew they even had those things in the rooms! Leave it to Hudson to tear the room apart. I'm not even going to mention how well the 4 shots went. Just keeping it real! I was ready to get out of there!

 

Harrison's ears are still yuck. Gotta love going to a well baby checkup and going home with an antibiotic. His ears have been draining since Thanksgiving and we just can't get them cleared up. It is so frustrating. Dr. C. was going to check with our ENT to see if we need to do the "vacuum" out of his ears, which I have been hoping we would not have to do because it is apparently pretty terrible. We'll see what happens with that.

 

Overall, I think he is doing fine. He's definitely behind where Hudson was at this point with his speech. Dr. C. did ask about it, but wasn't worried because a. he is the second child and he says they typically take a bit longer to talk, and b. his ears are a mess. Hopefully, we can get that cleared up soon! He babbles a lot though and I can make out his references to some things, but probably no one else could!



 

At 15 months, this boy continues to be a mess. The past two nights while giving Hudson a bath in my tub, Harrison has taken shoes from my closet and tossed them in the tub. I was right there when he did it both times and still couldn't stop him. Tonight, he put two towels in the full tub. Last week, he threw his backpack in the potty. He also took a bottle of soy sauce out of the fridge and thew it on the hardwoods (thankfully, it did not break). He eats dog food and likes to stick his hands in the potty. When he gets mad about something, he goes and hits things (like doors). He hides behind furniture, especially when you are trying to get out the door in the morning, all the while smiling! I could go on and on and on about this boy. He is trouble! But man oh man, he's cute. Real cute.

He gives the BEST hugs now! He will come running to you when you ask for one! So sweet! He loves going to bed. When I ask him if he is ready to go night night, he always makes a beeline for the stairs after waving and blowing kisses to everyone. That is his routine every night. I am thankful to have two kids that like to sleep. He is still on a 7 pm to 7 or 8 am schedule. Sometimes, he takes a morning nap on the weekends, but I can tell those days are coming to an end. I'm still letting him have the paci to sleep. I don't plan on letting that go anytime soon.

He still loves reading books. He's finally settling in and letting us read to him instead of flipping all the pages before we can finish. I love reading books with him. It is the one time of day that he will sit still in my lap and I just eat it up! He always picks out what he wants to read too, which is fun. He definitely has his favorites.

He has also started pointing with one finger at things. That pointer finger is always out! It sure is demanding! :)

He is doing great with identifying body parts. He can do nose, eyes, mouth, and my personal favorite, his belly!

He loves to kick and throw balls, and loves to dance too! Put on some music and he starts to bounce and wave his hands! Oh and he is really starting to run! Overall, he seems very coordinated for 15 months. He follows Hudson around everywhere. They don't always get along, but mostly it is due to whatever toy the other one has at the time! :) They have their sweet moments too though!

I finally started brushing Harrison's teeth this month. He likes it about as much as he likes to have his diaper or clothes changed. Yikes. Luckily, he only has 4 teeth so the torture is quick!

He is wearing 24 month to 2t clothes, with some 18 month stuff here and there, but mostly that is too small now. His feet are huge. He is already at a 7.5 shoe size. Hudson is only at a 9.5!

I know you can take one look at him and know that he eats, but he really is hit or miss with his eating. It is either eat everything you put in front of him, or don't eat anything at all kind of thing. The one thing that he will always eat is strawberries and bananas. And goldfish. And Chick-Fil-A. What else does a boy need?

I think that's about it for 15 months. I am loving this age, but it is challenging for sure. He is so different from Hudson so I feel like I'm starting over on this whole parenting thing! I just love him to pieces and I just wonder every day what he is going to get into next! :)

Wrapping up the Holidays

I am in denial that I actually have to go back to work in the morning. Two full weeks off and I gotten used to this staying home thing! Of course Joel has been off too, so it has been extra fun. I have had so much fun with the kids these past two weeks. My heart has just been hurting the past few weeks over several recent tragedies, and I have really just soaked up every second that I have had with my sweet babies. I am so thankful for them and love them so so so much. Due to sickness (again!) and car issues, we did not get to go out of town as planned after Christmas for the first time in several years, so we really just stayed home and played with all of our new stuff. It was nice not having an agenda and staying in our pj's all morning long and taking naps in the afternoon! I could get used to that!

 

We did sneak off to the lake for a day. It rained most of the afternoon and Harrison took a 4 hour nap in the little house (poor buddy was fighting another ear infection) so there wasn't a ton of playing for the two of us, but Hudson had a blast.

 

Scooter riding, tractor riding, 4 wheeler riding, gator riding, and throwing sticks into a huge burning pile made it for one fantastic day for Hudson!

 The rain finally cleared off on Sunday and we just had to get out of the house, so Joel suggested we go searching for a waterfall. He found one close to Montevallo and so we drove all the way out there and the entrance was so sketch that I would not get out of the car. The kids were getting fussy, so we just turned around and got lunch and then headed to Oak Mountain. We have taken Hudson to Peevine Falls several times, but Harrison has never gone. I would not recommend taking a toddler on this hike! It was scary! Of course Joel wanted to hike to the bottom, so it was a bit treacherous getting down the hill, but we made it. Maybe it would have been better had we stayed at the top.

 It is a pretty waterfall though! The boys had so much fun throwing rocks in the water.

We also made a stop by the petting zoo on the way out, which Harrison LOVED. He is not scared of anything. He and a goose got to be pretty close buds and the goose kept pecking him and he thought it was hilarious. I was a bit scared! He pet every animal there though and had a ball. We will definitely be going back (even if our shoes were covered in poop when we left!)!

We had friends over last night to celebrate New Year's! Margaret made these cute crowns for the big boys.

 Joel and Hudson went to the fireworks store yesterday and bought a bunch of fireworks. They even bought these sparklers and I told Joel that there was no way Hudson would touch a sparkler, but he was all about them!

 The kid crew watching the show! Harrison was somewhere...

 Harrison loved the fireworks too. He got sleepy though so as soon as they were over, I took him to bed. The perk of having folks over to our house!

The kids had so much fun playing. Our house looked like a tornado had gone through it after everyone left and I realized that we have way too many toys. I was embarassed. We will be getting rid of about half of them very soon. It is time. Anyway, Hudson woke up this morning and the first thing he asked was if he could go to Haines' house today! They are such good buddies. They played their little hearts out and were SO tired last night.

Joel and I had fun hanging with the adults too! It was fun ringing in the new year with good friends (at 8 pm!). Ha! No way in a million years could I have stayed up to midnight!

I'm glad it is a short work week so we can ease back into the swing of things. I know that drop off tomorrow morning is going to be hard for us. I am just ready to get it over with! The one thing about the holidays that always depresses me is that when they are over, busy season begins, and this one is going to be a doozy for me. Thankfully, it will be over before I know it and a trip to the beach will be in store for us. Can't wait!