Nathaniel's Third Birthday

The kids had a BLAST:


The adults played it cool:


Babies were on hand for doses of adorable:

Nathaniel loves to say "Cheers!"
(Here, it's with drinks, but my personal favorite is when he does it with popsicles.)


Presents opened at home:


The Little Einsteins "Rocket" from Nana & Pop-Pops was a hit!


...and Aidan had a "ladies ride"
(it's a longtime family thing):

Pictures: Hoppy Easter '09

No visit from the Easter Bunny, no egg hunt, but we did snap a few Easter pictures of the boys. The stuffed rabbit pictured is Nathaniel's very favorite lovey. It was a gift his very first Easter from his Great Aunt Kris! Lately, we go nowhere without 'bunny'.







Aidan's thinking: "Uh, mom? Should I be concerned about the rock he's holding behind my head?"

Aidan's Urgent Care Visit

Friday, Aidan started a little rattle when he breathed - sort of a congestion-like sound. By Saturday morning, it was accompanied by a cough. I even had a conversation with mom about it while we were on the phone that morning. I'd told her if it was still like this Monday morning, I thought we'd need to bring him to the doctor. Then, that afternoon the little infant cough suddenly became like a seal-bark or a goose-honk.

I called his pediatrician right away and spoke to an after-hours nurse. It was frustrating, because she had questions about if he'd had lung problems before. Anyone who has read his Medical Log from the NICU days knows he has, but it's also not like he's been having lung trouble at home for the last four months. So I wanted to be truthful, but not alarmist. However, he also had a temp of 100 degrees.

She asked me to bring him to Accent Urgent Care, which specializes in pediatrics. From there, she said they may want me to go to the Emergency Room. At the Urgent Care, they brought him right into triage. They had to use several different machines before they got what they thought was a reliable oxygen saturation percentage. This is another number we tracked daily in the NICU, and was what kept him from being released for so long. Needless to say, it brought up all kinds of bad memories. The first machines were showing percents in the eighties, which used to be accompanied with alarms back in the day.

They finally got a read in the mid-nineties. After listening to him and hearing the cough, I held him while they gave him two treatments of albuterol on a nebulizer. They said if he continued or got any worse, to go right to the Emergency Room.

They believe it to be croup and/or bronchiolitis. We now have our own nebulizer which gives him his albuterol every four hours and he takes an oral steroid twice a day called prednisolone. Corey will bring him to see the doctor tomorrow (Monday). A doctor from his Pediatric Group was supposed to call and check on him today (since there was no one for us to call today, as it's Easter Sunday) but he never did. Fortunately, he seems to be doing better today and he'd slept okay last night. We've brought him back into our room just to monitor more closely.

Oh yeah, we also learned at this appointment that he's now 18 pounds. Obviously that's NOT in the headlines or the cover story, but just fyi.

Here's our brave little guy getting a nebulizer treatment:

The Easter Elephant

Corey brought Nathaniel and Aidan this past week to a co-worker's son's Easter Party, held at his grandmother's house. (It was in the morning on a school day, so she and I had to teach and could not partake in the frivolity.) Anyway, when I come home from school, Corey always has to dash out the door to work. There is a fast 'changing of the guard' where little snippets of the day are exchanged. This particular day, I asked after how the party went, and Corey said Nathaniel had a blast: he dug in dirt, he colored eggs, he played with Lego's, etc.

When Nathaniel woke up from his nap, I asked him about what he did at his friend's grandma's house. I didn't really get an answer. So I prompted him more specifically: "Did you dig in dirt? Did you color eggs? Did you play with Lego's?" After each question, he responded with a lukewarm, "Yeah".

Then, his eyes lit up. "An elephant!" he exclaimed.
"An elephant?"
"Yeah! This big!" (With his hand up very high.)
"A big elephant was there?"
"Yeah!"
"Really?!?"
"Yeah, Mommy!"
"You saw the Easter Elephant?!?"
"YEAH!" . . . and he trumpeted like one, just to polish off the effect.

"Huh. Wonder why daddy never mentioned it . . . Just imagine the size of the eggs!"

(Yes, I know elephants don't lay eggs, but neither do rabbits.)

Pics from our visit to Nana & Pop-Pops

The Evolution of Aidan's Smile

Aidan's 6m check-up & "Privacy Please"

Aidan just had his six month check up today. (Six months? Can you believe it? We can't!) However, his adjusted age is only three months old, which is a better indicator of where he is developmentally. For example, the doctor's office six month questionnaire that we filled out today asks about him sitting up, and he's still working on rolling over. It wants to know about how he picks up his Cheerios, and he's not even on soft solids like rice cereal yet, etc. Anyway, here are his stats:

• 42 cm head circumference (10th %ile for his chronological age of 6m, but 50th %ile for his adjusted age of 3m)
• 24 1/2 inches long (<5th %ile for his chronological age of 6m, but 65th %ile for his adjusted age of 3m)
• 15 lbs 15 oz (<25th %ile for his chronological age of 6m, but 90th %ile for his adjusted age of 3m)

So, like his brother, he's growing exponentially and will eventually be a bruiser. Nathaniel was in the tenth percentile for weight at birth, but at age two-and-a-half weighs forty-five pounds, which is the 99th percentile . . . for four-year-olds.

Speaking of big brother Nathaniel, we are really working on his Potty Progress. (Its required herculean effort warrants the capital letters, I assure you.) He never suggests it himself, but Corey and I find if we persist, we can get some success in the "number one" department. Whenever he was placed on the pot and realized he's going to actually - you know - go, he would point out of the bathroom door and tell me or his father, "Go that way!" Ergo, we subsequently taught him the phrase "Privacy Please".

So here's the kicker: every time now, without fail - and not thirty seconds after sending us out for "P'why-vuh-see Pwease" - he always comes streaking out of the bathroom, screaming joyfully: "I pee-peed in the potty! I pee-peed in the potty! I pee-peed in the potty!" Mind you, he is completely naked waist down - little boy parts and bum cheeks just a-flailin' away as he runs, skips, spins in circles, and jogs in place. Privacy indeed. Make no mistake, we do not wish to dampen his excitement about success; to ensure we encourage further progress. However, as you might imagine, keeping a straight face during his unabashed self-congratulatory dance all around the house is no small feat.

Bless him, he's entering that wonderful age of amusing and priceless quotes that make for these adorable little anecdotes. To close, I've got two others:

• Mom and Dad (aka Nana and Pop-Pops) visited the other weekend. After Nana announced pointedly to a specific audience that she had gone pee-pee in the potty, Nathaniel smiled broadly and told her enthusiastically, "Good boy, Nana!"
• The other night, he was headed up for bed, and it was "Daddy's turn!". (Nathaniel's very insistent about whose turn it is to do the bedtime routine: help brush his teeth, read him a story, and so on. I seem to get it nowadays about four to one, but I digress.) He was already wearing his Superman pajamas. After my goodnight kiss, I called up to him as he ascended the stairs, "Goodnight, Superboy!" He called back, "Goodnight, Supermommy!"