Happy birthday, Jake!

Jacob had a birthday last month. All my plans for his birthday presents died one by one, so when I finally went out shopping for him I was kind of roaming aimlessly, until I realized that his birthday was the day after our lawn would lift its "do not walk on me" restriction from recently seeding it. So he got a new back yard for his birthday. I spent that morning shoveling one and a half tons of pea gravel into the swing area so he wouldn't have to, then put together our new patio furniture. The kids helped decorate some of his wrapping paper, and were very happy that the weather cooperated and rained like crazy to cool it off, then stopped raining soon enough to dry out enough to eat outside on the new table and chairs.

We ended up getting him a few back yard games to play, and an ergo-keyboard--his one request that I actually filled. And yes, that is a toilet seat. We love our new house, but apparently he misses the toilets in the old house: elongated, rather than standard sizes. I thought about getting him a toilet, but didn't want to carry it up the stairs all alone. The toilet seat equates to the promise of a new toilet. 

Maybe we'll have to go to Home Depot toilet shopping soon. Jacob got a Tim Hawkins (comedian) video for his birthday from my mom that had a funny bit about just that thing. I looked for a clip online, but couldn't find it. The main gist of the bit was: "You haven't lived until you come around the corner and see your kid USING one of the display toilets at home depot." Oh how I hope we don't have to experience that. :)

We're glad to have Jake around another year. As they say, birthdays are good for your health. The more you have, the longer you live. Happy backyard birthday! (And yes, we have been much enjoying our new back yard with actual green grass. In Tucson.)

A Mother's Work Is Never Done

Colette is in the process of ridding the kitchen of gluten, and of course we can't just throw it away or give it away - so she does her Motherly duty and eats it. The Nutella she's eating is GF when you open the jar, but it has been spread on too many pieces of (gluten) toast and now it's contaminated.

In the picture below, Colette is preparing to spread the Nutella on something.

Oh - she's spreading it on her tongue.

The Annie Foot Adventure

Last Thursday Annie was standing by the entertainment center looking longingly at the movies, like she often does. Ryan was next to her, and they must have been playing with the glass door on the entertainment center and somehow managed to pull it out of the joints or whatever holds it on. I heard "Boom. Bonk. Whhaaaaaa!" It apparently fell onto Annie's foot, then tipped and hit Ryan on his head. I pulled the door off of Ryan, who had been knocked over, then got them both onto my lap to comfort them.

Annie is the anti-hypochondriac of our family. When she gets hurt she cries a little, and through her tears says, "I'm okay." Then she's back to playing right away. She hates bandaids and apparently doesn't feel much pain, or just ignores it. Pretty much the opposite of Rachel. 

So when Annie was crying pretty hard I took a look at her foot and saw that her toe was bleeding. I set Ryan down (he had stopped crying almost immediately and was fine) and took her into the bathroom to wash off the toe. Running it under the water it looked like a pretty deep cut and I started to get a little worried thinking I don't even know what I'm supposed to do if she needs stitches--take her to our doctor, to the ER, to urgent care? Slightly panic-y, but not too bad, I went and got some gauze to put on her toe. Walking back to the bathroom I was a little light-headed, then I put the gauze on her toe and it bent back (like toes do) and I thought, "oh no, what if it's broken." And apparently that thought was enough to put me almost over the edge. I was suddenly pretty dizzy, so I got Annie off the bathroom counter, onto the floor and I laid down next to her, holding the gauze on her toe. Or trying to. Annie did not like the gauze or the pressure. Still crying she said in her most pathetic voice, "Mom, I just want some ice on it." So I got onto my hands and knees and crawled to the freezer, since I was close to blacking out. The whole time I was thinking, "What am I supposed to do here? I can't even stand up, I have a baby and a 2-year-old, and what's going to happen to them if I do pass out?" I got back to Annie, put one ice on her foot, wrapped in gauze, laid my head on the tile floor, and put another bit of ice on my forehead. Annie said, "Mom, can you say a prayer?" She's a smart girl. I said a prayer and we laid there for a few more minutes until I started feeling better, then I ran and got the phone and called my doctor's office. I think Annie started going into mild shock because she was shivering a little. And the fact that she was still crying 5-10 minutes after the fact told me she was really hurt. The doctor had an appointment in a half hour, so I called a friend to get Rachel off the bus, another friend to drop Ryan off to, and we headed to the doctor. 

Annie was distracted by the iPad by that time, and had much calmed down. Her cut toe had stopped bleeding, and the one next to it was starting to look swollen, so they washed out the cut good, said it wasn't deep enough to need stitches (which I had kind of figured since it had stopped bleeding relatively quickly), and they sent us next door for an x-ray. Annie was a good little patient, helped along by the fact that I found a few pieces of taffy in my purse. Sometimes it's a good thing I don't clean out my purse all that regularly. 

The x-ray came back with her swollen toe looking a little different than her other toes--more white in the middle, from what I saw, and the doc said she thought it might be broken, but she'd call after a radiologist had a chance to look at it. She bandaged the cut, wrapped the two toes together, gave Annie some ibuprofen and sent us home. Annie was asleep before I pulled out from picking up Ryan. Then I went and picked up Rachel, and when she heard what had happened to Annie she started to cry, feeling bad for her sister. Awww. Sisterly love. :)

Once Annie woke up from her nap Rachel was super helpful to her the rest of the day and coddled her quite a bit. Admittedly, so did I. Poor girl couldn't walk without limping all day. We got a call from the doctor around dinner time telling me that the radiologist said it was not broken. And sure enough, the next morning Annie's toe was as good as new, no more swelling, though there was a bruise that went halfway up her foot. But she could walk without limping the next day and balked at having to keep a bandaid on her cut. We tried a liquid bandaid instead, but that stung so much that Annie didn't fight having a regular bandaid on for the next several days.  :)

I'm glad it turned out to be nothing big, but the whole experience left me hoping we never have a compound fracture that I have to deal with all by myself or I may just faint and leave the kid to have to crawl to the phone on their own to call their own ambulance. And I've never that happen before--I can handle needles fine, blood usually doesn't bother me. I think it must have been the panic of seeing my own child hurt and not knowing what to do right away maybe put me into shock for a few minutes. Glad I came out of it. And next time I'll be better prepared. I hope. 

Gluten-free

Well, since last time I blogged we decided to just make the whole house gluten-free so Ryan wouldn't eat gluten accidentally, and within a week Ryan was back up to 20.5 on our bathroom scale. And two days ago he weighed in at 21.0. So it's working, apparently. :)

The boy is incredibly attached to his binky. He has taken to calling it his "mimi."

If you try to take it away for a picture this is what you get:

Annie was also super attached to her binky and we thought it would be horrible to get her to give it up, but when she turned 2, she got a toy in exchange for the binky and she was over it in a couple of days. Hopefully Ryan is the same way.

Ryan likes his peanut butter. Probably more especially because it is so messy and he loves making a good mess.

 

A week or two ago I was busy with something and Ryan had woken up from his nap and was not happy, so I asked Annie to go to Ryan's room and give him a toy or a book to make him happy until I could go. He had about 10 books in his crib when I made it in there. So the other day Annie heard Ryan wake up and went in with me to get him out of bed then volunteered to get him books. I went and finished brushing my teeth and such and came back to find Ryan covered in books, and Annie working on a book tower, transferring the books from her book case to Ryan's one at a time.

The boy loves his books. His favorite is an animal book that has a seal in it, which is his favorite sign and animal sound. And the book with dogs. When we sit down for stories before bed he says "puppy!" first thing every time.

Ryan turned 17 months this past week. Which means less than a month until he gets to go to nursery! Woohoo! Because of my primary calling I get to visit nursery often, and a few weeks ago when I went in they were playing with Play-Doh. I realized that when Ryan goes in he can't do that because Play-Doh is made with flour and Play-Doh getting all over his hands, then going into his mouth would mean diarrhea for the kid. So I got on google and found a good gluten-free play dough recipe. The kids loved it. We haven't had play dough in our house probably since before Annie was born, mostly because I hate the mess. The kids have done great at keeping it at the table, and are having a ball with it. Annie will stay occupied for 30 minutes to an hour at a time! 

'

Ryan is beginning to be interested in movies/TV a little at a time now. He'll actually sit there for one full minute at a time on occasion (instead of the usual 10 seconds max he has for sitting still). 

And he continues with his food shenanigans. Today we had pizza and he decided his plate belonged on the window sill (this happens when everyone else is done eating and up from the table, and I am busy with something else--I don't just let him get up and eat wherever while we're all at the table eating, just to clarify).

He put it down there for short term storage, then came back to it after a few minutes for a few more bites.

At which point the precariously balanced plate fell. No surprise there. He subsequently forgot about all his pieces of pizza scattered on the floor and found the remnant of pizza that Annie had left on her plate and appropriated it for himself. (Exactly why all the children are now gluten-free at home.)

 

A growing boy has got to eat, I guess. :)

Ryan and eating

Ryan has decided he's done with his high chair. Lately whenever we put him in it he might eat a couple bites, then stand up, try standing on his tray, or getting down on his own. Then as soon as we get him down he goes over and climbs up on a chair. If I move his plate from his high chair to the table most of the time he'll polish it off. Last time I couldn't even get him to sit in the high chair properly for one bite.

 

He was more than happy to finish his meal at the table (mostly naked, since he had dropped half his meal on his pants while eating the wrong way on his high chair).

 

His latest mealtime antics:

If his sisters finish before him and he wants to join in the fun, but is still hungry, he'll just bring his plate along.

 

 

He thinks he's the boss of the world and can do whatever he darn well pleases. And mostly he can. At least until I get the pictures taken and send him back to the table.

We are slowly whittling away at our gluten cereal. I can't quite bring myself to throw away perfectly good cereal, but maybe I should. We have designated a gluten half of the table so Ryan can always sit on the other side and hopefully not have accidental gluten contamination from something his sisters ate earlier. But Annie's favorite breakfast and snack is cereal in a cup, which she has a hard time keeping at the table, and I usually only remember to actively supervise her for 5 minutes or so, then she wanders with her cup and it inevitably spills somewhere around the house. Which means we do a lot of vacuuming because leaving that on the ground for any time at all means Ryan will likely find it and eat it. I think we're doing an okay job at keeping him gluten-free, but I never really know for sure since it's so easy to get glutened without me even noticing. We are severely restricting gluten snacks around here and that's helping, but it'll be much easier once our gluten cereal runs out at which point we will stick to Chex, Trix and Kix from here on out.

For a while there on our bathroom scale Ryan was weighing in at 20.5 pounds, which was a pound more than what he'd weighed in at the doctor's office at his 15 month checkup. Now he's weighing in at 20.0 pounds. I think he's grown a little taller, so maybe some of his weight converted to height, but still.... I'm wondering if he had some initial weight gain being on a gluten-free diet as his stomach healed from the damage inflicted by gluten, and now that he's healed he's more sensitive to gluten so just a little bit that he's accidentally ingesting from sharing a cup with his sisters, or dropping his apple on a gluten crumb then picking it up and eating it is making him not absorb nutrients again. Who knows. My plan is to wait and see how he's doing at his 18 month appointment, then take him in to a pediatric GI and see if there's anything else we need to do for him to actually grow. One more month until then. And nursery. And that's a whole new adventure, too...

Camp-In

A few weeks ago Jacob suggested we have a camp-in: set up the tent in the family room, watch a movie and the girls could sleep in the tent while Ryan and the grown ups still get to sleep in the comfort of our own bed. That day, however, the kids had an especially fighty, naughty day so we had to postpone the camp-in. Fortunately a week ago Friday the kids had a good day and were obedient and helpful and happy, so we went ahead with a camp-in. 

Such fun having a tent inside the house:

We pulled out the sleeping bags and watched a movie for movie night. The girls hardly complained that Ryan kept walking in and out and in and out blocking their view of the movie every time he did.

 

At bedtime Rachel changed her mind and decided to sleep in her own bed. Then Annie decided to follow suit just as Rachel was returning to sleep in the tent. So Rachel slept in the tent on her own. She sleeps in the weirdest position:

Saturday the kids enjoyed playing in the tent, too. Next time maybe we'll do it out on our balcony once it cools off to less than 80 degrees at night.

Gardening

Our garden has had a pretty good year. Especially considering that we moved in mid-March and knowing that it was already time to plant (late February/early March is the best time to plant in Tucson for a lot of things), I just threw some seeds in the ground without much thought or planning. We've had a pretty consistent cherry tomato harvest, gotten a couple acorn squash before the plants died, several good butternut squash, and lots and lots of yellow squash, zucchini and cucumbers.

A couple of weeks ago I went out and harvested a good bunch of squash. The next day I was back out there watering the garden and saw that I had missed some zucchini. How I missed these I have no idea. I KNOW they didn't grow that big overnight. 

Someone on a facebook gardening group I'm on had mentioned that while cucumbers get pithy and gross if they get too big, zucchini just get tastier. So I put those huge zukes to work making zucchini muffins. Then bagged the rest and froze it to make more. I had enough for 9 batches.

Sadly, a few days after that last harvest all my squash and zucchini plants died within 2 days of each other. Stinking vine borers. In my quick planting after we moved in I didn't give any thought "companion planting" to keep pests away. A week later my butternut squash plants all bit the dust, too. At least I got a good harvest before everything died. And next year will be even better because we just about doubled the size of our garden with our backyard project that is mostly done. 

I'll get a picture once it's all green with grass, but our backyard is almost complete! Woohoo! We took out the shed, removed the gravel, added one of the curved garden beds in the corner and both of the short beds along the side walls, and planted grass. All that is left is for the grass to grow (lots and lots of watering to keep it from drying out now that our monsoons have deserted us for a while and it's stinkin' hot) and for us to get some pea gravel for the area that will house the swing set.

Much more kid-friendly than the rock yard with a cactus garden that we had not too long ago. :)