Good Bye 2011

So now it's the end of the year and I am still trying to process the challenges. I can say at the end of it is that 1) I'm glad I had Jason to go through it with me and 2) Whew!  Nobody died.  And that's not even a trite statement.  It's a real and true relief for us.
Right after the crazy croup-thing in October, when I was still on my adrenaline rush and the world was still spinning, I remember wondering how I would process this in the longer term.  I was surprised how easily I put it behind me and moved on.  Mostly, I think, because of other factors.  We shortly after learned that there was no reason for concern about muscular dystrophy which was an enormous relief.  On that very same day we learned that we'd soon be dealing with a tonsilectomy for Nathan.  All of this, along with the crazy amount of holiday projects I assigned myself, has kept me very busy.
Strangely, though, today I was driving by myself, zoned out in my own little world of thought when out of nowhere, seriously like a falling object from space, that night hit me like a ton of bricks.  I was coming down the 105th hill where it flattens out not far from the freeway and wham! it hit me.  It felt very heavy.  It felt very unreal.  I actually questioned in my mind whether it really happened.  It just felt like too much to think about.  It was just a brief flash to my mind of the green gopher pajama shirt Nathan was wearing that night and how it is now clean and neatly folded in my closet, cut vertically down the front where the firemen cut it off of him that night.  Do you know that when I washed it I didn't even realize they had cut it off of him until I took it out of the dryer and was folding it and had that horrible realization?  It's the one piece of tangible evidence that we have of that night and I both love and hate it and I can't get rid of it.  I love it because I will keep it and show it to him and tell him about all the people who prayed for him, about how angels were with him that night, about how he fought and he lived just like I begged him to when he was laying on the floor in the hallway by our front door before the firemen arrived.  I hate it because it IS a physical manifestation that that night is not a weird nightmare but a reality.  We almost lost him.
This event just completely and totally over-shadows this year for me.  It wasn't the only thing that happened to us - there were many others, although obviously nothing as serious.  It is just the thing that I have the hardest time grasping.  It takes my breath away.  My brain can't process it.  My heart bleeds for all the parents out there who have lost children.  I know there are other people out there who's heart has bled for me, which is humbling to think about.  When I was sitting in the waiting room at Children's waiting for Nathan to wake up from his tonsilectomy, it was getting later in the day.  I think I was playing angry birds, just waiting and waiting but feeling totally fine.  After the croup-ordeal, a tonsilectomy felt like nothing to me.  A couple sat down nearby and they were very confused looking at a map of the hospital trying to figure out where they were supposed to go.  I looked up and apologized for eaves-dropping, but gave them directions for where they needed to go.  (I hate watching people flounder with maps when I know where they need to go.  When I worked downtown, I would always stop to give directions to people in downtown Seattle...I'm just weird like that.)  They started asking me questions about the general layout of the hospital and I was answering their questions with great confidence.  I have that hospital totally figured out by now and it's a bit of a maze, so that says something.  I was perfectly cheerful and totally fine but I will never forget the look in that woman's eyes as I was telling her where she needed to go.  It was pure sympathy of the mother-to-mother kind.  I could tell that it hit her that I knew my way around because I must have a child who had spent enough time here for me to know my way around.  Children and hospital.  Sad things.  And yet, I was thinking internally, "don't look at me that way!  I'm just fine!  He lived!  We weren't here that long!  Not compared to so many others!"  Her husband, sort of embarrassed, asked me (I can't remember his language, it wasn't intrusive) why I knew this place so well.  I gave them the brief story, and again I saw that look.  They were there because their 12-ish-year-old son had broken a bone and had to have some sort of minor surgery and they'd never been there before.  They seemed almost embarrassed by their own worry. 
I remember thinking when Nathan was still unconscious in the ICU that I didn't want to be one of those people that had a face permanently marked with sadness.  You know how there are those people where you just look at them and know that some tragedy has befallen them?  I didn't want to look like that.  I still don't.  I'm grateful that as serious as what we went through was, it could have been much worse and it wasn't.  So I don't have to look like that.
I have learned two somewhat conflicting but very important lessons this year.  The first one sort of became my mantra when I was dealing with these difficult things: I can do hard things.  I can.  And I have.  And I now know a whole new depth of personal strength that I didn't know before all of this stuff happened.  It's not a fun lesson to learn but it's one that I'm oddly proud of.  I can do hard things.  How?  You just keep pushing through because what else are you going to do?  Although, I must add, that when you live through something as horrible as almost losing a child, there is a very strange almost manic euphoria that follows the experience.
The other lesson I learned came from a very heart-felt talk I had with a wonderful woman who is my visiting teacher through church.  She has become a good friend and she is a wise woman with lots of life experience herself.  I was telling her about this great lesson I learned - about how I can do hard things.  She agreed and then paused and said, "yes, but you don't have to do them all by yourself.  You CAN ask for help."  I admit that I am terrible about asking for help.  I often feel like wall-paper, like people don't notice I'm there.  I'm just so bad at small talk (and I know it) and I tend to avoid situations which require it, for example.  Through these more major trials, though, I realized that I am part of a community, that people care about us, and that we do matter.
This year is now over and let me breathe a sigh of relief!  I have great hopes for 2012 and don't anybody burst my bubble.  We hope this will be a year when we get to actually travel to visit some family we haven't seen in a long time.  We hope for good health and a year where we do not meet our insane medical insurance deductible.  Mostly we just hope for calm and progress.  2011 was just SO full of detours - the kind that make me once again realize I can't plan out my life and expect it to all come to pass when and the way I would like.  We hope to glory in Austin's ever-increasing vocabulary and watch him bop his little head to 80s hair band rock (I introduced him to Bon Jovi today and he was mezmerized - cracks me up).  We hope to see great progress with Nathan as he begins physical therapy.  Maybe he will be able to peddle a trike by Summer?  We look forward to hearing him talk in even greater depth about everything from "submersibles" to the specific anatomy of cement mixer trucks.  We hope to spend lots of time gawking at all the local major construction sites. 
Somehow through everything, I still say our life is good.  We have a warm, peaceful household.  Isn't that amazing?  Through all of this stuff, we never lost a general sense of peace.  We have lots of love and each other - what is greater than that?  I end this year with a very full and grateful heart.  How could I not?  Maybe that in and of itself is the silver lining.  The end.
And now a few photos from our classy New Year's eve candlelight dinner of appetizers and crab legs for Jason.  Notice the straw in the plastic goblet full of fuzzy juice.  He insisted on it.

Austin rocks out

He now asks to watch guitar solos on Youtube. So far his favorite is Slash playing the National Anthem. He also liked Sweet Child of Mine. I think we need to introduce him to Richie Sambora because I've always preferred Bon Jovi to GNR...

'Mote Control Extravaganza

For some time now, Nathan has been intrigued with the concept of "'mote control."  Remote control trains, cars, etc. - anything with a control.  He really wanted a true, remote-control model train for Christmas but this just seemed disastrous to me so I've been telling him he's not old enough yet (which he's not).  Remote control cars are a very close second and so he scored this year when he got a little remote control fire truck from Uncle Adam and Aunt Amy (Austin got a school bus) and Grandpa Lonnie got him a red remote control monster truck.  The kids have been able to use the little ones around the house and in the hallway, but the big one needs a lot more space: like a park.  So we have been waiting for a sunny-ish day to go try it out.
Today the rain stopped and the sun came out and we took a walk to the park with all three remote control trucks.  We lucked out with the weather and the fact that our resident crusty-homeless-dudes, who tend to camp out at the park between September and May, were elsewhere.


Nathan using his Jedi-mind-controls on the firetruck.  When I kept yelling "make it turn, make it turn!" his solution was to use his arms to direct it.

 The smaller, simpler remote controls are definitely more the kids' speed, but Nathan had a great time trying out the big truck - lots of smiles.  Thankfully the park is a fairly wide-open space because he was a crazy driver.  The remote control doesn't have a joy stick or buttons, it is a very light-weight touch-screen that looks a little like a smartphone (fancy modern technology).  The biggest problem was that he didn't quite understand that he needed to take his fingers *off* the screen to get the truck to stop.  So most of the time, the truck would keep going at high speed until it would crash into an obstacle.  It is much sturdier than we expected it to be.  It crashed into solid granite on several occasions without any problems.  I only had to run after it fast once (big camera in hand, while yelling at Nathan to get his fingers off the controls) to keep it from going into the street.

He's a bit under the weather right now, hence his disheveled, confused look.

Remote control cars at the park are definitely a two-parent adventure.  While one of us was trying to direct Nathan away from driving his truck into the street or running over unsuspecting passers-by, the other of us had to fend off other jealous children trying to take away the remote control vehicles.  Nathan was nice enough to let a couple of slightly older boys take a turn with his truck (they were much kinder to it than he was).  Austin kept having to deal with this little girl who would pick up his school bus every time he would set it down and try to steer it.  After running after her furiously signing "TURN!" a couple of times, he gave up, wrenched it out of her hands and would not set it down for anything during the entire rest of our trip to the park.  This hampered his fun a bit and before very long, he was tugging on Jason begging to go "HOME."
So I guess you could say a good time was had by all.

He looks far too grown up in this picture.

 

Housebound on purpose

Santa must have done a really good job picking out the presents this year because ever since Christmas, my kids don't want to leave the house.  In fact, it takes a lot of negotiation to do so.  Yesterday while out on a couple of quick errands, Austin kept asking, "go home?" and then when we pulled into the parking garage he very excitedly started yelling, "home! home! home!" 
Since I'm trying to get a few organizational-things done around the house (finding homes for all the new toys, pulling out old clothes that have been replaced, putting away the first round of Christmas stuff, etc.) I've been fine with indulging the boys.  They have mild colds and gross coughs anyway, although, since we've not been anywhere, I can't figure out where they came from.
So what have the kids been so intent on doing, you ask?

Austin is completely and totally in love with his "GAR."  He must know where it is at all times and must go to bed with it.  We hear him peacefully strumming away in the dark for a long time before he finally falls asleep.  If we leave the house, it must go with us.  He was very unhappy when we wouldn't let him take it inside church on Sunday. Nathan has shown absolutely zero interest in his ukelele so Austin usually uses it to force one of us to play with him.
...and the best $3 purchase I have ever made: LIMA BEANS.

Whenever I suggest going somewhere, Nathan tells me he is too busy excavating and he can't leave the house right now.  I kind of don't blame him - that's the coolest toy excavator I've ever seen.  I bought them a bag of lima beans (the biggest beans I could find) and now there are always lima beans all over the floor while the kids work on their construction project.  It's like a less-messy sandbox inside the house.  It is genius.  If you have kids who like to dig with trucks, I highly recommend buying them a bag of beans and letting them have at it.  It has entertained my kids for hours and it's not that big of a deal to clean up.
Thankfully Jason and I finally got out last night sans children for a nice date at the Melting Pot.  We hadn't been in many years and it was just a really fun way to eat dinner.  We decided we should make it a yearly event.  I will be dreaming about that cheese fondue for many days to come.

Is TODAY Christmas?

We've had so many minor Christmas-ish celebrations that Nathan has been a little bit confused about which day is actually Christmas.  Due to a very busy day today, we were actually hoping our kids would wake us up early so we could get going.  It didn't really happen.  At 7ish, Jason woke up to a silent house.  He decided to get the ball rolling, so he tried to wake Nathan up, which is virtually impossible, so he woke Austin up instead.  A few minutes later, I woke up from a very sound sleep to a very cute little boy standing next to the bed yelling, "GAR! GAR!" and holding his brand new eukelele - which he continued to hold all day long. 

Then all three of us got Nathan to open his eyes.  Keep in mind that at 7am it was still very dark here.  He woke up and very confusedly said, "Santa came?  Already?  Is it morning?"  Then he rushed out to find the one and only thing he really wanted for Christmas: A GIANT EXCABATOR. 

There was some stocking-investigation:

It was a great morning.  We now have many more trucks and a lot more musical instruments.  It will take me a few days to find homes for all these new toys.

Then we went to church.  The kids were totally not interested in sitting and behaving.  Thank goodness it was only an hour today.  We survived.
Then after a couple hours of mellow playtime at home, we headed to my grandparents' house for more Christmas celebration.  I don't have many pictures from the evening, BUT I have some cute ones of Nathan and my grandma.  He was so sweet.  During the gift-giving, he went up to her, put his arm around her neck and gave her a big kiss on the cheek.  I just love how affectionate he is and how much he loves his family.

A few funny anecdotes from the day:
1) Austin loves his eukelele.  All day today he's been going up to Jason, thrusting Nathan's unused eukelele into his hands and authoritatively exclaiming, "SING! SING!" and if Jason's not paying attention, he will grab Jason's hands and start strumming his fingers over the strings.  He spent large portions of our evening bopping up and down with a very serious look on his face and playing the eukelele while my mom played Christmas songs on the keyboard and humored him by also singing.
2) Due to Nathan melting down into huge tears last Christmas when he was not asked to give the blessing, this year my grandma asked him if he would like to say it at dinner.  He bravely accepted.  He did a great job praying for continued health, gratitude to eat dinner and mostly for the tiny spoon Great-Grandma had put into his special bowl of still-frozen peas.
3) Examining all the things on his plate at dinner, Nathan picked up a spear of asparagus and said, "what's this?" I told him it was asparagus and that it was really good and he should try it.  He said, "Is this the stuff that will make my pee stinky?"  I confirmed that it was.  He quickly downed it all.  Little boys are so weird.

More Christmas Activities

I think I'll blog a little bit while I listen for the munchkins to fall asleep in their beds.
Well, after about three days of Jason being drugged out on Vicodin and Flexoril, he has now gone all day without medication and is beginning to return to the land of the living.  He was pretty zoned out for awhile and combine that with work disasters: it was like he was on another planet.  His back still hurts but he is functional. 
Sadly, he had to miss out on our special date Wednesday.  I took my mom to the Boys' Choir concert and canceled our fancy dinner reservations.  Sigh... The concert was wonderful, as it always is.  I even got a little teary-eyed when they sang my favorite song "How Far is it to Bethlehem."  My mom very much enjoyed "Leave Your Sheep" which was a new one I'd not heard them sing before.
On Thursday I baked all day.  It just wouldn't be Christmas without cookies after all.  I wouldn't say this was my most stellar baking year.  I pretty much stuck to relatively easy stuff due to lack of time and patience.
On Friday, we took the kids down to Zoo Lights at Point Defiance Zoo in Tacoma.  It turned out to be WAY more of a production than we imagined but the zoo was pretty and the lights were impressive. 

After the lights and dinner, we headed back to my parents' house to open presents.  Nathan was immediately taken with his brand new extra-fancy garbage truck.  It is both a front-loader AND a rear-loader and it has gotten quite the work-out since it came out of the box.

Austin didn't actually have much interest in opening presents.  He just wanted to play Grandma Nancy's piano.  BUT, once Grandma Nancy coaxed him into opening one present in particular, he was so excited about it he had no interest in anything else.  What was it?  It just shows how much my mom knows what he likes: a toy electric guitar shaped like a dog that howls and woofs musically.  Yes.  Somehow it isn't annoying yet.  Possibly because it's so cute to watch him play it.

Today I assembled the new fire/police station also from the grandparents.  Like cookies, it wouldn't be Christmas without toy-assembly.  I've got to dust off that architecture degree and put it to good use every once in awhile.  The kids were quite happy to play at home all day.  The new toys were so exciting that Austin decided he did not need a nap.

Tonight we had our Anderson-family-tradition of the shepherd's dinner on the living room floor by tree light.  We also watched a little church production of the birth of Jesus.  Nathan thought eating on the floor was the greatest thing ever and asked us a million shepherd-related questions.  Of course, all he ate were pistachios.  Austin, poor Austin.  When we sat down to eat he was laying strangely, wouldn't sit, looked oddly uncomfortable.  I finally realized he needed a diaper change and that's when I discovered we had been so busy with our day we had not noticed he desperately needed a change much much sooner.  He was pretty rashy and uncomfortable, so mid-dinner, he had a hose-down in the bath and then finished his dinner in the buff.  Nice.  Perhaps that adds to the authenticity?

The kids went to bed promptly at 7pm tonight after checking NORAD to see that Santa was in Newfoundland, saying good-bye to Elvin the Elf (who is hitching a ride home to the North Pole with Santa tonight), leaving exactly three spritz cookies and some milk for Santa and one final reading of The Night Before Christmas.  They appear to be asleep now, so off to work I go...

Focus on the Positive

I keep telling myself that...but I'll save my philosophizing for the annual end-of-the-year-post.  Let's just say the hits just keep on comin'.  But first, the good stuff.
We've pretty much abandoned the advent calendar this year.  It just hasn't been working out for us.  Maybe next year.  We've been trying to be festive, but truly our list of things that we have NOT done is much longer than what we have done this year I think.
On Saturday, spur of the moment after dinner, we took the kids up to Swanson's Nursery to check out the camel and, of course, the model train.  Jason did not even know that Swanson's existed, so he was intrigued.  The boys weren't terribly interested in the animals and wouldn't get close enough to them for me to photograph.  Austin loved the "YIGHTS! MO' YIGHTS!" and Nathan loved the train.  To Nathan, Christmas is all about trains.  On accident, we came across the giant koi pond near the little cafe and the bathroom.  This turned out to be the biggest hit of the night.  In fact, we were there so long, we didn't realize the nursery had closed and an employee had to come and shoo us out of the store.  The kids LOVED the giant fish - Nathan was even brave enough to touch one.

On Sunday we did not make a gingerbread house.  I have no idea what I'm going to do with all the candy I bought in which to make a gingerbread house.
On Monday I took the kids to pick out their annual Christmas ornament.  Hallmark seemed like an easy place so there we went.  Nathan walked by all of the cartoon characters, Santa Clauses and cute little animals and found this ornament.  He thought it was the greatest ornament ever made:

A replica of a Lionel model train Union Pacific Passenger Engine (he knows ALL about this train from the wonderful I Love Toy Trains movies).
Austin picked out a "HOT!"  I was fine with this because it seems like the Christmas tree of every house with little boys needs a red fire engine.

Wasn't it nice of Austin to cover Daddy up with "Beep?"

Today, Jason had planned to run up to the courthouse in Everett in the morning and then take the rest of the day off to take the boys out Christmas shopping.  I heard a sort of feeble "Hey, Danielle?" about 7:30am and walked into the living room to find Jason laying flat on his back, fully dressed, unable to move.  It turns out he ended up having back spasms and laid on the floor for about 5 hours before I took him to the doctor.  She didn't even have to touch his back to see what was going on.  He is doing much better with high-powered pain meds and muscle relaxers.  Invincible man that he is, he is still up and able to function even on that much medication - how is this possible?  So, even when we thought nothing else could happen to our little

family, it has!  Please let this year end before anything else terrible happens!  I was reading The Littlest Angel to Nathan tonight and when I got to the second paragraph, describing how the little boy was four years (and change) when he entered Heaven, my heart skipped a beat and I almost started to cry.  I love this book so much because it is about a sweet little boy.  I am SO glad that I was able to read this book with my own sweet little boy in my lap and not have to read it thinking of him as that angel.  These are the sorts of tender mercies that keep me grateful and not angry about all these crazy challenges we have gone through.

I am trying very hard not to lose my Christmas spirit, but at this point, I'm just seriously beat.  I still need to get going on my holiday baking.  That was my project for today that I never got to.  Tomorrow I hope to bake myself back into the holiday spirit and then enjoy our annual recreate-our-first-date-night with my dear, slightly-drugged husband.  We are going to our first-date restaurant again: Il Terazzo Carmine down in Pioneer Square and then to the Boys Choir Festival of Lessons and Carols.  I need a date night.  Shoot.  I need a vacation.

Good Mom, Bad Mom

Good Mom: I finally found something liquid that Nathan will consume (he's only been taking occasional tiny sips all this time since his surgery).  A 50/50 combo of lemonade and Sprite.  It sounds terrible to drink citrus and fizz with a sore throat, right?  It works.  I know it works because after my own tonsilectomy all I could drink was a similar combo of OJ/Sprite.  I have been trying to figure out what would work for Nathan all this time since he doesn't like OJ and lemonade worked.  Woohoo for hydration!

Bad Mom: This morning when I was putting Austin into the car during one of our many errands, I accidentally crashed his little forehead into the sharp corner on the top of the car door.  He was very offended that I would hurt him.  At first it left an indentation, then it started bleeding.  I felt SO bad.  Thank goodness I keep a first aid kit in my magical backpack. Now whenever somebody comments on the bandaid on his forehead, he points to it and says "Mommy owie." Sigh...

Marble Works!

To conclude with the tonsilectomy business: Nathan did go to school yesterday.  It went okay but I had to pick him up early.  When I got there (just after school ended but during lunch, which he usually attends), the teachers took me into one of the smaller rooms where the light was off and a pathetic Nathan was huddled on a large pillow under a blanket attempting to sleep.  Quite pathetic.  I felt SO bad.  Perhaps he wasn't quite ready for school yet, but he really wanted to go.  He was seriously disappointed because the cookies at the class party were too crunchy and they hurt his throat.
Today, miraculously, he woke up mostly normal.  He even ate a couple of meals.  He needed far less pain medication and was fairly cheerful.  He was so tired by dinnertime, though, that he almost fell asleep at the table.  He would have if Austin hadn't been "singing" at the top of his lungs.

Moving on... the boys got a package in the mail from Auntie Mer yesterday and since she said they could open it early, we did just that.  Marble Works!  I remember this toy from when I was a kid.  Hours of fun.  Nathan already knew about it from school and he was anxious for me to get constructing.  Austin was pretty impressed too.  He has claimed the white marbles for his own and no one is allowed to touch them. 
It is fun to watch them play with this particular toy because their individual styles (and ages) come out so prominently.  Nathan puts a few marbles down the marble run and then he goes and gets the perfect sized construction equipment and in no time, marbles are being pushed with skid steers and loaded into dump trucks. 
Austin prefers to just put the marbles down the run over and over and over again.  When he gets bored with that, he attempts to "remodel" which usually ends in collapse. 
It is nice to have an early diversion to keep their attention before Christmas...but speaking of Christmas, I am SO excited to see how they dive in and what they want to play with first.  Will this mean they will be so entertained I might get to read a book in January?  A mom can dream...
Thanks Auntie Mer!

This is why I need a break...

This tonsilectomy-thing has been far more intense than we expected.  Everyone told me that it wasn't such a big deal with kids.  Well, I am here to tell you that at least for MY kid, it IS a big deal.  Not quite as big of a deal as it was for me at age 20, but still a big deal.  Nathan has now lost 10% of his body-weight and I'm starting to freak out about that.  We're very close to seeing what a very tall 30 pound 4-yr-old looks like.  I'm not joking.  Thank goodness we have lots of medical documentation to prove we aren't trying to starve him.  On top of the food-struggles, we are also dealing with some serious night-time struggles.  This timeline should illustrate what I'm talking about.  This was our version of last night, we are now 5 or 6 (I've lost count) days after surgery and the previous nights were pretty close to this one.  This is incredibly accurate - I kept staring at my clock.  I am not exaggerating at all.  It's like we are harkening back to newborn days.

Here goes:
8pm: Boys go to bed.
10:30pm: Grown-ups go to bed.
11:45pm: Nathan wakes up hysterical, thus waking up both of us who then had to get him calmed down enough to get him to swallow some medicine and put him back to bed.  Our adrenaline is now pumping.
2:30am: Nathan wakes up hysterical, begging for medicine.  Same as before, this time tylenol instead of motrin.
3:30-ish am: I finally fall asleep again.
5:00am: Jason's alarm goes off (poor guy had to take a 6am ferry to Bremerton this morning).
5:45am: Nathan wakes up hysterical.  I get him a drink, more motrin (like clockwork, this kid is - notice how it was EXACTLY 6 hours from his previous dose) and attempt to put him to sleep in our bed.
6:00am: He's still not sleeping, neither am I.
6:20-ish am: I tell him if he's not tired, he can go play in the living room because I need to sleep.  He trudges off with blanket and duck.
7:20am: I awake to the other little boy pulling the covers off of me saying, "UP! JUICE!"
7:25am: I get up to get Austin his morning OJ and notice that Nathan is sound asleep on the couch.  I put on Mickey Mouse SPACE ADVENTURE for Austin (quietly), sit him on the couch with his juice and go back to bed.
8:20am: A very pathetic Nathan comes into my room wimpering once again for medicine, but I can't give him any - not enough time has passed.  And so, I give up and attempt to begin the day looking forward to giving him his 9am dose of vicodin so that I can enjoy a couple of hours of normal-Nathan before it once again wears off.

I am exhausted.  Grumpy.  Very little patience (but I'm trying!).  Stuck at home once again today.  So tired of watching I Love Toy Trains and Mickey Mouse Clubhouse.  And yet, this is my life at the moment.  We are optimistic that one of these nights he will make it all the way through without waking up hysterically in pain.  I am desperately hoping he will be able to make it to his last day of school tomorrow before Christmas or else he will be SO sad (as will I).
As a mom who stays home with her kids, I often don't cut myself any slack for unproductive days.  I absolutely hate days where I get nothing done and at the end of the day, I often do an inventory of "what did I do today?" to sort of make myself feel better, like I am not just sitting around letting time pass (I know given the above this line of reasoning sounds completely insane).  I have to frequently remind myself that right now my job is not necessarily to *DO* things but to take care of my kids, and that (as unproductive as it often feels) is good enough.  It's just that right now I'm still not done with all the gifts I am making and the clock is ticking and I don't currently have the mental faculties to complete my tasks.  Somehow I'm going to have to pull myself together and force myself into action.  It's just a little bit difficult given the last week.  Alright.  Enough complaining.  Up and off the couch.  I can do it!

In other cuteness: Austin has finally settled upon a name for his precious blanket: Beep. So we now refer to blanket as Beep and he giggles. I love it. I swear he gets more cute every single day. In the picture above, the boys are watching TV after a walk. He refused to let me take off his coat or his shoes. And, he insisted that his "hook" be up (for hours).

"My lips are bumpy."

I woke up at 6am to a little boy whispering that in my face this morning. 

So, how is our patient doing?  Well, when heavily medicated, he's almost normal.  The doctor sent us home with a pretty awesome pain-management program: piggy-backing Ibuprofen with Vicodin.  It is working very well and we will probably continue with it for at least another day before we drop it down to Ibuprofen and Tylenol.  We can tell when about three hours have passed and he needs more meds because he starts to get whiny.  When he does hurt, it seems to be manifesting itself as a sore tongue.

Our first night home was pretty rough but we seem to be over the worst now.

Here are some *interesting* things we are dealing with:

1) Nathan is experiencing chapped lips for the first time in his little life and he does not enjoy the feeling.  He now has his own special tube of green-apple chapstick.  Now that he can self-apply, we are all good.

2) Excuses.  Oh my.  We already called this kid the Master of Misdirection and his skills are coming in handy here.  He basically doesn't want to eat or drink anything.  It takes us all the powers of negotiation between the two of us to get him to drink a juice box or eat anything.  Even bribing him with treats doesn't work (I'll get to more of that in a moment - that's another problem).  Tonight we drove over to Candy Cane Lane to look at lights (and we were SO proud of Austin actually combining two words to say "More Yights!" over and over).  Afterward, we made a detour to U-Village to grab cookies at Specialties for the drive home.  Who could pass up a Specialties cookie, I ask you?  We kept coaxing Nathan to eat it and he very seriously said this more than once on the way home - very politely and thoughtfully: "Sometimes children want to drink their water BEFORE they eat their cookies." 

3) He doesn't like ANY food that would be conducive to his situation.  He does not like milkshakes, smoothies, pudding, applesauce, mashed potatoes - if it's gloppy, he won't eat/drink it.  On top of this, when it comes to ice cream or popsicles, he is very concerned that they are "not healthy foods."  I tell ya, whoever the sugar-nazi at school is, he/she has very successfully convinced my child that sugar itself is the devil.  I am a believer in moderation so we don't forbid much of anything around here with big lectures.  Nathan, all on his own, has decided that sugar must be avoided at all cost (except juice of course).  When the doctor was talking to us prior to discharge, he told Nathan that if he wanted to for the next few days he could eat as many popsicles as he wanted and have ice cream for breakfast or before his dinner!  Isn't that cool?  Nathan actually looked at him, shook his head and said, "that isn't healthy."  So, tonight, to finish off the cookie story, when we got home, Nathan handed me his untouched cookie and told me he was hungry.  Do you know what he desperately wanted?  Broccoli.

Lots of waiting around...

Waiting patiently for HOURS.

I have absolutely nothing else to do while I sit here next to Nathan in his hospital room so I might as well write about the tonsilectomy experience.  I'm too tired to do something that requires intelligence like reading.
We had an 11am check-in time yesterday which I was nervous about since he couldn't eat for 8 hours beforehand.  Somehow we kept him away from food successfully and got here right on time at 11.  And then we waited for FOUR. HOURS. for the surgery to get underway.  Apparently the doctor's previous procedure ran very long and I'm guessing it caused some operating room scheduling issues.  It would have been nice if someone could have explained this to us since we were stuck in a very small windowless room for three of those four hours with very little human contact...and no food or water.  I marvel at the fact that Nathan never once complained or asked for anything.  He just patiently watched cartoons.

The after-photo, last night when he was still cheerful.

The surgery started around 3:00pm.  I talked to the doctor around 4:00.  At that time he was hopeful Nathan would be able to go home shortly, but he said the next hour would be critical.  Anesthesia is a croup-trigger and if he was remotely barky they were going to keep him overnight.  The doctor found me again in the waiting room around 4:45 to tell me he was barking and we would need to stay overnight for observation and that they had just given him epinephrine.  We were checked into a room (sadly a double room) and then Nathan was wheeled in.  Jason and Austin very conveniently showed up right when we were getting our room assignment.  Nathan was in remarkably good spirits and we were relieved.  As Jason put it, "It apparently takes more than a tonsilectomy to silence our little boy."  I left Nathan with a brand new 90 minute Mighty Machines movie and took Jason and Austin home so I could have the car.  I stopped and got some pasta on my way back.  Nathan was starving and he ate about half of it, a whole pudding cup, a popsicle, milk, two cups of juice and 8 saltines.  We were very encouraged by this (although in the back of my mind I was wondering if it was that initial medicated-boost you feel after surgery before reality sets in).  It was funny, after he ate all the noodles, pudding, milk, juice about an hour went by and when the nurse came in he said, "I'm hungry. I want more food."  She offered him ice cream or popsicles and he said, "No.  That has too much sugar.  I want somesing healfy."  He was finally pacified with those 8 saltines.  Funny kid.  Faced with all this junk food, he probably wanted something like broccoli.  My guess is that he was unable to articulate how cloying sweets feel right after a tonsilectomy.

Here's the "now" photo.  Sense frustration perhaps?

We had a HORRIBLE night.  He was coughing about every 20 minutes requiring a sip of water or an encouragement to swallow.  This meant I slept in very short bits until I gave up at 7:30.  There were frequent needs to use the bathroom due to his IV drip, there was one episode of projectile vomit (serendipitously missing the precious Ducky and Blue Blanket).  A doctor showed up at 5:30am to make sure his noisy breathing was not strider (associated with croup, difficulty getting oxygen).  I definitely got my exercise leaping off of the couch/bed as many times as I did.  By 7:30 this morning when the nurse came in, Nathan just looked like a total zombie.  Swollen, dark circles under his eyes, tongue sort of lolling, staring off into space.  Last time we were at the hospital, I was so hopped up on adrenaline that I was unphased by not sleeping.  This time, I felt like I was going to collapse by about 9am.  On top of all this awesomeness, since we are in a shared room, the adults are not allowed to use the bathroom inside the room.  So everytime I need to use the facilities I have to hike it down the hall and around a couple corners to a public restroom. 
We were told we could go home after lunch *if* he was eating well.  As the reality of pain has set in, he now refuses to eat and so I'm not sure what this means for us getting out of here.
Update: Due to some sort of divine intervention or just a perfect coincidence, I ran into the doctor in the cafeteria at lunchtime.  He looked at me and said, "you're still HERE?" and I told him Nathan wasn't eating much and he had a fever so they had not discharged him yet.  He promised to come check on him and make the determination himself (at Children's a lot of these decisions are made by a team of residents/interns and not necessarily by the doctor).  He came by about an hour later and told us we could leave whenever we wanted.
So, we got home around 3pm.  Nathan has perked up immensely and is totally engrossed in his tonsilectomy-bonus: the ENTIRE series of I Love Toy Trains (oh joy!) while playing with the wooden trains that are set now set up in a circle around the Christmas tree.  I am just hoping we all sleep tonight.  At least I won't feel like I am sleeping on an exam table.

Kids say the darndest things...

This is a cautionary tale for anyone who has a child who is as sponge-like as our dear Nathan.
This afternoon I took Nathan to a Seattle School District evaluation to check in on his gross motor skills.  They did a full evaluation of him - everything from gross/fine motor skills to cognitive development and even a vision test - it was quite full-service.  He actually thought it was great fun and it is always reassuring to be told by professionals that your kid is very smart.  I can brag about him being in the 85th percentile for cognitive development (aka general intelligence), right?  It's the gross motor skills that are his big issue anyway and he is about as far in the other end of the spectrum with those as is possible to be, but nothing we can't work on and help him to improve.  Anyway, while he was talking to the school district psychologist during the cogntivie evaluation, I was on the other side of a partition listening to all of this and not reading the magazine in my lap.  I was so proud of him pointing out all kinds of letters, explaining what various words meant, sorting objects, pointing out big numbers like 91, etc. and then this approximate conversation happened and I was immediately embarrassed:
Psychologist: Nathan, what shape is this?
N: It looks a little bit like a crescent.
P: A crescent?  Wow.  Yes, you are right. (my guess is it was a half-circle or something like that and she was surprised by his answer)
N: Yah, sometimes the moon looks like a crescent.  Hey, did you know there is this drink called moonshine?
P: Moonshine?  How do you know about moonshine?
N: Well, moonshine is this yucky drink made out of rotten fruit and it doesn't taste very good.  We don't drink it.
P: Where did you learn about this?
Me over the partition: FROM THE DISCOVERY CHANNEL.  A COMMERCIAL.  WITH HIS DAD.
She laughed.  Whew.
Seriously.  Nathan has watched prime-ish-time TV exactly twice in his life.  The first time was some sort of sporting event where he saw a commercial for Taco Bell.  Now every time we drive by Taco Bell (which we've never taken him to) he says, "Hey look! Taco Bell.  Do you know what they have there?  A crispy taco and a medium coke!" and he is very proud of himself.  The second time he was up late due to some nasal congestion (I was off at church for the annual toy exchange) and he watched that show Gold Rush with Jason and low and behold, there was a commercial for that weird Discovery channel show about the people that illegally make moonshine.  Now he's an expert.
So there you go.  This is why we stick to the DVDs in our house.  Sigh...

'Tis the Season of the Advent Calendar

To Nathan's great glee, December 1st brought some holiday fun to our house.  I felt like Thanksgiving was so early this year that if I decorated that day after, it would have seemed like FOR-EV-ER until Christmas for the kids.  So I waited until around the 1st to do most of the decorating.  I love our festive place!  This is such a great time of year for memories and sentiment.  I always realize that when I pull out the Christmas stuff.
I managed to come up with a decent plan for Advent activities with the days falling closest to the tonsilectomy being fairly mellow, low-key, miss-able activities.  We are definitely not going to go quite as crazy this year as we did last year, but I think it will still be fun for the kids.
On December 1st, we pulled out the Little People Nativity set and decorated for Christmas.
On the 2nd, the kids did a Christmas craft: coloring some ornaments.  Nathan thought this was a great idea and then spent exactly 30 seconds on his ornament.  Austin, to my surprise, was incredibly meticulous about his ornament and spent a long time coloring very carefully. 

Today we went out and had a quick donut-breakfast (to the thrill and delight of both boys - their donuts even had Christmas tree sprinkles on them) and then we bought a real Christmas tree. A lovely Noble Fir. The first real tree we've had since the first year we were married. I decided that since this has been a pretty crappy year, we needed to have a nice, festive holiday season, no matter what. I can't even describe how happy this silly Christmas tree makes me feel. I am sitting here typing by tree-light and it just fills me with delight. I sprung for LED lights (which better save us some money on that electric bill) and a bunch of shatterproof ornaments so that should Austin decide to redecorate from time to time (so far he's been quite gentle), I won't have to worry too much.

Oh, and let me introduce you to our new buddy, Elvin the Elf (Nathan came up with his name all by himself).  Elvin is a visitor from Santa.  He arrived promptly on December 1st and will be staying with us until Christmas.  He sits in a new place every day and watches the boys and then reports back to Santa at the end of each day.  

I love Christmas! 

(Okay.  Back to crafting.  I have given myself an incredible amount of work this year...I am starting to stress about it a little bit.)