Our super awesome weekend

The weather this weekend could not have been more perfect. Saturday was one of those Top 5 MN days of the entire year. Gorgeous! My sidekick and I spent very little time inside. Lots of park trips and walks and playing on the patio and walking up and down the driveway.

Elijah has had some serious milk cravings lately. Or OCK, as he calls it. Each night after prayers and before sleep, he asks for OCK. I can't deny him since he is using the word correctly, so I always let him have a few swigs. This weekend he asked for OCK not just before bed, but all throughout each day. Is he reverting to the baby years? We are careful not to give him too much so he continues to eat well.



OCK also means PARK. Many many times this weekend I found him pointing outside, toward the park, saying OCK repeatedly. We have to be very very careful in our house not to say the word PARK if we don't intend on going there within the next three seconds. Serious disappointment occurs for the park-lover when the word slips out accidentally.



On Saturday afternoon we drove down to my sister's house to celebrate my nephew's high school graduation. As I said, it was a beautiful day, so it was nice to sit outside and catch up with everyone and watch the cousins love on each other. Elijah got some serious attention.



Even though my sisters and I all live in the same "city," we don't see each other enough. I love my sisters. And I love all of my nephews and nieces.



Swinging was a big hit for Elijah. Could he look any more comfortable? And could Elijah's sweet little cousin Kaleigh be any cuter?



We decided to collectively color a special card for Erik. Elijah took it upon himself to give us an art lesson and show us his special coloring techniques.



On Sunday morning we got ready nice and early and headed into the city to visit our good friend Jess. It was another beautiful day to be outside, so we walked from her house to a cute little restaurant for breakfast. We sat outside and enjoyed some delicious food. We decided it was time to go when Elijah dumped an entire container of Chips Ahoy cookies on the ground (I know, why am I feeding my child cookies for breakfast, right?).

We walked to a few nearby gardens that I had no idea existed. They were beautiful! It felt like we were out in the wilderness instead of in the middle of a huge city. Elijah fell particularly head over heels for the waterfall. He pointed and pointed and pointed at it, even after we were well past it, and then started signing MORE and pointing back toward it.



The flowers, the paths, the trees, everything was beautiful and peaceful. I guess there is a reason it is called the Peace Garden.



The garden across the street was gorgeous, too. There were rows and rows of roses and huge fountains to gaze at. We ran through some sprinklers and Elijah loudly proclaimed DUH (done). Ok, no more sprinklers.



Dan survived another Man Weekend. We relaxed at home in the afternoon and evening, enjoying more time outside. Maybe it was because Elijah was tired that he had a two-hour crying/screaming/tantruming/body flailing party for himself. By 6:00 I begged Dan for a reprieve and fled to the bath tub with my book.



Elijah finished off his weekend with an OCK nightcap and went to bed a tired boy. Oh, and woke up this morning a coughing boy, yet again. Tomorrow morning he will get a pre-op physical and that will determine if he is healthy enough for surgery on Thursday. Please pray with us that the 18th is his day to get this done!

Fiesty

Coloring a picture for Grammie P and Gramps. It's on its way to you, you guys!! He just loves these new markers I bought for him. He cries and cries when we have to leave the table after coloring.

I feel like a fresh, new woman! I got my hair cut and colored today. It always feels so good after a good hair cut. And I can't complain about the scalp/neck/hand massages. Earlier today, we got a visit from an old friend, Roger. It was his first time meeting Elijah, so it was a really nice visit. We haven't seen him since before Dan's and my wedding. Thanks for visiting, Rog! Elijah loved you, and we enjoyed catching up with you.


Putting a bow on his lips. There's Rog in the background.

Tonight Dan headed over to urgent care for a softball leg injury (all is ok for now) while Elijah and I went to the grocery store. It was quite an experience for us. Elijah was THAT child in the grocery store. You know, the screaming, fish-flopping one. And I was THAT mother. You know, the totally embarrassed, helpless one. Oh ugh. I took the imitation crab meat from his hands to scan it and pay for it and that's when it all began. The screaming and body flopping lasted for a solid 15 minutes. I had every eye within 50 feet turn and give me The Look. As I did my best to ignore Elijah's ridiculous behavior (after telling him firmly that his behavior was not ok), I had the thought, "Wow. So THIS is what it feels like to be THAT mother. Huh. Interesting." The young man behind the cash register said, "Whoa, kid. You just aaaaaaaren't happy."


My beautiful boy's face. I could smooch that all day long (when he's not screaming like a maniac in the grocery store).

Something is going on with our little man. Teeth, maybe? We had thought all of his teeth were in, but I think we were wrong. He has been sucking, biting, chewing on his hands constantly, which is very unlike him.


He very quickly and randomly fell asleep on me while playing with his letters this morning. This is very unusual for him.


See the pretty flowers Dan and Elijah got me for Mother's Day? Maybe someday we'll have the means to own a nice camera to take fun pics of pretty flowers. In the meantime, this is what you get, and with a happy, handsome man in the background.

Plunge!

First of all, let me say that Elijah was a MONSTER today. I've never had a more abnormal day with my little boy. He whined constantly if I was more than two feet away from him. He had about nineteen tantrums. He sat in his timeout spot about eleven times. He hit mommy and/or daddy on the face about....eleven times. UGHGHghh! I don't know if he is just tired, or what, but he went to bed early and we hope it is just sleep deprivation??

Yesterday Dan and I joined some good friends of ours, Mike and Julie, in plunging into the freezing cold lake to support a good cause, the Special Olympics of Minnesota. It was something we will never forget. Brrr! The pain only lasted a few seconds.


Mentally preparing for plunging....


WHAT are we doing?


We could run away now. No one would ever know....




HI! Here we go!!


Running to the plunge..


There go Mike and Julie!


Here we go....


WWWowooooooowowwhwoooowowwwww!!!!!


That was CCCCCCCOOOOOOOOLLLLLLLLLLLLDDLDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDDD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Attitude

Last night I took Elijah to his Thursday physical/speech therapy. The past few times have really been breakthrough sessions for him. No more tears when the PT tries to move him ONE INCH out of his comfort zone. No more crawling over to Mama every 15 seconds. He really has seemed like a big boy to me lately, and he has been making a ton of progress, too. Last night they got him to take sideways steps ON HIS OWN, while holding onto the edge of a table. This is a first! Of course, there had to be incentive. What could possibly appeal to him so much that he would take steps without being forced? TRUCKS, of course!

They had this really cool toy truck track with three trucks that drove around inside of it and it was love at first sight! When he first saw them, I happened to be standing behind him holding onto his hands. He immediately tried to RUN over to them, but that didn't work out well so we tripped over each other and fell to the floor. Honestly, I've never seen him so smitten before. During the session, I was sitting there watching him, amazed at the progress that was unfolding before my eyes. Then I had the thought...Hmmmmm, anything he loves enough to willingly take steps for is going to be hard to tear him away from. Uh oh.

And I was right. When we were finished and he knew it was time to leave the beloved trucks, an instant MAJOR tantrum erupted. So far, it was my most embarrassing public parenting moment. The tantrum was so bad that I had absolutely no idea what to do. I'm pretty sure I disengaged from reality and became comatose for a few moments. His physical therapist, speech therapist, speech therapist assistant and I all stood there watching it. After what seemed like forever, I picked Elijah up and told him it was time to go home. He arched his back so violently and quickly that he flopped over my arm and hit his head on a stool. He continued to flop around on the floor and scream and kick and hit. I sat him up again and put his coat on.

He calmed down immediately when his very nice PT found a truck that he could take home with him. I kind of wish she wouldn't have done this, but I certainly wasn't going to start fresh with Meltdown #2 by taking it away. He grabbed the truck from her, smiled instantly, and looked at me like, HI Mama! We're having fun, right?! The front half of the car was quiet on the drive home.

Later we went to Dan's sister's house to celebrate his mom's birthday and Elijah swatted his little 1-yr-old cousin because I was holding her in my lap. Mr. Attitude has some things to learn about "pecking order," as Dan says.

Cough cough....gasp..cough.....cough..

Every day I think that this just has to be the turn-around day. But the Cough Monster coughs on.. Last week the doctor said it was just a viral thing and it needed to run its course, so we continue to wait it out.

Aside from the coughing, Elijah seems to be feeling just fine. He is crawling all over the place, making messes at each stop. He appears to be attempting to master the art of The Tantrum lately, too. He has gotten really good at throwing enormous fits for no apparent reason at all. He is one feisty, stubborn, strong-willed little boy. I keep reminding myself that these are good traits to have while lying in a hospital bed after surgery.

I have been trying to take more video of him lately because I want to remember everything. I wish I could bottle up his smells and sounds and always remember them as clearly as I do now (maybe minus the tantrums). I feel so lucky that he is such a cuddly boy. He likes to crawl over to me and reach for me. When I pick him up, he puts his arms around me and rests his head on my shoulder. He's my little snuggle man, and I'm so thankful that he enjoys the hugs and closeness as much as I do.

I have a busy first part of my week, so pics and video will have to wait for the last part of the week. And a question for fellow bloggers.. Have any of you ever looked into turning your blog into a printed album or book? I really want to do this for archiving purposes. Someday, I want Elijah to be able to read through all of the entries we have written, and also to see the comments people have left for him. I found one place that is compatible with Blogger, but their site isn't very user-friendly. I'm wondering if there are better sites out there dedicated to this sort of thing?

Home time

We spent our entire weekend being at home together. We did some cleaning and laundry and organizing and it feels awesome to be somewhat in control of our house for once. It has been a cluttered burden for so many months. Every room I walked into, I would moan and think of about 23 things that needed to be done. I even cleaned and organized Elijah’s room this weekend. As I was scraping dust off the shelves, I realized that I had never once dusted those shelves before. We put them up just before Elijah was born, TWO YEARS AGO. Gross! I have no idea how parents who work outside the home and who have more than one child have time for anything besides the bare minimum. How does anything ever get done? One of my goals for the new year is to do my best at staying on top of everything, or at least not allowing myself to be controlled by the dust bunnies in my house. It’s amazing how good it feels to have a semi-clean house. I think I need a five-day weekend every week!

Elijah is still a sick boy. I think he could break records with the amount of green globby snot that slides out of his nose every thirty seconds. He was up coughing a lot through the night last night. At 4:30 I went in to sit with him because he was coughing so hard I was sure he had thrown up. Thankfully, he hadn’t. I thought he might go back to sleep after a quick neb, but as I was rocking him he started “honking” my nose in the dark and giggling and trying to tickle my neck. Buster heard the commotion and started barking, so we were all up early to start our day! It actually worked out just fine. Dan was able to take Buster for a much-needed walk and I got some quality Elijah Time before heading to work.

It was weird being at work today. After five straight days of nothing but Dan and Elijah, I felt like I was missing a limb. I found myself worrying more than usual and of course missing Elijah more than usual. My sweet little peanut. Which leads me to.. There was a period of time yesterday where Elijah was not so sweet. He threw the biggest tantrum I’ve seen yet. I was giving him a bath and he made the sign for all done, so I assumed he wanted out of the bath. I took him out and he started doing the floppy fish back arching screaming thing that is always so much fun. He was wet, so I was barely able to hold onto his slippery little body. I laid him down to put a diaper on and it just got worse. Once the diaper was on, I walked away to let him work through it. Except, he kept following me. He followed me into the laundry room and started hitting my legs and banging his head on the laundry basket as he wailed. So I went over to the computer. He crawled over to me and did the same thing. So I went downstairs. He flopped around and screamed for probably ten straight minutes in the hallway upstairs. I was actually worried that he was going to do damage to his little feet, as forcefully as he was kicking the ground, over and over. After he realized I was going to outlast him, and after angrily tossing a few toys over the railing, he started playing nicely with his blocks. I came back upstairs and all was well! Ahhhh, toddlers..

99% of the time, though, he is just the best little boy. He has such a sweet little spirit. All weekend he would crawl over to Dan or me and pull himself up on us and say, “Haahhhhhhhhh!” and smile. He was stopping by to say HI! You would think he has southern roots with the way he pronounces his only two words: Haahhhhhh! and Baahhhhhhh!

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that you ate lots of yummy food and got lots of nice things from Santa.. Have a good week, everyone!

Monster Porta

Belly button


This is one of the exercises Elijah's PT suggested we do with him to help him strengthen his core muscles. Since he usually refuses to put weight on his legs, putting him on his knees is almost as good when it comes to building strength in his core. He actually tolerated this for a few minutes today.


Looks like maybe he's up to something?


He put the toothbrush in his mouth. By himself!

You would never know from these pictures that Elijah was an absolute BEAST tonight. He and I spent the day together while Dan worked at the dropzone. Everything was great until supper. We had a good morning visiting my cousin Trevor and his wife Angie in the hospital and meeting their new beautiful baby girl. Elijah was great at the hospital. He took a good long nap today, and afterwards we went for a walk and went to the park and everything was happy and sunshiney.

Then I sat him down for supper and this is when things took a sharp, wrong turn. I gave him a sandwich and I was going to also give him some spaghettios mixed with veggies (his favorite). He took one bite of his sandwich and one bite of spaghettios and one sip of milk and then decided to freak out. His cup was sent flying across the room, his sandwich was suddenly in my lap, his spaghettios were all over his face, his plate flew across the table, and his body was thrashing, causing his chair to rock back and forth. I was in complete awe. I was thinking, what in the world just happened? I gave him one chance to calm down and eat more of his food and explained that he wouldn't be getting fruit or yogurt if he didn't eat his spaghettios and sandwich. More body thrashing took place, so I removed him from the table and put him in the living room on the floor and walked away.

He sat in the same spot for a good 5 minutes and screamed his head off. I sat at the table, faced away from him, and cried into my hands. I know that disciplining Elijah is important, and we will do it, no question. It is just hard. The kid has been through so much. As I sat at the table, I thought of his strength and of him lying in a hospital bed and about how fragile his life seems to me sometimes and I just wanted to run over and give him whatever he wanted. But I didn't. I just sat there and let him work through it.

Eventually he scooted into the kitchen and contentedly did his usual opening and closing of all the cupboard doors. After a while I went over to him and asked if he wanted a hug from Mommy. I went to reach for him and all I got was another round of body thrashing and screaming.

He tried to get into the pantry, but I said no, so more thrashing and screaming followed. I brought him into the living room and sat him on my lap, facing me, which he usually loves. More thrashing and screaming. Again, I set him down and let him do his thing. After a few minutes he was playing with his toys but any change in his life (me trying to give him his nebulizer treatment or change his diaper or put on his pajamas) and he would totally freak out. I turned on Baby Signing Time and he was happy. In my gut I feel I shouldn't have let him watch it, but I think I may have pulled out all of my hair otherwise.

After that it was time to get ready for bed, and more crazy behavior took place with every little thing I tried to do. This is so confusing for me. I mean, I understand that we're starting the terrible twos, but really? Is it this bad? I'm sitting here wondering if there is something more. Again I'm worried that there might be something wrong. Is he not feeling well? Is it his heart? Is it nothing?

I had a bad dream last night. I have these a lot. I call them my PTSD dreams. I was feeding Elijah and there were a few people around us, watching me feed him. Suddenly I noticed that his breathing was different. It sounded a lot like it did before his last surgery in April, really stressed and shaky. I looked at his lips and they were a dark red color. I said to the other people, "His lips have changed, this isn't good," and I reached to pick him up. I was very calm on the outside but freaking out inside. I woke up in a panic.

It just plain sucks always wondering if something is really wrong with my baby. I'm so tired of it. I just want one week where I don't have to worry about his heart. If I knew his 3-hour tantrum tonight had nothing to do with his heart, I feel I'd be able to handle it much better, and without any tears (on my end anyway). So here I go, another sleepless night of worrying and wondering....