A real contest

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Zephra, Shinga and Vicky were the winners of my fake contest. They all guessed the quote correctly, before I posted the comments which contained the answer. If you really want I will send out pictures of the kids but you will have to email me your addresses since I may be great at trivia but I can't guess addresses.

My fake contest and the fact that I finally finished my scarf after working on it for over a year (off and on) made me decide to throw a real contest. That is right, the prize is a magenta wool scarf hand knitted by yours truly. I am willing to ship international so all my non US readers feel free to enter. All you will have to do is enter one comment a day on each post that I write for the next week. That will give people plenty of time to get their name in if they so choose. That also means that I will have to come up with a post every day but I think I can handle it. All I ask is that the comment is more than a lame "hi". I would like a tiny bit of substance since I did spend many hours making the scarf. I will randomly draw names.

Breakfast

I am stuck in a breakfast rut. I serve my poor kids the same few things every morning because they are simple to get together. I am generally a cereal gal so me having to think up anything more complex than that first thing in the morning is hard. Right now we are on a whole wheat toast spread with apple butter streak. I pair that with yogurt raisins and call it good. I guess what I am trying to say is Help!! Give me some ideas about what else is out there for breakfast. I need tips on what to feed the kiddos. I am sure they will be quite happy with expanded breakfast options.

Too cute!

One of the best things about increasing the humidity on our living room is that Harry's cute little curls stick around much longer. Generally his hair gets crazy and frizzy looking if it had not recently been wet down. Enjoy the wonderful curl pictures I took this afternoon.

Harry's first blog entry

mnnnnnnnn jnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn vbgggggbbbbbbbbbbbnnnnnnnnnnnnmmllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllk bbb vvvvvvvvcvhgnmnhjjjj

Which translates to: Dude please some and rescue me from this crazy woman! She does all sorts of mean things to me like getting me dressed and making me sit down in the bath tub. Help!!!

evanPod

Way back when the nanos were first out on the market I joked with my sister E that she should get Evan a nano. It was the perfect size for him and after all he deserved all the cool new toys. She refused but did say that once he would tolerate headphones that she would then get him his own nano. Well Auntie E where is his iPod?

Warning!

When you are shopping for a humidifier do not take your train obsessed sons with you. You will walk out of Target with a humidifier that you know very little about except that it is in the shape of Thomas the Tank Engine. Curse those pleading brown eyes and the giggles of glee.

The Dentist

Yesterday we finally had the long awaited dental appointment that would get the ball rolling so that Evan could have his cavities taken care of. I was rather apprehensive especially after all the issues we had even getting the appointment. To top things off I was not even sure our dental insurance would even cover the visit. According to the website they have no providers in Big City which seemed really odd to me especially when they had a ton of providers in my small town area.

We got there and were checking in. Evan started whining which worried me even more but it turned out that Evan wanted out of the stroller to play with the mega lego blocks. We have them at home and they are quite popular with the boys. The student dentist we saw was nice and through. She had a bunch of pictures of different heart defects on a page and wanted me to pick out Evan's heart defect. I laughed and told her that Evan's heart was unique which is why I had put complex heart defect on the medical forms.

The exam went exactly the way I expected. Evan hated it when they were looking in his mouth but was otherwise quite well behaved. Having the cavities filled under general anesthesia was recommended due to his age. Proper diet and oral hygiene was stressed. They were eager to make sure that I scheduled an appointment with out dentist up here for Harry (which I had already discussed with the dentist). I could tell that they were used to seeing worse mouths with kids that had very poor oral hygiene.

After we bought some sandwiches and had a picnic in a local park. One of the advantages of this dental school is that it is right next door to the hospital that Evan goes to for all his heart stuff so we already were familiar with the area. It was quite tough to push the stroller filled with the kids up the steep hills. I guess I need to get in better shape. The day ended up being a long day but turned out much better than I had thought it would.

Picture post

It was a frosty and very chilly morning yesterday.

Harry wearing the cashmere hat Auntie E knit for Evan last winter.

Hat hair is so much fun

This was supposed to be a picture of the boys sharing and taking turns. I wanted to have it just in case they never share anything again. Sadly, I did not grab the camera fast enough and the brief moment was gone. At least they are not screaming and crying in this picture.

Harry making mommy jealous with his bending and balancing skills. If I bent over like that I would have fallen on my face.

Quite the morning

This morning Evan had a bloody nose. I was trying to get lunch done (so I guess is was more afternoonish) and Evan was having a fit that it was not going fast enough. I send him off to sit down so that he could calm down when the next thing I know he has blood all over the front of his shirt and big fat drops more coming out of his nose.

It is not easy to stop a bloody nose in a very reluctant toddler who would have been happy to just sit there and bleed. He did not want me to put any sort of tissue up there and was not wanting me to pinch his nose shut. I was glad that my neighbor was not home because she might have thought I was murdering someone the noise was so loud. I had to restrain his entire body and pinch the nostrils shut, no easy feat now that he is getting bigger and stronger. Once he exhausted himself I was able to pack some toilet paper in his nose and ace bandage his good arm to his side. He then calmly watched the computer screen saver while I finished lunch. I wanted to make good and sure that a clot had formed since I did not fancy a trip to the Emergency Room.

I think this whole event was a combination of bad genetics and blood thinners. I checked Evan's INR, which was fine, so it was caused by the dry winter air. My husband and I were plagued by bloody noses as kids. I have grown out of it mostly but sometimes my husband will still randomly start bleeding. I emailed Evan's cardiologist and I got some great tips to hopefully prevent the next event.

Excuse me, while I run off to mop the blood off of my floor. CSI would have a field day in my house.

A classic blunder

Ha ha! You fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! The most famous is never get involved in a land war in Asia, but only slightly less well-known is this: never go in against a Sicilian when death is on the line! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha! Ha ha ha...

I am adding another to the list of classic blunders. Never go up against Awesome Mom in trivia, especially science fiction trivia. I seem to have a wicked memory for all sorts of odd facts. This is something that my husband discovered today.

As I mentioned above I am very much into science fiction literature and tv shows. I grew up watching Star Trek: The Next Generation along with other sundry science fiction shows. I learned to discover actors that appear in more than one show even if in one show they were heavily coated in makeup and odd masks. My husband checked out the entire first season of Farscape from the base library and we have been watching it all week. He is also a fan of Stargate (a show which I like but would not go out of my way to watch). We have to get all of our sci fi shows in reruns because we are too cheap to spend the money for the good cable so we are not really up on the latest shows. We had not seen an episode of Stargate in awhile but there happened to be one on tv and imagine my surprise when one of the new main character of that show looked awfully familiar. The main character was Ben Browder who was also the main character of Farscape.

My husband was incredulous. I had to finally look online to get him to stop denying the obvious. I had no idea why he would not believe me since it was not like Ben Bowder was in any alien makeup at all in either show. Stargate and Farscape also share another common actress Claudia Black who has a reoccurring but semi-minor role in Stargate but is the love interest for Ben Browder's character in Farscape.

He then moved on to discussing Star Trek with me. He said that we should add it to our collection of TV shows. He mentioned that there were probably tons of seasons to collect. I of course had to beg to differ. I knew that the Star Trek had not even run for the five seasons that were hinted at with the whole "five year mission" in the introduction. I was not entirely sure exactly how many seasons had run but I knew it was not the seven seasons my husband was thinking of (which of course any trekkie knows is the standard length for the spin off Star Trek shows excepting Enterprise) . Wikipedia solved that argument by stating that the show had run for three years. Score another one for Awesome Mom. Who knew there was still some brains left in me after having two kids? I sure did not.

I am giving an autographed picture of my kids to whomever can guess what movie the above quote came from.

Pediatric Grand Rounds

Pediatric Grand Rounds is up at Parenting Solved. I particularly enjoyed the posts submitted by Sandy Szwarc who has a blog called Junkfood Science. It reminds us all to be a bit more critical of what read in the news.

Laundry and pictures

The Laundress was bemoaning her seemingly enormous pile of laundry so to make her feel better I am posting a picture of my own pile of laundry that is awaiting folding. Of course after I took the picture I enlisted the help of my husband in removing said pile from my hall way but, for the record, I will admit to it have been in existence for several days. I added Harry into the picture so that I could simultaneously appeal to the segment of my readership that only comes here to look at pictures of my cute children.



Old things have become new again. My sister E bought a couple of pop up tent type things for Evan as a gift for his second birthday. He had fun going in and out of them but eventually they were put under the stairs to make room for other larger toys. While I was trying to do a bit of organizing under the stairs I pulled them back out and they became an instant hit. Harry got a bit rough with them knocking them over so I had to clothespin a blanket to them to help keep them in place. The blanket makes them seem more cave like so it only adds to the fun. Evan also likes to bounce his sippy cup on the top of them.

Bust my buffers!

Apparently I have almost missed delurking week here in the blog world. Luckily it ends tomorrow so I still have a bit of time to try and squeeze a few comments out of my readers. Please leave a comment or question even. You would not want to make Evan or Harry (possibly both) cry. If there is something that you are dying to know about me feel free to make a request, the worst I can do is say no after all.

Transitioning your child off of tube feeding

I have received several Google hits on this subject. I thought that I would share the things that worked for Evan in the hopes that someone may find it useful. This is what worked for us, each child is an individual and what worked for us may not work for someone else. It is important that the child's GI doctor is consulted when you make drastic changes in your child's feeding schedule and diet.

Evan was not a hard case. His eating issues stemmed from several different sources. His number one issue was his heart defect. It is hard to develop much of an appetite when your heart is working hard to make sure that everything is being oxygenated properly. He also had to deal with reflux when he was an infant (he spit up a lot and very frequently). Small frequent meals were all he could manage during the day. He would not show any sings of hunger so I had to keep him on a schedule or he would go hours with out eating. He made up the calories he was not taking in during the day with a tube feeding while he was sleeping at night. All this led to him having very little stomach capacity. If he attempted to eat a lot of something that he liked his stomach could not handle the large amounts and would end up throwing up. We had to do something to stretch his stomach before we could get him off of tube feeds.

Evan's doctor and I decided to switch from feeding him a small amount per hour over a long period of time at night to giving him bolus feeds (a larger amount over a shorter period of time) during the day time. We would gradually speed up the bolus feed and increase how much we gave at one time. A lot of throwing up ensued when mommy or daddy pushed him too much during a bolus feed but eventually he was able to take eight ounces of Pedisure over a half hour. The doctor had deemed this our ultimate goal since kids his age were able to take in that much on a regular basis.

Once we knew that his stomach had the capacity we started dropping how much Pedisure he was getting. As we did so his weight was carefully watched so that we could see if he was compensating for the calories that he was not getting from his tube. Every time he was weighed I would hold my breath hoping that he was still gaining. Every time he was which made me very happy.

You can see that Evan's transition off of the tube was rather smooth. We did not have any oral aversions or strong texture issues to deal with. I think that my insistence that he eat orally during the day helped that since, even with tube fed kids, oral stimulation is still very important. I also think that having him get the feel of real food in his mouth was important. A dietitian that I saw to get ideas on how to boost Evan's calorie intake wanted me to feed him more pedisure. I did not want to have Evan on only pedisure since as good as a formula can be it is still artificial. I felt the he needed a variety of real food in his diet to keep him healthy and happy.

I hope that this is helpful to someone some day. I think that with out reading about the things other parents were trying I would have gone insane with worry and frustration especially since early on we ended up with a GI doctor that was not very interested in helping us transition Evan off of the tube. Once we got a more caring doctor that was willing to work with me and listen to me things really started taking off. Evan is now a pretty normal picky toddler that hates to eat his vegetables.

Evan enjoying a tube feed while watching a video. It was the only way we could keep him still in his chair long enough to give him his bolus feed.

Hi Honey!

I hope that today is much busier today that it was yesterday. It must stink to be so bored at work that you have nothing better to do than read my blog for entertainment. You might want to cover your tracks so that your buddies at work do not know that you can fit a whopper in your belly button.

Whee

I have had the best Sunday ever! Well maybe that is a bit of an exaggeration but it was pretty dang good. After an entire year of going to church when my kids should be napping the change to the 9-12 schedule was very welcome.

The biggest drawback to the new schedule presented it's self when I got up in the morning. My husband after a long discussion of our wake up time in the morning had not actually set his alarm. Luckily the kids got up early enough that we were not running around like madmen trying to get to church on time. Actually, not having to be up at a specific time is something that I see as a perk of being a stay at home mother. It is a bit annoying to have to be up every week at the same time. Waa I am such a whiner, I know.

Evan was thrown off by the new order to the meetings. He is used to coming in and going straight to nursery for two hours of playing. He started crying when we went right to the chapel for Sacrament meeting. He was inconsolable until I pulled the yogurt raisins from the diaper bag. We continued to stuff the kids with snacks and actually were able to sit through the entire meeting with minimal disturbances. Even did let out a loud "uh oh" right before the sacrament prayer. It was all I could do to not laugh out loud. I could see the people in front of us trying to hold in laughter too.

Nursery was lovely! I did not have to clean up after the ward that met before us since we are first now. I also did not have to worry as much about sobbing cranky toddlers. Towards the end the kids were getting tired but it was not the normal over tiredness that I had been dealing with in the past.

The best part was coming home at a decent time. We were able to have a nice lunch and then everyone (except for my non nap taker husband) took a lovely Sunday afternoon nap. We are now all happily playing and relaxing before the start of dinner. I think next year we will just start going to the other ward when they have our lovely morning church time because I love it that much.

Gah!

I love my husband, I really do but I am soo ready for him to go back to work already. I want to get my schedule back and stop all the lazing around. When my husband is home I am much more tempted to stay up too late since I know that he will get up with the kids. Now that Harry is on all solids I know that I will even get to sleep in some (Harry would not take a bottle from my husband unless he was starving to death so sleeping in was not an option for me). We also hardly go anywhere when my husband is at home. My morning excursions often revolve around walking with one of my mommy friends so a husband coming with makes for awkward conversation. I am looking forward to Monday.

Awesome Mom rocks the house

This morning

Ring ring! Husband answers the phone while I am brushing my teeth and then hands it to me.

"Hi this is Really Annoying Dental School. We are calling to reschedule Evan's appointment (which took me months to even get since they are ultra slow with the whole paperwork thing). We are going to be short staffed that week."

Awesome Mom hastily spits out the toothpaste and walks over to the calender thinking that the new appointment would be a mere few days later.

"The earliest we have is the 29th of January"

Awesome Mom is happy that she spit out the toothpaste because she would have spit out any liquid in her mouth due to her great surprise. She starts getting angry and mentally puts on her battle gear.

"Is that the earliest you have? We have been waiting for this appointment for a long time."

Awesome Mom's first attack is weak, she is trying to feel out her opponent's strengths and weaknesses.

"Yes that is. "

The opponent deftly blocks Awesome Mom's attack and prepares to make one of her own.

"We tried calling you in December but no one answered" she smugly added.

Awesome Mom smells weakness and goes in for the kill.

"Why didn't I get a message on my answering machine then? I would have called you back if I had known you wanted to talk to me about rescheduling"

Awesome Mom's attack is vicious and brutal. Her opponent is sorely wounded by the logic of Awesome Mom's attack.

Silence and then "Well I can highlight you and if there is a cancellation that day we will give you a call."

The victory is not as strong as Awesome Mom had hoped but she allows her opponent to leave the battle arena saving some face.

A little while later

Ring Ring. Awesome Mom answers the phone.

"This is Really Annoying Dental School. I found an opening the next week at the same time as your original appointment, Do you want that appointment?"

Awesome Mom smiles and the crowd goes wild. She emerges victorious from the bloody battle.

My darlin Clementine

I have never been a big fan of oranges or other types of citrus. I like lemons and limes but they are not the kind of fruit that you peel and eat. Oranges just had too much white stuff left on them after you peeled them. My obsessive peeling personality would not let me eat them until they were completely free of the white gunk. Grapefruit was just....... well we will not even go there. I do buy them now and then because my husband loves to peel them and eat them like oranges.

On a bit of a lark I bought a few tangerines for the kids to eat. I was wanting to branch out a bit in the kinds of fruit we ate and tangerines were perfectly kid sized. The big downfall I discovered was that they had seeds that had to be removed before the kids could eat them. When I heard about clementines (which are seedless tangerines) I was overjoyed. It was the perfect solution to the whole seed problem.

Evan lost interest in tangerine eating just after I made the trek to Trader Joe's to buy a box of clementines. Harry decided that he still liked the juice but had no actual interest in eating the whole thing so I was left with a bunch of fruit that I did not want to go to waste. I decided to take the plunge and eat one. They were especially bred so that they were easy to peel. That meant that there was very little white gunk to peel off. I took one bite and was in heaven. I am now a citrus convert and am happily eating my way through the box.

The first day of the year

It is the first day of the new year and I think that we are off to a pretty good start. I already have one goal mostly achieved off of my list of goals for the year thanks to my darling husband who was looking for something in the horror that was under our stairs and decided to clean while he was looking. I will go and tidy up a tad more and call it good. Mostly I think we need to have a better place for all of our throw blankets (you know what I am talking about right? The smallish blankets that you snuggle under when you are watching tv). We have to keep them hidden from Evan who likes to eat them. They also seem to be breeding because we started out with two and now we have four.

I also went walking today after slacking completely during the holidays. Harry is still doing his two nap thing so I was able to just take Evan along in our single stroller (my husband is still on holiday hours at work and only has to work one day this week so he stayed home and played computer games while Harry slept. Of course Harry woke up the instant I got back from the walk. My husband lives a charmed life sometimes). It was amazing how much faster I could walk when not pushing 50+ pounds of children in a boat of a double stroller. The double stroller is nice but it is a monster to turn. It was also neat being able to listen to my wonderful shiny iPod while walking. I felt like showing all the people I passed my new toy.

I hope that this great day is a sign of things to come.

Evan playing tonight while I was making dinner. This is a super nifty toy that my parents bought for Evan. Thomas will follow the tracks that you put on the mat and can actually search for the track if he looses it which happens often since Evan loves to sit on the mat instead of by the mat. Sometimes Thomas has to take "naps" because the music drives mommy nuts.