tiny feet make my heart sing

This is not actually about tiny feet, other than Noah has the sweetest little toes and I want to take pictures of them all day long.  And when he is sleeping!  Oh my stars.  He is so lovely.

We have a "game" closet that is just shelves full of boxes, puzzles, games - kid stuff.  If you remember The Berenstain Bears and the Messy Room, and also dreamed of a bedroom organized like theirs (as I did), this is the closet for you.

Anyway, I ran out of shoebox sized containers and so the tools have always been in with the doctor kit.  This can and has produced several interesting pieces of "medical" equipment that include screwdriver + otoscope (for long ears and noses, of course), thermometers held with pliers (germs, hello), while the toy hammer that makes boink and bang sounds is excellent for testing reflexes since you can hear the results.  Yeah, I realize that doesn't make sense.

It was finally quiet enough last week during a morning check up that Adam figured out he can actually hear a heartbeat through his stethoscope, even though he doesn't understand what he's hearing - "It goes really fast!" he says of Noah's and he is convinced Dustin's "thumps" are much too slow "Yours sounds tired, Daddy.  Lay on the couch and I will listen to your tummy instead!"  He now walks around the house talking to himself very quietly through the stethoscope.

Paige tends towards trauma rather than the typical well check (no surprise there) and lately her little brothers have been wrapped into Ace bandages and wrist braces often.  Seth has a bent towards surgery and wants to use all the construction tools - saw! pliers! drill!

before the month is over

At least I'm not an entire month late, right?  Adam turned 3 several weeks ago.  His Memaw & G'paw (Dustin's parents) sent him 2 Battat building sets and they are super fun.  Adam was so excited*

He loooooves tools/building/unbuilding.  I had to move my canister of tools to a higher shelf because he was creating towers of calamity in his efforts to snag a screwdriver while I wasn't looking.  This was great as he had recently taken to unscrewing anything he could (door hinges! vacuum cleaners! front door handles! coat hooks!).  BUT it was not so great because he figured out that hello, a butter knife is a clearly designed multi-tool and he used one to take all the outlet covers off the living room walls while I took a shower one morning.  Everything is screwed back in, but I am missing 3 butter knifes.  Oh, three year olds.

This little middle man is pretty fabulous.  He must wake up instantly because as soon as I open his door - morning or afternoon - he is immediately telling me his latest thought (he must wake middream): "And then I will need a bucket!  I will use my bucket to put out the fire!  It's at the neighbors." or "I was asking Daddy for a drink of water because I was so thirsty.  And he brought me a dragon!  It was red.  With blue stripes!"  or "The train ride was so fun!  I really liked it and I want to go again.  Today!  I went with Poppy on the train and we went so fast.  It was so fun!"  He is so fun.

Happy 4th year, Adam.  I hope it is as delightful for you as you are to me.

*Noah is also super excited about the drill.  They are the perfect size and slow speed for putting in his mouth and rotating on his sad gums.  He prefers the Philips bit, but the flathead will do in a pinch.  Oh, teething.

reading through winter

this little baby is in love with Gossie books

I spent the winter reading children's & young adult fiction.  They're easy reads, of course, and I think it's good to keep up with current reads for the peeps so we're never at a loss when they are looking for something new to read (or be read to them).  And you can never read too many books.

Unless I hear about a specific author/title, I typically choose books based on their spine fonts.  Dustin makes fun of me quite a bit, but it's taken me to some great reads (also some losers - I found one last summer with sparkles on the cover and it was dismal but I was so enamored with the sparkles that I committed and trudged through it anyway).  I like to read everything by an author in quick succession.  Writer binges, you might say.  So I tried to stick with series since I prefer to read them over stand alones.  I think this is most of what I read.

• The Mysterious Benedict Society
• Sarah Dessen (whatever the library had, I think 12 - I missed a few)
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place
• The Penderwicks
• Nanny Piggins
• Percy Jackson
• Little House on the Prairie

It was really fun and winter seems like the perfect season for kid books.  Sweet Dustin has gotten sucked into reading a few of them as well and I will never forget him telling me over lunch one day "I'm a little sad that I don't have four daughters".  What!

the one we missed

So Adam broke his arm (radius & ulna) in January.  I had been out of town when he fell off a kitchen stool and shot out his hands to break the fall.  I heard that night about how he said his arm was hurting, and how Dustin looked him over and thought his shoulder/elbow/wrist were fine.  The next day he was babying it (I'm still out of town) but the consensus is that he was sore, bruised, something - he'd still pick things up and play and such.  But by Sunday - he had fallen Friday evening - I was headed back home and Dustin says something is probably wrong with him and he's just not...right.  So I come home (first time I've left him alone, really) and he's all happy to see me.  I brought two dear friends with me and he was his charming little self.  But his arm!  His arm was just not right.  It was hanging funny and he cringed if you touched his forearm.  So it seemed entirely likely that it was, in fact, broken.

I took him to the pediatrician on Monday (after seeing the ER bill for Paige, we'd like to avoid that place).  She sends me a block away to a pediatric radiologist.  They xray him, and then I meet the radiologist.  Everyone knows you never meet the radiologist.  Yes, she says.  His arm is broken, both bones are involved.  But that's not all.  His arm has clearly been broken for at least two or three weeks.  Being that we are around this boy pretty much all the time, I was taken aback.  But I continue back to the pediatrician as my mind is rather frantically trying to figure out how this is possible.  So then (it was a long day) the pediatrician just happens to find a pediatric orthopedic surgeon that will check him out during lunch (I am also in shock at this point that this pediatrician doesn't xray or set bones in house?!)  Adam and I drive to the ortho, they take more xrays (long day), and then he comes in and tells me the reason we are actually there is because child abuse needed to be ruled out, as the break is definitely not 3 days old.  And even though I kind of wondered if that would be brought up, it was harder to hear out loud, truth or not.  I felt a little sick to my stomach, to be honest.  The doctor said it wasn't.  No questioning me, no asking Adam.  Just...nope.  I must have been pale by then because he started telling me stories about other toddler patients (man, I feel for those fellow wild kids' parents).  He got a blue cast and we were ushered into the fiberglass club with an appointment scheduled for 2 weeks later.

At first I couldn't even...it boggled my mind to think that his arm had been broken for so long already.  I rejected this completely.  He has hung from monkey bars, been swung by his arms, and we always pull him up by his hands.  He plays and draws and throws.  Surely that must have hurt, right?  Adam adjusted pretty well to the cast all in all, but sleeping was a hurdle and he stayed out of sorts for a while.  We went back after 2 weeks, cast cut off, xrays, great improvement (I think the first photo is of this visit, and you can see the new shoots of bone growth on the sides), but new green cast for 2 more weeks.  I asked him how this was possible.  How is it even possible?  Was the break this big to begin with?  How did I not notice?  Why wouldn't I notice?  He nodded sagely and said lots of technical terms that I don't remember and said it was very likely that the initial injury was a hairline fracture and that the reinjury on the already weakened bones caused such a large, jagged break.  I can understand that.  He also said that young children have entirely different nervous systems than adults - developmentally speaking - and it could easily have not bothered him much, or not noticeably at all - like a bruise only hurts when you press on it.

But you know what?  I was bothered.  Our boy fell sometime (who even knows when) so hard that he cracked two of his bones.  And we missed it.  I felt really guilty, even though I couldn't change any of it - and would likely react the same way.  Kids fall down, have bumps, bruises, scrapes.  I just...I don't know.  We missed it.

He's all the way better now.  He wore his green cast for another 2 weeks and then we were sent home with a 1/2 arm brace for 2 more.  The brace has been added to the doctor kit and he is now The Authority on wrapping arms with the ace bandage "cast".  The PA who casted him both times was fantastic and Adam invited him to "come play with tools" after his last appointment.  He used this vacuum/sawzall deal called the Tickle Machine to get his casts off - Adam also asked Al if he could borrow it some time.  "I could borrow it.  And, you know, show all my friends the Tickle Machine.  I do really like it."  Resilience.

a most favorite yakyak

A while back Uncle Brandon & Aunt Michele sent Noah a Highland Cow.  I had no idea that this was an actual animal and started off calling him a yak.  He looks like a fuzzy yak!  Are they even different?  Sadly yes, though I am still unsure as to all of the specifics.  Not so sadly, by the time Dustin corrected me - he hollered "Someone find the highland cow!" at bedtime - it was too late.  Oh, and there was this great beat of silence and then, "What?  What did Daddy say?" from several of us since we had been calling that hairy beast Yakyak for many days already.  He tried - and tried - to correct us but after a few days even he fell to calling for Yakyak.

Noah sleeps with him.  When he goes down for a snooze, he has one arm around Yakyak and he rubs his eyes with his empty hand (he rubs his eyes as soon as he gets covered up, it's lovely).  And he totes him around during waking hours.  Yakyak is slung onto tables, pushed into chairs, balanced upon windowsills.  Noah shows him his world, natters on, gives squishes, and gets him plenty dirty (thankfully he washes well).  He delightedly drops Yak from the confines of his crib, and then searches him out once he himself is free.

Do you remember on the cartoon 101 Dalmatians, how Pongo is watching out the window at dogs walking by with their people?  And how they oddly - or not so oddly - looked very similar to each other?  Because when Noah has great bedhead, he and Yakyak show an endearing resemblance.  Dustin and I laughed about it over breakfast this week.  Yakyak was waiting patiently for Noah to finish his oatmeal, of course.  Oh, sweetness.