Friday, October 31, 2008

Will it be Spring next, Mama?

Well, this week was exciting.
Andrew and Rowan came home from Minnesota on Monday night (Andrew spent the weekend with his Dad and brother in Bluefin for their annual Father/son weekend trip and took Rowan with him. He stayed with Pam for most of the time, and I'm soooooo glad he was able to spend some quality time there!! Thanks, Pam!). We put Rowan to bed kind of early because he was really sleepy, and after about an hour of crying with no consolation, he fell asleep. Andrew had said that he kind of had a little cough, so we thought if we could get him to sleep with a humidifier, he might sleep it off.
No such luck.
At about 11:15pm (Andrew and I had gone to sleep by 10:00pm...!), we woke up to him crying and coughing a "barky" cough. I ran into his room, and with every breath, in and out, he "barked." Scary. Ingrid had had the croup last winter, and I recongnized this as the same thing. The croup is just an inflamed trachea, making breathing difficult because of the small airway opening. We called the hospital in Oakland to make sure they took our insurance, and when we found out they did, I got up and took him in (so much better than driving to Ruby Memorial in Morgantown, like we had to with Ingrid! It's an hour away, and Oakland is 15 minutes away!). They gave him some steroids, and he was on his way to feeling better, though he did wake up a few more times that night. He's much better now, but the cold that accompanied the cough is still pretty bad, so he's been taking decongestant that the doctor gave him a few colds back, and that helps tremendously. (It should, since after insurance it cost $50!)
The other news is that we changed the kids' sleeping arrangements, and it's soooooo much better! We ended up putting a pack 'n' play in the office (it's been tricky with the printer and computer in there, so we're going to have to figure out some way to move that around), and he has slept through the night for 3 nights in a row! Even with not feeling well! We're attributing it to the smaller bed, and most importantly, a stricter nap schedule. We've started a bedtime routine, which seems to help the screaming, however, he still hates going down for a nap, but even when it takes him 45 minutes to fall asleep, he eventually does, and we let him sleep as long as he will. I think we're on the right track. I can't believe how much better I feel! I'm sure he's feeling better, too! I was having a lot of trouble with "blacking out" every time I stood up, and since getting even 3 full nights' sleep, it's almost completely disappeared! I guess my body was just telling me it needed more sleep...
Autumn?

On a different note, this week, we had an early snowstorm. I mean, it wasn't a foot of snow or anything, but the temperature dropped really fast, and it became icy and snowy in a matter of hours. Not fun to drive in.


Ingrid, on the other hand, was ecstatic! She's a Minnesota Baby through and through. She could not wait to get out into the snow and make snow angels or "throw snow bites" (or "have a snow fight," as we would all say). ;) She played outside till we told her she needed to come in because her nose was so cold! She would have stayed outside all day. Andrew went out and helped her make a sad-looking snowman (there was only about 4 inches of snow...), and she felt satisfied after making snow angels and showing me her snowman. I made her a "steamer" of hot milk and maple syrup (chocolate brings out her evil twin...), and she felt so grown up drinking out of a "grown-up" mug, holding it like Mama does with her hand through the handle, cupping the mug to keep her hands warm.
She's so funny. She really, really tried to convince us to go sledding. She tried every angle, suggested every hill, and told us it would be okay... I don't think she was convinced that there wasn't enough snow. I think she thought we just didn't want to do it.


She talked with me about how the snow will go away and then it will be Spring. (My mom had been talking about the seasons with her recently.) But then, when I told her that the snow would probably go away this weekend, she asked if it would be Spring next. I explained that it was just a funny snow because it was still Fall, but about Thanksgiving time, it would stay cold and the snow would stay for a while. Then, we could make more snowmen. She was excited for that, and a little relieved, too, that winter wouldn't be over.

Tonight, we go trick or treating. It's supposed to get near 60 degrees today, so it shouldn't be unbearably cold. Ingrid is going as a pink and grey kitty cat instead of the tiger because the costume is much warmer. She was excited to be something else, anyway. I'm not exactly sure what we will do with Rowan, but we'll just make it a surprise for everyone! In any case, they'll be using their Halloween bags that Pam got them for Halloween last year with their names on them. Check back in very soon for pictures of our Halloween Adventure!

Saturday, October 25, 2008

The cutest Tiger...

We went to the Aurora School Fall Festival tonight where Ingrid dressed up like a tiger!


She was so funny reassuring all of us that she would still be Ingrid after I painted her face. Every time she looked in the mirror, she looked away immediately. :) She never got used to looking at herself. She thought getting her face painted was pretty fun, though. She said it was like when Mama and Papa and Aunt B did the play at the theatre... Uh-oh... ;)

She was really funny, though... All night, she wouldn't do anything that might take her paint off her face. She was so careful when her nose itched or when she wanted something to drink... In fact, she wouldn't even drink out of the pop can because it might take off her black lips! :) By the end of the night, though, she was over it. She kept asking if we could go home and wash it off, mostly, I think, because she was so worried about messing it up. :) I gave her a napkin and told her to itch her nose and took her to a water fountain so she could get something to drink...


We ended up winning a candy dish full of caramel Hershey kisses because we guessed the right amount in the dish. I let her have 3 of them, knowing she was so tired, it wasn't going to matter once we got home. I was right. She's sound asleep right now, although despite our reassurance, she wanted me to leave the door to her room open tonight. I don't blame her since Elijah was dressed like a bloody-toothed vampire and Aunt Anita wore a wierd man mask, and Granny was a skeleton bride... :)

At least Aunt B and Uncle B and Isaac weren't scary... :) We had fun.


Andrew is in MN, so he missed it, but thought we'd post these pics so he could at least see Ingrid. So, Happy Halloween, Papa--and Uncle Eric, Aunt Colleen, Grandpa Darrell, Gramma Camra, and Grandpa Jack--and everyone else!! We love you!!



Saturday, October 18, 2008

The earth showeth forth His handiwork

Even as I type this, I'm serenaded by my son who is crying at 11:30pm... It's so much harder to figure out what to do with a crying baby in the middle of the night when both kids are sharing a room. Tonight, earlier, I was trying to put Rowan to bed (he goes to bed by 7:30 usually, but today we went to Brian's sister's house and neither of the kids slept until we were headed home...so Ingrid was just getting awake at 6:30 and Rowan was just going to bed...) and the screaming that he's started to do when I put him to bed woke Ingrid up. Ingrid sat up and yelled, "NO! Rowan! It's too loud! STOP IT!"

Oh, yeah. That made things so much better. :^?

Rowan still isn't sleeping through the night. Ingrid definitely was sleeping through the night by this time (13 months). I'm so tired. And I'm not sure what to do to remedy it... It's really hard to let him cry it out when the crying wakes up the other one--especially when she insists that if she's awake, everyone else may as well be too! And to put Rowan's bed in the office or something is just really inconvenient...and if he's in our room (if there was room for him in our room), I wouldn't sleep at ALL because I would wake up every time he rolled over.

I'm buckling up for the long haul. I hear stories about Andrew not sleeping in his own room till he was much older than Rowan. My Mom said that Rebecca didn't sleep through the night until she was 3. And I'm so tired.

On the other hand, I'm loving Rowan's age. He's starting to blow kisses and initiate playing peek-a-boo. He said "bah-boo" today for "bottle" and he's starting to say "mama" and "papa" to us. Tonight he said "tee-tee" (sissy) as he pointed to Ingrid's shoe, and when we said that it was sissy's "shoe," he tried to say shoe, but ended up with a funny sound because he couldn't quite figure out the "shhh" part... We laughed a lot tonight.

He's really funny about his eating right now, too. Frustrating for us, but really funny how dramatic he gets when he wants to feed himself. I mean, when you put the spoon or fork to his face to feed him, he screws his face all up like you've just fed him castor oil and shakes his head, sometimes accompanied by a "DOE!" which, of course, means "NO!" or "DOP!" again, of course, meaning "STOP!". Both of which he learned from his sister who constantly uses those words to him... And he will immediately spit the food out--if you're sneaky enough to get it into his mouth before he clamps his mouth shut. Then, you can give him the fork or spoon with the apparently disgusting food on it and he will readily eat whatever he's just spit out. Frustrating.

The only thing he will not object to being fed is YoBaby yogurt. He knows the little package and he will open his mouth like a little bird as long as that's what he is being fed. He's suspicious about ANYTHING else... Hmmm.... maybe I should wash those little YoBaby cups out and re-use them... Nah. He's no dummy. One bite and he'd probably never eat YoBaby the same again. Better not even take the chance. :)

Ingrid is really funny too. I was giving her a bath tonight and she was talking to her little Dora doll about how something was "heavy on her brain." :) She's so funny at night time. For some reason, she comes up with these clever quirky things right before we put her to bed. Nothing gets past her. Apparently, one of Andrew's favorite bluegrass groups has a song that she LOVES and that phrase is in it. :) She's so great.

Thursday, Andrew put some new jeans on her (her 2T size jeans are WAY too small for her, but the new 3T jeans are too big around the waist...) and they kept falling down. She kept having to pull them up and turned to Andrew (and then to me later) and said, "I've gotta pull my britches up!" What a turkey...

We also had a pretty cool discussion today about God. I told her the story about how I had been praying that God would help me figure out how I could get my car fixed because I didn't have the money and I knew it wasn't very safe. And then God told my Mom to tell me to take it to the High School where they have an excellent program in the vocational building where they fix cars under the close supervision of an experienced mechanic (a teacher, too) and they only charge for parts, not labor. So, I got my car fixed the other day--a job that would have cost $450-$500 elsewhere--for $105, including an oil change! And I was explaining to Ingrid that God was good and that we can talk to God anytime and God will listen to us.

She reiterated to me that God was good and then asked, "Where is God right now?" So we got to talk about what Heaven was like and how no one cries in Heaven and that sometimes people talk about Heaven being in the sky, but really, we couldn't understand until Jesus wants us to be with him and He comes to get us when we die and that we didn't have to be afraid to die because that just means that we get to see Heaven and see God and Jesus. She said that she wanted to go there someday. :) We talked about Jesus and that she could go to Heaven to see Him, but we'd have to wait until we were done with our work here.

Then, she wanted to know if we could get to heaven on an airplane. ;) I said no, that we had to wait until we died to see Jesus in Heaven, but that we could feel God and Jesus now anytime we felt love for someone else or when we looked at the beautiful trees or sunsets.

Then, she was quiet for a little while....and asked me to put in her Mickey Mouse CD. :) But nothing gets past her, and I pray our conversation stuck somewhere in her little mind... It will in mine, I know.

So, now I should sleep. But I will leave you with a few pictures of the kids and Becca and I at our Autumn Glory Festival this past week. It was a glorious autumn weekend.

"The Heavens declare the Glory of God, and the earth showeth forth His handiwork." Psalm 19:1


Mama and Rowan

Mama, Rowan, Ingrid, Isaac and Aunt B

Aunt B and Isaac