Old Blog Posts: February 2008

Another of my favorite Will words is “back.”  He uses it totally inappropriately.  It means “put” to Will, because he has heard me say (so many many times) “put that back.”  Nic has been working with Will on this (“see?  Daddy puts the ball IN the box.  IN the box.”)  Me?  I just think it’s cute.

Will lost his left ring finger fingertip on Tuesday.  He was next door being watched by the neighbor while I was at a shoot in Denver, and Nic was at work.  Our neighbor’s two and a half year old daughter closed the sliding glass door, not knowing that Will’s finger was on the doorway, and it sliced the tip of his finger off.  Nic was on his way home, and was able to take him to the hospital.  Meanwhile, I was an hour and a half away, totally oblivious.  I called Nic after my session ended to check in and say hello, and Nic played things very cool.  He said that Will had cut his finger and they were going to the hospital just to be on the safe side, but it wasn’t anything to worry about.

He is a good liar.  There was no “just to be on the safe side” about it–his fingertip was in a baggie on ice!

Will was a trooper.  Our neighbor said he was so brave.  And when I got to the hospital, he wasn’t even crying, just sitting on the cot watching tv.  When I got to the ER (after sprinting to the door from the parking lot [thank God the speed limit on I-25 is 75 mph]) I asked the nurses at the front desk where I could find my Willie,  The nurse said “oh–he is such a doll!” and I knew she knew who I was talking about!  She gushed over how adorable he is and said it broke her heart when he looked at her, held up his hand, and said “ouch.”

He only cried when they touched it.  But when they touched it, oh how he cried!  It broke my heart into a hundred thousand pieces to see him hurt like that (and then of course there was all the guilt of not being there to prevent it).  He would cry “done!  done!  done!” or “home!” or just scream “mom-mom” or “da” or in one particularly heartbreaking moment (trying to get him to put his hand down on the table so he could have it x-rayed) he had exhausted his mom-mom and dad-dad pleas and called for E!  (If he had known that Uncle E was in Australia, he probably would have asked him to bring along The Wiggles with him to save his finger!)

We were in the ER for a LONG time.  Nic and Will got there around 5:30, and we weren’t discharged until after 10.  I felt horrible for Will–I knew he was starving, and it was past his bedtime, and so at 9:00, after asking the nurse to make sure the doctor wouldn’t be coming any time soon, I went to get dinner.  (We decided that it was best for me to go, because on the off-chance that the doctor DID come, I’m not able to hold Will still as well as Nic.)

I went to get my boys dinner from the nearby Qudoba, but missed the doctor, of course.  I got back just as the doctor was leaving the room, the tears still fresh on Will’s cheeks.  Nic said it was for the best that I wasn’t there, though, and I’m inclined to agree.  Daddies are just better at that stuff than Mommies.

Will fell asleep on the way home, and we stopped to get his prescriptions (an antibiotic to prevent infection, and hydro-codone for the pain).  Of course, the codone is a both a blessing and a curse.  It doesn’t make him sleepy–it makes him crazy!  Jumping off furniture, making bad decisions crazy.  Not what you need with part of your finger missing!

They weren’t able to do anything for him other than clean it and bandage it–they think it will grow back better if it isn’t stitched up.  But that part is horrible.  At least with stitches you feel like your child is “fixed.”  But instead of being all sealed up, he is walking around with an open finger!

He is so brave. SO BRAVE.  He hasn’t cried about it at all today.  His bandage has a tendency to slip down, so when I have to redress it it certainly provides an opportunity to cry or fuss, but he doesn’t.  He lets me look at it, goop it up with tons of neosporin (directions from the nurse) re-dress it, and wrap it back up.  Of course, it helps that the first time I did it (and this morning [as well as last night] he didn’t want anyone looking or touching it) I gave him the Costco tup of Jelly Bellys to distract him. 

We had his specialist appointment yesterday and everything went very well.  She thinks it will grow back just fine (maybe with a little help at the end to give it some more skin at the top) as long as we are patient.  Our follow-up is in three weeks, and she thinks it will take a couple of months for it to be healed.  Which is a bummer, because March-May are really the prime “playing outside” times–the summer is so hot!  But he would most likely be 100% healed for our if-traci-books-three-more-weddings (and she has three brides she thinks will book) -we-get-to-go-to-disneyland-in-may trip.

She gave us a splint to keep it from getting banged up, which has made me feel so much better.  It was awful to feel like he just had this little amputate finger hanging out there to get damaged.  We did pause our My Gym membership for the time being, though, which breaks my heart for Will!

He didn’t cry at all at the specialist visit–in fact, there have been zero tears since the doctor cleaned and bandaged it at the hospital.  (well, at least hand related tears–we still have tantrum tears!)  The most he does is show us his hand and say “ouch.”

For the first two days (this is day three) he had a little story he would tell us.  Every once in a while he would come over and show us his hand and say “ouch.”  “dogs.”  “jump.”  The first time he said it I thought “dogs” might have been “door” but when I said “door?  you finger got shut in the door, huh?”  He looked at me like I was simple and kept saying “dogs” until I said “dogs–it happened at the house where there are dogs” and then he was satisfied.  I’m not sure whether he is saying that the dogs (two little dogs, one goldendoodle puppy) were jumping on him, or whether he is saying that it happened at the house where there are dogs, and he had either been jumping, thinking about jumping, was about to jump, or had been jumping at the time.  No one will ever know, but if you want to know Will’s story of how it happened, here it is:  ouch.  dogs.  jump.

He is off the codone as of this morning (thank god) and just on motrin and tylenol.  Honestly, I doubt he even needs that–the finger doesn’t slow him down at all, and he seems to be only bothered by the fact that his arm is in a splint!  He sleeps very well (we’ve spoiled him the last couple of nights and had him sleep with Nic in our bed).  The first night he just woke up once, but I was very easily able to get him back to sleep (in under a minute–just had to lay him back down and tell him we love him).  The second night was a little crazy-the codene made him wired during the day, so he didn’t fall asleep for a nap until 4pm!  We didn’t want to wake him (he’s trying to grow a finger) so when he woke up at 9pm, we gave him dinner and let him play until he was ready for bed (at 3am–yikes).  But last night he went to bed at a less insane 10pm and slept through until 6:30.  He had a regular nap today, so I’m hoping we might even manage to get sort of back on track!  We are spoiling him, though, and let him fall asleep on the sofa with one of us.  Neither of us has the heart to make an amputee cry.

We are in awe of how brave he is.  You can bet there would be a lot of bitchin’ and moanin’ if I was in his shoes.  The hardest part is trying to keep him resting.  We have used plenty of Disney movies in the last couple of days, but with the splint now, I feel like he’s probably ready for more regular action.  I think we’ll take him to the zoo tomorrow and hopefully he’ll enjoy his time playing with the other kids in the church nursery on Sunday–I think he’s ready.

He doesn’t seem to be holding anyone responsible for his injury.  Casey (our neighbor), Ems (the “amputater”), and Jameson (a witness) came over yesterday with “get well soon” balloons.  Will was shy at first, but that could have easily been that he had just woken up.  When Casey mentioned that I should bring him over to her house soon to get back on the horse, he ran for the door!  We took him next door and he was totally fine (happy to see the dogs–which is why I think the “dogs” part of his story is more a location description than a blame-placer) and happy to run around.  So while he might be literally scarred for life, he doesn’t appear to be so figuratively!

One of my favorite Will words is “yuck.”  It’s cute to see what he thinks is yuck.  Like this morning he kissed Mitzy and then said “yuck.”

The full story on Will’s missing finger tip is coming–I’m working on typing it right now.  He’s doing really well, though–aside from the gauze and splint, you wouldn’t know the kid had a serious injury from the way he acts!

 The big two for Will today!  He woke up so cranky I was sure he was sick, but since we absolutely HAD to run errands, I got him ready and took him out.  It is not just Will’s birthday…Costco opened up here!  A mere 20 minutes away.  Heaven.

We arrived an hour after the grand opening, and the place was packed.  We waited in line for at least 30 minutes to get a membership, and I was beginning to feel a little guilty about doing this to Will on his birthday…that is, until the samples started flowing.

Of COURSE Costco is an awesome place to take Will!  Nothing makes him quite as happy as trying new things…and there were new tastes on every corner!  And the giant jar of Jelly Bellys we took home didn’t hurt things, either.

It’s a good thing Willie and I had so much fun, because there is a good chance we won’t be allowed back without adult (ie–Nicolas) supervision.  No one should be allowed to spend that much money on groceries and paper products at one store in one day.

Tonight after Bed Time, Will had an accident (I think he is getting that stomach bug that everyone else has).  Since we have impressed upon him how much poopy accidents make us sad, he tried to clean it up himself.

It was bad.  It was in his hair.  On his blanket.  On his bed.  Into the carpet.

And that is the story of how Will almost didn’t make it to his second birthday.  Nic’s head just about exploded.

But I felt really badly for Will (I’m a sucker for clean-up attempts) so we went to the bathtub and had a nice bath followed by a nice cuddle time with a story while Nic cleaned up the mess.  Not exactly a Consequence for a poopy bedroom…but I am 99.5% positive that no consequence was needed–he knew and was sorry.

It was exactly two years ago to the hour that I went into labor with Will.  If we’d known how many poopy bedroom incidents there would be, we might have told him to stay in there. 

After all those hours of editing and mashing together and adding a soundtrack it turns out I missed an entire tape of raw video!

I could punch myself in the face right now.

I realized after talking to Kelly last night that I somehow missed a huge chunk of videos in our 2007 home videos dvd.  Which means they either got taped over or are missing somehow.  Looks like I know how I’ll be spending naptime today!  ARGH!

We’ve been cleaning today–going through toys in anticipation of Will’s birthday this week.  Man that kid has a ton of toys!  But the thing is, he plays with all of them!

He didn’t take a nap yesterday (although he tried to crash at 5:30 and I had to wake him up by making popcorn and hot chocolate) so this morning he slept in…until 9:30!!!!!!!  It was heaven!  Not worth the no-nap crazies, but nice for a one time deal!  I even squeezed twelve hours of sleep out of it!

It turns out that the number of “ut”s in “ut-oh” is directly related to how bad of an “ut-oh” Will perceives it to be.  The big car crash scene in Cars, for example, gets FOUR “ut”s.  Spilling watter on the floor, though, just gets two.

We are very excited about Will’s new potty independence.  The thing about potty training a child under the age of two is that they might not be able to do the potty trip by themself.  That was totally fine with me–I was much more happy to hear “heee!” (will’s word for pee) and run off with him to the potty than deal with diapers.  But in the last week, he has been taking matters into his own hands.

We have had a little potty since the beginning, but he preferred the big potty…and within a week or so, he had ditched the little boy adapter for using the big potty just as it is and holding on to the seat to balance.  In the last week, we have seen renewed interest in the little potty–he would go and pee in it and then try to take the bowl to the toilet himself (not my favorite trick).  This week, though, he learned how to climb up onto the potty himself!  I was amazed to see him sitting on the potty upstairs peeing yesterday.  Nic and I were doing our own thing, and the next thing I knew, he was sitting on the big potty peeing!  (No stool, nothing!  You should see him climb onto the potty–he does it like a spider monkey.)

With poop, he has been semi potty trained for the last couple of weeks.  He wears unders or goes commando for the day, but would bring me a diaper when he wanted to poop, I’d slap on the diaper, he’d go somewhere private, do his business, and come back for a change.  I wasn’t going to push it, because I have read too many horror stories of boys and poop.  He would poop on the potty occassionally, and I figured it would come eventually.

Last night he went into our bathroom and closed the door.  I followed him in (assuming he was up to either playing with the plunger or eating tampons) and he bitched me out and slammed the door in my face.

I lay down on my belly to watch him under the door…saw him climb up onto the potty, and then heard some grunting.  I peeked in just in time to see that he had pooped and was about to flush it down himself!  Gross blog talk, yes, but so exciting for us!  It was a potty trip he initiated and executed all by himself!  I was thrilled.

It’s awesome to have him be more independent in his potty trips.  He is ready for that second birthday next week!  Weaned, potty trained, sleeping in a big boy bed, using two word phrases, and letting us sleep through the night (right now, he has been sneaking into our bed some time during the night, but since he isn’t waking either of us, we figure we’ll let it go until it does wake us up or he turns three–whatever comes first).   That sounds like a boy who is ready to be two to me!

At the moment, Will’s favorite toys are a little screwdriver and Nic’s two godzilla dolls (there is a big-un and a little-un).  He spends a lot of time doing ill-advised dental work on them.

Will is very into teeth.  He is always saying “teeth!” which is his way of asking for his toothbrush.  Nic always gives it to him and praises him “thank you for choosing to make dental hygiene a priority in your life” he says…but I mainly roll my eyes as Will stands there sucking the training-toothpaste out of the toothbrush bristles.

Will and I left the house early this morning (as in 9am) to go to the zoo.  I decided to run some errands on the way, since I figured Will would fall asleep on the way home.  Except that when we got to the stores…THEY WERE CLOSED.  It turns out there is a reason why I don’t leave the house until 11:00, and it isn’t (as I had previously thought) because I am lazy.  Apparently there are plenty of establishments that also believe that it is ungodly to operate before 10am.

Will fell asleep four minutes before we arrived at the zoo.  He was impossible to wake.  He goes into these stages of sleep where he literally cannot be woken.  You stand him up, he crumples.  You blow raspberries on his belly, he laughs in his sleep.  IMPOSSIBLE.  So I popped him in his stroller and got myself some $0.75 hot chocolate (we bought a souvenir cup so now every time we go to the zoo we get the most delicious hot chocolate for just 75 cents) and waited twenty minutes before pushing Will over to the giraffes, and then working very hard to wake him (mostly by shouting “LOOK!  GIRAFFES!  CRACKERS!” 3mm from his ear).  He was a little bit picky today about which giraffes were allowed to eat his crackers.  I have no idea what his criteria was.

He was excited about the boars today (usually not his thing) and said “piggies” for the first time.  He also had a lightbult moment in the monkey house when the monkeys went ape-crazy and started hollaring at each other.  Will’s face lit up and he said “ooh-ooh-ooh”–for the first time HEARING the monkey sounds that he had been using!  It was very exciting for him.

Will’s birthday is just over a week away (EEEK!) and we’re going to have his party the week after next.  I only had to print out four invitations–it makes me so sad that we don’t need to print out more!

It is going to be a safari themed party, since Will loves giraffes more than anything in the whole world.  I am making him a giraffe cake and am going to try to get safari hats for me and Nic to wear as the party tour guides.

I’m hoping everyone can make it–we’ve invited Will’s neighborhood friends, his friend Mason (whose mommy is my photographer friend), and Oscar the dog and his mommy Laura (who was at Will’s very first birthday party, too).

Things are chuggin’ along here.  I’ve booked another wedding, and would have hoped to book a second this weekend, but the bride and groom got rear-ended on their way to the meeting and their car was totalled.  I hope they reschedule…but brides are fickle creatures and I’m worried she’ll take it as a bad sign.  I have another meeting on Tuesday, so I’m hoping we’ll be at five weddings by the end of the week!  If we make it to eight before the end of March, there’s a special family prize planned. 

(Joan–you shouldn’t read this post–it will just make you think I’m serious.   )

Nicolas and I have long planned for Second Baby in February of 2009.  Three year gap between babies.  I just read on CNN, however, that that would be the Worst Plan EVER.

Having a baby in 2009 is the worst economic decision a family can make.  Wanna know why?  Because a baby born on 30 December 2008 is worth $300 more than a baby born on 1 January 2009.

Here–educate yourself:   http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/08/pf/taxes/rebates_what_you_need_to_know/index.htm?eref=rss_topstories

Nic and I have been all about brainstorming ways to make more money–after all, we have no idea what job Nic will have in May.  So I called him up a minute ago and said “OMG–wanna know how we can make an easy $300?”

And he said “have a baby?”

It’s fate.  Sometimes the Pope tells you to stop using your condoms and IUDs and you say “forget that, Mr Silly Hat.”  But then President Bush says “I’ll give you $300 for every child you have before the end of 2008” and you say “light the candles, babes…we’re gettin’ it on.”

The Pope is so going about it the wrong way.

To be fair, this really isn’t much of a confession, since if you spend any time at all at our house, you can observe this on your own.

I’m not really into clothing Will.  It started in the days of diapers and hot humid Virginia summers.  It didn’t make sense to wear clothes in that kind of heat, and it certainly didn’t make sense to put pants on a kid if you were just going to be taking them off every hour.  Plus, who wants to cover up those cute cloth diapers and chunky little legs?  As the temperatures dropped, I just cranked up the heat.  No pants, no problem in this house.

Enter potty training.  For the first few days, we took the “no underwear at all” approach.  Those few days of freedom were all Will needed to determine that the way to live is sans underwear.  Keeping unders on the kid is virtually impossible, and since he FREAKS OUT every time you go to put pants/unders on him (shouting “heee! heeee! heee!” and insisting on 100 trips to the bathroom) it’s easier to let both Willies run free.

It is not uncommon to hear Nic say “could you try to keep some unders on that kid today?” as he walks out the door sure that his wife has lost all standards and attempts at discipline (this is not totally untrue).  And so Will spends most of his day naked from the waist down (and often from the waist up, too).

In fact, because of this complete fear of peeing in his pants, we have discovered that the key to a much easier bedtime routine is to let him fall asleep naked.  Then we sneak in after he’s asleep and slap a diaper on him.  We repeat the process after his midnight trip to the potty.  Except that sometimes I forget or fall asleep too soon and the kid wakes up naked.

Nic talks wistfully about families where children wear clothing and he asks occassionally if I would like to join the ranks of those families.  Sadly for him, it’s just not up there on my wish list.

He is getting to be such a big boy.  It’s kind of ridiculous.  Today I told him to go get in his chair for lunch and I heard him say “ut-ut-oh” and then he came running into the kitchen, opened up the cupboard, grabbed a towel, then ran back to his high chair.  His chair had breakfast crumbs in it, so he had grabbed a towel and wiped it clean.  Then he got into his chair and waited for me to come buckle him in.

How cute is he?!