Happy Birthday, Huck

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The above was contributed by guest blogger, Huck, age 2

I can't beleive my baby is two years old!  If you ask him, he is NOT a baby nor is he a big boy.  He is a Toddler!  And he is very much so. How to describe my boy... hmmm..

Perhaps some vital satistics?  At his 2 year old checkup he was 27.7 pounds, 35 inches tall and his head was 50.17 cm.  Which makes him lean, tall and big-headed :-)  He is a healthy boy, although he has had a run of ear infections this year.  He does have some new eczema on his legs that I am not sure of the cause.  I suspect diet since when we were on our Spring Break trip and eating junk it was much worse.  Or perhaps the car seat, like my nephew, since we spent a lot of time in the car?   He had a finger poke for some blood work and 1 shot.  We used the Buzzy Bee www.buzzy4shots.com for both and he did not even make a peep.  The nurse was amazed at how well it worked and was telling everyone in the office. 

He is very busy all the time!  He climb anything and has recently mastered climbing down out of things, like the playhouse in the backyard.  He runs, jumps, crawls, gallops...  Lately he has been enjoying wodden puzzles.  He is quite good at them.  He likes the shape sorter as well.  He like zippering up his jacket/ PJs.  We are seeing some emerging pretend play as well.  He plays with his brother and sister and is a little mimic.  Duch and Huck have been playing together more and more and often enjoy each others company.  The one area of concern in regards to development is his expressive language.  I don't have concerns about his receptive language as he understands everything easily.  He follows commands, he points to pictures, knows the parts of his body and appropriatly answers questions.  However, he uses mostly sounds as opposed to words.  He has only maybe 10 words that a stranger would recognize.  We are going to take him for a speech evaluation as I would prefer to intervene sooner rather than later. 

He is a pretty good eater.  He will eat a variety of foods.  Some favorites are bananas, oranges, mac and cheese, steak and any and all sweets.  He will flip out for fruit snacks, which is why I won't buy them.  The Hubby, however, has no problem buying them...  He is nursing several times a day, mostly before naps, at night and after a fall of some sort.  He does not show any signs of self-weaning. 

He goes to sleep at night in his toddler bed in is room, but wakes up and comes to my bed at some point during the night.  He can open the door from the inside now so I hear him rattling the door knob for a bit before he wanders in to ask for Mama Milk.  He takes a nap when I am home, usually for 2 hours or so, but does not nap when home with the Hubby (unless it is in the car.) 

He is more shy around strangers and takes a little bit to warm up.  He will stick close to my side or climb into my lap and put his chin down on his chest until he is more comfortable.  Once he warms up he is free with smiles and waves.  

He loves to play with balls, coins, blocks, puzzles, computers and the play kitchen.  He loves Mickey Mouse and still loves Veggie Tales.  He does appear a bit more interested in TV these days as his attention span is growing. 

He can be very stronged willed at times.  He will NOT share his food with his brother or sister, even if he is finished with it.  He would rather throw it in the trash than let one of them eat it!  Sometimes he will set his mind to something random and there is no changing it! 

We got to celebrate his birthday with Uncle Mike, Aunt Sara, William and Dillon which was great fun.  We were still on our Spring Break trip on his actual birthday so we celebrated a few days later when we were all back together.  He is a blessing to us!

Ear Infections and the Beach

|Right now the kids and I are at home in Dallas and it is 34 degrees outside at 11:00 in the morning.  The Hubby is in Playa del Carmen, Mexico where is it 70 and cloudy.  My mom is in Panama City Beach, Florida where it is 50 and sunny.  Neither of them have perfect beach weather but I'd still rather be there than here!  At least it is sunny here.  The Hubby had to go to Mexico for work.  His boss owns another bar there and the woman who runs it was going to be gone, so the Hubby was sent down to look after it.  My mom's friend asked her if she would like to go to the beach, so they packed up the car and drove to Florida for an undetermined amount of time. They plan to read books, look out at the ocean and do some shopping. I hope that when I am retired I can do things like that. 

Both Duchess and Huckleberry have had ear infections the past two weeks.  I got paged at work from the school nurse telling me Duch was in the clinic complaining of an ear ache.  I took her to the doctor and sure enough it was infected.  That makes her 4th ear infection in 12 months.  She had 1 the first 5 years of her life and suddenly she is having trouble.  The pedi was concerned because she said she should not be doing that since she had her tonsils and adenoids out.  So we may be in for another trip to the ENT. 


At the doctor

I let her stay home from school, looks real sick, right?

While we were there she looked in Huck's ears and they were clear.  That was a Tuesday.  Thursday night I knew Huck had an ear infection.  He couldn't sleep and was hitting his ear.  I thought I would try to wait it out and see if it would clear up on it's own.  Friday he was okay but then Sat afternoon he woke up from his nap with a fever of 104.1.  So off to the doctor's we went Sunday morning.  Thankfully our pediatricians has Sunday hours in the winter.  He had an infection in each ear.  That make 7 ear infections for him in the past year!  So both of them were put on Omnicef.  We may be in for an ENT consult for him as well.  I'm more concerned for him because that is a lot of antibiotics for one little guy's gut.  He does take probiotics each time, but still.  I am also getting concerned about his speech.  He has no problems with his receptive speech but his expressive language is made up of about 4-5 sounds.  He imitates syllables and intonation, but most things sound the same.  I think he is very good at communicating, he just doesn't use understandable words.  I am self-referring him to ECI for a speech evaluation.  I'd rather do it sooner than later and I understand the process can take some time.  It could be that some ear tubes will help, we'll see. 

Now this poor baby looks sick :-(

Bubba, thankfully, has stayed healthy.  Just a little bit of congestion.  I am so grateful that we have (at least so far) avoided the flu.  Knock on wood!!!! 

I put some baby clothes and baby equipment in a consignment sale this weekend.  I was kinda sad to see all those sweet baby clothes leaving the house, but we do not anticipate another kiddo in out house needing them.  This sale has a cool on-line system where I can see what sold so I know I made about $100.  I chose not to discount or donate the things that did not sell.  I'll try again next time, maybe lower the price or maybe not.  As a consignor I got to shop the pre-sale.  I got Duch 5 or 6 outfits, a few shirts and a pair of jeans for Bubba and 1 outfit for Huck for $60. 

Sweet baby clothes...

Bubba is going through books so fast we can't keep enough in the house for him.  He loved the Ready Freddy series and just finished The Mouse and the Motorcycle by Beverly Clary.  I love that he loves the books that I read as a kid :-)  I wonder if he'd be interested in Ramona Quimby, Aged Eight?  We need to take a trip to the library.  He made a chart to earn a hamster.  He is doing extra chores to earn each check mark and once he has 20 he will earn his hamster and everything that goes with it.  We told him he has to wait until at least after Spring Break so that we won't need to find a hamster sitter.

We are going to San Antonio and Austin for Spring Break.  We will meet Aunt Sara and the cousins in San Antonio.  We plan to go to Sea World, the Alamo and the Riverwalk.  We may be crazy for the 2 of us to take 5 kids to Sea World during Spring Break, but we up for the challenge!  Then we'll head up to Austin where we'll stay with a friend for a night or two and see some other friends there.  The Hubby will be in Florida for Hank's Open and Grandma K's memorial service. 

Update on our Healthy Eating Challenge: 

Make Your Own Pizza!  The kiddos made these when we had a friend over to play.  I made the whole wheat pizza crust from scratch and the kids liked it. 

 

 

I think we are doing pretty well.  The kids are more aware of what we are eating and frequently ask if something is healthy.  There has been some complaining about "never getting anything yummy anymore" like the donuts they wanted at the store yesterday.  I am so aware of artificial colors- they are everywhere!  I can't look at things the same way anymore.  Duch was invited to a birthday party where the mom made a gorgeous rainbow cake where each layer of cake was a different color of the rainbow.  My first thought was "Wow, that is cool!" but it was quickly followed by an internal cringe at all the sugar and dyes...

 I have slacked off a little on the fruit at breakfast, so I need to focus on that more.  I have cooked more whole wheat goods.  Some were a hit, some were not.  Whole wheat waffles- hit.  Whole wheat mac and cheese- miss.  I think that I did not get the roux creamy enough with the mac and cheese, or maybe I need a different cheese.  I'm not giving up on that one yet.  Whole wheat biscuits- big hit.  Whole wheat pancakes- ehh, kinda in the middle.  I also made mini egg casseroles which were a bit hit.

Round Breakfast- home made biscuits, egg casseroles and clementines

 But on the flip side, I also let the kids buy lunch 3 times last week.  I just didn't get everything together in time.  And we ate out after ballet and had pizza and pasta which was full of white flour.  I blame it on The Hubby for going out of town!