Where oh where have I been?

Life has a way of getting the best of you. I haven't blogged in a month! :O It has been crazy busy around here and there were so many times that I said "Oh man this needs to go in my blog" then the event came and went.

I am back in school now and 2 weeks away from finishing my second class. I am proud to say that I finished my first class with a 99.3% and I am on my way to a very similar grade in my current class though it is so much harder. Who knew a healthcare ethics class would be so challenging? It is really making me think about my own ethics and how I would handle situations if/when I become a nurse.

Chris is doing great at work and is getting a 20% raise! He has been approached a few times about stepping into a management role and we have discussed what is best for our family. It is a step in the right direction but management doesn't get overtime which is our bread and butter at the moment. I would love for him to not have to work overtime but on the flip side, it is what allows me to stay home with the boys.

Braedon has been doing much better with the herbs he's on and the new diet. However, the last week has been rough. He is falling into old habits and of course, now we know it isn't anything other than him chosing to not make "smart choices" (per the school's wording). I am starting to wonder if he is challenging us in a way to see how far it will go. He has been grounded since last Tuesday and continues to challenge us. We also have a parent-teacher conference tonight.

Cohen is continuing to thrive and learn so much. No, he isn't "walking" yet though he could. He just won't let go and is afraid of falling. He also knows he is much faster when he crawls. He has also turned into quite the dare devil. He knows how to climb on the couch and likes to "throw" himself into the pillows after Braedon has stacked them up. We line the floor of the couch with additional pillows to help with the falls but now he intentionally falls off and laughs when he hits the floor. He is quite the little boy!

Since the boys' birthdays are 5 days apart, we had 1 big party for them a couple weeks ago at the park down the street. We reserved a ramada near the playground and BBQ. We also rented a bounce house which was a major hit with the kids and had a pinata. We were lucky that it wasn't triple digits like the weekend before and that it didn't rain as anticipated. It was very very windy so most of the decorations didn't last and we didn't even bother with the balloons. The general concensus was at least the sun wasn't beating down! The boys were spoiled as anticipated and we still have to go through the play room to make room for the new stuff.

They both had their check ups as well. Braedon came in at 47" and 52# up 6" and 10# from last year! Cohen came in at 31" and 21#. They are both healthy growing boys!

Blood work results, Week 2 Day 1 and Cohen walks-sorta

First of all, we got Braedon's blood work back and all is NORMAL! Not even anemic :-) It's definitely good news but it doesn't explain the symptoms. The pediatrician thinks the headaches are definitely allergy related, can't really explain him cold and I suppose he just bruises easily. His pediatrician wants me to watch for nose bleeds and bleeding gums because she will want to run more tests if this starts. Not sure what those will be but we can cross that bridge if we get there.

Now onto our day-Braedon's second week of jumpstart.

We had a rough night last night-Braedon didn't want to get in the shower then once he was in the shower, he didn't want to get washed. He likes to play so I let him for about 5 min or so and then gave him a 5 min warning to get washed. Then I went back in there to give him a 2 min warning and told him that in 2 min, I was turning the water off whether he was washed or not. Gave him a 1 min warning-which I really gave him another 2-3min and he still hadn't even attempted to start washing so off the water went and another fit started. I had to drag him out of the shower then, of course, he refused to put his jammies on. Meanwhile, Chris was bathing Cohen and getting him ready for bed. I finally carried Braedon to his room, naked. Not an easy task when he's pushing 55lbs. He was still refusing to get his jammies on so I put him in bed, gave him a hug and kiss and said goodnight. He screamed and threw a fit so Chris had to take over so I could get Cohen in bed. Braedon finally got his jammies on and went to bed at 8:30-1.5 hours passed his bedtime.

Since he was late to bed, he was tired this morning making it for a rough morning as well. He wanted to take his time eating breakfast, didn't want to get dressed, didn't want to brush his teeth or do his hair. I was at my wits end but pushed through the morning sure he would continue at school and we would have to deal with it later. I dropped him off at school and told him to have a good day and to have fun-hoping he would.

HE DID! I didn't get to the school as early as I usually do because Cohen was napping and didn't want to get up-plus, I had to get him dressed again because he had messed up his outfit already and was just sleeping in his diaper. I am usually waiting for Braedon to get out but today he was already waiting. As soon as he saw me, he came running up to me with a HUGE smile on his face-a VERY good sign. He ran up to me saying that he was on green all day and he was the leader! Ms. Jimenez looked at me and said he was really good all day and he was the leader in the lines whenever they went anywhere! YAY!! I was over the moon happy that he was good. I knew he could do it, he just wasn't. We also met his teacher that he will have all year. For whatever reason, she didn't do the jumpstart but will be in the classroom this week to get to know her students better. She knew he had problems last week but did really good today. Braedon sais he likes her and we had talked to her and K roundup when we registered him...I definitely remember liking her so I'm sure it will be a good year.

This weekend, Chris and I talked to Braedon about some of the things he was doing. We also decided to monitor more closely what he watches and plays. He is obviously having a hard time distinguishing real from fake. He understands why we took things away and we will be paying closer attention to everything. We thought he understood the difference which is the ONLY reason we were letting him play video games..even at that, they weren't any that you wouldn't think would be ok-they are certainly marketed to kids-Bolt, Monsters vs. Aliens, Batman and Indiana Jones. He has games like Boom Blox and Mario Kart that he will be able to play when he gets them back.

Ok so now for this mornings pictures LOL! I won't take them everyday but since I was onto something, I figured I wouldn't stop now.





No you are not dreaming-my car IS IN THE GARAGE!!!

Chillin' telling Daddy how good he was at school!

Now onto Cohen-he's getting to be such a big boy! He has a walker, you know, the one you sit in and can walk around in it. He never quite got the concept of it but he loved to be in it. He would push himself around backwards with both feet. Well, he has a different walker, the one you push and yesterday, he stood up with it and pushed/walked with it across the kitchen floor! He thought it was the funniest thing and was laughing! I wish I would've gotten it on video. I'll have to catch it tomorrow-hopefully :-) But for now-he was so tired today! He didn't want to take a nap at his normal time between 9-10am. He didn't go down for his nap until 11am which only gave him about a 20min nap...so he fell asleep in the car:

Doctors visit for both

Today was Cohen's rescheduled 9 month well baby check since he had Roseola for the last one. I was a little nervous about his weight check since he had lost weight from being sick. With the exception of his birth weight, he has been sitting at the bottom of the weight chart in the 10th percentile while everything else in the 75-90th percentile. Not to worry *yet* I was told because he had been consistently gaining slower and developmentally, he was right on target. However, they did NOT like the drop in weight but considered the illness and wanted to see him back in 2 weeks.

So, 2 weeks ago he weighed in at 17lbs 15oz and today, he was a whopping 19lbs 4oz!! This bumped him up to the 25th percentile! He has grown quite the appetite in the last week. Example: He slept through his normal "lunch" time yesterday and didn't act like he wanted to eat until around 3:45. I knew he needed to eat but hesitated because dinner was at 5 and I didn't want him to eat too early and be hungry later when it was bedtime. He ended up eating 1 slice of cheesy bread, an entire banana and a couple handfuls of Cheerios. No biggie-a little bigger than normal but still in what I would consider the normal range. So dinner was at 5 and he didn't really show any interest in eating as we were setting the table. He was happily playing with his toys. I decided to go ahead and put him in his high chair so we wouldn't have to keep watching him to make sure he didn't get into anything. He was content when I put him up there but then I started dishing out food to Braedon and myself and he was eyeballing the macaroni. He proceeded to "yell" at me when I didn't put any on his tray. I thought he couldn't possibly be hungry so I gave him a small spoonful figuring he would just play with it and maybe eat some of it. Boy was I wrong! By the time it was said and done, he had eaten half a peice of chicken, 2 spoonfuls of mac & cheese, and about a cup of broccoli...and he was still acting like he wanted to eat. His tummy was SO full so I cleaned him up and took him out of the chair and he was fine.

Ok so back to the visit :-) He is now 29" and his iron check came back normal. He is a very healthy boy who impressed the ped with his ability to cruise and stand alone. He also got 2 shots today. Normally he only gets 1 at a time but these were the 2nd and 3rd in the series with no previous reaction so we felt comfortable with 2. He did amazingly well and I'm glad we waited until he was older. The couple of shots he got when he was younger, it took me forever to calm him down. I had to nurse him before we could even leave and he wanted to nurse for 30min or longer. This time, he cried just until she was done and I was able to pick him up. Once I picked him up, he cuddle his head into the crook of my neck for, literally, a minute and then he perked up and was laughing at his brother! Once we got out and I went to put him in his carseat, he started to whine a little bit but Braedon is an awesome big brother and started entertaining him.

Now onto Braedon. There have been somethings going on with him that have had me concerned for a while but finally enough piled up that I decided I should have them checked out especially since we were making the trip for Cohen's check up anyway and once he starts school, it will be Saturday visits (nightmare) or missing school. He always seems to have bruises in misc places but we always just shrugged them off as being an almost 6 year old boy. However, these bruises seem to be getting worse and they are all sorts of sizes from the size of a pea to very large ones. Most of them he can't explain and we can't think of where he may have gotten them. Some of them appear in weird places that wouldn't be easy to get bruised like right below the elbow and it isn't just one. It's like a patch of them that don't make a pattern to match anything that we could think of to cause it. He has also been complaining of a headache-a lot. He will be playing and all of a sudden grab his head and make a sort of whincing pain. When I ask him what's wrong, he says his head hurts. It happens a lot after a fit but it happens beyond a comfort level when there hasn't been a blow up. The third thing-the final straw you could say-is that he's been complaining he's cold at an increasing rate. It is 100+ degrees-it's NOT cold. Our house will be 80 degrees and he's huddled under a blanket..not to the point of shivering but enough for a blanket. For a while I was joking around with him when he said he was cold until I started noticing that he was cold enough to want a blanket and to stay under the blanket for a length of time. There were times he asked if he could wear it at the dinner table. So it was time to have it checked out.

I was pretty sure they would do a finger poke because bruising and being cold are pretty common symptoms of Anemia. He was borderline Anemic as a baby so I watched his milk intake which reduces the bodies ability to absorb iron and increased his intake of iron rich foods. He's had iron checks in the past and they've all come back fine but he's prone. It doesn't necessarily explain the headaches but I had migraines at that age. So the nurse checked him out and told me she wanted to poke his finger which I had already talked to him about. She got the stuff out and he FREAKED! We tried to calm him down but it wasn't going to happen. She went out to get help and the ped came in saying she wanted to do a full blood panel anyway to rule out any possibilities so there was no point in unnecessary poking. She looked over his bruises noticing the different sizes and spots where they were, asked me a few questions about the other things going on and asked if there was any history of blood disorders or diseases in the immediate family. At that moment, I remembered that Braedon's "sperm donor" as we refer to him, had a brother that died of Leukemia. I told the ped this and she said not to worry-that was somewhat of a distant relationship but the bloodwork would show that *if* it was there. GREAT! Way to not make me worry right?

So we got the orders for the bloodwork and headed over to the lab. There were a couple people ahead of us but the wait wasn't too bad. I talked to Braedon about what was going to happen. When I was a kid, I hated being lied to *it's not going to hurt* or when I wasn't told and it was just sprung on me. I walked him through the steps of looking for the vein, a quick poke and then the blood filling the tubes and it would be over. He seemed ok with it but I should've known better. I was going through the steps in my head trying to figure out how we were going to hold him down since I had Cohen. Once we were called back into the room, he was doing good. He got up into the chair after she told him she just wanted to look. She tied the tourniquet and started looking. Thankfully, he does NOT have my veins and that beautiful vein just popped right up. She showed him and said "see right there, it will be quick and easy". She reached into her drawer to grab the needle and it was over. He started pulling the tourniquet off and I told him to leave it on but she said it was fine and took it off. No sooner did she have it off his arm did he slide out of the chair and ran to the door. Then he hid under the chair and wouldn't let go. I had to put Cohen down and she helped me with the chair while I pried his hands off. He went into an all out screaming fit, kicking and flailing about. I got up in the chair with him and was restaining him the best I could but it wasn't going to be enough to try to draw blood so the phlebotomist said she would go get help. I hesitated to let Braedon down because it was quite the ordeal to get him out from under the chair but Cohen was freaking out because he saw Braedon freaking out so I had to put Braedon down to comfort Cohen. Once the help came in, I put Cohen back down and he helped me grab Braedon. You never know how strong a child can be until you are trying to draw blood..man is he strong. The whole time we were waiting for help (about 5 min because he was drawing another patient) Braedon kept saying he wouldn't do it and I couldn't make him and he just wasn't going to do it. I tried to be reasonable with him but I told him it was something that just had to be done and it would be whether he decided to be a big boy about it or make it harder on us. Needless to say, once we had him restrained, he realized there wasn't anything he could do about it. I had his legs between mine, my arms around his chest holding the other arm while the helper held out the arm that was getting the draw. Once he couldn't move, he started screaming in the guys face-his only defense mechanism at this point. The guy was really good though and was calming him down more than I could. Once the needle was in, Braedon miraculously stopped crying and started calming down. His curiosity of seeing his blood drip-more like squirt-into the tube was better than crying I guess. They needed 1 large tube and 2 smaller tubes but as soon as she stuck the second one on, he said "ok take it out now" but waited until the 3rd one was done. In the meantime, he agreed it didn't hurt that bad and it wasn't hurting while the blood was coming out. He winced when she pulled the needle out but that was because she pushed down on it with the gauze as she pulled it out-I HATE when they do that..just let it bleed the 1 little drop that will come out before you can put the gauze on.

After that, he was fine and we called Daddy to tell him what a big boy he was getting his blood drawn-aside from the normal understandable freak out. I promised him ice cream when we were done but by that time it was lunch time so we picked up Chris and had a nice family lunch.

Apparently it was a tiring morning for both boys as they fell asleep shortly after dropping Chris off at work:



Oh and I stopped at DQ for his favorite-cherry dilly bar-even though he was asleep and he ate it when we got home :-)