Remembering

Memorial Day is a time to remember those who gave their lives for their country, and we are grateful for their service and sacrifice.

But today I am also remembering Memorial Day weekend last year. James was very sick with his first round of NEC (necrotizing enterocolitis) and we did not know whether he would survive. So, today (as every day) we are also deeply grateful that our precious son is still with us. The bottom picture is from his baptism -- you can see the chaplain's hand and James's tiny foot.

Just Say No

For the first time, Matthew actually stopped doing something (chewing on one of the foam floor letters) when I told him "no" -- of course, he started doing it again a minute later and a second "no" had no effect, but we have to start somewhere. :) (Hopefully it wasn't just coincidence!) And on the flip side, he gave a huge grin when I complimented him on his excellent clapping.

Mattie is also getting yet another tooth (on the bottom; number 7, for those of you keeping track at home). That might have contributed to the many, many wake-ups last night. (But it was probably mostly this never-ending congestion.) Mattie is not normally a clumsy child, but he was so tired this morning that he was stumbling around like a drunken sailor. And then he was overtired and hyper, so it was quite a production getting him down for a nap. Fortunately he was more himself by the afternoon.

Although the light in this picture may make it appear that James has a top tooth, he doesn't yet. We think there may be a bottom one starting to come in, but we're not sure yet (and we've been fooled before!)

Mike installed our third attempt at a baby gate to block off the living room from the kitchen. We think this one will work, and the bonus is that it can actually be operated with one hand. (But not one paw -- poor Stanley can never decide which side of the gate he wants to be on.)

Cruisin'

Matthew took a couple of steps hanging on to the couch this afternoon -- he's cruising! James probably isn't far behind; he can move between the music table and the couch if they're right next to each other.

Mattie is also now clapping! For a while he clapped with one hand open and the other hand kind of a fist, and then he moved to frenetic arm waving where his hands sometimes came together, and now he's got it figured out. :) He was clapping this afternoon and had a big smile on his face -- he's enjoying his new skill! Hooray for Mattie!

Babies Who Stare at Goats

[Alternative title: Kids and Kids.]

Usually yardwork isn't a spectator sport, but our friends J & Y have employed the goat patrol to get rid of the ivy in their yard. So, we seized the opportunity to play goat tourists and introduce the boys to a new species. :)

Interestingly, goats find poison ivy much tastier than regular ivy, but they'll eat just about anything. While we were there, we saw one goat jump up to knock over a sapling, and the rest came running to help eat the branches.

We learned the poison ivy tidbit and other fun facts from the goatherd. Who knew goatherd was even still a profession in these modern times?

Re-Rescheduled

The surgery scheduler made a mistake. Our surgeon is out of town on June 9, so James's surgery has been rescheduled again, for June 2 (next Wednesday -- yikes!)

We went in to the hospital yesterday so that the surgeon could take a look at James (or, more importantly, a listen to his lungs), and he said that as long as James didn't have anything more serious than a runny nose, that the surgery could proceed.

On the one hand it's nice to be getting it over with sooner, but on the other hand, Grandma Georgia already had plane tickets to come in on the 7th! Fortunately, Uncle Isaac and Aunt Erin can come visit next week and help us hold down the fort (or hold the Matthew, as the case may be).

James has gotten to be an expert at standing up in his crib. Last night, we tried to put him down three or four times, and every time we'd hear him chatting over the monitor and came in to find him standing up. (So, of course we gave in and let him play for a while even though it was past his usual bedtime.) He's also starting to use his legs the right way (one foot in front of the other), instead of just doing a pull-up with his arms to get to his feet. Go James!

[Top photo is from 5/15.]

Spring Day

Everyone enjoyed a little outdoor time this afternoon. Except, perhaps, for James, who slept through it all. To be fair, James visited the doctor today so he missed his nap, was stressed, and then fell asleep on the ride home. We moved him from the stroller to his crib shortly after the picture was taken.

Cranky

We are on cold number 4 around here -- somehow it seems one or the other of us has been sick almost the entire month of May. This time it's James, unfortunately. He's got a cough and was not very happy today. (I'm pretty sure the germs were introduced by someone who ought to have known better, so I'm not too amused by this either. And if you're reading this, then no, it wasn't you.) And Mattie still has a terrible runny nose, though he's mostly been in good spirits. I just hope we can line up a run of good health before James's surgery.

One side effect of the boys being sick is that their sleep schedule has gone completely haywire. I was up at least three times last night with Matthew and I think Mike was up more than that with James. And you'd think that would mean they'd nap better, but in fact it was just the reverse, so we're all dragging a bit.

Matthew is enjoying his standing-up skills. He stood himself up using just the wall (with a vent on it) yesterday (and then couldn't figure out how to get back down!) This morning, he stood up on my legs and then let go for a second, just testing it out. And he's tried to walk a little hanging on to furniture, but unfortunately he's tried to do it while making a turn at the same time, which has led to some rather spectacular looking sideways wipe-outs (fortunately onto well-padded surfaces, so no harm done).

This evening, Mattie heard Mike in the bathroom talking and running his (Matthew's) bath, and he crawled from the living room (otherwise known as "baby play area") down the hall and right into the bathroom. (I was right behind him; babies aren't allowed in the hallway unattended!) Clever boy!

Bonus Grandma Time

The boys got some bonus Grandma time yesterday afternoon and this morning -- Grandma stopped by on her way home from visiting Cousin Daniel.

Happy Birthday, Daddy!

Matthew and James say happy birthday to their daddy! (Mattie celebrated by staying up past his bedtime, a bit of a surprise to us since he didn't sleep well last night -- yet another cold! -- and didn't nap well either.)

Mike and I celebrated by going out to lunch. The babysitter said that the boys were well-behaved until right before we walked in the door, when she dared to set Matthew down so she could change James's diaper. We could hear the screaming from outside the house. Mattie definitely makes his opinions known! (Fortunately, he had lots of smiles for us today as well.)

Baby Swings

Instead of our usual evening walk around the neighborhood, we went to the park today. And so the boys got to have their first try at the baby swings! James seemed to really enjoy it; Matthew wasn't so sure about it but wanted to chew on the edge of the swing. (This is the exact opposite of what I would have predicted, given Mattie's love of being swung around and James's love of chewing on the edges of chairs.)

They're small enough to both fit in one swing (bottom picture), but they liked having their own space more. :)

By the way, in case I haven't mentioned it already, James's surgery has been rescheduled for June 9 (a Wednesday). Although it would be really nice to have it behind us already, it was also kind of great to be able to enjoy Mother's Day and the babies' birthday at home rather than in the hospital.

Babies in Good Standing

James has started pulling himself up to a standing position. Hooray for James! Unfortunately, his favorite thing to pull up on is the exersaucer, which is not a very stable support (since it's designed to rock). He also will just let go of whatever he's holding onto when standing, and while I appreciate his trust in the basic goodness of the universe, that's not exactly the best strategy for getting down! Hopefully he'll figure that out without learning the hard way (so far, I've been behind him to catch him). I'm pretty sure he's just on his knees in this picture; we haven't captured a standing-up photo yet.

Mattie has gotten quite good at pulling himself up, and he also seems to have the idea of sitting back down again (though we still follow close behind him, too!) The picture of him with Grandma is from a couple of days ago; she left on Sunday.

James has been initiating games of peek-a-boo. He'll pull a towel over his face and then back down again. So cute! (Mike has been playing lots of peek-a-boo with Matthew because we read somewhere that it helps them get over the separation anxiety by teaching them that things can disappear and reappear again.) James also likes the "sound effect game" -- when we're sitting in the easy chair, he'll tap on the arm of the chair, and I'll say "boom boom" every time he hits it -- he turns around with a huge grin and then starts tapping again.

Mattie was funny this morning. We have a big cardboard box in our entryway that a baby gate came in, and it has an orange circle on it with some text. Matthew crawled over to it, tapped right on the circle, and then when nothing happened, he banged on it again harder. He was clearly disappointed that this toy was broken; nothing happened when he pushed the button!

At Least It's Caffeine-Free

Matthew continues his kitchen exploration. :)

Mattie also seems to have entered the "separation anxiety" phase -- he occasionally decides he doesn't want to be left alone, or even put down, and screams bloody murder if you try. We're hoping this phase passes quickly, or our babysitter will start demanding hazard pay!

Birthday Boys

Since we had expected that James would still be in the hospital on the babies' birthday, we hadn't planned any kind of party in advance. (We figured that we would have a "birthday observed" celebration when he was back at home.) In the middle of the week it dawned on us that we should do a little something to celebrate, so we invited a few neighbors over for cake and ice cream. We had a cake for each boy, which also allowed us to get both chocolate and white cake! (And then, since it was going to be around dinner time, Mike decided to order pizza as well, and Grandma and Sue found decorations at the party store.)

It was a wonderful party (at least from our perspective!), and the babies seemed to really enjoy it as well. Their daddy even gave them their first taste of icing.

(Apologies to our local friends who don't happen to live on our street -- next time we have a party, hopefully we'll have more advance notice and can invite more people!)

Matthew army crawl

Matthew loves crawling from the living room out to the kitchen. He has gotten better at crawling since the video was taken last week.

Birthday Morning

One year old today...how far we've come!

Sweet Sleeping James

James with Grandma, just before bedtime. :)

Boys and their Blocks

The boys do not usually stay in one place for long, so the babyproofing continued this morning -- one more large piece of furniture is now securely attached to the wall. Thanks to the visiting Grandmas for helping us get organized!



PS: Matthew actually says "mum mum" when he's eating his baby Mum Mums. I'm pretty sure he didn't actually learn what they're called, so they must have just been accurately named!

Baseball, Motherhood, and...

Honorary Grandma Sue's apple pie!

New Horizons

We don't (yet) have a gate between the living room/dining room and the kitchen, so of course Mattie makes a beeline for the (not yet babyproofed) kitchen every chance he gets. He finds the grate under the refrigerator and the dog's water bowl particularly fascinating.

Mattie also got to try his first cracker the other day -- baby Mum-Mum, which is designed to melt in their mouths. He takes a bite, then makes a face like it's horrible (bottom picture), and then immediately puts it back in his mouth for another bite. So, we think he's having fun with it, despite the grimaces! (Grandma gave one to Jamesie the other day, too, but since he still had a bit of a cough it didn't work out so well. He liked it but it made him sort of cough it up. Maybe in a little while!)

Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's Day all the wonderful mothers and grandmas out there, especially ours! :) Hope you all had a fantastic day.

We were delighted to get to spend our Mother's Day with my mom and Sue. Mike cooked us a nice breakfast (and dinner!)

It was not the most relaxing Mother's Day because both of the boys still have that cold, so they were not as happy as usual. But hopefully they'll be on the upswing soon. (Even being congested didn't stop Mattie from wanting to stand up at any available opportunity, though!)

Saturday

Before we left the hospital on Friday, some of the managers came around and asked us how our stay had been -- so we had a chance to tell them about the concerns we had. They were really interested in what we had to say and seemed to be taking it seriously, so that was a nice positive note to end on. (Of course, that positive impression was then reduced when I went to the pharmacy to pick up James's prescription refills -- which I had dutifully called in three days in advance, as instructed -- only to find that one of the medicines was not ready, and it takes four hours to make, so I had to make another trip back to the hospital that evening! Ugh!)

A couple of our favorite NICU nurses were working on Friday, so we went to visit them after James was discharged -- it's always wonderful to see them, so that also helped brighten our day.

As Mike mentioned in a previous post, poor little Mattie had a terrible runny nose yesterday, plus another tooth coming through (another top one), so he was not a particularly happy camper yesterday. (Sorry, Grandma Linda and Grandma Sue!) He is somewhat improved today but still not back to his normal self. We are hoping James doesn't come down with the same thing, but given that they're both crawling around and putting everything in their mouths, we don't have a chance with germ control, so we'll just have to hope for good luck and a good immune system. :)

Despite his cold, Mattie still figured out how to pull himself up to a standing position in his crib today. Yikes!

Just Passing Through

Matthew likes crawling into (or in this case, through) the bottom of the Excer-saucer. Apparently he doesn't care if it is occupied.

Trial Run at the Hospital

Here are some pictures taken Thursday night at the hospital. (James was admitted to prepare him for Friday morning's surgery, which was ultimately postponed for a month). The picture of James smiling is typical James -- he is such a happy soul. He is a little less happy tonight because his congestion seems to be getting slightly worse. It is a good thing we postponed the surgery since he may in fact be ill. Matthew is definitely feeling worse today than he has all week. His nose is running a lot, he wakes up every 45 minutes because he is all clogged up, and he is generally uncomfortable. We don't know if this is a preview of how James will be feeling in a few days or if James will manage to avoid the worst of it.

Canceled

So we got all the way down to pre-op this morning, and the anesthesiologist was not comfortable going ahead with the surgery when James had recently had a cold/fever -- since it's an elective surgery, she would prefer that he be as healthy as possible to reduce the risk of post-operative respiratory complications, particularly since he's a preemie.

On the one hand, I am really glad that she was willing to make that call and put his safety first (peds anesthesiology here has always been great), but on the other hand, we're really disappointed to have to delay -- we'll probably be rescheduled for early June. And if their decision rule is to wait if a child has had a recent fever, someone could have told us that earlier -- we were very clear with everyone that he'd had a recent cold, and so it would have been better to avoid the hospital stay, IV, bowel prep, etc.

So Far, It's a Go

James was admitted to the hospital this evening, and so far, everything is on track for surgery tomorrow morning. He's scheduled to be the first case, at around 7:30 AM. (However, even with the first case, I think there's no guarantee that it'll be on time!)

James didn't have a fever this evening, so that's good. The surgery resident didn't seem at all concerned about fever ("we'll just give him Tylenol"), but the anaesthesiologist said that if he has a fever in the morning, they'll cancel the procedure (and we'd have to reschedule). So, keep your fingers crossed.

Mike is staying overnight with him. They've already started an IV and the bowel prep, and James was sleeping when I last talked to Mike.

The hospital experience so far has not been at all what we expected. We have a private room, which is nice, but it's been sort of a do-it-yourself experience. That is, we showed up and the 6th floor staff didn't even know why he was there, so we had to give them his history and explain all of that. (Which is a bit odd considering that all of his treatment has been at this exact same hospital.) And we sort of expected they would have things like ostomy bags and formula (I mean, when you're admitted to the hospital normally you don't have to bring your own food and medical supplies!), but it's a good thing we brought ours, because they didn't have any on hand (although they ordered an extra ostomy bag for us just in case). In fact, they didn't even have diapers in his size. And James peed on the floor when we were changing his diaper and bag, and the nurse didn't even bring us anything to help clean up with (although in fairness, I'm sure she would have if we had asked her, but there were paper towels in the bathroom) -- we were just on our own.

Everyone has been very nice, but the nurses seemed to only come in when they needed to do something (like draw blood). I don't know if it would have been different if we hadn't been able to be there, but we got the unsettling sense that if we weren't in the room, James would be kind of on his own -- it would be hit or miss if anyone would notice that he was crying or needed something. I know it's not intensive care like the NICU, but still, he's a baby -- he can't just push the call button if he needs something! And hopefully things will be different when he's out of surgery; maybe they just pay less attention to patients who are basically healthy or who have their parents with them.

I'm glad we've had such good prior experience with UNC hospitals, because tonight didn't do much to inspire confidence. And although we expected to be there a lot, we didn't necessarily expect to have to be there 24/7 -- but now we almost feel like we're going to have to. Again, though, maybe things will be different tomorrow.

Matthew, meanwhile, had a wonderful evening with Grandma Linda and honorary Grandma Sue. :)

Fever

James had a slight fever tonight and also has a bit of a cough. I don't know what their decision rules are for proceeding with surgery, but I'm guessing there's a 50/50 chance that we'll have to postpone it. We've had so many things planned around this surgery date (other medical appointments, work commitments, my mom's visit -- not to mention just looking forward to having it over with!) that it would be a big disappointment, but of course we don't want to take any chances with his health. (I'm actually more concerned about the cough than the fever; I don't particularly want him to have to cough when he has abdominal stitches!) Anyhow, we'll take him in tomorrow and see what they say.

Gated Community

Mattie helped Daddy install a baby gate this morning (and by "helped", I mean "was kept a safe distance away").

Matthew seemed to be feeling slightly better today, although he did throw up again. James was fussier than usual (and for him, usual is "very smiley and not at all fussy"), but no vomiting and no fever, so that's good, at least so far.

We had James's hearing aids in for some of the day, but they keep coming out, so it was a little frustrating. I think it will get easier as he gets bigger and after we get the new ear molds.

Mike has taught James "if you're happy and you know it clap your hands." He doesn't clap every time, but it's very cute when he does! One of James's other favorite games these days is taking my glasses off my face. I'm not quite so fond of that one!

Mattie has been playing with the gear toy recently, but his way of playing is to just take all the gears off their pegs. He really really wants to get the big gear off the board, but it's permanently attached. That hasn't stopped him from trying, though. I admire his persistence. :) (The t-shirt Matthew is wearing says "Cow tipper in training. Wisconsin". Compliments of Nora and Erin. Thanks!)

Hearing Aids and Other Adventures

James got his first pair of hearing aids today. (Turns out hearing aids are very expensive, so our thanks to the great state of North Carolina, which has a program that pays for the first pair of hearing aids for babies under three.) It was a long meeting with the audiologist where she programmed them and showed us how to use them and take care of them.

In the top picture, he's wearing the pilot cap that can be used to stop babies from pulling out the hearing aids (unfortunately, that's not ours; the ones we ordered are too small so we'll have to exchange them). Isn't he cute? In the bottom picture, you can kind of see the hearing aids -- there's a clear part that sits in the ear and then a plastic part that hooks around behind the ear. (We figure if people ask about them we'll just tell them he's in the Secret Service. Kidding.)

This afternoon he wasn't really pulling them out while he was playing (although he did when the sitter laid him down to change his diaper), but on our walk one of them did keep falling out. The problem is that his ears have grown a little bit since they took the ear molds, so the little part that fits in his ear doesn't quite fit properly. The audiologist took new ear molds while we were there, so they'll be replaced in a week or two, but it'll probably be a bit of a hassle until then.

We thought we'd see some dramatic difference when he had them in, but we actually haven't noticed much difference at all. The audiologist said that it was a good sign that he didn't seem startled when we were talking after he had the hearing aids on, because if he jumped or looked surprised that might be a sign that they're turned up too loud. So, we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

But in other news, when Mike got home, the sitter told him that Matthew had been inconsolable all morning. Then he threw up all over the bathroom. He felt a little warm, too, so I came home from work and we called the doctor. By that time there weren't any appointments left at the Chapel Hill office, so I had to take him to the Durham office. Turns out he did have a slight fever, and the doc diagnosed it as a viral illness, which apparently is common around here in the spring. The typical course is 3-5 days of fever and irritability (sometimes with vomiting and diarrhea).

The really really bad thing about that is that the virus is contagious like a cold, which means that James will probably get it too, and they probably won't let him go to surgery if he's sick (especially fever). So although I am completely dreading having to take him in for surgery, it will be worse to have to postpone it after planning everything around it happening this Friday. Although we are hoping for the best, we are really upset and disappointed about this, and we're kind of kicking ourselves for going out and about this weekend -- it didn't occur to us that there would be a lot of contagious stuff floating around this time of year, and the babies were mostly in their carseats the whole time, so who knew they'd pick something up?

They gave Mattie a dose of Tylenol at the doctor's office, and just as I stepped out the door, he threw up the Tylenol and all his milk. I turned back around and mopped him up with paper towels in the bathroom -- he had a puddle of pink puke in the bottom of his carseat, poor kid. I changed him into the spare outfit which almost fit, and we headed home. He fell asleep on the ride, and woke up shortly after we got home (thanks to Stanley and his ill-timed barking). But maybe a little of the Tylenol got into his system, because he was in much better spirits.

P.S.: James's good eating has continued -- no pump last night or tonight!