Snowball

Our friends were over this weekend, and in honor of C's first time skiing for real, we brought out the Wii for some Wii skiing.  The boys didn't have a lot of interest in playing most of the games (though the adults had a great time -- Y christened the Obstacle Course game "Bowling for Avatars").  But the ski jump game is set up so that if you don't jump in time, you turn into a giant snowball and rolled down the hill.  Mattie thought that was hilarious, and wanted to have turns simply to not jump and announce gleefully that he'd turned into a snowball.  :)  (James, on the other hand, covered his eyes and said, "Oh, no!" when someone got snowballed -- I'm pretty sure he was just making a game of it and wasn't actually bothered.)

Building Bridges

 James and Matthew thought the boards that Mike left in the backyard were perfectly good toys.  :)

Flying Tiger

I just really like this picture of Matthew.  :)

James Lloyd Wright

James has been building Lego houses/castles with overhanging ledges - his own little Fallingwater!

Not Who You Think

This is Lowly Worm (James) and Huckle Cat (Matthew).  (They're characters from Richard Scarry's Busytown.)

Patterns

Yesterday after his bath, James was asking, "What's 7 + 1?  What's 7 +2?  What's 7 + 3?"  After answering each of those, when he got to "What's 7 + 4?" I said, "What do you think?"  And he got it right, continuing on with 7 +5, 7 + 6, and so on up to 7 + 9.  So, he'd figured out that if he added one to the number he was adding each time, he just had to add one to the answer each time.  I was impressed!  I'm no expert, but that seemed like pretty sophisticated math skills for a three and a half year old.

Snow Day!

 (Not much of one compared to South Dakota, but we'll take what we can get!)  The first time the snowflakes started coming down, we got the boys bundled up to go outside -- and it had turned into rain.  The second time we made it out for the big fluffy flakes!

Happy Valentine's Day!

 Mattie has been eagerly looking forward to "passing out Valentines day" at preschool (tomorrow).  He has spent the last week making Valentines for all his preschool friends (bottom picture). 

He said, "I'm going to get a lot of Valentines because my friends at preschool really love me!"  (I wish everyone could look forward to Valentine's Day that much!)

He told me he put a gold star on my Valentine because I was the best mommy.  :)  Awww. 

I asked James this morning if he would be my Valentine, and he smiled and said, "No, only Mattie."  But then this evening when I asked, he said yes.  :)  Lucky me!

Pizza for Breakfast

The boys are on the upswing today.  Mattie complained once or twice that his tummy hurt, but basically seems back to normal. 

James had a rough afternoon yesterday, to the point that we were considering whether we needed to take him to the emergency room.  He was in pain and we weren't sure if he was getting dehydrated.  We talked to the pediatric surgeon on call, and she said it didn't sound like he needed to come in immediately, and recommended just getting James fluids through his g-tube.  Fortunately that worked, and we think the pain may have been cramps/gas, because he was able to fall asleep on Mike a little while after that phone call. 

(So glad we didn't have to go in -- for many reasons, but one is that they probably would have wanted to do IV fluids, and getting an IV in that kid is a huge challenge even under the best of circumstances.  It would have been awful.)

We were able to give him formula through the tube overnight, and this morning he was cheerful and talkative again.  Yay!!  We kept the boys home from preschool since James is not 100% better yet (and Mattie didn't want to go, so we figured we wouldn't expose the other kids to any remaining germs). 

Jamesie wanted to have pizza for breakfast, and we weren't going to argue with him!  We didn't have any pizza left from dinner last night, so Mike made him bread pizza.  (On hearing this, James said, "I don't want bread on it.  Just cheese."  Hee hee!)  James cheerfully ate the cheese from the pizza toast, so that was a good start to the day, and he had a great time playing with Mattie and N.  He took a long nap this afternoon and went to bed early, which is probably what he needs.   

The boys also had fun seeing all the snow at Grandma and Grandpa B's house (on Facetime).  They were both impressed with the snowblower!  :)

Round 2

...and this evening, Mattie complained that his tummy hurt, and he's thrown up a couple of times. 

James is still not eating much, to our dismay.  He asked for mac and cheese this afternoon, so we cooked him some, and he ate maybe 6 noodles and a few Cheerios.  He kept down a couple ounces of formula before bed, but we're hoping tomorrow is a better day (although given the course of the illness, I expect it will be a worse day for Mattie). 

Blech

James had a great appointment with the feeding therapist on Tuesday; he's up to the 10th percentile in height (and 25th percentile BMI, which is a height/weight ratio -- they're happy with that).  And then, of course, on Wednesday, he started vomiting, and he's been sick ever since, eating nothing yesterday and nothing most of today until dinner (a bit of pizza and some formula).  Poor baby!  He seems like he might be on the upswing, but he feels light and skinny, and today he had huge bags under his eyes and just looked very unwell.  So, the weaning off the feeding tube will have to wait a little longer. 

Mattie is doing fine, although the pediatrician said that it's not uncommon for symptoms of this virus to start 48 hours after exposure, so we may be in for Round 2.  (I hope not!)

Prince Matthew

Today was the Royal Ball at preschool.   They made crowns and shields, and had a dance where they got to wave streamers.  (At home, Mattie made a shield for me, too. What a sweet boy!)

The teacher sent a picture from the dance, and my favorite part was that a couple of the boys were in princess dresses.  (Not Mattie and James -- they were wearing their tiger and dinosaur sweatshirts.)  I don't think there were any "prince" dress-up clothes available!

Chilly Weekend

The boys went to a birthday party for a preschool friend yesterday (not pictured). Mattie impressed the other moms by asking, "May I be excused?" when lunch was done!  :)

Today we braved the chilly playground (where James introduced himself to another child as, "Scooby."  Heh!)  We also ran into one of their preschool friends there, and he and James had a great time running around with the dads being monsters.  (Mattie preferred to climb on the rocks instead.)

James is reading short/beginning reader books really well -- go, James!  He's also interested in addition these days, mostly done by counting on fingers (so, he's really good at 4 +4 and 5+5).  He likes to ask, "What does (number) plus (number) make?"

He is also in a phase where he likes tossing/throwing things (toys, books, etc. -- he walks around like a little Swedish Chef from the Muppets).  He's not intending to be destructive, but it's not a good habit! I'm hoping it'll diminish when the weather improves and we can let him throw balls outside more. (Or, we'll have to get stricter with time-outs, etc.)


Mattie continues to be extremely delightful and talkative. Today James and I were playing dominoes, and Mattie came up and said, "Do you have your instructions?  Well, if you lose your instructions, you can call me and I'll bring you my instructions."  So helpful!  :)  He also drew a card for James yesterday when we were making a card for the preschool friend.