Christmas video

Outside fun

Outside fun on Christmas day!

Christmas

The stockings were hung by our new gas log with care...



John and Daddy examining the coloring book that Santa left.



John looking into the bathroom mirror on his own for the first time while standing on his new step stool from Mama and Daddy.


John stowing his new Christmas bus inside the Christmas step stool.

John's Ear Surgery

This morning John had tubes implanted (for lack of a better word) in his eardrums. We were at the surgical center for about two hours, but the actual procedure was very quick.

He actually has me to thank for this problem. I had tubes in my ears twice when I was a kid (I was a bit older than John, actually) and we're told it's a hereditary thing.

We arrived and checked in, then sat in the waiting room for about 10 minutes, then they took us back to a pre-op area where we put John in his hospital gown and waited for about 30 minutes. One of the nurses rolled a television over and we watched a couple Curious George episodes. The anesthesiologist came and spoke with us briefly, several nurses stopped by, and Dr. Hellstrom (John's ENT and the one who actually performed the procedure) talked with us, too.

Details of the procedure...
It's basically pretty simple. John had a build-up of fluid behind his eardrums that was causing him discomfort and some hearing trouble, so they needed to implant (that word sounds better) tubes in his eardrums. They put John to sleep with a gas mask (no needles used at all, thank goodness!) and then made a small incision in each eardrum, drained the fluid, and put in a small tube that the eardrums heal around, holding it in place. You can see in the photo that the tubes are very small and are shaped sort of like an hour glass. These tubes will allow excess fluid to drain out preventing future ear infections and will help equalize the air pressure around his eardrums. The tubes in the photo are actually one of the two sets of tubes that I had in my ears when I was a kid. Yes, my parents kept them.

Finally Nurse Libby came and took John back to the OR and we waited in the "Family Conference Room." What seemed like 5 minutes later another nurse came and took us to the pediatric recovery room and a minute later they brought John in. He was groggy and very upset, but he did very well. The surgery went very well and there were no complications. We held him for a while and then put him back in his pajamas and headed home. He slept most of the way home. Now he's on antibiotics and we have these drops that we have to drop into his ears every day.

The hardest part of all this was not being able to give John anything to eat or drink this morning before the surgery. After we got home he started eating like a horse, is completely back to his energetic self (more so, actually), and seems to be gravitating toward toys that make noise!

Ear update

We're back from surgery. It was very quick. Everything went well, and John is happy he is finally able to eat again.
I'll try to get the pics and a more thorough description of events later today.

We love Christmas Songs!

We have been singing lots of Christmas songs in the car, usually at the "More, please" request of John, and Tony and I have been running out of material.

I googled and found this site which has a lot of extra verses for old favorites!

C'mon, everyone join in!

Testing

Evidently John is passing through the stage in which he systematically tests our limits on various topics!

It was grinding teeth yesterday, today it was gagging himself on his own hand. How does he come up with this stuff??!

Also, he and I had a standoff on the stairs this morning over whether or not he was going to say "Please" when he asked me to pick him up. He finally did, but it took about 3 minutes. Now I'm realizing the other side of the dog food standoff from my own childhood... Sorry Mom and Dad, I get it now.

Always something new...

The song
(sung to the tune of "Oh, Susanna")

Oh, John Michael, don't you grind your teeth,
Cuz it really bugs your momma, your dada, and your Keats.

So this evening, John started gritting his teeth. While awake. Often. And that is the sound that I CANNOT stand hearing. So I have ear plugs in and Tony is staying with John. We hope the teeth-grinding doesn't have anything to do with his fever and irritability...

pics for aunt jen 5

pics for aunt jen 4

pics for aunt jen 3

pics for aunt jen 2

pics for aunt jen 1

Medicus

We had John's appointment with the new ENT this morning: Dr. Hellstrom at Medicus. He was super-nice, as was everyone in the office. John is scheduled for tubes at their surgical center in Anderson on Friday, December 21st. We have a "pre-op" appointment the Tuesday before, when they will tell us the exact time for surgery, pre- and post-op instructions, etc.
They will only be installing tubes, no adenoidectomy or nasal lavage. Light general anesthesia, and John will be cleared by Malpass (cardiologist), when he gets back to his office Monday.
Dr. Hellstrom is left-handed and he was in the Lincoln Park neighborhood in Chicago last weekend (where we are going tomorrow!). Two interesting coincidences, which always make me feel better for some reason.
He also said John was fine to fly.
So everything is going smoothly so far, and I feel 10,000 times better about this doctor and practice!
Yea!

Our friend James

Here is a picture of John and our neighbor friend James at the botanical garden on Sunday.

Thanksgiving cousins

Check out the AmigoNet link to see some great pictures of John and his cousin Naomi over the Thanksgiving holiday!

http://amigonetblog.blogspot.com/2007/11/cousins.html

Quick update

All of the South Carolina Pennas are back home now.

John and I flew from Newark to Columbia, SC, on Saturday, then took a cab to GSP. They overbooked our flight and no one else wanted to volunteer, so we did. Don't think I would do it again, but now it's over with and we have $800 in travel on Continental.
Tony got back to SC from Louisville yesterday morning, and also started tech rehearsals for a show in Greenville yesterday afternoon. So, he'll be shuttling back and forth between Clemson and G'ville all week until the show opens on Friday. He assures me that he will be able to spend at least 45 minutes at home each afternoon... It's definitely a lesson in not taking time together for granted! I will be EXTRA thankful this year when the semester is over, and his traveling is over for awhile.

We have an appointment with Feiste this afternoon for the weekly ear check. Still haven't heard from the new ENT. I'm planning on calling them today, if I can get my work done before we have to leave for the doctor.

John and I had a great time in New York over Thanksgiving. Although it took him a day or two to warm up to everyone, he was hugging everyone continuously by the time it was all over. More details about the trip soon, but the highlight was seeing my mom's brother and his family, all of whom we rarely see. They are as wonderful and welcoming as always, and their three boys are articulate, friendly, and very grown-up!

Hope that everyone's Thanksgiving was as full of love and food as ours was!

Off we go, into the wild blue yonder!

It's 5:40 am, and I popped awake about an hour ago, realizing that if I changed John's and my seats to the row immediately behind the bulkhead (which were available when I checked in at 4:30pm yesterday), he would disturb two fewer people because he wouldn't be able to bang on the tray table of the people in front of us. So I printed out new boarding passes, then discovered that you can't actually change your seats within 24 hours of the flight. However, I now have two sets of boarding passes for two different sets of seats. [This seems like a serious security breach!] We'll see where we end up. I always wait until the last minute to get on the plane anyway... Previously, I always envied the "parents with small children" who got to board first. But now that I'm older and wiser, why would anyone want to get into a small, cramped space with 100 cranky people any sooner than they have to??? Particularly with a wiggling, giggling, screaming toddler!

So, we have been cleared for take off. John had an ear checkup with Feiste yesterday afternoon and he got an antibiotic shot and another prescription, as well as a followup appointment the day after we get back. He's definitely going to have to have tubes, and that's fine. Having tubes was never really the issue for me, it became who was going to put them in. Hopefully we can time the surgery so that it is completed (and recovered from) before our trip to Chicago early next month.

Anyway, I have been getting today's work done (I only took a half-day of vacation today), and just watching the time go by, hoping that everything will go smoothly today. It probably won't, but now as I type, I'm realizing that it WILL go smoothly, if I can STAY smooth in my reactions to whatever comes up. Yes, I know, that's obvious, but that seems to be my personal lifelong challenge. I KNOW the lesson: "Getting upset is not worth the energy, doesn't help, and usually makes things worse." Maybe this time I'll remember that lesson. Because now I see (I'm full of epiphanies this morning!), I actually have learned the lesson, I just have to practice and APPLY the knowledge EACH time.

Whoa. I did not mean for this post to be so philosophical. I just wanted update "Ear Crisis 2007" and let everyone know that we are planning to take the NJ trip!

Super-Feiste Saves the Day ... Again!

So once again, Feiste had all the right words of reassurance, knowledge, wisdom, and humor. Thank God for pediatricians who are passionate about what they do!

We will NOT be having the surgery next Thursday. We will be getting a second opinion from some "wonderful" ENT's in Anderson. We have a nebulizer, an oral steroid, and an antibiotic to get us through.

More detail soon. It's 7:15pm and John is down, hopefully for the night, and I have to get the rest of my work-work done, and maybe get the dishwasher loaded so we have stuff to eat with tomorrow.

Ears

So John and I went to Dr. R-o, the Ear-Nose-Throat doctor, yesterday afternoon.

It was rough. Feiste had warned me that R-o was "dry," but I didn't really get what that would mean. He was very short with his answers, didn't volunteer extra information or opinions, and was very brief with John's exam. I think that the first thing that he said when he walked into the room was "Does he need to go to the bathroom or a diaper change?" about John, who was crying, because he was bored, because we had been waiting 45 minutes...

So he said yes, John should get tubes, an adenoidectomy, and sinus lavage. I was prepared for the tubes but thought it was an office procedure. It's not, it's an outpatient procedure at Oconee Memorial Hospital. I had never even thought about having his adenoids out and was plunged into shock. And sinus lavage, doesn't seem like a big deal. He shot a bunch of rapid statistics about non-success rate of the tubes for ear infections, the possibility of permanent damage with the tubes, and added that John probably has a dairy allergy, because his cheeks were red. Which was because the weather just turned cold.

The whole experience was very trying, complicated by the fact that Tony is out of town today and tomorrow, and was in tech rehearsals all day yesterday. I asked about flying next week, and R-o asked if we had to go, but said John should be fine after the surgery.

The surgery is scheduled for next Thursday morning at 6:30 am. Which is really fast, which as my dad said can be good or bad...

We have an appointment today with Feiste, because I need to get reassurance that this is the way to go.

I am most freaked out that this is hospital (albeit outpatient) surgery and that he's going to have a "functioning biological organ - until the age of 3" removed. When asked, R-o said that it creates white blood cells and ENT's remove it because they THINK that bacteria gets concentrated there.

So I am pretty weepy today, and have to pick up John early to get to the doctor, and haven't been getting a lot of work done because I'm searching the web for more info.

I know that I'm overreacting, but that's what I do.

Tutu and Ma Bee

Each time Tony carries John down the stairs, he asks "Who's that?" sometimes referring to the picture of Tutu (Tony's grandmother) that we have on the wall. John excitedly responds "Tutu!" Now sometimes John points to Tutu's picture. It's very cute the way he says "Tew tew," sort of rhyming with "chew chew." My apologies to Grandma Henn, Grandpa Don, Grammie Gail, Grandpaparazzi, and Grandpa Mike, whose names we have not so diligently worked on... Of course, after weeks of identifying Tutu and Dada, Mama has FINALLY been identified in the photo lineup!

"Ma Bee" is John's name for his blanket. It sort of sounds French to me. (Or, I think of the Beatles song "Michelle, Ma Belle.") We sometimes say "Bee" when we refer to it, but mostly we still say "blanket." Is that term as annoying for you people out there as it is for us when someone calls a pacifier, a "passi"? (I don't know why I hate that nickname so much, but I do.)

Can you bear more bear?

Sorry, I love puns!

Halloween in the Deep South

John actually went trick-or-treating three times on Halloween.
Once at Southern Wesleyan University, with his daycare. I actually pulled the wagon with John the Bear (or lamb, everyone thought he was a lamb) and Meghan the cheerleader. All the ladies in the admissions office, library, and other business offices cooed over the "one's" (1-yr-olds).

Then John and I went to the downtown Clemson festivities. The police closed down the main street to traffic and all the store clerks sat in front of the businesses giving out candy. It was crowded. This is where John had his picture taken on the tractor.

Then Tony took John in our wagon to selected houses in the neighborhood. Our neighborhood isn't quite the best for trick-or-treating: no sidewalks, very dark, lots of hills, and twisty, dead end streets. But they hit all our friends houses. I handed out cookie and goldfish cracker packets. I think I had 5 or 6 groups total.

We didn't give John candy, but he did manage to get a little sugar and chocolate by chewing and sucking through the packages on a couple of treats. All in all, a successful start to the holiday season!

B-U-S

Tony and John finally took a CAT (Clemson Area Transit) bus ride on Monday. Tony said that John just sat quietly taking everything in.

A bear in his natural habitat

Bad word

John has started saying "No," or rather, "No, no, no, no."
It had to start sometime, I guess.

A poll about REAL life as a parent

What music I listen to, movies I like, or condiments I use don't reveal my real day-to-day life as a mom, so I put together a list of questions that just seem more pertinent to being a parent...

What does you car smell like?
-chicken nuggets
-febreeze
-dog and toddler
-you don't want to know

What's the grossest thing you touched today?
-the worm that your child picked up from a puddle on the street
-a week old sandwich from under the couch
-snot
-baby poo

At the end of a typical week, how do you measure how busy it was?
The number of ...
-conversations you had with your spouse that weren't via cell phone or email
-baskets of clean laundry waiting to be folded
-times you went to the gym
-days you skipped a shower

What's the last thing your child threw on the kitchen floor?
-a half empty bowl of milk and cereal
-a spoon
-himself

Your number one top parent worry is ...
-your child's health
-your child's behavior
-your child's college fund
-all of the above and more

What comprises the list in your head that you have yet to write down?
-unfinished house projects/chores
-things you forgot to get at the grocery store
-your child's Christmas list
-all of the above and more

What is the last thing you did online?
-posted something about your child on your blog
-looked up the words to a kid's song
-looked up symptoms of a childhood illness

What is the last song you sang out loud?
-the latest tune you downloaded on your iPod
-something from the 1980s, sung while you were in the shower
-a lullaby
-anything that had a farmer in it

Your hair ...
-is overdue for a trim
-is best seen under a baseball cap
-is turning gray as we speak

What is the last thing you skipped that you probably shouldn't have?
-breakfast
-your last cardio workout
-a shower

What is the thing that makes the stress most worth it?
-watching your baby sleep
-a hug from your spouse and child at the same time
-when your toddler says "Bagel"
-all of the above and more

What a difference a year makes

This video was taken on October 21, 2006.
So John was 2 days shy of 4 months old.




This video was taken on October 18, 2007.
Just 5 days shy of 16 months.

Where's Daddy?

So Tony's trip to Hilton Head this weekend seemed to be the first time John was aware that Daddy was not around. He often asked for "Dada" (and the "Buh" - bus). Other times it hadn't occurred to John that Daddy wasn't around. We met Tony at TGI Friday's in Greenville for dinner and John was very excited to see him.
I'm just proud that I made it through without too much desperation! I guess I'm growing up just like John. However, check on me next Sunday night, because Tony will be gone again... to Louisville this time, leaving before bedtime on Thursday night and not getting home until late, late Sunday night. I'm trying to line up activities now!

The Flour Video

The Bagel Tape

Ok, this is my only successful attempt at getting video on here.
Sorry for all the extraneous YouTube stuff...

International Economics

Fun stuff I bought for John



Fun stuff I bought for John
that DIDN'T come from China.