Happy (Belated Internet) Birthday #2!



Happy 2nd Birthday to #2!  I realize this is a little late.  We did celebrate his birthday, on his actual birthday, I'm just a little late letting all my Internet peeps know he turned two.  We had a nice bbq at our house with some of our adult friends and Husbands family over.  Lots of cousins to play with!  I decided we would forgo the traditional cake and made homemade cupcakes, from scratch, including the frosting.  Below is my (lame) attempt at hand drawing airplanes, one of #2's favorite things at the moment.  They turned out pretty good and were tasty.  Cupcakes for a crowd of little people is definitely the way to go.  An added bonus is the limited cleanup, no plates or forks, yea!!!

 

Here is #2 enjoying his cupcake.  #1 helped him blowout the candles.  Luckily #2 is very accommodating to his older brother (so far).  I fear the day (coming soon) this finally ends.



 A very cute picture of #1 when he was still a little baby.  Unfortunately, I failed my second born by not getting a super cute picture of him when he was first born.  I'd make some sort of excuse, but truly there isn't one.



#2 has in the past year really developed into the quintessential toddler.  He has blossomed under his big brothers guidance; a lot of times he faithfully does whatever he tells him to do.  Unfortunately for #1 this too is coming to an end.  Not sure how to convince #1 that no matter how loudly or forcefully he tells #2 to do something that, no, he actually doesn't.  #2 is starting to assert himself more.  In fact, he just started saying the word no to us.  It's pretty cute, I'll ask him something, and instead of grunting "uh-uh", he'll say "no mama." 

Other (not so cute) things he's picked up are:
- screaming at me (thanks to #1)
- hitting me when he's mad (why do children do this to their mamas?)
- being obstinate
- oh, there's the forever repeating myself telling him no:
         - don't touch the baby swing
         - don't touch the baby chair
         - don't push your brother
         - don't stand on the over: I could go on forever, so lame children aren't created to listen

Cute things he does:
- crashing his body into the ground (for fun)
- lots of hugs and kisses
- playing with his older brother
- lots of kisses for little brother
- riding his trike
- just being himself!  He's got such kissable cheeks :)

There are a thousand things I'm missing, but you get the gist.  I'm so lucky that he's apart of our family.  Can't wait to see what the next year will hold for him (or us). 

I Passed the Test!



Not sure if I mentioned this or not but #2 wears glasses.  Husband and I noticed his left eye (around nine months old) was turning in when he looked at objects but then would adjust back to normal.  I asked several people whether to take him to the optometrist and got both answers: 1) No, don't take him, they'll correct it when he's older and in school 2) You should take him and get it looked at.  I waited until he was 18 months old because I sort of felt like I was teetering on the edge of being a neurotic mom.  So I finally took both #1 and #2 to the optometrist to get their eyes checked out.  #1 passed (even though it's really only a visual exam with parental input on how they were doing) and #2, not so much.  Turns out lazy eyes are EXTREMELY important that need to be checked out and corrected ASAP.

The doc said many people wait until their child is in school for correction but by then it is too late to correct that eye, it will be bad FOREVER.  You child will be stuck with 1200 vision in that eye FOREVER.  There is a limited amount of time that the brain has to relearn how to see at 20/20 vision and once that time frame is passed, you can't get it back.  SO SO SO glad we took him in.  They ordered him some "cute" Winnie the poo frames which were very cute, but unfortunately too small and we had to upgrade to a larger, read, more expensive pair.  (Sorry folks, no pics of his first frames, although I do have a video where they make an appearance.)  Here's the thing about children's glasses, even though they are tiny they still cost as much as adult frames and they are no less prone to breaking or getting scratched.  Ugh.  The doc said for him to wear the glasses as much as possible.  Do you know how hard it is to get an 18 month old to wear glasses and not break them?  I do.  It's tough.  And remember I was six months pregnant at this point chasing him around, trying to get him to both wear them and not break them.

#2's second pair of glasses.  He LOVED picking

dandelions this summer and he'd store them in

his firetruck.

In April I took him back for a recheck and the doc very kindly said he only saw "mild improvement."  The goal for the next four months was to get him to wear his glasses AT LEAST six hours a day AND WEAR A PATCH for an hour (or more) a day.  I totally looked at him and asked if he was crazy.  Did he not see that I was three days from my due date?  Not only did he have to wear his glasses more but I also had to convince him to keep a patch on as well?!?!  Crap.  To give the doc credit he really is a nice guy who told me he understood he was expecting the impossible out of me.  I do like the guy.  He has two sons and is great with our kids.  I asked if he would be able to measure how good of a mother I am based on how well his follow up appointment in August would be, and with a smile and go natured laugh said yes.  And off I went with #2 out the door with glass patches in my pocket.

It took #2 all of one day to realize that if he bent his head down he could look over his glasses, thus defeating the purpose of the patch.  The next step, getting a "sticker" patch for his eye, featured here:

The thing about the patch is, well, to put it blatantly, is it makes him sort of blind.  The patch goes on his good eye thereby forcing his bad to do all of the work.  He has a pretty strong prescription for the bad eye that guesstimates the amount of correction.  He hates the patch.  He hates it so much that he would rather sit in timeout for forever.  Luckily though once on he'll leave it on.  I'd say we've had pretty good luck (read me).  Over the past four months he has consistently worn the patch 70% of the days, usually for two hours (the longer the better).  He also keeps his glasses on for the majority of the day; exceptions, car rides, when he in angry, or they fall off one ear and we're not around to fix it. 

Don't let the picture above fool you.  These glasses have taken a beating.  The original pair were bent to hell and he had gnawed off the latex bridge piece more times then I care to remember.  Additionally he broke off each ear piece and the end result was new frames.  Thankfully they have a warranty.  They have also gotten lost outside.  One time my mom's dog found them and used them as a chew toy so there are nice little indentations on one lens.

This brings us to our latest recheck.  Turns out I am a fabulous mom who cares greatly about #2's future eyesight (and possible his future) because I passed, err, he passed with flying colors.  There was more improvement then was expected so I did my part, and #2 kind of did his.  The doc is changing his prescription so he'll get new scratch and bite mark free lenses in two weeks.  He still needs to wear the patch everyday but thankfully we are heading in the right direction.  I must admit I was pretty nervous.  "We" even did so well that we won't be back for six months when usually he'd want to see us in three! 

The end goal is that by seven or eight years old he will have restored his vision to 20/20 and won't need glasses anymore.  Let's up everything keeps going smoothly for the next five or six years!!!

The Dresser

There is a serious short fall of five drawer dressers in this town.  I've been wanting a dresser for the boys room for six months or so.  When summer showed up, and shorts and t-shirts came out of storage, I found I no longer had room in their child sized wardrobe closet to fit all of their clothes. So my search began for the elusive dresser.  None of our retail stores (walmart, fred meyer) sell one that is reasonably priced.  The less expensive stuff on Amazon, according to the reviews, comes damaged and usually is missing parts.  There is no way I'm going to a furniture store and purchasing my two little terrors an expensive dresser.  I went to Craigslist.

 Let me say this again, there is a serious short fall of five drawer dressers in this town, including used ones. 

A dresser would come up every two weeks or so, and when I would call they were already sold, and usually already picked up.  Often times this would be within the hour of the post.  But alas, finally, after months of diligent searching I finally found one!!!  I bought it without even looking at it, I had to go with my gut that this fella wasn't going to screw me, he even delivered it us! (Granted he did just live down the road, and was coming over to pick up the cash anyways)

So now to the point of this post.  Husband and I looked at the dresser in the garage today and an entire discussion ensued, all around this central question, that you would think we already had the answer to, "Where are we going to put the dresser?"  The thing is, #3 will eventually be moving out of our room, when is he about six months old.  So the discussion then led to, which room?  Do we put him in the larger bedroom with the spare bed (like we did with #2 before he moved into the same room with #1), or do we move the big boys into the larger room and #3 into their room?  It's nice to have a spare room with a queen bed in it for company, but the thing is that with three kids, we don't have the luxury of having a spare room any more.  So to sum up a long (and possibly pointless) post, we decided that on Wednesday we'll be moving everything around and the boys will be in the big room.  It has it's own drawbacks, mostly the little door that goes to our well pump and storage area, still thinking about how to make that little boy proof.  It will be nice to give them a little more space.  And we think we'll eventually put them all in the same room so we'll have a head start on that.

And we'll end with a picture, an all words post just doesn't seem fair.  Especially when you have such cuteness to share with the world.