And just because he doesn't have ENOUGH going on...

mr. o has started the ever joyous act of teething again. this time it's his two-year molars. they aren't anywhere near in, but he's pretty miserable at night. last night he was up at 1:00 or so, but back down by about 1:30 after jeffy put some stuff on his gums. however, he was up again at about 5:30. at least that is better than 3:00 like it's been for the past week. people have told me that once he gets his tubes (8 more nights to get through, but who's counting!?) he'll likely stop that bit, too. i've forgotten what consecutive nights of solid sleep feel like. i wonder how i managed when we were getting up three time a night to nurse. oh, yeah. i was on maternity leave that whole time and could nap. nap? what's that? gonna have to look that one up soon. HA!

i've been e-mailing a friend whose two oldest children have been through the tubes thing. she basically told me flat out, do the tubes. she's been a great help this last week. our mothers were college roommates so erin and i have known eachother for quite a while.

a new trick - and a gross warning!

my sister told me to watch for this around mr. o's 18-month birthday...today, while waiting for the tub to be filled, owen took off his diaper. granted, it was all he was wearing so getting at it wasn't that hard, but he undid one of the fasteners and then slid the diaper down and stepped out of it. i took the opportunity to sit him on his training potty, hoping he might pee in the potty. he didn't. however, during his bath, he pooped. gladly, we were nearing the end so i quickly scooped out the floaters and dumped them in the big potty. after i got him out and dried off, i put his diaper back on, and he took it back off. what a smart boy... :-S needless to say, i quickly got him into a onesie and jammies.

this afternoon we went to the birthday party for our friend brendan, who is three. brendan's mom went to m.s. and h.s. with jeffy and she and i have become wonderful friends over the last few years, much to jeffy's chagrin, i must say. anyway, brendan has a blow-up jump-around and owen got in it (with my help) and loved being bounced up and down while the bigger kids were jumping. i'll post a picture if one that faye (brendan's mom) took comes out.

after the birthday party, we stopped by my in-law's house so that Grandma could see owen before she heads to upstate ny on tuesday. we walked in and she said, "hi, owen! what happened to you?" i fessed. i find what i did to his hair pretty funny, mostly because it's only a temporary thing. hair grows back. :-) i won't make that mistake again. the funny thing is that jeffy won't let me near his head with the clippers. i wonder why that is... ;-)

Oops!

i tried to cut owen's hair today. i used one of the black things that was just a little too short....see for yourselves! the lesson learned is: use more than a 1 for owen's hair! at least it's only hair and it will grow back. we'll try again later on, with a longer setting! lol

on the schedule

we went to the surgeon yesterday and after owen's ears being poked and proded (including having a hearing test) we were given two options by the doctor. (1) continue to treat the EIs with antibiotics every time one happens or (2) do tubes. betcha know which option i went for. owen is getting tubes on april 5. they'll call us on the 4th to let us know what time we need to be there. it will likely be around 6:30 or 7:00 in the morning, which is perfect, since he can't eat anything after midnight that day until the surgery is over.

one more week until spring break. it can't come fast enough! i'm ready for a week of not having to worry about teaching. i love my job, don't get me wrong, but the breaks are nice to have. after that, we're in the home stretch. most of april, all of may (with the memorial day holiday in there) and then about three weeks in june. kids get on on june 19, i'm done on the 20th. wonder what we'll be doing that day. it's a make-up waiver day that we lost due to having so many danged bad weather days to make up this year. at least we're not going until july like some districts!

owen and i are stuck in the house today. my car is getting worked on and jeffy will be out and about applying for a different job than the one he currently has. it's rainy and i don't want to be stuck inside my house! grrr..... at least tomorrow we go to a birthday party for a friend's son who is turning 3.

someone's getting fussy. better go pay attention to him...

No question now

Owen has his fifth ear infection since October. The antibiotics we were on for number 4 since October (#5 over all) didn't work worth a darn. We're now going on a different line of antibiotics. We've been up since 4 a.m. Not fun at all. This pretty much seals the deal on whether or not we're doing ear tubes. Our poor little guy! I'll be glad when this is over with, or at least minimized by tubes.

another step forward

i called the surgeon's office today and we are going in on friday at 8 for our consultation. keep your fingers crossed that we can get in for the procedure during spring break!

i got some mommy time this afternoon. jeffy picked up the little one at daycare so mommy could relax a little. i spent my time by going to my favorite discount store (concentric circles) and dropping a load. jeffy's birthday is coming up, and i got some spring pants, plus one of those racks with the bins on it for owen's toys. most everything was on sale.

A step in the right direction

I talked with the pediatrician this evening about Owen's ears and we made the decision to go for tubes. She put in a referral to a surgeon while we were talking and I'll call his office tomorrow to schedule the surgery. From what I've been told by several mothers of children who have had tubes, it'll be a good decision. I'll update you after we have the surgery date set.

Number 5 - Tubes anyone?

Last Sunday, Owen's eardrum ruptured. This is getting to be old hat for us. That isn't good. I called the doctor (thank goodness for weekend office hours!) and we are now on our fifth (or is it sixth?) round of medication for an ear infection. I'm guessing that when we go in for our follow-up next week, we'll be talking seriously about ear tubes. I hope we can get it done during spring break, which is the first week of April.

Owen is at daycare today. I am home. Two days ago, I noticed the my voice was disappearing. Not good when your job requires you to speak and SING all day long. Also, even worse when you have a program coming up. That was yesterday. I woke up completely hoarse. No voice at all. I showed a video to one of my classes (little ones who can't read what I would put on the board...) and taught by writing on the board with the rest of my classes. That part actually went pretty well. I made the decision early yesterday to take a sick day today, since I didn't know what was going to happen with my voice.

The afternoon program went really well. I had made up two signs that said, "Singing Posture" and "Concert Attitude". The kids read them and followed what they said. :-) After I picked up Little Man from day care, my voice all of a sudden returned. I had it for the evening program, which was good because my principal was also sick yesterday and wasn't able to make the program. The kids were so excited to hear me talking. They were really cute! They sang beautifully. It was an awesome program. One of my best, I think. (and if I do say so myself...) ;-) One more program to go this year, plus recorders at the block party at the beginning of June. That's always a fun thing to do. The kids get a chance to really show off what they've done during the year.

Monkey Boy

Yes, he's in the sink. He climbed up on the stool and then his training toilet. He is very proud of himself. I came around the corner and saw his two little legs sticking out over the front. All I could do was laugh and yell for Jeffy to come quick. He did, with his camera phone (gotta love those!)

Oops (an explanation) and success!

So for those of you who may be wondering why the last post stopped mid-word, it was because Owen started pushing keys on the computer keyboard and Blogger froze. The last sentence of my previous post should read, "...this time for the rest of the night."

Lots has happened in the three weeks since my last post. My mom came out a couple of weeks ago and we had a great time. We went to the zoo where Owen had a blast watching the animals play, particularly the walruses (who were coming right up to the glass), the sharks and fish, the otters, and the monkeys. Some of the kids there were scared by E.T., the big male walrus at the zoo, coming up to the glass and swimming with his belly to it. Sometimes E.T. went from bottom to top, other times he went from side to side. Owen didn't care. He just loved it. Had a huge grin on his face whenever any of the walruses came by him. When Owen saw the puffins, he immediatly said, "Duck!" It took me a while to figure out why he knew that word and why the puffins were a good place to stick the label (hey, he's 16 months old. That's pretty good in my book!) Finally, several days later, we were reading a favorite book (Moo Baa La, La, La by Sandra Boynton) and on one of the pages is a duck. Duh! As we were getting ready to go home, we went on the brand new antique carousel (does anyone else catch the oxymoron here?) I guess we waited a little bit too long to take Owen on it because, well see for yourselves! Yes, that's Mr. Owen asleep on the carousel. He tried so hard to stay awake but, alas, it was hopeless. Next time we go, we'll take him on it earlier!







Now for the success mentioned in the title of today's post. I have finally figured out why O stopped putting himself to sleep at night. He was over tired and we were putting him down too late. On Wednesday night, I tried putting him down at 7:30 and let him cry himself to sleep. It took 40 minutes, but he did it. He woke up once around midnight and I tried to put him down before he was asleep enough. I was up for another hour or so (got back to bed around 2:00 a.m.). Thursday night, it took him a little longer to go to sleep, but he finally fell asleep around 9:00 (starting from 7:50 or so) and went clear through the night. That means that we (Jeffy and I) also got to sleep clear through the night. Last night, it took him about a half hour to get to sleep, and tonight, only about 5 minutes. Granted, he hadn't slept since this morning and was likely extremely exhausted. Poor little guy. To top it all off, he had a temp of 100.9 right before I put him down. I gave him Tylenol and will be checking on him through the night. This probably doesn't have anything to do with the fact that we stopped nursing this week, does it? (Honestly, I forgot to nurse him on Thursday morning. Didn't realize it until nearly 10:00 that morning. He hasn't seemed to miss it or want it, and neither have I. Guess it was time, huh?)

Today we hung out with our friends Katie and Peter. We went to lunch where Owen and Peter had a blast. They were so well-behaved. No loud noises, until they started banging on the table with their hands and laughing. And they both ate pretty well. Owen is now able to take bites off of sandwiches and fruit. It didn't work so well when the canteloupe was still on the rind...Mommy had to cut the fruit off for him, but she didn't have to cut it up! Yay! After lunch we went to the play area at the mall. My little monkey boy discovered how to climb UP the slide. Oy vay! We really need to get him a slide or something. He loves to climb. (He also loves bananas, which is why I call him my little monkey boy. He'd eat bananas at every meal if I'd let him!) We then went to my favorite "discount" store (concentric red rings) where we bough two of the Little Einsteins DVDs. Owen loves this show. So do I. They take exerpts of real classical music, and pieces of real artwork and work them into the show. Owen only has to see Rocket and he starts to pat his legs (that's how they get Rocket to power up to fly) and then he'll raise his arms in the air for "blast off!" Too funny. He loves any kind of music. He's becoming a great little dancer. Check out http://www.disney.com to see more about Little Einsteins.

So in addition to "duck", Owen can now bark like a dog, nod his head for "yes", and has said peek-a-boo and mine. Ah, yes. Let the toddler years officially begin! It's time for what I call, "The mes, the mys and the nos" as those seem to be the three favorite words of just about any toddler. Oh, and he can now accurately point out four of the five senses - all but touch. Taste is really funny, he sticks out his tongue.

School continues to go well for me. My 4th and 5th graders just finished up a unit on musicals, with the end project being writing their own musicals. They had to take a folk tale or fairy tale of their choice and adapt it to a musical. They had to have at least one song, and could use an existing melody, but had to write original words to the melody and their song had to help tell the story. They got into groups of 3-5 kids. A few groups really understood it and nailed the assignment. Some other groups sort of got it and did ok. Other groups didn't get it at all. They were graded on four things; adaptation of the story (they could alter it, but the main skeleton of the story had to be recognizable - think Pretty Woman and Cinderella), song (did it help tell the story), preparation (which included use of class time, cooperation within the group, and general practicing for the performance), and finally the performance itself. Extra points could be earned for using an instrument, writing an original melody, and/or having a second song. They really liked the assignment and some have even started writing their own play on their own time. Guess I've created a bunch of monsters here, huh? The process was a lot of fun to watch. Basically I just sat back and helped out when kids needed me to. Gotta watch the video and do grades for them tomorrow.