John's Birthday Weekend

John turned 27 on Saturday and because my dad was going to be in town Saturday through Sunday, we decided to let the birthday festivities cover the whole weekend.

Saturday morning, we woke up and the boys were very happy to give John his present (2nd season of Battlestar Gallactica and a birthday card picked out by Aiden). We spent most of the day at home - John settling down with some video games for a while and me catching up on some much needed cleaning before my dad arrived. After Nathan's nap, we headed to the grocery store to get what we needed for John's dinner request (steak, yams - mashed potatoes for the rest of us, asparagus, cherry pie, and chocolate cake since the boys won't eat pie). We got home just before my dad arrived, but it hadn't gotten a little on the late side somehow, so we gave the boys their dinner and my dad helped to read some stories to them before we sent them to bed. Then the three of us sat down to a relaxing steak dinner where we could talk and eat without having to worry about the kids. In fact, it was so nice that John and I have decided we should make it a regular thing for us - maybe once a week or so. It would be almost like a date! And we did get a large package of steak since it was only $3 per pound, so we have a lot in our freezer!

On Sunday, we all headed off to church and while the church swim party was that afternoon, none of us adults really felt like swimming and thought it would be unfair to the boys to take them, but not let them swim. So we decided to go home for lunch (and a viewing of Disney/Pixar's Cars) and then we headed out to the zoo in the later afternoon. Once we were in the zoo, Aiden requested to ride the zoo train. John decided that it would be fun since he hadn't gone on it before and my dad was in town to enjoy it with the boys. We had a great time on the train and I am still amazed at how well behaved the boys can be during the 35 minute ride. They sit perfectly still the whole time! I guess we have some little train fanatics on our hands. During the ride, Aiden was complimented on his loud and clear "ALL ABOARD!". I guess he felt that the conductor's version wasn't adequate (I must agree that it was lacking some enthusiasm), so he gave the shout himself.

Once we finished with the train, we all shared two elephant ears between the five of us and then had a quick visit to the goat petting area (Nathan's request) before we headed towards home. My dad was down here because a friend of his was driving down Saturday afternoon and then driving back to the Seattle area Sunday evening, so we had to get him back to our place in time to be picked up by his friend. It was a short trip, but the boys loved every minute of it and it was a chance for us to do some things for John's birthday that included the whole family.
Once my dad's friend arrived to pick him up, we packed the boys up in the car once again and went over to John's parents. They had agreed to watch the boys so John and I could go out to dinner. We had a wonderful relaxing dinner at a little restaurant in Lake Oswego called Thai Basil. They had amazing pad thai, so if you like thai food, I would highly recommend it. The last time John and I had gone out for thai food, we were still living in Philadelphia, so it was a nice change for us. And I was able to use a pair of chopsticks without trouble!
After dinner, we collected the boys from John's parents and took them home to bed. Poor Nathan hadn't really napped all day and he was very, very tired.

It was a very nice weekend and it just happened to coincide with my one guaranteed weekend off from work per month. Now we're back to work today and we go house hunting some more tomorrow evening. Maybe we'll find John a nice house for his 27th birthday! :^)

Morning Discovery

When I got the boys up this morning, I found Nathan....well, no longer in his crib. I knew this day was coming, but I was actually surprised at how concerned I was with HOW he did it and whether or not he had injured himself in the fall. He seems fine and I still don't know exactly how he got out, but motherly instinct tells me that his big brother had a hand in his removal.

He's been showing interest in Aiden's toddler bed for quite a while now and we can turn his crib into a toddler bed, but before I'm comfortable doing that, I want to get a safety rail. He still sleeps up against the railing quite a bit and I know that he would continually fall out of bed. While it's not nearly as big of drop as climbing out of his crib, he wouldn't get any sleep and neither would we.

So I guess it's time to look for a safety rail. Oh yes, and we're still working on perfecting his timing for using the potty, but he has been having success about once a day. This little guy is growing up quite a bit faster than I expected.

An Addition to Yesterday's Post

One little thing I forgot to mention in my post about our shopping trips yesterday was that Aiden insisted on wearing a Santa hat the entire time. Now, it was in the 80s yesterday, but he still wanted to wear it.
The manager in Target noticed him and told him that she wished Christmas would come in the summer too. I told her that I don't argue with his clothing choices too much...he is just 3 after all and doesn't know if people are pointing (and laughing) at him. She said that her daughter would do things like that all the time when she was that age. I'm glad it's normal.
Aiden attracted a lot of attention in Fred Meyer though. Most people tried very hard to hide their laughter, but some weren't very good at it. The only blatant pointing out of Aiden's hat happened when a small child suddenly yelled, "Look mommy! It's Santa!!!". Still, Aiden was totally unaware that he was creating a bit of a stir. And I was a good mommy and went along with it, smiling and acting as though wearing a Santa hat in August is completely normal. :^)

A Better Day

It seems that the boys are trying to their best to make up for such a horrible day yesterday. I had to do some grocery shopping and had to get all of Aiden's back-to-school items from his class list today - an adventure that I wasn't looking forward to very much since I had to take both of them with me. I just never know how they're going to behave while we're out. But they were great!
Aiden asked if he could walk instead of riding in the cart and I told him that he could if he stayed right next to me the whole time. He will run away from me sometimes and that makes things difficult, especially if I'm alone with both boys. I fully expected him to run off at some point, but I am determined to give him the opportunity to learn how to stay with me at all times. And it paid off because he was so well behaved today! He helped me push the cart and I told him everything that we needed from our list. I think talking about each thing we were doing helped him to stay focused. He also helped me in the check-out line and got right into his carseat once we got back out to the car.

The only incident was when Nathan got scared by something in Target (I think it was the very large BBQ we ended up stopping next to while looking at school supplies) and began crying in fear. But he calmed down quickly. Aiden got a little worried at one point while shopping because he suddenly needed to go to the bathroom and whispered (loudly) "I'm wee-weeing in my pants!!". I had put him in pull-ups since I was out by myself, so I told him that it was ok for now, but that there are bathrooms in the stores and he can always tell me if he needs to use the potty. I'm pleased that he's becoming more and more aware of his bathroom needs when we're away from home.

We had a great grocery shopping trip as well and they were just so well behaved that I took them to McDonald's for lunch. As we were sitting in the drive-thru, Aiden announces "I think that shooting stars are like mashed potatoes!". I'm not sure what he meant by that, but it sure was cute.

If I didn't know any better, I would think that someone had switched out my children from the ones I had yesterday!

Various Things for One of THOSE Days

Today is proving to be quite difficult - the boys have been at each other from the moment they woke up. I cannot leave the room for a moment without something setting them off and beating the living daylights out of each other. Silly me, hoping to take it easy on my day off. So while Nathan naps and Aiden plays with his train set, I need to write some things out....if only for some mental relief.

I haven't written much about my new job, but I am enjoying it very much. I guess I just feel like there's not much to write about since it is just retail. The ladies are all very nice and welcoming and the level of stress is much lower than at Payless. I believe that this is mainly because the customers are kind and tend to treat you like an actual human being, and there are more associates there to help in case things do get a little crazy. I am walking more at this job and my feet are letting me know that my shoes aren't cutting it. For the past week or two, my feet have been in quite a bit of pain that radiates up into my calves by the time I get to bed. It's causing some sleep issues. I think I will need to invest in some Dr Scholl's gel inserts for my shoes. Of course, I have also been having to stay late at work for the past few nights and haven't been getting home until near midnight. On Saturday, someone couldn't work the evening shift and the backups weren't answering their phones, so I offered to stay. I was scheduled from 1-6, but ended up staying until 11:30. Needless to say, I was quite tired by the time I got home. Even so, it's still more enjoyable than Payless.

John has been swamped with his job. It seems that they waited until the very last minute to hire him back. This sometimes makes evenings quite stressful if I have to work. He was trying to cram so much in each day last week that I ended up being late for work almost very night that I was scheduled. We are incredibly thankful that he has a steady job again and our health insurance application was just approved today. Things are slowly getting back to normal.

However, things can only be so normal while house hunting. We have found one that we like, but then we looked at another one and John prefers the yard and garage on the 2nd one. I'm not too thrilled about the living and kitchen space, but I'm willing to take another look at it. It's such a huge decision that I don't want to end up settling for something that I'm not going to end up being entirely happy with. We'll figure it out. I think we probably will end up putting an offer in on the first house, but we can't set our hopes on that one. It's a bank owned property and there's is already one offer in. The problem with it is that our offer would be considered the "back-up" just in case something falls through with the first offer. There's no competing with offers like a normal sale. As much as I want to hope that something goes wrong with the first offer, it seems a little mean to wish disappointment on another family just so I can have that house. But we like it well enough that we're open to putting in an offer and seeing what happens. We would keep looking and could pull our offer if we found something else.

I think that's everything of importance that's been weighing on my mind. I am waiting to hear from the real estate agent about some homes and we will hopefully go out looking again sometime this week. And I have to try to keep my sanity somehow today as I long for a backyard so I could shoo the boys outside. :^)

Potty Time at the Minthornes

In case I didn't think potty training one child could be stressful enough, now we're potty training two! This was by no means planned - I was waiting until Aiden was done (which should be very, very soon) to start on Nathan. But Nathan had other plans.
He came up to me after he finished his lunch and says, "Potty?". I was a little confused, but asked him, "Do you want to go sit on the potty?" and he said yes. So we went into the bathroom, took off his diaper, and sat him down on Aiden's potty adapter. Almost as soon as his little cheeks touched the seat, he went potty!! I was so shocked! We cheered and yelled "Yay, Nathan did it!!". Aiden came running into the bathroom and demanded, "What's the baby doing on my potty seat??". I told Aiden that Nathan had gone potty and he wasn't sure what to think about that. He told Nathan "good job", but I could tell that he wasn't too pleased about sharing the potty seat with his little brother.

Nathan clapped for himself, hopped down off the potty, waved bye-bye to the wee-wees, and flushed the toilet. He then took himself over the sink and stood on the stool, asking, "Wash hands?". The only problem is that even with the stool, he's too short to reach the sink! So I had to hold him up and help him with the water and soap. It was so adorable. Of course, we had to call daddy and tell him the great news.

I guess the plan now is to buy some pull-ups in Nathan's size and stock up on potty treats (we've been giving one Hershey's Kiss for wee-wees and two for poos, but maybe we can change it up a little and include some M&Ms in there somewhere). We are almost done with diapers for Aiden at night - once we use up the last package and I think we're 4-5 diapers away from that, we'll be switching him to nighttime pull-ups. He's been in underwear during the day for a few weeks now, but for accident's sake we've been putting him in pull-ups whenever we go anywhere. I know we'll need to get out of that habit here pretty soon though. To think...if all goes very well, maybe we'll be diaper free by next year! Way to go for initiating potty training, Nathan!

Conversations with a 19 Month Old

As my previous post mentioned, Nathan is quite obsessed with books. He will often go grab a select few and bring them to me to read, or I will peek into his room (after there has been an extended period of silence....rarely a good sign!) to find him sitting on the floor amongst a small pile of books, just looking through them.
What surprises me though is the complexity of the books he wants me to read to him. While he'll sometimes ask for picture books with just the word of the picture being shown, he prefers stories. He seems to be a fan of Dr Seuss and one of his favorites is 'What Was I Scared Of', which is part of The Sneetches and Other Stories, but we just have the story as a book on it's own. We think he may be attracted to it because of the constant rhyming. He is also a fan of Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day. I feel like it's a pretty big story for someone his age, but I'm certainly happy to read it to him.

Whether it's due to the increase in reading bigger, more complex stories or just because I don't really change the way I talk to him from the way I talk to Aiden, we've had a big increase in his vocabulary within the past week. He's asking more and more questions and instead of just doing the "what's that?" sort of thing just for the heck of it, he's asking questions about the current situation or location in a way that tells me that he actually wants to know and isn't just trying to attract attention by asking random things.
This morning's conversations went something like this:

Nathan: "Mommy, where daddy?"
Me: "Daddy is at work today."
Nathan: "Oh, work. Mommy work?"
Me: "Yes, mommy has to work later."
Nathan: "Oh, ok."

A little while later, as I notice Nathan attempting to climb up to reach something on the toy shelves:

Me: "Nathan, do you need help?"
Nathan: "Yes, bocks pease (blocks please)."
Me: "Ok, here you go."
Nathan: "Yay, bocks! Tink to! (Thank you!)"

As funny as it may sound, I really enjoy having conversations with such a little person. It keeps life interesting and he always seems to ask a question or make some sort of observation that surprises me.

Storytelling with Nathan

Nathan has been into books for quite a while now and within the past few months, has been taking a more active role with the storytelling. There is a book about baby sea otters that we have been reading for a week or so. As I read it to him for his nap today, his little tidbits were so cute, I had to write them down.

Me: "Shhh! Don't wake Sally. She's taking a nap. Did you know sea otters live in the ocean?"
Nathan: "O-Tay." (translation: "OK")
Me: "Sea otters eat clams. Can you see the clamshell Sally's mom is holding?"
Nathan: "No."
Me: "Sally's mom cleans her face after she eats. It looks like she's playing peek-a-boo."
Nathan: "Peet-a-boo!!"
Me: "Sally is napping again. She likes to cuddle with her mom."
Nathan: "SO boo-tiful!" (translation: a very enthusiastic "So Beautiful!")

My favorite part was his "no" to the clamshell question. At least he's honest.

A Visual for Aiden the Cowboy

I've been told there are more pictures, so I might have more later, but I thought I'd go ahead and share this cute one. He was so happy!!

(Click picture to enlarge)

Allowance

Aiden announced to me yesterday that he wanted to begin earning some money. I don't know if he gets WHY someone would earn money, but I guess it sounded like a good enough idea to him.
We began with me explaining to him that mommy and daddy both go to work to earn money, so if he wanted to earn money, he would have to do some work too. That sounded OK to him and he said that he wanted to do some work right away.

He had made a bit of a mess with his train tracks earlier that day, so I told him that if he cleaned up his train tracks, he would earn 10 cents. I have never seen him clean up so quickly or with such joy before! It was pretty cute. Once he finished, we went into my bedroom where we keep our huge spare change jar and he picked out two nickels for himself.

Once he had the nickels in his hand, we had to think about where he would keep the money that he earned. We had the idea of making a money jar out of a spare jam jar from the kitchen. We then got some colored construction paper (Aiden picked blue), wrapped it around the jar and taped it, and then we wrote 'Aiden's Money Jar' on it. I told Aiden that he could put his 10 cents in the jar, but he asked me to draw two circles on the paper first. So I did and then he placed the two nickels onto the two circles and asked for tape. He decided that he wanted to use his first 10 cents to decorate the jar! It was adorable and he was so proud of himself.

I explained the whole thing to John once he got home and he was all for it. After I got home from work later that evening, I walk in to find the living room all cleaned up. Aiden had earned 5 more cents by helping to clean up before bed and was apparently quite happy with the situation.

We haven't really discussed if there will be a weekly amount we'll give him or if we'll just decide how much he should earn for each little job he does based upon what it is. I'm just so proud of Aiden for bringing the subject up on his own. And maybe now there won't be such a fight to get him to clean things up when I ask!

Aiden with his new money jar!

His money jar all decorated, just like he wanted.

Slow Cooking

I came across a great website this morning and I thought I'd pass it along - especially to those of you with heavy work schedules or small children.

It's called A Year of Slow Cooking and it's actually a lady's blog from last year. She's an author and she has a book called Make It Fast, Cook It Slow and I'm really wanting to get it! But for some free recipes, she posted a new slow cooker recipe every day last year and I'm using one of them (Shepherd's Pie) for tonight's dinner.
Now that I'm home more during the day, but leave in the evening right before dinner time, I don't want to leave John to deal with coming up with something for dinner after he's worked all day. I've been alternating putting together casseroles for him to put in the oven and some stuff in the slow cooker. I would love to do more in the slow cooker, since it would be completely ready whenever him and the boys were ready to eat. So I got really excited when I found this blog today.

http://crockpot365.blogspot.com

She's even labeled all of the posts off to the left side, so if you want something with pork....it's labeled under pork. I'm looking forward to doing more with the slow cooker; meaning John gets left to fend for himself for dinner a little less often. Let's face it, as much as I try to be on top of things every day, sometimes I just can't do dinner.

Aiden the Cowboy

John's company had their 10th anniversary BBQ this past Saturday at the Lake Oswego Hunt Club. It was going to be child friendly and they had mentioned "pony rides" for the kids, so we decided that it would be a fun family thing to do. John's company is pretty small and over the past two years, I've met enough of the employees and their wives that I feel like they're a good group of people to spend an afternoon with.

We had told Aiden that there would be pony rides and he was quite excited. What we didn't realize was the the "pony" was actually the full-grown horse of one of the co-owners of the company. Luckily, the horse was super calm and used to being around children. The guy's daughter, who is the one who rides the horse, showed Aiden how to feed him and where to pet him. The horse seemed to really like Aiden! Aiden did really well at not making any loud noises or sudden moves and was being very gentle.

After a while, Janelle (the daughter) put the saddle on Wings (the horse) and told Aiden that she was getting the horse ready for riding and that Aiden would get a ride in just a little bit. Aiden was pretty excited about that, but was able to entertain himself during the waiting period.
We assumed that Aiden was excited about it in theory, but figured that once we attempted to put him up on this huge animal, he'd get scared and wouldn't want to do it.

It was finally time for Aiden's horse ride and he was still acting pretty excited as he made his way over to the horse. We put the little riding helmet on him, I walked him over to Wings, and asked him if he was doing alright. He announces, "Yes mommy, I'm going to ride the horse!". So I lift him up onto this huge horse and he perches himself up there, places his feet in the stirrups, and grabs onto the reins. He's going to ride this horse ALONE! Janelle holds onto the horse to lead him and tells Aiden to get ready for the horse to start walking.

She begins to lead the horse around and Aiden gets the biggest smile on his face and starts yelling, "YEEHAW!!!". No joke - he yelled "YEEHAW!!" every 30 seconds for the entire ride. It cracked up everyone from the company as his yells echoed across the small valley. About halfway through his ride, he looks at me and yells, "Look at me, mommy! I'm a cowboy!! YEEHAW!!!". It was definitely one of those moments that will bring a smile to my face for a long time.

Once he was done, he got down and we told him to say thank you to Wings - "Thank you, Wings!" - and then to say thank you to Janelle....this is when he proudly says, "Thanks Cowboy Mom!". This poor girl is about 17 or 18 and she laughed so hard she couldn't talk for a few minutes. After we had all stopped laughing, I explained that Aiden has been calling all older females "mom" (unless he is very familiar with their real names or titles, like "teacher" or "grandma") and in this case, he had just differentiated her as the "cowboy mom".

After his ride, we all took a tour of the stables and met some very pretty horses. Nathan was having a fun time looking at all the horses. He went to every horse and would say, "Hi dog!". I kept reminding him that it was a horse, which he would repeat for one or two horses after that, but would then revert back to calling them "dogs".
The boys had a great time and sadly, we didn't take our camera and my cell phone battery had died on the way there, so I couldn't use that camera either. Once it was time to leave, we told Aiden to say bye to all the horses and he burst into tears and then cried the whole way home. I think we've got a horse lover on our hands. Maybe we'll just have to bribe Aiden's auntie Laura to let him see her horse every once in a while. :^)

Great News!!!

I just got a call from John - his boss just hired him back on permanently!!

I hung up and threw out a big PRAISE GOD and then burst into tears. These past few months have been challenging and at times I have felt pushed to my absolute limit. I will admit that in the stress, I have lost a bit of my relationship with God, but I have sent up many prayers about making this unemployment as short-lived as possible and right now, I feel so blessed to have an answer to prayer.

One of the things we have continued to discuss over the course of this unemployment is whether or not to re-start the house hunting process once John found a job. We have been able to keep a good hold on finances - actually a little better than when he was working before - and we think that is something we are supposed to do. Obviously, we will have a serious discussion about it before I call up our real estate agent again, but we believe we have both been being drawn towards keeping up with that process.

There's still lots to pray about, but we have a big praise on our hearts today! We made it through this!!!

Nathan Update #2

We haven't had any fever issues since Monday, so that's good news. The weird head lumps are seeming to really be lymph nodes, but I still want to get them checked out if they haven't gone away by the time our new insurance kicks in.

He woke up this morning with a stuffy nose again and has now developed a cough. He is in good spirits, although you can tell that he's exhausted. The poor kid has huge circles under his eyes. Despite that, he's standing here dancing to a theme song on TV. :^)

The lack of him having a fever has made sleeping a little better for both of us, but I know he's not getting as much rest as he really needs. Once he gets better, maybe we can start potty training him too. He just came up to me and told me that he needed to go poo-poo! Oh, how happy I would be to be done with diapers completely by the end of the year....

Nathan Update

First of all, thanks to everyone who has been putting prayers out for Nathan.
He has made some progress! His nose is finally beginning to clear up and the fever seems to have mostly gone away. We have had some trouble with it going away for 12-18 hours, but then coming back for 2-3 hours, but so far it has yet to come back since yesterday afternoon. I'm hoping we're done with it. The lumps are still on the back of his head; however, I think they're a little less sensitive and Nathan let me rub the back of his head to feel them. They don't seem to be hard and stationary (which would have signaled one of the worst-case scenarios), but it's hard for me to tell if they are actually lymph nodes. They almost seem to be a little on the big side for lymph nodes, but I'm no doctor so I can't make any real diagnosis.

Some really good news since we asked for prayer is that we were able to find and apply for health insurance that we can actually afford, AND our current pediatrician is a preferred provider! Providing everything goes well with our application, we should be covered beginning on the 15th.
Right now, as long as Nathan continues to get well, I think I can put off getting his head lumps checked out until then. I am hopeful that they will just disappear on their own, but if they don't, at least I don't have to worry about a doctor visit for possible lymph nodes costing us $500.

Thank you again for the prayer and if I can request for just a little more for Nathan's continued recovery from this odd little illness... Also, keep John's work in prayer as well. I asked him last night how it was going (he has 4 1/2 weeks left on this project) and he said that things are picking up, but it's still a little early to tell, so of course they haven't made a decision on whether or not they will be keeping him on permanently. While I do like my new job, I have really been enjoying my extra time here at home with my boys and would love it if it could continue.

Sick little boy

I'd like to put a prayer request out there for Nathan....

All the boys in the house developed a cold about two weeks ago - Aiden and John recovered early last week, but Nathan has continued to get worse. He's had a fairly high fever off and on for the past few days and last night we noticed some odd bumps had developed around the base of his head. They seem to be sensitive, as he won't really let us touch or examine them closely.

He woke up this morning around 5am with a very high fever - he felt absolutely burning hot as I held him. Tylenol was given along with fluids and over the course of the morning, I was able to bring his fever down to an almost normal level. Needless to say, we didn't really sleep much.

I tried to do a little research on what the bumps could possibly be and right now I'm hoping that they are just swollen lymph nodes due to the cold, although that does point to him having yet another ear infection. There are some worst-case scenarios regarding the bumps, but I'm trying to not assume the worst.

Obviously, I will provide my child with medical care no matter what, but we are lacking health insurance at the moment so it makes the situation a little more stressful than I would prefer. We did spend some time this morning looking at health plans and we did find one that works for us, but it looks like we couldn't get covered until the 15th. I am hoping that if we call and speak to someone, maybe we could get it processed a little faster so I could take him in to the doctor this week, if needed.

Please keep Nathan in prayer as we deal with this situation.