It Was A Messy Day

This is what happens when he refuses his breakfast and flings the spoon from my hand!

He knows what he did and he's telling me that by the look on his face.... little stinker.

This is what happens when you turn your back for a minute on a 2 year old painting!

She's a picky eater.... but she'll eat paint??

And he can't get messy.... haha, if he does he'll let you know he has to change or be cleaned up right away!

Travels Down South

We decided pretty last minute to make the trip down to NC, instead of having my mom come up for her spring-break. We made it down late the night before one of my cousins got married. What a neat story... he is 54 and his wife not much younger than that and it is a first marriage for both of them. They were both beaming!! :) My dad was in the wedding - he looked nice all dressed up!

Nate ready to take a nap after the wedding. It was nice to see lots of extended family all at once!

Josh drove us down and stayed the weekend and left Monday morning, then we stayed 2 weeks.

Abby and Will love riding the Harley motorcycle! Abby finally got the steering down.

This park across the street from my parents is great.... because its so close and usually we are the only ones there :).

Always makin' faces!

We spent almost everyday with my sister Christy and her kids. The cousins couldn't get enough of each other. Here is Zac blowing bubbles! He is a character... I nicknamed him "swiper" from Dora, because he was so sneaking about stealing things :)!

Lilly blowing bubbles with her awesome curls!

Love Zac's face when Abby was trying to hug him. He actually loved Abby and was always hugging her and chasing after her.

Baseball time. The little ones didn't do so well! They just stared at the ball flying past them.

Christy trying to show Zac what to do. He just wanted to kick the balls.

A trip to Mimi and Poppi's just wouldn't be complete without going to Monkey Joe's!

My 3 little cuties!

Will did great climbing everything on his own.

Action shot

His favorite - Lightning McQueen!

Mimi - the kids always fought over her.

They loved taking baths in Mimi's deep tub. This time the bubbles were a little too much. Will and Abby loved it... Nate did too, but he splashes SO hard that he falls backwards... and tumbling under this was too much for him... he did a dive and then we quickly took him out!

It was a great time visiting family and friends!

Journal of our first Hospital Experience

As most of you know, we had to take Nate to the ER Feb. 22nd, for his first time. I know my family was getting the word out to most of you that read this blog so that you all would pray for him. It was a rough few days, but we are so thankful to be home and well now.
All I can say is that I don't like February 22nd..... (I'm not a superstitious person AT ALL)... but that is the day in 2000 that I got in a horrible car accident and totaled my car.... and now its the day we had to take Nate to the ER for the first time.
Earlier in the day I took the kids up to the doctor for Nate's 9 month visit, where everything looked great. He is now 21 lbs. 6 oz. He was such a good boy there and seemed healthy and happy. On the way home (its an hour drive) he started gagging and choking/coughing....and finally I pulled over to make sure he was OK, and he was. So when we got home I started to feed him some of his baby puffs and he threw that up and acting like he was choking again. So I nursed him and he ate great and then threw up his entire feeding, So I tried to feed him two more times..... didn't keep down a thing. I called Josh over from work and I was just panicked... I couldn't find things as we were getting ready to go to the hospital, but we made it out the door in a couple of minutes and were on our way (another hour away) to the hospital in the snow....
It was a long ride up there and I had to take him out of his car seat every 15 minutes or so because he kept throwing up. I called his specialist on the way, who in turn called the ER to notify them that we were coming and give them special instructions. He was definitely getting more and more lethargic on the way up, but thankfully right when we got there they brought us back and had his IV bag waiting for him and got that started within 10 minutes. We got to the ER around 6 and finally got admitted to a room around midnight. Nate only took about a 15 minute nap that whole time! So, we spent 3 nights there and they got his blood sugar stable and made sure he was keeping down his food before we were able to go home. It was extremely difficult for me to be away from Will and Abby (thank you MaryLou for keeping my babies) and also to be without Josh a lot while I was in the hospital. I ended up getting the stomach bug while we were there, which made it hard for me to take care of Nate a whole lot. He was pretty good - considering he was hyper from the sugar in his IV, not sleeping at all, and so wanting to crawl around (which there is no way I was going to let him crawl on the hospital floor). We know there will probably be many more of these trips, but we are praying they will be few and far between. It is emotionally and physically exhausting. It has opened my eyes up to pray for those that spend months at the hospital.... that is a hard thing to do. So, thank you all for your prayers and concern for us. We now want to keep him in a bubble, haha, but know we have to live life. Here are a few pictures from while we were there. They are fuzzy because they are from our cell phone, since grabbing the camera on the way out to the hospital wasn't really on my mind :).

Here is Nate in the ER a few hours after we got there.


Here is Nate in the hospital with his little tiger gown and IV.

This is when he was feeling a good bit better and he was SO ready to be out of this cage (crib) and crawling around.

This & That

This post is going to be all over the place because I haven't posted in a while and just have some random pictures I recently downloaded from my camera.

About a month ago, Nate decided to grow up way too fast in a couple days time. He went from army crawling, to regular crawling (and a FAST crawl), pulling himself up to standing, and climbing stairs. AHHH, I now know why I haven't posted in a while.... I'm super busy trying to keep after this guy and get the ladybugs and every other thing he finds on the floor, out of his mouth :)!

Trouble!

He is thrilled that he can pull himself up to play with Will's trains!

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Meet, Ceasar snow man. This is one HUGE and weird looking snowman Josh built with the kids last Saturday.