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Tuesday, August 19, 2014
Summer Wrapup
Well, it's nearing the end of August, if you can believe it! I am sitting here tonight, enjoying a rare moment of peace and quiet, and thought I'd try to do a quick update of our summer before it gets any later into the year! After a very busy spring, our summer has seemed incredibly uneventful! Here's a little recap:
We actually kicked off June with a really fun and spur-of-the-moment vacation to celebrate Joel's medical school graduation and our 7th anniversary, which was on June 1st. We left Benjamin in Mitchell with grandparents, and took Michael with us out to the east coast! We stayed in Cape Cod (at the Coves at Yarmouth Resort), where we spent 5 beautifully relaxing and super fun days. We spent one day in Boston, where we traveled the historic city like proper tourists and even took in a Red Sox game in the evening! We are still a little surprised that we survived our "near death experience" late at night at the super sketchy subway station where we parked our car because 1. it was the cheapest and 2. we didn't know any better. Boston is just gorgeous. We walked the entire freedom trail, and I would guess we both loved visiting the USS Constitution the best! We ate terrific food and tried our best to keep a diet solely of seafood because, hello, South Dakota is landlocked and when in Rome... The remainder of the vacation was spent traipsing around the Cape, finding the most beautiful beaches and most delicious places to eat. It was a total dream vacation, even with Michael there! :) Also, I have never in my life had so many people comment on my "cute baby." The fact that most of the people at our resort were old and retired grandparents themselves might have been why, but even people in the city consistently commented. I guess East coast people just really love babies... We had a ton of fun, but my favorite memory of our trip is this little off-the-beaten-path beach we ended up finding after consulting Yelp, of course. (This trip was literally planned days before we left, so we completely depended on Yelp once we got there since we had zero ideas of what to do.) The directions were slightly unclear, but we decided to try our luck at finding what was described as a "one of the best in the Cape" and "nearly a private beach." We found our way to a quaint little cemetery that would be our starting off point. We knew to expect to walk about a mile on this sandy path in a lush, green forest, so we parked our car and started on our way. The walk was gorgeous, but we laughed the whole way as we continued to see cars parked as we got closer and closer to the beach. Turns out that most people just take their cars down the path, sandy and bumpy as it might be, and avoid the long walk. Eventually we made it to a fork in the path. One way led you to a large pond area. However, the other way was a hike straight up a tall hill, which was supposed to lead to the beach. As we trudged up this sandy hill with all our gear and baby strapped to us, after a mile-long hike no less, we both grumbled that once we get to the top of the hill it had better be this amazing panoramic view of the ocean, just like you'd expect to see in a movie, yadayadayada... Well, it was. The view was absolutely breathtaking. We just stood up there and looked around at this sprawling beach below us, with hardly a single inhabitant. We had so much fun, we ended up going again another day. :) We drove all the way down and parked at the end of the trail that time, though! Ha!
Joel started his residency program soon after we got home, and "real life" kicked into gear. His schedule has actually been wonderful, consider he is a resident! He's gone early (by 7 AM), but is usually home around 5 or 6:00. With the exception of the past month, it has been really nice to have a more normal schedule! He did just take Step 3 this past Saturday and Monday, so he had been really studying hard for that. Our family motto lately has been "after Monday!" So, starting today, Joel can be home more and Benjamin can get all the projects done that he's been waiting to do with his dad!
The last real exciting event this summer was that we moved! We ended up being able to get into a larger 3-bedroom apartment in our same building, and within a matter of weeks signed the papers and starting packing our stuff up! We are so glad to be here with a little more room to stretch! There was a part of me that was pretty sad not to find a nice little house with a backyard and a basement for the kids to play, but we do use our extra bedroom as a toy and tv-watching room. Also, our front door opens up to a really nice playground and even some yard that somebody else mows, so it's not all bad. The attached double garage, clean interiors, and cheap rent are all worth it, I suppose!!!
Benjamin continued to attend Early Head Start twice a week throughout the summer, but other than that we just sort of made plans day to day. He has grown up so much... He's turning 4 in October and I can't believe where the time has gone. Benjamin has the most wonderful personality. He is kind and loving, but at the same time excited, assertive and pretty bossy when he means business! He has the most wonderful sense of humor. He is wise and thoughtful. He has a great imagination! And he is fiercely independent right now! As in, he does his own laundry among many, many other tasks. The past few months Benjamin has really been into good guys/bad guys. It all started when he rediscovered an old toy - a small Captain America figure that Joel had bought him long ago. Once he realized that "Cap" is a hero along with a band of his friends, the Avengers, it was all over. It became Avengers-mania at our house! Playing good guy/bad guy became the only game he would play. (It still is.) We have now branched out a bit to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the concept is the same. He loves a good hero, especially if he comes with great weapons! I love the little conversations he has between characters. He is so great at giving each hero and bad guys their own voice. Usually, the bad guys have a low, gruff-sounding pitch when they talk. He loves everything from burying them in the sandbox outside to making them swim in a filled-up bathroom sink. He has costumes for each and every hero, along with their respective weapons. We have found multiple Avengers and TMNT cartoons on Netflix that are frequently watched and then re-enacted with his toys. Just tonight he and Joel got to work on building a giant cardboard Ninja Turtle van to put around his bike, just like one he saw in a Target commercial. He is such a little boy. It is the cutest thing in the world.
Benjamin will be starting the Head Start program at the beginning of September. Luckily, he gets to keep his same teacher, Miss Katie, who he adores. He loves school, so hopefully the transition will be smooth, even though there will be quite a lot more kids. He will attend 4 days a week for 3-1/2 hours, including lunch and a snack before pick-up. His teacher is excited to work more with him. He is blowing everybody away with all that he can do! His big achievement right now is how well he can read. He is sounding out all his letters and putting together blends for 3-4 letter words. It really is impressive. His writing is getting very good, too. I think he can write most letters of the alphabet. He spells his name really nicely and even surprised me by writing my name on the sidewalk outside the other day! His vocabulary is really great. He surprises me all the time with the words he knows! He's a pretty smart little kid. I wish I was better at documenting the memorable things he does, but this is a recent one that sticks out: the backstory is that we had just spent an afternoon at a friend's house in the pool where I ended up explaining "evaporation" to the kids. Anyway, the next morning, I walked past his bathroom to find that the door was closed and locked, and it was just a little too quiet. I knocked, and he opened with one arm behind his back trying fiercely to hide what was obviously a squirt gun. As I looked around the bathroom, I noticed the entire room was sprayed down from floor to ceiling. I reacted, but he looked at me very calmly and said, "but Mom! I have good news! The water will just go up into the air!" Haha.. Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Our little Michael baby is doing so well! He just turned 5 months old, which blows me away. He is getting fluffy and chunky in all the right places! He smiles with a big gummy grin, and his laugh is hysterical. It is so funny sounding, and so different from Benjamin's. Michael has this terrific head of hair with a big blonde tuft right on the top that sticks up just right. He started rolling over from tummy to back when he turned 4 months old, and just recently (within the last week), started rolling from back to front when prompted with a toy. He loves to put everything in his mouth and explore it. Just today, he went ahead and noshed on Benjamin's library reading log. It was a delicious looking bright green piece of paper and that baby just went for it. He has a really nice firm grasp and pretty good depth perception. If anything interesting is in reach, he will go for it! We have to start being really carefuly with Benjamin's toys! At his 4 month well-child, he weighed 13 lbs 15 oz and was 23 inches long. At his more recent appointment (cardiology at the end of July), he weighed 14 lb 5.6 oz and measured 25 inches long. He is getting so big! We suspect that Michael has some reflux issues or possible sensitivities to dairy (in my diet), but we started him on some Zantac recently and have noticed a little difference the past couple weeks. Hopefully he can get a little relief!
He loves to nurse, but is starting to get really distracted by things happening around him if he's in the living room with his brother. I sort of love it... He'll be nursing along, then hear a noise and turn his head to look. He'll watch very intently for a time and then I can just hear his body language say, "Huh, cool! Well, back to eating!" and he turns back to me and goes about his business again. His sleeping habits could use some improvement! I will say that the past couple weeks everyone in our house has been sick and that has thrown off everyone's sleeping, but he typically will go about 3-5 hours a stretch. The last couple nights have been between 4 and 5, so let's hope that's the trend now! When he wakes he is completely comforted by being nursed and then promptly falls back asleep, so it's not all bad. I'd say 10 minutes tops are our nighttime shenanigans. I wish I could fall back to sleep as easily as he does!!! He is taking about 4 naps a day as well. They range anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we stayed at home all day long with nowhere to go, but sadly that poor baby's "schedule" is always getting interrupted with errands or to take Benjamin to school or a playdate. Luckily, he is pretty good about going with the flow. Michael has such a sweet temperament. His personality is so different from Benjamin's already. He is more relaxed and calm. He's such a nice little baby. We love him soooooo much.
We had another cardiology appointment last month and had his heart defect checked out. Again, we left without much news. There hasn't been much change at all... if anything, the blood flow looks slightly better. But his oxygen sat was 100%, so we couldn't ask for more than that. Basically his doctor told us we will most likely have to sit tight and wait for a good number of years until he grows up more and becomes a lot more active. Until then, we will continue to monitor him for any changes. Most days we completely forget that he has a special little heart. It's always hard on me the days that we have his appointments. It's such a reminder of his condition and brings up those horrible memories from his birth and time spent in the NICU. There's definitely a part of me that wishes we could just go in and get his heart fixed now and be done with it. Anyway, we are very lucky that he acts so normally and seems to be developing perfectly in every other way. :)
Well, that pretty much wraps it up for us. We're looking forward to see what this year has in store!
We actually kicked off June with a really fun and spur-of-the-moment vacation to celebrate Joel's medical school graduation and our 7th anniversary, which was on June 1st. We left Benjamin in Mitchell with grandparents, and took Michael with us out to the east coast! We stayed in Cape Cod (at the Coves at Yarmouth Resort), where we spent 5 beautifully relaxing and super fun days. We spent one day in Boston, where we traveled the historic city like proper tourists and even took in a Red Sox game in the evening! We are still a little surprised that we survived our "near death experience" late at night at the super sketchy subway station where we parked our car because 1. it was the cheapest and 2. we didn't know any better. Boston is just gorgeous. We walked the entire freedom trail, and I would guess we both loved visiting the USS Constitution the best! We ate terrific food and tried our best to keep a diet solely of seafood because, hello, South Dakota is landlocked and when in Rome... The remainder of the vacation was spent traipsing around the Cape, finding the most beautiful beaches and most delicious places to eat. It was a total dream vacation, even with Michael there! :) Also, I have never in my life had so many people comment on my "cute baby." The fact that most of the people at our resort were old and retired grandparents themselves might have been why, but even people in the city consistently commented. I guess East coast people just really love babies... We had a ton of fun, but my favorite memory of our trip is this little off-the-beaten-path beach we ended up finding after consulting Yelp, of course. (This trip was literally planned days before we left, so we completely depended on Yelp once we got there since we had zero ideas of what to do.) The directions were slightly unclear, but we decided to try our luck at finding what was described as a "one of the best in the Cape" and "nearly a private beach." We found our way to a quaint little cemetery that would be our starting off point. We knew to expect to walk about a mile on this sandy path in a lush, green forest, so we parked our car and started on our way. The walk was gorgeous, but we laughed the whole way as we continued to see cars parked as we got closer and closer to the beach. Turns out that most people just take their cars down the path, sandy and bumpy as it might be, and avoid the long walk. Eventually we made it to a fork in the path. One way led you to a large pond area. However, the other way was a hike straight up a tall hill, which was supposed to lead to the beach. As we trudged up this sandy hill with all our gear and baby strapped to us, after a mile-long hike no less, we both grumbled that once we get to the top of the hill it had better be this amazing panoramic view of the ocean, just like you'd expect to see in a movie, yadayadayada... Well, it was. The view was absolutely breathtaking. We just stood up there and looked around at this sprawling beach below us, with hardly a single inhabitant. We had so much fun, we ended up going again another day. :) We drove all the way down and parked at the end of the trail that time, though! Ha!
Joel started his residency program soon after we got home, and "real life" kicked into gear. His schedule has actually been wonderful, consider he is a resident! He's gone early (by 7 AM), but is usually home around 5 or 6:00. With the exception of the past month, it has been really nice to have a more normal schedule! He did just take Step 3 this past Saturday and Monday, so he had been really studying hard for that. Our family motto lately has been "after Monday!" So, starting today, Joel can be home more and Benjamin can get all the projects done that he's been waiting to do with his dad!
The last real exciting event this summer was that we moved! We ended up being able to get into a larger 3-bedroom apartment in our same building, and within a matter of weeks signed the papers and starting packing our stuff up! We are so glad to be here with a little more room to stretch! There was a part of me that was pretty sad not to find a nice little house with a backyard and a basement for the kids to play, but we do use our extra bedroom as a toy and tv-watching room. Also, our front door opens up to a really nice playground and even some yard that somebody else mows, so it's not all bad. The attached double garage, clean interiors, and cheap rent are all worth it, I suppose!!!
Benjamin continued to attend Early Head Start twice a week throughout the summer, but other than that we just sort of made plans day to day. He has grown up so much... He's turning 4 in October and I can't believe where the time has gone. Benjamin has the most wonderful personality. He is kind and loving, but at the same time excited, assertive and pretty bossy when he means business! He has the most wonderful sense of humor. He is wise and thoughtful. He has a great imagination! And he is fiercely independent right now! As in, he does his own laundry among many, many other tasks. The past few months Benjamin has really been into good guys/bad guys. It all started when he rediscovered an old toy - a small Captain America figure that Joel had bought him long ago. Once he realized that "Cap" is a hero along with a band of his friends, the Avengers, it was all over. It became Avengers-mania at our house! Playing good guy/bad guy became the only game he would play. (It still is.) We have now branched out a bit to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, but the concept is the same. He loves a good hero, especially if he comes with great weapons! I love the little conversations he has between characters. He is so great at giving each hero and bad guys their own voice. Usually, the bad guys have a low, gruff-sounding pitch when they talk. He loves everything from burying them in the sandbox outside to making them swim in a filled-up bathroom sink. He has costumes for each and every hero, along with their respective weapons. We have found multiple Avengers and TMNT cartoons on Netflix that are frequently watched and then re-enacted with his toys. Just tonight he and Joel got to work on building a giant cardboard Ninja Turtle van to put around his bike, just like one he saw in a Target commercial. He is such a little boy. It is the cutest thing in the world.
Benjamin will be starting the Head Start program at the beginning of September. Luckily, he gets to keep his same teacher, Miss Katie, who he adores. He loves school, so hopefully the transition will be smooth, even though there will be quite a lot more kids. He will attend 4 days a week for 3-1/2 hours, including lunch and a snack before pick-up. His teacher is excited to work more with him. He is blowing everybody away with all that he can do! His big achievement right now is how well he can read. He is sounding out all his letters and putting together blends for 3-4 letter words. It really is impressive. His writing is getting very good, too. I think he can write most letters of the alphabet. He spells his name really nicely and even surprised me by writing my name on the sidewalk outside the other day! His vocabulary is really great. He surprises me all the time with the words he knows! He's a pretty smart little kid. I wish I was better at documenting the memorable things he does, but this is a recent one that sticks out: the backstory is that we had just spent an afternoon at a friend's house in the pool where I ended up explaining "evaporation" to the kids. Anyway, the next morning, I walked past his bathroom to find that the door was closed and locked, and it was just a little too quiet. I knocked, and he opened with one arm behind his back trying fiercely to hide what was obviously a squirt gun. As I looked around the bathroom, I noticed the entire room was sprayed down from floor to ceiling. I reacted, but he looked at me very calmly and said, "but Mom! I have good news! The water will just go up into the air!" Haha.. Sometimes a little knowledge is a dangerous thing!
Our little Michael baby is doing so well! He just turned 5 months old, which blows me away. He is getting fluffy and chunky in all the right places! He smiles with a big gummy grin, and his laugh is hysterical. It is so funny sounding, and so different from Benjamin's. Michael has this terrific head of hair with a big blonde tuft right on the top that sticks up just right. He started rolling over from tummy to back when he turned 4 months old, and just recently (within the last week), started rolling from back to front when prompted with a toy. He loves to put everything in his mouth and explore it. Just today, he went ahead and noshed on Benjamin's library reading log. It was a delicious looking bright green piece of paper and that baby just went for it. He has a really nice firm grasp and pretty good depth perception. If anything interesting is in reach, he will go for it! We have to start being really carefuly with Benjamin's toys! At his 4 month well-child, he weighed 13 lbs 15 oz and was 23 inches long. At his more recent appointment (cardiology at the end of July), he weighed 14 lb 5.6 oz and measured 25 inches long. He is getting so big! We suspect that Michael has some reflux issues or possible sensitivities to dairy (in my diet), but we started him on some Zantac recently and have noticed a little difference the past couple weeks. Hopefully he can get a little relief!
He loves to nurse, but is starting to get really distracted by things happening around him if he's in the living room with his brother. I sort of love it... He'll be nursing along, then hear a noise and turn his head to look. He'll watch very intently for a time and then I can just hear his body language say, "Huh, cool! Well, back to eating!" and he turns back to me and goes about his business again. His sleeping habits could use some improvement! I will say that the past couple weeks everyone in our house has been sick and that has thrown off everyone's sleeping, but he typically will go about 3-5 hours a stretch. The last couple nights have been between 4 and 5, so let's hope that's the trend now! When he wakes he is completely comforted by being nursed and then promptly falls back asleep, so it's not all bad. I'd say 10 minutes tops are our nighttime shenanigans. I wish I could fall back to sleep as easily as he does!!! He is taking about 4 naps a day as well. They range anywhere from 45 minutes to 2 hours. It would be interesting to see what would happen if we stayed at home all day long with nowhere to go, but sadly that poor baby's "schedule" is always getting interrupted with errands or to take Benjamin to school or a playdate. Luckily, he is pretty good about going with the flow. Michael has such a sweet temperament. His personality is so different from Benjamin's already. He is more relaxed and calm. He's such a nice little baby. We love him soooooo much.
We had another cardiology appointment last month and had his heart defect checked out. Again, we left without much news. There hasn't been much change at all... if anything, the blood flow looks slightly better. But his oxygen sat was 100%, so we couldn't ask for more than that. Basically his doctor told us we will most likely have to sit tight and wait for a good number of years until he grows up more and becomes a lot more active. Until then, we will continue to monitor him for any changes. Most days we completely forget that he has a special little heart. It's always hard on me the days that we have his appointments. It's such a reminder of his condition and brings up those horrible memories from his birth and time spent in the NICU. There's definitely a part of me that wishes we could just go in and get his heart fixed now and be done with it. Anyway, we are very lucky that he acts so normally and seems to be developing perfectly in every other way. :)
Well, that pretty much wraps it up for us. We're looking forward to see what this year has in store!
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