Cider & Donuts, 2nd B-day, "Twacktur" & High Fevers

2 YEARS OLD!!

Last Friday I don’t remember too much of what happened, except our weekly grocery trip in the afternoon.  I had set our bread maker before we left and I checked it when we got back.  There was some electrical glitch and it had perfectly risen, formed dough but the "oven" part of it never turned on!  So frustrating.  I have had a few times when the dough hasn't risen at all, because my yeast was too old or ... for no reason I could fathom... but this had never happened!  I tried to save the dough and bake it in the oven, so I was taking it out of the bread pan and it was very soft and it was sticking like crazy to my hands... so Tyson was at my feet, watching me.  And I said, "Oooh... Ty, look at my hands... it's so scary."  And right at that moment, a piece of the dough flew off of my hands and went directly into Tyson's right eye!!!!  The poor guy!  He rubbed his eyes and got the dough smeared everywhere - my hands were completely covered, so I had to rinse my hands quickly, so I wouldn't get more in his eyes!  We were both such a mess - thank goodness it didn't irritate his eye too much!  Well, Heath got home and decided to grill some vegetables and chicketts, instead of my non-existent bread & soup I had planned to make.  It was a better choice!

Sabbath was a busy day.  We got up and booked it over to Lebanon (poor Heath had to drive back there) to the West Lebanon church, that is now in Plainfield.  It is a gorgeous post & beam building and we made it there for church.  Ty did very well during church, so that was a plus.  We met the Frosts there and Kelly & Steve, who were visiting Steve's parents.  For lunch, we all went to Steve's parent's house.  We had a nice, relaxing afternoon.  Ty was completely obsessed with the two cats that were at the Conrads and kept saying, "cat, cat, cat" over and over!  I'm thinking Ty is going to be a cat man!  Both Finley & Ty really needed a nap, so Heath & Sean took them in their respective cars for a drive so they would nap.  That left Shannon, Kelly & I to sit and talk.  That was a nice break!  Saturday night at the Conrads was their annual Cider & Donuts Fall Festival.  They get a truck load of apples and they make homemade cider, and then make homemade apple cider donuts.  It is all delicious.  We had gone there once before for this, but it was 3 years ago - before we had Ty!  Tyson was absolutely obsessed with throwing the apples from the back of the truck, into the "holding tank" of water.  He just thought that it was the best.  He loves to throw things right now, so this job was perfect for him.  The problem was that the apple "throwers" would get ahead of the apple "pressers", so the throwers would have to stop for awhile.  That was never a good thing for Tyson.  He had a few melt-downs over this, so badly to the point that Heath had to take him away for a spanking.  It has to be pretty bad for Heath to do that, since he is such a softie.  For the down-time of not throwing apples, Ty was playing with some toys with a few other kids.  Ty & this one other kid became focused on this little stool and was taking turns sitting on it, but then one time... Ty had the stool all positioned and was backing up his little tush to sit on it, when the other kid stole it and Ty fell on his butt!  Poor guy.  He was surprised, but he didn't lose it! (=  We got him in his PJ's, hit up Taco Bell, and then got home after 10 PM.  Long, but fun day.

"I love apples!"

Throwing the apples into the tank

Ty looks sad, this might have been after the spanking!

Sitting down on the stool (he didn't fall this time)

Sunday was another busy day.  Busy weekend overall.  Ty woke up pretty early, so we were all up around 7:30 AM.  Sunday was Ty's "birthday" - well, it was going to be the day we were going to celebrate, his real birthday was Monday.  I did a full cleaning of the house while Heath made Ty's cake and then worked around the house.  Heath went to start icing the cake and being the perfectionist that he is... it took him about 1.5 hours to frost the cake (with Sean's help).  Unfortunately, everyone arrived and we had to wait for Heath to finish the cake, but what are you going to do?  The cake turned out amazing.  We had just our family over.  My parents, Devin & Leigh & fam, the Frosts, and Keith, Sonia, and Adam.  We had a good group!  We had grillers and hot dogs on the grill, chips and a cheesy-spinach dip that I had made in my crock pot (a recipe from a co-worker).  Then we opened presents!  Ty was much more lively at everyone else's parties lately and was kind-of stone-faced at his... probably all the attention and all that.  But he knew exactly what to do with the presents!  He went right to town opening the paper... he was so cute!  We finally got a reaction out of him when he opened our present to him.  It was a John Deere tractor with a trailer - he was in heaven!  After campmeeting with his tractor obsession, I knew that a tractor would be the present that we had to get him.  Bode also got on it and Ty climbed into the trailer – and then he tipped right over backwards!  After presents, we had his cake and he went right to town on that too, but only had about 4 bites and then went right to playing with the tractor again!  It was hard to get him to go to bed that night - he tried to drive his tractor up the stairs!  So Heath lugged it up to his room for the night and he went to bed saying, "twacktur, twacktur, twacktur."  So cute. I can not believe my little baby is 2 years old.

Heath's masterpiece for Ty

Our spread

Unwrapping the presents

The chair was a gift from my parents, the backpack was from Devin & Leigh, & he was opening a book from Devin & Leigh as well!  After he opened the book, he tried to put it in the backpack, with it still on him!

He really did get more excited than this!

The family of 3, soon to become 4!

Shannon & Sean gave Ty this fort-like thing - he brought all his new toys inside it!

He really loves it!

On Monday, he really became 2!  It is really surreal.  Monday I had a big job ahead of me, which was to pick up after the party and to find homes for Ty's new presents.  Well, that meant that I needed to do a thorough job of going through all his toys (family room & his bedroom) and I put a ton of his toys away in the basement that he just doesn't play with much anymore.  But, of course, I will be saving those toys for Jr. - even though it will be many months down the road before he will be using them!  After all of that organizing, Ty & I hit up the pharmacies and got two 24 packs of Poland Springs water for $2 each and two things of deodorant for $0.24 each.  Monday night Heath worked on the bathroom and got it all vacuumed out and ready for grouting (excited).  Tyson was, of course, obsessed with playing with his tractor and that creates some crazy, drama for us.  Ty does not know how to pedal the tractor yet, so... he pretty much just pushes it around - but you know how trailers jack-knife around... well, that happens pretty much non-stop, which results in Tyson screaming.  So that is fun.  I hope he figures out how to pedal pretty soon! (=

Hauling stuff around in his tractor

Then he tried to run over Heath!

On Tuesday my main goal was to go to the Town Hall and register the Passat, since our 20 days were up the day before!  Tyson threw a little monkey wrench into those plans when he decided to take a 3 ½ hour long nap!!!!  Because he takes his one nap late morning, I try to do all of our errands in the afternoon.  Well, he didn't wake up until 3:15 PM!  The town hall closed at 4 PM, so I wouldn't have enough time to feed him lunch and make it to the town hall before they closed.  So we went right to the town hall.  He could care less that he was like 2 hours overdue for eating, since he slept so long!  Poor kid did not get to eat until about 4 PM!  So we are officially in a bad way with eating.  Tyson will NOT stop playing to eat.  He will sit in his booster seat, take about 2-3 bites of something and then rip off his bib, throw it on the floor, and say, "all doo" (which means "all done").  He will NOT eat anything else, while sitting in the booster seat.  Sometimes he will kneel in my chair at the table and continue to pick at things on his plate, sometimes he won't.  But most of the time lately now, he will get up, run around and play with his toys and I will have to go up to him and give him a bite of something... and he will continue to eat as long as he is still playing!  It is very tiring and frustrating.  If he would just sit and eat - he would be done in 15-20 minutes.  But in this scenario, it takes about an hour, between him running around.  And how do I know when he is actually done?  I really hope that this is a passing phase, but this just keep reinforcing my idea that he has ADD.  Tuesday night, he was playing with Heath like crazy, was acting fine, when all of a sudden... at around 8 PM, he went completely quiet, was kind-of grunting/moaning, and felt on fire.  He had a fever of 102.7 out of nowhere.  He changed so suddenly that the nurse in me was way too paranoid - thinking of what kind of condition would result in such a drastatic change of behavior (like bacterial meningitis).  I mean, this kid will go non-stop playing until after 10 PM with no problems at all... and when I was checking his temperature on his changing table at 8 PM, he had fallen completely asleep.  Very scary.  So I gave him Tylenol and put him to bed and he slept all the way until.... 4:30 AM.

We did a little photo shoot outside

He had a blast running around

So Wednesday AM, between 4:30 AM and 6:30 AM, he was in bed with us ON FIRE and restless.  I mean, his temperature had to be over 104.0 with how hot he was, since he was WAY hotter than he was when I put him to bed with the fever of 102.7.  So out came the Ibuprofen and that did seem to help.  I hated to leave him sick with my mom - of course I trust her implicitly, but you just want to be with your kids when they are sick!  He was very subdued and just wanted to cuddle, hardly ate anything, and continued to have a high fever all day.  Tylenol seemed to do nothing for him.  He was 103.0 before his nap and Mom had given him Tylenol.  After his 3 hour nap, he was still 102.4.  But Ibuprofen would bring it right down to 100.0.  He spiked back up to 104.0 for Heath before I got home and Ty had a hard time going to sleep.  At 10:30 PM, when I got home... there was Tyson sitting with Heath in the recliner, watching TV.  My poor little buddy.  He got a little life to him when he saw me (and I think the Ibuprofen was helping him feel better)... and he got out of the chair and started to play with his toys.  I nixed that and put him right back to bed and he went to sleep this time.  But he was up at about 6 AM crying.

So on Thursday, he came to bed with me at 6 AM and he slept until 10:45 AM!!!!  I didn't even sleep in that late, well - I slept until 10 AM and then spent the next 45 minutes just watching him sleep! (= I figured these are our last precious moments together alone.  I get teary-eyed just typing those words.  So let's just say that our schedule was completed axed for the day.  His breakfast was at 11 AM, his "AM" nap was from 1:30 to 4:30 PM, yes, he slept another 3 hours!  He was much better natured, was playing a lot, and was fever-free all day long!  But I think that I solved the question of what this fever was from, since his ears weren't bothering him and he did not have any cough/runny nose etc.  He started pointing to his mouth a few times and I really laid  him down and looked into his mouth.  He has 4 humongous molars all coming in at the same time and his gums are all swollen.  I know that 104.0 should be too high for teeth, but 4 huge teeth all at once?  I just can't come up with any other explanation.  I gave him a popscicle and then Heath got home at 6 PM and we headed right to the mexican restaurant, just the 3 of us.  We weren't sure if we were going to go out with Ty having a fever, but he hadn't had the fever all day and he was acting so well - that we went.  He did great at the restaurant and ate at least a little bit, so that was a plus.  What was a negative was that we got stopped by the cops on the way home!  Thank goodness it was only to tell us that we had a headlight out, so our night got extended a bit when we stopped at Walmart to get the headlight.  Ty had a bath and got right to sleep without any problems.  Let's hope we have a healthier week next week!