Pool Swimmin', Dog Water Bowl & Dishwasher Diving

Week 43

Week 43 has been a difficult one.  The difficult part started at the end of last week and it has unfortunately continued.  "IT" is Ty waking up at 3 AM every night.  He wakes up, stands up in his crib, holds onto the rail and just wails.  I will pick him up and he will be snoring in my arms in about 2 seconds, but every time I try to ease him back to his crib, he wakes up.  I have tried everything. I've tried a nightlight, in case he is afraid of the dark.  I've given him a bottle, in case he is going through a growth spurt.  I've tried giving him Tylenol and teething gel, in case his teeth finally decide to make an appearance.  Nothing works. Thursday night it took him 2 hours to go back to sleep (2-4 AM).  I really think that it probably stems from his separation anxiety.  I think he wakes up and realizes that he is alone and he freaks out.  And then once you go in to comfort him, there is NO WAY he will let you go without a fight!  So this week has been a bit tiring.  I think I've said it before, "I wish Ty was 6 weeks old again, so I could sleep!"

Last Friday our highlights were filling out all our paperwork and officially doing our application for our refinancing.  I researched about 5 major companies and Quicken Loans came in the best.  They had the best closing costs as well as the best interest rate.  I am very excited about this, but a bit concerned about our appraisal - which is coming up this Thursday.  We have a few things that need to be done on the house and I hope it doesn't count against us too much!  When Heath got home from work last Friday, we headed to Sean & Shannon's place to have Heath help Sean lift and move their new couch.  Interestingly enough, they got the same exact couch as my parents' at their townhouse!  It's a very nice couch.  While the boys were doing that, Shannon got out this toy chicken that was dressed in a graduation outfit (it was a gift that Sean had received) and was going to show Ty.  The chicken does the chicken dance and plays music.  We thought that he would get a kick out of it - but he was afraid of it!  He is so cute when he is afraid of something!  He grabs onto you and climbs all over you - but without taking his eye off of the scary object for a second!  After the couch was positioned perfectly, we all went to Dairy Queen before sundown.  Then we headed home.  I decided to try a new recipe for supper, since I hadn't done that in awhile.  (Yes, we had dessert first).  Big mistake.  I used a Martha Stewart recipe for cream of broccoli soup.  I love her recipes and I have seriously tried at least 20 of them and I had not found a bad one yet.  Until now.  It was completely disgusting.  It called for 1/4 cup of lemon juice.  Well, all you could taste was lemon and it was horrible.  I used sugar and salt, which is what I read on message boards when I googled "I overseasoned with lemon juice," but it did not make a difference.  I choked it down to get something in my stomach and apologized to Heath.  What can you do?  Thank goodness Ty is not eating broccoli yet, so he didn't have to suffer!

Last Sabbath I worked and Ty spent the day with Daddy, Shannon & Sean.  They went to church in Laconia and then had lunch together.  How sweet.  Then they went swimming at Lake Winnisquam and Sean lost his wedding ring in the lake.  So that was sad.  Heath lost his first wedding ring, too.  What is it about guys and their wedding rings?  When I called on my way home from work, they were all there together at our house.  When I arrived, I found an empty house.  Do I smell or something?!!!  Shannon & Sean had enough and had to go home.  Heath & Ty had gone to Staples to pick up a HP Touchpad.  I don't know if you pay attention to the electronic world, but a major thing happened last weekend.  HP decided that they were going to scrap their tablet, the Touchpad.  It hadn't been doing well, so they dropped the prices from $599 to $149 for a 32GB and for their 16 GB one it was only $99 (from $499).  It was very, very hard to get them, but Dad and Shannon got one.  And Heath & Adam got two each.  Heath got one for his mother and Adam's second one (if he actually gets it from HP) is going to Devin.  So we all got them!  Heath already has a Galaxy tablet and I have an Ipad - so why we need 3 tablets between the two of us is beyond me, but it was a great deal obviously.  I guess Ty can use it when he gets older!

Last Sunday I worked again and Heath worked on the house getting ready for the appraisal.  Sonia, Keith & Adam came over to help.  So Ty got to spend some great one-on-one time with Grammy!

On Monday we had a busy day!  We went couponing first thing in the morning - much better week than last week.  My highlights were boxes of Cheez-It's for $0.75 and rolls of tapes and sharpies for $0.39.  As soon as we got back from the stores, I rushed to pack up to go to the Fairway for lunch.  I brought Ty in to the house, while I carried the groceries in.  I knew that he would probably make it to the dog water and start playing in it by the time I got in with the groceries.  What I didn't bank on was that he would take the dog water bowl and flip it over and dump it all over the hardwood floor!  What a mess!  So we got to the Fairway a bit late.  We were going to see Mia & Jack, who were visiting my parents for a couple of days.  Ty was very happy to see them!  We went swimming at the pool and this was Ty's first time in a pool and he ended up loving it.  He just wasn't sure at first!  We had a great visit and wish it could have lasted longer!  When Heath got home from work, him & Adam went to Manchester to get more Touchpads and then Adam ended up spending the night because they got back late.

"I missed you guys!"

Holding onto Noni for dear life

Things are looking a bit better...

"I love to splash in here!"

Figures the only picture with Ty looking is the one where you can't see Jack!

On Tuesday we repeated what we had done last Tuesday...which was going to Shannon's appointment.  Except this week it was an ultrasound to check on the baby's growth.  She is 4 1/2 pounds now and looking great!   They did a 3D ultrasound and she is absolutely beautiful!  I can not wait to meet her!  On the way there, I was driving Shannon's car, when Shannon yelled, "Heath!"  Heath and a co-worker were walking on the side of the road!  What in the world?  We stopped and talked with them.  They were walking between buildings (there is one across the street from the main building) - it was so random that my husband would be walking on busy route 104 when we were driving by!  Tyson was a perfect angel on both the way and the way back.  He's such a good boy!

Sitting like a big boy at the hospital

Wednesday I worked... but while I was getting ready for work, Heath was watching Ty downstairs.  I had to chuckle because I heard Heath scream, "No!  Tyson!  No!"  Tyson had dumped the dog water bowl over again!!!!  That boy.  Seriously.  My mom started watching Ty but Shannon finished watching him, because my parents went back to Nova Scotia for a few days.  When I got out of work, I had a message from Shannon saying, "I am more tired from watching Tyson than working a 12 hour shift.  That boy is non-stop."  That just cracked me up!  It is so true.

"Non-stop?  Me.  No way."

Thursday was another busy day.  Heath came home from work at noon because we had a guy coming to give us an estimate on replacing all of our windows.  Our parents used the same company and got 24 windows for a reasonable price.  We need 17 windows and were asking for double-pane (instead of triple-pane that my parents got).  Wouldn't you know that we were quoted the exact same price as my parents.  What in the world?  So we are not sure what we are going to do.  Not happy.  The not-so-great news continued when our Accord failed state inspection because it needs a new bumper.  That has never happened before.  One funny thing that happened on Thursday was that Ty fell into the dishwasher!!!  I was loading it when Ty walked over and started banging on it.  But he must have lost his balance, because next thing I knew was that he had fallen into it and was laying on his back on it!  He was unhurt but all wet!  What a bugger!  Thursday night we went out with Shannon & Sean to Chili's and then went to Kohl's after that.  I wheeled Shannon around in a wheelchair for awhile, but, man - that gets old fast!  We did a few more errands and then went home!  Busy week again.

Sleeping during our inspection

Have a great week!  Didn't take that many pics this week!  Sorry!

Clapping, Dog Water, Dishwasher & Tupperware Fun!

Week 42

Friday started Ty's 42th week out with Heath still home with us on vacation.  We were supposed to still be in Nova Scotia, but the weather was SO much better here!  Friday morning, we got our IRobot Roomba going - I am determined to run it every couple of days, because Ty is obviously crawling all over the place and I don't want him to be crawling on filth! (=  Tyson was very interested in watching the Roomba FROM A DISTANCE!  When it came up right next to him, he started to freak out and cry.  Heath was sitting on the floor next to him and Ty reached out for Daddy and tried to climb up his arm to get away from the very scary Roomba!  Poor Ty is getting more and more of a scaredy cat!  I'm sure it's just a phase...  We hit up our favorite Pizza Hut buffet for lunch and went grocery shopping and went to a few stores to search for things for our porch.  We were just price-shopping and didn't end up getting anything.  When we got home, we packed up again (didn't we just unpack from Nova Scotia?) and headed to the Edwards' house.  We had a nice BBQ and headed to bed.

Ty figured the high ground was the safest bet!

Sabbath morning we got up and made it to Sabbath School in Conway!  Well, we might have been about 5-10 minutes late, but Ty got to sing a bunch of songs!!!!  He loved it but definitely did not want to stay seated on my lap very long.  He is such a squirmer!  And everytime they passed anything out, like the bells, and the maracas... it was a bit of an ordeal to take it away from Ty!  He didn't cry, but held on for dear life and I had to pry his little fingers open one by one!  After church, we (Sonia, Keith, Adam, & us) headed to Sabbaday Falls on the Kancamagus, had a picnic, and walked up to the falls.  Ty slept on the car ride over, so he slept while we ate and then he had his lunch.  He got to be in the Baby Bjorn, which he loves.  He was so excited that randomly he would just let out his famous squeals!  After that we headed back to the Edwards' house.  We were going to go home, but for some reason, Heath & I were both super tired and didn't feel like packing up and driving home.  So we stayed the night.  We weren't too tired to go out for ice-cream in Kezar Falls, though!  Absolutely delicious!

Sunday we were supposed to get an early start and get home quickly to start doing projects around the house...but Ty slept in until about 8:00 am, which was great, but we ended up not getting home until about 2 pm.  We had a great breakfast that Sonia made for us before we left.  We ate on the porch and Ty was playing with a couple of toys while we were eating and ended up going beserk.  He was pushing these buttons on a stand-up toy that made these "people" pop up when you press a button.  Once he saw that he was making these people pop up, he went crazy.  I mean, Ty is very animated, but he was in some type of frenzy!  It was so funny!  So we went home, and it was great because Ty was due to take a nap.  He fell right asleep, but then Heath decided that he HAD to stop at Ocean State Job Lot on the way home.  We are always in there for about 45 minutes to an hour... so of course Ty woke up right when we were leaving the store!  So then Ty proceeded to cry for the next hour all the way home!  I couldn't resist asking Heath, "Was it really worth it?  Really?"  Well, we finally got home and Ty & I unpacked while Heath finished putting up the trim boards on our hardwood floor.  So my floors are finished and they look great!  I'm so proud of him for getting it done.  Sunday night, we headed over to Shannon & Sean's new apartment to see it.  They are only 5 miles away and it is awesome to have them so close!  They have a 1 bedroom apartment and it is in an old victorian house and I love their place.  Shannon cooked us supper (the girl on bed rest) and we had a nice visit.

Auntie Shannon messing around

Monday Ty & I went couponing, but I'm not sure why I bothered. There was hardly anything to get!  I know why, because I had missed it for 2 weeks and I missed it like crazy!  The highlights of my deals were making $0.50 on Veet wax and Cream of Mushroom soup for $0.59.  After our couponing trip, I got a call from Sonia and found out that Heath's aunt and 2 cousins had been in a serious car accident at 11pm the night before.  They were OK, but they were all admitted to the hospital in Wolfeboro.  Heath's aunt, Sandy had a fractured femur and a 3rd degree burn to her arm.  Heath's cousin, Lexie, sprained her ankle and Heath's other cousin, Dana, had lacerations to her feet and they were concerned about her losing one of her toes.  They all had incredible bruising from their seat belts.  What happened in the accident was that a car hit and killed a bear, then the car behind THAT car swerved to miss the bear, and hit Sandy's car head-on at 55 mph (she was going 55 mph too).  It is a miracle that they were not killed.  Sandy took the brunt of the impact and she was pinned in the car and it took them 2.5 hours to get her out.  They ended up cutting off the roof and taking her out of the roof.  We went and visted them in the hospital after Heath got out of work.  It was so good to see that they were OK.  Tyson brought a bit of needed comic relief at the hospital, so that was a good thing.

How could this face not cheer you up?

Tuesday Ty & I headed to North Conway with Shannon & my mother for Shannon's OB appointment.  The baby's heartbeat sounded great (147) and Shannon is measuring "just a little" bit bigger than they would expect.  Shannon, of course, was devastated to hear this!  The nurse practitioner says it could be that the baby is tall!  We'll see...  The plan for Shan is that she is going to remain on modified bed rest for 3 more weeks and then they are going to let her go back to work when she is 35 weeks.  Then they will let her just go into labor whenever she will!  So that was all good.  After the appointment, we drove by Devin & Leigh's house that they are buying, since Shan & I hadn't seen it yet.  I don't know if I have mentioned that on the blog yet, but Devin & Leigh found a house!  They are closing the end of the month!  It is super nice and I can't wait for them to get in it!  Then we went to lunch and drove home.  Oh, I forgot to mention one terrible thing we found out.  A friend of ours told us that their co-worker had driven by the spot of Sandy's accident and found debris still on the side of the road.  She had slowed down and couldn't believe what she was seeing.  It was a dead baby bear.  The baby bear must had come back to look for it's mother and then got hit - in the same spot the mother was killed.  That made me so sad, I just couldn't believe it.  Why do these things have to happen?  Well, I don't know what was wrong with me but I was super tired on Tuesday night when we got home.  I didn't feel like cooking supper in the slightest bit and I lucked out.  Heath called and asked if we had any plans for the evening because he was invited for a business dinner.  I jumped all over that!  So Ty & I had our first quiet night at home. Every night that we had been home from Nova Scotia, we had been on the go and had not been home right at bedtime.  I put him to bed a bit early, at 8:10 pm, since he was really tired and he crashed!  Heath had said that he wouldn't be home until 9PM and I definitely wasn't going to keep him up that late.  Unfortunately, Heath came home at 8:25PM and was bummed that Ty was in bed BEFORE his bedtime.  What can you do?

Ty didn't get to have his special Daddy time...

Wednesday was my first day back at work.  It is a rough time at CMC right now.  I don't know if anyone has heard about NH's issues with the hospitals and the state tax.  It is a long story and it involves Medicaid reimbursement.  The bottom line is that the state passed a bill that is going to require our hospital to pay $12 million dollars by October.  Our hospital is involved in a lawsuit against the state with 9 other NH hospitals.  Elliot Hospital (the other hospital in Manchester) layed off 182 people a couple of weeks ago.  We were initially told that layoffs were not going to happen here, but on Wednesday and Thursday, 101 employees were let go.  There were undercover police officers in our lobby on Wednesday because they were afraid of employees freaking out and damaging property as they were being escorted out.  It is a very, very bad time here in NH.  My dad's small hospital is going to have to come up with $4 million dollars by October.  It is outrageous.  Our medical director for the ER thinks that this law with bankrupt all of NH's hospitals within 3 years.  Everyone is on edge, since we are not sure if there will be a second round of layoffs. I feel vulnerable because I am only part-time now, but we'll have to see.  On a happier note, Ty had a great day with Noni & Shannon and went swimming in his little pool.  He also started clapping his hands together on Wednesday.  Of course I missed his first clapping, but he did it for me on Thursday at least.  It's not really on command yet.  Just randomly he starts clapping.

Thursday Ty started doing some cute things.  He is absolutely obsessed with playing in the dog water.  I am constantly running and getting Ty out of the dog water.  I will move Ty over to play with his toys and he immediately high tails it over to the dog water.  He gets excited when I am chasing him, it's like a game to him!  Another thing that he discovered is the dishwasher.  He loves it when I am loading the dishwater - he pulls himself right up on the dishwasher and grabs at all the dirty dishes!  That's just great.  Then he found our tupperware cabinet and loves to pull out the tupperware.  I'm actually very OK with that.  I keeps him occupied - at least for a few minutes!  Thursday night a big group of us (Sonia, Adam, Mom, Dad, Shannon, Sean and us) went out to the Mexican restaurant.  It was a good time and Ty flirted it up big time with the customers sitting beside us.

Have a great week!

        

          

Accident & Nova Scotia Highlights

Weeks 39, 40, & 41

How do you sum up 3 weeks?  I'm not sure, but I hope to do it quickly.

3 weeks ago, I was killing myself trying to get ready to go to Nova Scotia, so there is not much to report - except for the scariest day of my life.  Ty was sleepy and ready for a nap, but Reeses decided that she had to go outside right at that moment and was very insistent.  I let her out but she was messing around outside and wouldn't come back in right away.  I decided that I had to go out to find her.  I was carrying Tyson, who was sucking on his binky and getting sleepy.  I found Reeses between our garden and a flowerbed.  Next thing I knew, Ty and I were airborne.  I had tripped over a tomato planter that was laying on the ground.  Ty landed first on his head/neck and I landed on top of him.  It was instantaneous.  There was no time to react.  Tyson cried right away to my relief, but he was in shock.  I was really worried about his neck, so I wasn't sure if I should move him or not - but I did and laid him across my lap.  And that is when he closed his eyes and went to sleep.  Did he go to sleep or did he pass out?  I'm still not sure.  It was right before his nap and he was sleepy.  Then from crying and the shock of the accident did it make him go right to sleep?  Or was it the head injury that caused him to black out?  So in that moment when he closed his eyes, it was the worst moment of my life.  I blew in his face, yelled his name and he did open his eyes again after about 5 seconds.  But he was dazed.  I carried him into the house, laid him on the floor, and just looked at him.  He was just staring back at me, but not really moving or doing anything.  I didn't know if he was tired or injured or in shock.  All my experience as an ER nurse went out the window.  You totally stop thinking like a professional and you are a mother only.  At the same time, because of my experience I know too much and all I could think was that Ty had a spinal cord injury or a brain bleed.  I wasn't sure if I should call 911 for an ambulance to immobilize Ty in case of a spinal cord injury or if I should just go to the ER.  In that moment I needed someone to tell me what to do.  I called Heath but I couldn't get him (shocker) but I had the operator at Vutek page him.  He called back within a couple of minutes and by that time, Ty had started to smile at me and was moving his arms and legs.  Heath headed home right away and we decided to go to the ER, but then we called the pediatrician first.  They said that as long as he had cried right away, his eyes looked OK, he was moving all extremities, and hadn't vomited, then he did not need to go to the ER.  They said he was probably fine, but we could bring him in for their next appointment in 2 hours.  I asked if I could let him sleep because I was worried about a concussion, but they said I could if I checked on him frequently.  So I held him in my arms and he slept for an hour and 10 minutes.  That was the longest hour and 10 minutes of my life.  But when he woke up, he was the same ol' regular Ty.  He was grinning and giggling and crawling all over the place like nothing had happened.  We didn't think we had to bring him in to the doctors and they agreed.  They told us to check on him every 2 hours to make sure we could wake him up and if anything changed (vomiting, acting differently) then we would need to call them.  But as you can guess, he was completely fine.  It is only by the grace of God that Tyson was OK.  That could have been the worst day of my life.  God is so good and it has been 3 weeks since the accident and I still think about it everyday.

If anything would have happened to him...

Our trip to Nova Scotia went fairly well.  We left at 4:45 AM and eased Ty into his car seat without him waking up.  He slept until about 8AM, which was great.  But then the fussing started.  The fussing got so bad that we had to move things around so one of us could sit in the back with him.  Then he was OK.  It took us about 15 hours, which is about 2-3 hours longer than normal, but it was doable.

Ty slept great up there the whole time and has been sleeping worse when we got home!  What in the world?  We had a great time, but it poured all but one day we were there.  We were supposed to be there for 2 full weeks, but we left after 10 days because it would NOT stop raining.  Other people left early too, it wasn't just us!  For the first time in 6 years, we had everyone together up there.  That almost didn't happen because Shannon went into pre-term labor and was admitted overnight the day before we left.  She and the baby are fine, but she is on bed rest and is on medication twice a day to keep the contractions to a minimum and not so regular.  Her OB gave her permission to come to Nova Scotia, which was a big answer to prayer - so they came!

Thank goodness they were able to come!

The 8 great-grandkids all together!

I could write pages about Nova Scotia, but I will spare you all...  Let me just mention the highlights involving Ty!  First of all, Ty started furniture walking!  He really is getting around like crazy!  He moves right down the couches without any problem and even will transfer to another piece of furniture - if it isn't too far away!  Another thing that happened was that Ty started with some separation anxiety.  He absolutely lost his mind and sobbed his eyes out on a few different occasions when either Heath or I left the room.  Poor baby!  And he would just put his arms up and hugged us tight when we ran back to him.  The only decent day we had was on the second day.  We were going down to the lake for a quick swim and Heath talked me out of putting sunblock on Ty (he was having an eczema flare and the sunblock irritates him worse).  Heath & Ty ended up staying longer than I did (I had to cook with Leigh)... anyways, when the boys came up from the lake... Ty had his first sunburn!  It wasn't super bad, but it did end up peeling.  I felt so bad, but he didn't even notice!  The other highlight was not a good thing.  I tried to feed Ty some "real food" - a casserole with potatoes and Fri-chik mashed well, but he vomited twice.  I finally figured out that if he gets any real texture (anything that isn't pureed), it makes him gag and he vomits.  I read that it is one of the most common feeding problems, but I'm not sure how long it will take for him to outgrow that.  He has vomited about every other day when I try to do any texture at all!  Frustrating!  I just hope he isn't 3 years old and still on pureed foods!

Furniture walking, or leg walking at this point

He never wants to be separated from his Daddy!

First sunburn )=

I think those are the highlights as far as Ty goes... we'll be back to our regular weekly entries next week!  Have a great one!