Virus, Feeding Wes, Trying to Ride Reeses, Crazy Eyes & Wes On Caffeine

Wes:  14 Weeks Old

Ty:  2 Years, 4 Months & 2 Weeks Old

I can’t believe how many nights in a row I tried to get this blog out!  I fell asleep a couple of times (one time nursing and one time sitting on the couch typing this blog), and I had a couple of rough nights with the kids.  It just didn’t happen.  Better late than never.

Last Friday Ty still had a fever and I felt guilty bringing him into the grocery store, but I menu plan Friday to Friday, and since Friday is my grocery day…we did not have any food for that night.  I couldn’t ask Heath to go because it would be sundown by the time he would be driving home from work.  So we went.  Of course Ty didn’t give me any problems at the grocery store because he felt so bad!  Poor guy.  You know he must be feeling bad when he refused to eat anything!  And this included his favorites - like cookies, popsicles, and juice!  Speaking of juice, earlier in the morning I had tried to get him to drink prune juice since he has been a bit constipated since his potty-training.  He is only going once a day instead of his normal 3 times because he is holding it.  I had given him prune juice before, as a baby, and he had loved it!  Not anymore.  He took one sip of it and said, “yucky.”  I’m afraid that I have scarred him for life for all dark juices now, because I tried to give him grape juice and grape-apple juice and he won’t even try it now – thinking that it is the prune juice!  I don’t get it because I don’t think it tastes bad at all!  Ty at least had some energy when Heath got home from work.  He took Heath on a tour of the family room, pointing everything out to him, and even knew names that I did not even know he knew, like “piano” and “swing!”  It was cute, like Heath had never been in our family room before!

Friday night cuddling with Daddy

As it is every time that Ty gets sick, he ended up in bed with us at about 2 AM on Sabbath morning…but what was unusual was that he slept in until 11:30!  I couldn’t believe it!  Wes and I took full advantage of that and slept in until 10:15 ourselves (after he nursed at 8 AM).  Heath was up at the crack of dawn – he just can’t sleep in!  Ty was such a pitiful sight on Sabbath.  He slept most of the afternoon.  I realized (too late) that since he was dozing on and off on the couch, that I should probably put a pull-up on him.  He did end up having a pee accident while he was sleeping and was very distressed about it.  He still wouldn’t eat all day, but at least he would drink, so that made me feel better.  I was holding my breath that Wes wouldn’t get sick, but he was his normal, happy self!  When we were reading stories in our bed at bedtime, Ty projectile vomited all over the bed.  He has only vomited once before and I think it scared him.  He also had a bit of diarrhea too, and he actually made it to the bathroom in time!  What a guy.

My sick little munchkin 

He got a bit lonely by himself!

My happy guy - thank goodness he wasn't sick!

On Sunday morning, first thing, the 4 of us hung out in bed together and finished Season 3 of Downton Abbey.  After watching nothing but Downton night after night, we have finally caught up with the rest of the world!  It is so bittersweet now that it is over!  I really enjoyed our nightly “date” watching the show with Heath.  It was special.  What is infuriating is that we have to wait almost a whole year until Season 4 will air!  What was also infuriating was that we got about 10 more inches of snow last Sunday.  I have just about had it with these storms!  We have had nothing all year long and then we just had to get killed in February!  Obviously with the snow and Ty’s illness, we bunkered down at home.  Ty had a bit more energy and actually would eat a few bites of food.  He still had diarrhea (causing some accidents) but no more vomiting.  Wes had a great nursing day – he just nursed like he used to and I was encouraged!  Heath worked in the basement doing a few things and Wes & I joined him while Ty was sleeping.  We had a fire going in our woodstove in the basement, so it wasn’t too cold for Wes.  He loved watching us.  A couple of things that Ty did Sunday night showed that he was feeling better.  While I was making supper, I said, “Ty, go to the window and watch Daddy plow!”  And he did.  But I left him in there by himself for a few minutes too long.  He was too quiet (of course), so I went into  the den to check on him and I couldn’t believe it.  He trashed the den in a matter of minutes.  He got into our paper shredder and had strewn all the tiny pieces of paper all over the floor  It was such a mess.  I made him pick it up with me (later).  After I had scolded him about that, I ran down to the basement to get a bag of Fritos (from my pharmacy stock pile) and I was gone, literally 20 seconds.  In that amount of time, Ty got a handful of shredded cheddar cheese and fed himself and WESTIN!!!!  When I came up the stairs, Ty said, “Westy cheese.”  I flew over to Westin and I was able to fish 2 pieces out, but I saw a third and he swallowed it before I could get it!  He was fine, of course, but I can only imagine what Ty will try to feed to him now (food or otherwise).  Scary.

Wes hanging in the basement 

The bros chillin'

Ty's mess

On Monday, Ty was still not eating well and having diarrhea, but his spirits were really good.  They were so good that he tried to ride Reeses like a horse!  I was in the kitchen and I looked down and he had Reeses cornered and was trying to straddle her, saying, “Reese…horsey!”  Oh my goodness.  He could break her little stick legs - so easily.  I have noticed something pretty funny about Westin.  Whenever you shut off a light and he is in the dark, or semi-dark…he opens his eyes super wide – like crazy eyes!  It is actually kind of scary to look at him late at night when he is doing the eye-thing.  In the afternoon, we hit the pharmacies, as usual, and I don’t remember what we got.  Couldn’t have been that good!  Monday night Heath & Ty went playing outside and made a bunch of paths in the snow banks and had a blast. 

Terribly fuzzy and it doesn't show it exactly...but these are his crazy eyes!

Look at them smiling at each other

Ty is feeling better!

Playing outside with Daddy

Reeses joined Ty outside - I guess Reese forgave Ty for trying to ride her!

Talking with Reeses 

On Tuesday, let me see if I can recall the highlights.  Well, it had been exactly a week since Finley & Shannon had visited.  Finley had been asleep in the car and we had watched her from the guest room window to wait for her to wake up.  Tyson clearly remembered this, because he had run into the guest room and was playing around and then I heard him at the window.  He banged on the window and said, "Rinley (aka Finley) back!"  He wanted his cousin to come back to play with him!  So cute!  What was NOT cute was my dogs waking Westin up after a 30 minute nap, not once but TWICE!!!!  I could kill them.  Why I did I ever change my mind about those shock collars?  My dad came over for a visit in the afternoon with the boys and had a nice visit.  Ty kidnapped my dad's phone and kept playing music and dancing around the room.  I have a video of it, but I am still having trouble loading these videos for some reason on Blogger.  There are 2 videos back to back.  The first one is when my mom stopped by for a quick visit...I can't remember when and I was going through some clothes a friend from work gave me for Westin.  Ty proceeded to strip off all his clothes to try to squeeze into Westin's new clothes!  But he did actually get a couple pairs of shoes from my friend and he was very excited about a pair of green crocs!

On Wednesday I worked and we had ANOTHER snow storm.  I am seriously getting sick of this!  I left a bit early but my commute was OK, since the heavy stuff hadn't started yet.  It was mostly rain down in Manchester, but we got another 6-8 inches at home.  The report I got from Noni was that Westin was great and that Ty finally got his appetite back!  Noni said that he was eating everything in sight!  I was so happy to hear that!  I was unhappy to hear that Ty had a bunch of potty accidents for Noni.  He better not regress when he is with Noni or Daddy!  I'm sure Ty did a bunch of funny things with Noni, but one thing I heard myself.  During one of my pumping breaks, (let's be honest, I take only 2 breaks in 12 hours...that sounded like I take a bunch of breaks) I had called to check in on the boys.  While we were talking, I heard my mom say, "No! Ty!  I need those!"  Ty had taken my mother's glasses and had put them down his pants!!! (=  I laughed so hard at that one.

A good boy for Noni

Thursday I was in heaven because both of my boys took 2 ½ hour naps!  Amazing!  Westin slept so long and he was an hour overdue to eat…I actually had to wake him up to feed him!  Who knows how long he would have slept!  I had to feed him before we left for our Thursday night out – otherwise I wouldn’t have woken him up at all!  We met the Frosts in Concord at the OG for dinner.  It was scrumptious but we had the slowest waiter under the sun and it was a 2 hour dinner.  That can get dicey with kids but they did pretty well.  The highlight of the night for Ty was going poop on the potty at the OG without an accident.  He came to the table, all excited, saying very loudly (for all tables around us to hear), “Shane, Shane (Shannon) poop potty, poop potty!”  Everyone was very impressed!  I came to a conclusion on Thursday.  I have to stop drinking iced tea.  I never touched caffeine when I was nursing Tyson, but you just are more relaxed with the second child – there is no question about that.  All the documentation out there states that you can have some caffeine, but you just need to watch for fussiness with the baby.  We love this ½ iced tea, ½ lemonade drink and I have been drinking it and I haven’t seen any problems with Wes.  Well, I had two iced teas at the OG and poor Westy paid for it.  He wasn’t fussy, oh no.  He was just completely wide awake and would NOT go to sleep.  It was midnight and he was still going strong.  I couldn’t get him to sleep, even with nursing him, rocking him or lying down with him in our bed (which usually always works).  I gave up and brought him to the swing.  He finally went to sleep within 30 minutes, but I have definitely sworn off iced tea!  Good thing it is the only caffeinated drink that I like!  Have a great week!

Midnight = Wide Awake

Very happy, wide awake

What is up with the Michael Jackson - one glove thing, shaking his maraca?