Rough Day

Love Bug had two important doctors appointments scheduled for today.  His first appointment was an ultrasound of his kidney to see if he still has an extrarenal pelvis.  His second appointment was with the pediatric GI that visits town once a month from Children's in DC to evaluate him for eosinophilic esophagitis (swelling of the esophagus due to allergies).

He did great in the waiting room and flirted with the ladies at the desk before his ultrasound.  And he was doing really well when we first got him into the room and ready for the exam.  But as soon as she touched him with the little wand, that was it, he cried and cried the whole time.  He was so scared.  The appointment probably lasted less than 20 minutes, but it was long enough to wear him out.

In between appointments I took him for a little ride and was able to get him to sleep for a little bit.  When we arrived at our normal doctors office for the GI appointment, he was still out cold, so he was really calm in the waiting room while I filled out the multitude of forms asking about his GI and allergy history.  I was hopeful that because he was so calm that we'd have a pretty easy appointment.  Boy was I wrong.  He had actually just been to the doctor the day before, and in the exact same room because he had a high fever and we wanted to make sure it wasn't another ear infection.  Needless to say, he remembered being there, and was so traumatized from the ultrasound that he cried inconsolably the entire appointment.  Talk about difficult to have any sort of discussion.  But, we did arrive at a good way ahead and he is now off his Zantac for at least 2 weeks to see how he does.  We'll let the GI doc know how he's doing and depending on what's going on, he may be good to go or he may need an upper GI endoscopy.  

The doctor called us back, herself, to let us know the results of his ultrasound.  He still has an extrarenal pelvis, but she's not too concerned since it hasn't caused him any problems so far.  Her plan is to have us follow up with a pediatric urologist so we can hopefully close the book on his kidney bean and just be grateful that there's a little extra part of him that makes him a little extra special!

Bigger and Bigger

I took this picture of Roo today and just couldn't believe how big he looks.  He's really a little boy now.  I've known this for a while of course, but it's just so hard to believe that he's growing up so fast.  He's lucky he's cute though.  He had a 3 is worse sort of day today, it was joyous.  

I was also noticing how big Love Bug's gotten when Grandma was holding him today.  He's 30 inches long now and is growing out of some of his 12 month pants.  He's still a cute little baby though!

And best of all is just how much the boys play together now.  At bedtime every night, after we get all of Love Bug's lotions on him, he and Roo chase each other around Love Bug's chair and laugh and laugh and laugh.  And when we snuck out of the bathroom tonight and let them think we weren't right there they played together really well.  Love Bug loves to mimic everything that Roo does.  Even watching them fight over toys right now is cute.  Hopefully they'll be the bestest of friends.

Happy Hanukah.

One Small Step...

Love Bug took his first step last week!  And tonight he took 5 steps!  He thinks it's just the funniest thing in the whole world.  He stands up, gets his balance and then I wave him towards me.  He giggles the whole time and then laughs really hard when he falls.  It's so exciting to see him so excited about getting his balance a walking.  And he's doing it the hard way, he stands up on his own in the middle of the room without holding on to anything.  What a cutie!

Snow Day

It seemed like a lot more snow fell from the sky than what stuck to the ground.  Sunday morning Roo was excited to go outside and play in the snow.  He was great about wearing his boots, hat and mittens, something I was horrible about in March when it had snowed.  He and I went outside and played for a bit.  It was really crunchy snow and Roo wasn't a big fan of it.  We moved from out back to out front and played with his trike and he shoveled for a bit.  He hated his mittens, they didn't help him work at all, he said he needed ones that fit!

Then when we decided it was too cold we went inside for some hot chocolate.  I hope we get some better snow this year so we can build a snowman and a snow fort.  Because if we get snow, it might as well be fun snow to play in.  Oh, and while I'm making snow requests, how about some snow in the middle of the week so we can get a day off from work!  I promise to do all my homework the night before :)

What's That Song?

If you've ridden at all in the car with Roo recently, you'll hear him say, "what's that song," as each new song comes on.  I've got Sirius so it tells me the name of each song, and if I think it'll make sense to him, I'll tell him the name, otherwise I make something up.  But there can only be so many songs called Love or other simple names like that.  His favorite song is Fireflies.  He absolutely loves it, and when we were out today, he sang it as we were walking through the store.  It was super cute.  He also likes to sing "there's a roo roo, mommy, daddy, love bug, baxter, in the closet, a woo."  And his favorite modification of a song is to Elmo's Potty Time, he'll sing "Roo do it, Roo use the potty" to the tune of the song.  We're starting to be very careful about the language of the songs we listen to.  Otherwise, it's a lot of fun listening to him sing along.

Tis The Season

It must be winter.  We got up this morning and it was raining pretty hard and getting cold enough to get some snow.  Roo and I went to Target to get a few more decorations for the tree.  By the time we were done it was snowing pretty hard and though Roo was super excited to see it, he wasn't very happy when it was hitting him in the face.  We headed home and showed daddy what we got.  

We enjoyed lunch together and I made some Love Bug friendly oatmeal craisin cookies (egg, dairy and nut free), they were very yummy!  Roo was an awesome helper and really enjoyed baking.  And both boys watched and waited by the over while the cookies cooked.  

After the boys woke up from their naps (Roo fell asleep on me while Love Bug took his nap) daddy got the tree out and we decorated it.  Love Bug kept putting all the ornaments that had glitter on them in his mouth.  And Roo was a good helper putting ornaments on the tree or passing them to daddy to put on the tree.  We also finally weeded out all the glass ornaments, I thought we did this last year but we didn't as we found out the hard way.  

Minus a few of my fancy ornaments and all my White House ornaments, the tree looks great and is actually pretty well color coordinated with lots of blues.  Now we're trying to teach Roo the about Santa.  And we also need to teach him about Hanukah this year as well.  Should be a fun and memorable holiday season!

Hug Me

Love Bug has another ear infection and is needing lots of love and hugs.  Normally we just pass him back and forth between mommy and daddy.  Last night he decided that he also needed some love from his brother.  It was just the cutest thing ever, he crawled up to Roo and signaled that he needed a hug. I told Roo that he was asking for a hug so Roo sat him in his lap and gave him a huge hug and a big kiss.  Love Bug asked for more hugs from Roo tonight too.  We love that they are playing with each other more now, even if it means more fighting, but even more, we love that they love each other <3

A Bunch of Turkey's

Turkey Day was fun this year.  We missed it last year because Love Bug was only a few weeks old and we weren't feeling up to travelling.  We headed up to Grandma and Grandpa's on Turkey morning and had an enjoyable day.  It was pretty hectic watching the little guys all day but it was great catching up with family.

Grandma made a great meal and all the sides were wonderful too.  After dinner we celebrated Love Bug's birthday with the family.  The cake I made was Love Bug friendly and waist friendly too.  It was ok, the applesauce just doesn't cook right in cake format but is awesome in cupcake format.

The boys had a lot of fun seeing their family and we had a great day celebrating.

When You're 3, The Zoo is Boring

I have been really excited to take Roo to the zoo for a couple of months now.  I wanted to wait until we got past the heat of the summer and go this fall.  But on all the weekends I wanted to take him it either rained or they were sick.  So finally, last weekend the weather was nice and sunny and we ventured up to DC to the National Zoo.  I was so excited, Roo not so much.  I made a lunch box of food for both of us so we could picnic too.  We parked in the area that is right next to Asia land.  We wandered around Asia land a bit but couldn't see where the pandas were, not too exciting.  We headed over a huge bridge and went to the bird area.  Roo loved the pink flamingos.  He thought they were pretty funny.  After that we tried to see the elephants but the area was under construction until 2011.  You could see 1 elephant way off in the distance, but not the ideal situation.  So then we wandered a bit more and some how I got a bit turned around and he was saying that he was all done.  We saw cheetahs and zebras and since I figured we were only there for an hour and he was indicating he was done, that I should cut my losses and go.

So we left and all he really wanted to do was go home and play out front with his trucks, tractors and tricycle.  But no way, I drove all the way up there and had promised some W&M friends I'd meet up with them.  I talked to Cloud and she found a park for us to meet up at in Adams Morgan.  Roo spent the rest of the day having a blast at the park.  He loved going down the slides and making cakes out of leaves for all of us to eat.  His favorite was probably the airplane bouncy flying thing.  He enjoyed playing on that for a long time and it was a pretty cool toy.  Will, Neela and Nancy met up with Cloud and us at the park too.  A bit later we went for ice cream.  He was very helpful when we were all done and threw away everyone's trash.  

We got in the car to go home and he was out cold within 5 minutes and slept all the way to the bridge.  We had a great day and it was a lot of fun catching up with some close college friends.  We'll have to visit some other museums in DC this winter and meet up again!