*star* of the week

Mr. Abraham is the star of the week in his class at school. He helped put together this poster by picking the pictures, being very specific about their arrangement, and telling me all his “favorites”. I would add that Abe is a tender-hearted kiddo who loves to have fun, fun, fun!   I think he lives for Saturdays when there is no school. He quickly does his chores so he can play the rest of the day. Abe says he doesn’t like to read, but he has done well this year. He loves science and recently learned about water being a gas, liquid, and a solid. Abe does not like winter and is so excited for when he can play in the warm backyard. We love Abe and all the joy he brings to our family.

guess what? … i can feel it in my bones

Just wanted to note two funnies that we keep hearing this week in our home.

Ever since Max’s birthday in December he’s been interested in birthdays and the celebrations. One night we were reviewing with him the order of birthdays and whose would be next. So now… about 10 times a day Max will randomly offer this bit of trivia, “Guess what mom. Abe birthday in May.” He never mentions any other birthdays… but is excited and fixated on Abe’s upcoming celebration. I wonder what will happen after Abe’s birthday. We might need to introduce some new trivia to him.

Hannah’s been actively talking about how she just knows we are having a girl. One day she was trying to convince Abe of this (He, who insists that a boy is the only option), and she said, “But Abe, I just know we are having a girl. I can feel it in my bones.” Too funny.

p.s. we had another earthquake tremor today. It was only a 1.5 and I was surprised that it woke me from my nap.

Truman needs a hobby

I was telling my sister about all of Truman’s “Adventures” and she said, “Truman needs a hobby.” It really made me laugh. It’s so true! Right now his hobby is getting into mischief. And that he is good at… especially last week.

I’ve been thinking of some things that Truman enjoys and is good at. Here are a few:
~ I checked my email for maybe 3 minutes and when I went into the kitchen, Tru had climbed onto the counter and opened the container of chocolate cake and helped himself to a piece or two. He does like chocolate!

~ I got him all cleaned up and put him upstairs in the playroom so I could clean up the chocolate cake. He found a box of cereal upstairs (who knows why it was there!) and dumped out the entire box of Cheerios. He and Max were laughing their heads off and throwing Cheerios all over the place. I got the vaccum, tidied the toys, and sucked all the Cheerios up. Jimmy came home from work and I gave myself a timeout in my room.

~ Throwing away diapers. Whenever Truman sees a diaper laying around, he is so vigilant about throwing it in the garbage. Sometimes he can hardly wait long enough for me to finish changing him. One time he tried to pull Max’s poopy diaper out from under him when I was changing it. At least he’s helping to keep things tidy around here. He’s also started picking up crusties from under the table to throw away. I’m just glad he’s not eating them anymore!

~ Eating. Truman has been so funny about food lately. He eats so much. He’ll eat his multiple servings … drinking every last remnant from his bowl (whether it’s liquid or not). Then he’ll go see what’s left on Max’s plate. Then if I have anything on my plate, he sits on my lap and begs for more. He loves flavor, casserole type dishes, beans and peas, and soup. (and yes… that’s a mermaid bib from when Hannah was a baby.  It’s still functional so we use it.  Sorry Tru).

~ Truman’s main task is delivering scriptures to everyone at scripture time. He is so funny about it. Whoever has the bin of scriptures hands him one and says, “Give this to Hannah”… etc. He stumbles and runs the Book of Mormon to that person… sometimes throwing it at them. Sometimes he looks all around the room like he can’t find that person. I think he’s quite proud of himself for having a task.

~ Emptying the dishwasher. It is so funny when Truman tries to help unload the dishes. He is so fast and it’s impossible to keep up with him. He can put pots away by himself. And then he hands the cups and bowls one at a time, so swiftly, to me. We get the dishwasher unloaded so quickly because he’s so fast. Plus, I have to hurry and do the glass things so he won’t throw them.

So – I guess those are Truman’s hobbies these days. He also makes lots of requests for the “wii”. He likes to hold a steering wheel and watch people play. He is saying so many words these days. He’s a little smarty. My sister commented today that she can’t imagine Truman doing some of these things because he seems so serious and mellow. He has surprised us how feisty he can be. He hits (and boy does it hurt). He bites (he thinks he’s so funny to get away with it). He gives hugs when we’re hugging (this is good). When he and Max have to say sorry, they are so funny giving hugs. They usually fall over in laughter.

Tru is about 16 months. He’s a handful at church. He just grew in his 8th tooth… his first molar. Boy, was it a bear. He screamed at us all weekend if he didn’t have ibuprofen in him.

Overall though… Tru is so cute. He is serious, but sure enjoys having fun wrestling with dad and the boys. He doesn’t like to be left out from the kid’s activities. He’s dying to go outside every day. He seems to feel free running around on the driveway. I’m sure spring and summer will be fun for him.

We love our Tru!

the AMAZING recovery

Little Tru’s eye is doing amazingly well. I guess what you hear about little ones bouncing back and healing swiftly is true. On Saturday (one week and one day after surgery) the stitches were dissolving and falling out. His bruising has lightened significantly. You can barely see the incision on his eyelid, but when you feel it, you can tell there is some scar tissue that is harder. Hopefully that will resolve. His eyeball still has a red spot but it’s fading. Overall… Truman is doing great with his recovery. I love this picture because it’s just a common look for Tru… plus, you can see his new tooth there on the bottom.

Update on Tru’s Eye

I wanted to have a record of Tru’s recovery so here are 2 more pictures 5 days after surgery. The swelling has gone down a bit and he can open his eye almost all the way. The bruise is turning greenish. You can see his stitches better now that it’s not quite as swollen. Also, there is a large red spot on his eyeball over by where the cyst was. I hope that goes away.

Truman is doing well with leaving his eye alone. At first he tried to rub it, but it doesn’t seem to bother him too much now. We also put ointment on it a few times a day to help it heal better. Tru had a hard evening/night on Sunday, but after a priesthood blessing, he slept well. Other than that, he’s slept well at night.

Looks like little Tru is definitely on the mend.

“The black-eyed baby” update

Abe named Truman “The Black-eyed Baby” tonight at dinner. I’m afraid it’s quite true.Truman had a check-up with the doctor this morning. Dr. Call said his eye looked “Great.” It was much more bruised and swollen than we anticipated, but we’re glad the doctor thinks it’s healing well. Truman’s eye patch fell off during his afternoon nap and we let his eye have a little air until bedtime when we put a new one on to protect his eye until morning. Then he should be okay to be patch-free. When the original patch first came off his eye was so swollen Truman couldn’t open it at all. After a few hours, the swelling went down a bit, and his eye opened more.

You can see that Truman is much happier now that his eye patch is off. We hope his stitches heal well and that things mend and mellow out in the next week for him. When Jimmy was at the doctor’s this morning, he met a man who had a patch just like Truman – only he had his entire eyeball removed. We feel grateful that Truman only needed minor surgery and had no complications.

Truman’s Eye Surgery

We noticed a squishy bump on the side of Tru’s eye about a year ago. The pediatricians thought it was a displaced blob of fat (from getting hit on the eye brow by a cowboy boot – courtesy Max). But after talking with our Optometrist (our Bishop), a pediatric Ophthalmologist, and an Ocular Surgeon, they quickly determined that it was a dermoid cyst. They said if we didn’t take it out now, the mass would continue to grow and could cause eye problems in the future. Today was surgery day for little Tru.

Here’s the before photo:

Isn’t this about the cutest little patient you’ve ever seen? They even gave him mini sticky socks.

Jimmy and Tru had to leave the house about 5:30 to be at LDS Hospital at 6 a.m. Truman’s surgery was at 7:30 and it took about 45 minutes. He couldn’t eat or drink anything after midnight so by 7:30, he was one hungry baby.

The doctor brought the orbital mass out to show Jimmy after the surgery.  It was about the size of a small marble and was white. The surgery consisted of making a small incision on the crease of his eyelid (to reduce noticeable scarring) and remove the cyst. Here’s Truman in recovery resting and waking up from the anesthesia.

You can see how happy he is about his eye patch and surgery here. Upon returning home, all he wanted to do is run around. A semi-sedated, drugged, one-eyed 15-month-old running/stumbling/falling = NOT SAFE. Poor little Tru was not a happy tot. He kept hitting, pinching, and scratching us because he was so upset. Eating a tasty omelet and orange juice helped him temporarily. And then finally when the Tylenol-Codeine kicked in, he fell fast asleep.

We have yet to see his eye since we’re supposed to leave the eye patch on as long as possible. We’ll post more updates when we have more photos.

We love you Tru! Heal well!

“It’s Amazing!”

Max has been a really funny kiddo lately. He’s talking so much and must have hit a new stage of speech development because he’s trying harder to say sentences. We still don’t understand it all, but it’s cute to hear him try new phrases. My favorite is, “It’s Amazing!” He says it about random things that are normal. Love it!

The funniest thing yesterday was that he was acting as Truman’s interpreter.
“Mom, Twu wants na-na.” When really Truman was saying, “night-night”.
“Mom, Twu wants Da-da.” … Which was probably true because Tru does love his Dad.

Yesterday we were playing with legos and Max decided on his own to build a temple. This is what he came up with. We rebuilt it many times because … “Twu bwoke my temple.”

I think Max has been working on his conversation skills as well. At dinner, he’ll turn to me and start talking about his Sunbeams class and his teacher. He’s also turned into more of a parakeet. He imitates Jimmy saying, “Sorry Babe.” or “Love ya Hon.” Of course, always with his big Max smile.

Max has been interested in eye color lately. He asked, “What color eyes, mom? Blue?”. Then he’ll go through the entire family and ask about their eye color.

But is it all smiles and funny sayings. NO! Much of the day he is soooooo dramatic about anyone coming near him or touching him.
“Twu pinched me.”
“Don’t touch me.”
“Twu, no hit me. Be nice me.”
“No Gwab me.”
“Abe squished me.”
“I got scwatch.”

One delightful new thing for Max has been quiet time. Generally his quiet time has lasted about 5 minutes and then he’s banging on the door. Well, this week, a miracle has occurred and he’s spent 1+ hour in his room playing with toys, building airplanes with brick-blocks, looking at books. It’s heaven for this mama. I definitely need quiet time too!

It’s fun to see little ones learn new things. I’m trying to appreciate all the darling things about Max at this stage because there really are so many.

The Adventures of Truman and Max

1. Piano Tunes from Tru
2. Emptying pots from the dishwasher (actually helpful!)
3. Unloading silverware (actually helpful!)
4. Max pushing Tru around the kitchen. Both loving it! Not safe, really!
5. Max trying to push Tru out of the picture.  I love Tru’s wee toothy grin.
6. Max feeding Buzz fishies.
7. A tower of Legos built with dad. So Tall!
8. Hannah reading to Max in a holiday-break quiet time. {Max misses the kids when they are in school}
9. Abe attempting to put Max’s boots on Tru. Very funny to watch!

Unphotographable Moments from today:
~ 6 poopy diapers in one day. {Yes, this would be today. We have one smelly house.}
~ 3 baths
~ A Feast of pancakes for Tru for breakfast {seriously – this kid ate like 3}
~ Kisses on the lips from Max
~ 5,000 wipes of Tru’s boogie nose. wah-wah.
~ Max hurting Tru and immediately saying sorry with a love and smooch {without any prompting from mom}
~ Max feasting on loads of dinner crepes. We couldn’t keep up.
Oh – and so much more…

Overall, a good day.   It’s somewhat nice to be back to a normal schedule, though I do miss my Hannah and Abe helpers.  And now, pardon me, but I’m exhausted from following these tots around all day and I’m going to bed!