Christmas Card Photo Shoot

Why is it so hard to take a good picture of two children at the same time? This was the result of our photo shoot. I should have waited for Dane to be home to help me, but I got anxious and wanted to get it done. Below is a sampling of my quest for the perfect picture. I settled for less than perfect when I lost the crowd. You will just have to wait until they are sent to see the winner!

Trains at Union Station

Last weekend, we went down to Union Station with some friends of ours to see the model trains. Each holiday season, they build this huge display of model trains. Our friends have two kids as well. Aidan is about 4 months younger than Liam and they just had a baby girl over the summer, Maeve. It is nice to have friends with kids to hang out with. Liam and Aidan get along so well and they (of course) both  LOVE trains.

Liam and his friend Aidan looking at model trains down at Union Station. It was so cute they were so excited and walked around holding hands. There was so much to see, they just kept pointing things out to each other.

This was our attempt to take a nice family picture for our Christmas card...as you can see the boys were less than thrilled.

Gavin 11 months!

Dane telling Gavin about the trains

There was even a tree with Thomas ornaments all over it. The boys were jealous that it was not in their houses.

Christmas Decorations and First Snow

Liam entranced with a music box

Gavin seeing snow for the first time (that he remembers)

Pretty exciting stuff

My boys and the Christmas tree

Liam with Santa at the Luminary Walk

Who needs toys when there is tupperware?

We haven't posted in a couple of weeks. Not too much to catch up on. I worked on Thanksgiving so Dane spent it at home with the boys. It was a crazy day at work and needless to say it wasn't hard to come up with a million things to be thankful for, with #1 being that my children were not in the ICU. 

To make up for Dane and the boys missing Thanksgiving, I made a full turkey dinner, stuffing and all, the weekend following. It was a nice night. The boys ate it up and afterwards, we went to the Overland Park Arboretum for a Luminary walk. It was a mile walk through the arboretum which was candlelit. Very nice. There were also lots of christmas lights and decorations. There were carolers and bonfires. We had a great time despite the freezing rain. Liam even got a quick visit with Santa. I wasn't sure how he would do, be he was thrilled to jump on the jolly guy's lap and tell him all of the things that he wanted for Christmas. 

The boys have been doing well. Liam is just hilarious. He is so excited about Christmas coming. Everything is just generic Christmas...."mommy, there is christmas in there. Look at the christmas over there, etc." He talks about Santa everyday. I am sure that some of it is coming from daycare. We are working on potty training with him. It is tedious. He has his good days and his bad. I am working the Santa angle and told him that Santa wants his diapers and that he would bring him underwear in their place. He was excited and then asked if he could have Dora underwear...hmmm don't know how I can pull that off. I am pretty sure that they don't make Dora briefs for little boys. It is a work in progress. Not too much is new with him.

Then there is Gavin. Oh, Gavin is so lucky that he is cute. That poor baby has now had 8 ear infections. The most recent is being extremely stubborn for which he is on his 4th antibiotic in 5 weeks to try to treat. I think that he is going to get tubes. Our life (and his) is consumed with these ear infections, He is miserable, not sleeping and missing day care (which equals missed work/clinicals). He is such a happy guy until it is bedtime. He screams. He screams for 1-2 hrs sometimes. It is heartbreaking. We try to rock him, give him Motrin, rub his back, turn on his music. Nothing works. If you let him cry too long, he bangs on the wall....seriously. When you go in his room, he begs to be held and points to his doorway. What he ultimately wants is to come into our room/bed. We are not letting him. It will only breed bad habits that we do not want to start. So, we are letting him cry it out. We actually turned off the monitor the other night and we fell asleep to him screaming. Once we get rid of infection #8, I plan to seek an appt with ENT to discuss tubes. It is not a perfect science, there are risks, it may not work, but it is all that we have. I feel like we owe it to Gavin to make him more comfortable.  He is close to walking. He takes more steps everyday. Maybe he will be a walker by his birthday...which is just around the corner. I can't believe that he is going to be ONE! It has been a fast year.  

Dane and I are hanging in there. I just ended my semester and have a million things on my to-do list for my break. (what else is new). Dane is just as happy that my semester is over as I am, so he can try to get some serious work done. I have Christmas off so we will hopefully get to see lots of family. I think it will be such a fun year with the boys! Here are some recent pictures:

Gavin on his 1st Thanksgiving

One of Gavin's favorite pastimes is hanging out by the dishwasher. You never know what you are going to find in there. Unfortunately, not only does he have access to the dirty dishes, he has a tendency to go for the knives. 

I don't remember Liam ever playing in the kitchen cabinets. He just wasn't one of those babies. He actually played with toys. Gavin would be happy to live in the tupperware cabinet. He does not require toys to be happy. Because of his love of tupperware, it is as is Liam is reliving his infancy and enjoys spending time in the cabinets with his baby brother. They are pretty funny together these days. 

Maybe this should have been the Christmas card!

Another Train Lover?

Little Chef

Liam and I decorated cookies this morning. Lynnie babysat the boys yesterday and let Dane and I have a date night. She had made sugar cookies and brought things over to decorate them, but after naps, dinner and playtime at a local McD's, they simply did not have time to do it. After breakfast this morning, I grabbed Liam his standard cooking chair from the dining room and let him go crazy with 4 colors of icing and two types of sprinkles. He is very into cooking and baking. He loves to help as much as I can let him and takes pride in the results. I just thought that these pictures captured his current love of the kitchen.

Winter Ready

Muscle Man

Dane's brother Connor gave him a set of "perfect push-ups" for his birthday this summer. Liam loves them as much as Dane does. He watches daddy do his workout and frequently must do his own when the handles are available. Dane took these pictures one recent morning. He was at our kitchen table eating breakfast while the boys were playing in the living room. He noticed Liam doing his workout for Gavin and thought it was pretty funny and was able to snap a couple of pictures of Liam teaching his baby brother about push-ups.

Gavin back to health.

Down

Push Up

Repeat

Sick

Well, Gavin has had a terrible week. He has been a sick little boy. We got a call from daycare last Monday saying that he had thrown up and was not eating. That was just the beginning. He has been puking or having diarrhea for 5 days. I am thankful for hardwood floors :) Then yesterday he had a fever and was tugging at his ears. To the doctor we went. His weight was 21 lbs and 13 oz which is only 15 oz up from his 9 month appointment at the end of September. So we know he has lost weight, but is holding his own thanks to aggressive hydration strategies (ie. holding down and using a syringe to give his sips of pedialyte and water). On top of that he also has two ear infections! That makes ear infections 5 and 6 in his short 10 months. He has to get an injection of antibiotics (very painful) because he won't tolerate oral antibiotics with his puking. He was still puking and having fevers into this morning. I had to take his back to the pediatrician today, but he had successfully had two 4 oz cups of formula and kept it down. I was thinking that he was starting to "turn the corner". So we decided to get him onto oral Amoxicillin instead of getting more injectable antibiotics to treat his ears (it takes 3 shots over 3 consecutive days to equal a 10 day course of antibiotics). I just didn't have the heart to put him through it. The good news is that he ate tonight. This is his first food since Monday! He ate chicken, scalloped potatoes, peas and yogurt. This boy loves to eat! Not bad for a first meal after his terrible week. He also took his amoxicillin and so far is doing fine! I have to work all weekend so Dane will be on his own. I hope that Gavin will keep getting better without any setbacks. If he can't tolerate the medicine, Dane will have to take him into the peds office for another shot. Keep your fingers crossed for no puke, no fevers and no more middle of the night sheet changes. I will post some pictures soon.

Enjoying the weather

With the weather having been so beautiful, we are trying to get the boys out as much as possible. Soon enough, we will have two little boys trapped in the house for the winter. Here are some pictures of us playing outside in the leaves!

Gavin watching Liam jump in the leaves

Dane is laughing at Gavin beating on a pumpkin

The boys first wagon ride together. They loved it. Gavin did well keeping balance. Liam was excited to have someone else in the wagon with him.

Officially 2 1/2  :)

Gavin looking at the trees. This wagon is a new favorite of his. He runs all over the place with it. I think he will be walking soon. He will stand without holding on to things for 5-7 seconds. He has good balance. He cruises around all of the furniture, but has yet to take a step.

Gavin is checking out the leaves

Super Daddy Dane! I just thought the tree looked pretty

Gavin and Mommy playing in the leaves

JUMP!

Liam decided to ride his bike into the leaf pile. It did not go so well. This was him flipping over his bike into the leaves. As you can see he was uninjured.

Gavin @ 10 months!

TRICK-or-TREAT

We hope that everyone had a very happy halloween. The boys really enjoyed the day. Like last year, I undertook the job of costume designer. I think that by next year, Liam will have an opinion on his costume choice, so I wanted to take advantage of my (possible) last year to decide what they dressed up as. They were Crayola Crayons! 

Let me explain. My mom made crayon costumes for my older brother and I when we were young. That was the first time that I was a crayon. The second time I was a crayon was in college. My friends and I decided to use that as a group costume. Four of us were crayons and one was a box. We were a hit. Then when Dane and I lived in Madison, one halloween, we had several friends come to visit and, once again, Crayola Crayon seemed to be a perfect idea. 

This year, it was Liam and Gavin's turn. Somehow, I found a bit of time to make their costumes. Liam got to pick our their colors. Green is quickly becoming his go-to color when asked to choose. Although, he is a fan or purple, and being in the fabric store suddenly brought out his love of hot pink, in the end, he settled on green and wanted baby G to be blue. They turned out great and looked so cute! 

We had a busy day that started off at daycare for a party. It was not their day to go, but I try to take them for the parties when I can. Liam enjoys it. After that, we swung by their Pediatrician's office so Gavin could get his second flu shot. (yes, children under age 9 have to get 2 injections the first season that they get the vaccine) A long nap gave me the opportunity to clean the house, do 3 loads of laundry and rake the front yard...have to capitalize on that! Then Lynn (Dane's AMAZING aunt) and McKay (that's Un Kay to Liam) came over for dinner. I have to add that the entire homemade dinner and dessert was supplied by Lynnie. Then it was time for trick-or-treating. 

The boys had fun. Gavin got a VIP seat in the jogging stroller while Liam walked the streets of Hawthorne. He did really well. Wasn't quite sure what to do the first couple of houses. It was something between not being sure about talking to a whole bunch of strangers and not believing his parents are just letting him collect all of this candy. He primed his pumpkin bucket with a couple of pieces from our home supply. He then tried to use this to barter at the first house. He thought that if he took a piece from her, he should give her back a piece of his...he really put a Butterfinger in her bowl from his pumpkin. After that, it didn't take him long to catch on. In the end he made a haul and only tried to walk into 2 houses uninvited. Here are a bunch of pictures in random order:

Gavin is skyping with Gram and Papo before leaving the house

This was Dane and Liam after trick-or-treating

Gavin at the end of the night

Ok, I forgot to mention that Dane drug out our old costumes from Madison and we wore them out with the boys. It is OK to laugh. The quality of ours was not as good since they were mass produced in one afternoon. I had the luxury to take time to made the boys' look a little nicer.

 

Almost lost G on this one

I was so impressed he kept his hat on...didn't try to take it off

This was Liam before we left

At daycare party

This is priceless. This was at daycare when I put Liam in his costume for the first time. He was SO excited to be a green crayon.

Gavin's first Halloween!