Poor Little Guy

I took this the day before Logan threw himself up the stairs.  This morning he woke up looking a bit worse than the day before with a bit more bruising and swelling.  We have a doctor's appointment for Monday.  He is still not complaining of any pain, though.  Thank goodness for that.

Here is a quick shot from my phone this morning:

It's been a rough month for my little guy.  Now that my adrenaline has worn off, I am so sad about the entire thing.

So my birthday yesterday...

It started out lovely.

Being that it was a Thursday, Emma, Chloe, and I walked Logan to his room and then put in our volunteer hours at his school library.  (I shelve while the girls dust.)  We came home mid-morning and as I was gathering the ingredients for the night's crock pot dinner, I realized I was missing a couple of things.  So the girls and I ran to the store and returned to find my mom on the front porch with coffee and my very favorite cinnamon stick cookies.

Yum.

We visited all morning and I went to pick Logan up that afternoon.  Then I was then treated to lunch by my friend Jessica.  We came home and I opened my present from her, which included Oregon Trail for the Wii.  I was playing that when I asked Logan to take his PJ top upstairs.  (He was so tired that he forgot to take it off that morning and had worn it all day under his shirt.)

And that's when the pleasantries of the day ended.

I'm not even sure what happened other than he fell up our hardwood stairs.  There was lots of blood and lots of tears.  After he finally calmed down (i.e. fell asleep in my lap), I took him upstairs to his room, but was feeling a bit paranoid since, despite not finding any bumps, I didn't know for sure whether he had bumped his head.  So I woke him up and eventually brought him back downstairs to eat dinner.  While he was eating I snapped a photo with my phone for Andy to see and that's when I could see that his nose was crooked.

So to the ER we went.  (Thank you, thank you, thank you Jessica for staying until Andy got home so I didn't have to drag the girls with me as well.)  Three x-rays, one CT scan, and five hours later we found out for sure that he had broke his nose.  We have to wait for the swelling to go down and have an appointment with the ENT Monday to find out what we're going to do next.

Sad side note:  the ER doctor offered Logan a popsicle but he was afraid to eat it because last time he was at the hospital and had a popsicle, he threw up.  I explained to him that that was the medicine he had had, not the popsicle, but now I'm afraid he'll have to have that "medicine" again.

Here's my boy.  It's kind of hard to tell whether anything is amiss, but we do have that CT-scan as proof:

The break (and swelling) is on the left side (right side in the above).  He's still not complaining at all about it hurting, thank goodness, although his chapped lips are pretty good evidence that he's having trouble breathing through it.

Ah.  Motherhood.  It really does change everything, even birthdays!

Wordless Wednesday

Just living life...

I'm having a hard time getting back into the groove of writing here since my Christmas hiatus.  Even with the holidays over, we've been busy.  But we haven't been busy.

Anybody out there know what I mean?  Well, here are some pictures:

I guess we've just been living life.

Last Monday Logan had a quick procedure called a sub lingual frenuloplasty.  In plain English, he had a bit of skin under his tongue clipped.  (Emma and Chloe had this done when they were about a week old.  They weren't gaining weight quickly enough and the pediatrician discovered they were tongue-tied.)  Since Logan never had an issue with nursing or weight-gain, nobody thought to check under his tongue until he started talking and was having trouble with certain sounds.  Unfortunately, since he is five now and probably not open to the idea of a doctor coming at his mouth with a pair of scissors, he had to be put under general anesthesia.  Everything went well, though, and he was back at school the next day.

I've been training for my next half-marathon in April.  Not much to say there except that I've been running.  A lot.

Andy and Logan have been working their way through the original Zelda.  (Andy downloaded it onto the Wii.)  I now hear the soundtrack in my sleep and, when I'm not asleep, Emma is kind enough to hum it for me.

And speaking of Emma and Chloe, they have simply been enjoying being four.  In our house that means lots of coloring and imagination.

Little pitchers and all that...

No.  This isn't an entry about signing Emma and Chloe up for spring tee ball and Logan for his first season of pitch baseball.  Although I did just do that.

Perhaps I should have titled this "I have a horn and I'm not afraid to toot it."

Or perhaps I'm delirious and need to get up from this keyboard right this minute and go to bed.

Anyhow.  The point.

This afternoon, after picking Logan up from school, we were sitting at an intersection waiting for the light to turn green.  Being a five-year-old boy, Logan has been asking lots of questions about the rules of the road and such.  Being a thirty-something momma, I have been trying to contain my contempt for stupid drivers (and stupid people in general) by not saying everything that pops into my head when I've been cut off, etc.

I'm not always successful.

So we're sitting at this intersection and the light turns green.  The women on the opposite side of the street decides that she doesn't have to wait for the right-of-way and turns right in front of us.

I, of course, lay on the horn.

(When faced with that particular stupid driver situation, my mother's intuition told me that, with three small children in the car, that was my best course of action.)

We make it about fifteen feet past the intersection when my son, with extreme seriousness, relates this dilemma:

"Momma when I am driving and somebody does something wrong, I don't know whether to say 'Why don't you just run me off the road!' or whether to beep the horn.  How do I know what to do?"

All I could say was, "Honey, you just know."

Then I told him about right-of-ways and he told me about wrong-of-ways.

Old Man Winter is MIA

I'm sure I'll eat these words, but Old Man Winter seems to be missing his own party this year.  I'm probably the only one who feels this way, but I survive the heat of July and August knowing that I will be able to wear cozy fleece PJs and multiple layers come January.  And that just hasn't happened yet.

The kids and I took a walk around the neighborhood this afternoon, well I walked and they scootered, and I actually saw forsythia starting to bloom and daffodils pushing their way up towards the sun that apparently is behind the clouds.

The Boy returned to school this week.  A friend asked me if he was excited or if he wanted to stay home and I'm not sure he had any opinion on the matter.  When I went to get him up yesterday, he asked for one more minute of sleep and then hopped up to get dressed.  He did mention tonight that he misses building his Legos.  (He's still working through all the sets he got for Christmas!)

Emma and Chloe also seem to have no opinion on their brother's return to school.  They were quite pleased, however, to return to their gymnastics class today.

In other news, I have been unable to feed any of my children enough for the past couple of weeks.  Basically, they all start complaining that they are hungry as soon as they clear their plates from the table.  This usually points to a future growth spurt, but since the girls are already in the 1,000th percentile for height, I can't believe they are about to sprout again.

With the arrival of January, I have quite a few projects that I would like to tackle, but I haven't managed to get all of the Christmas decorations put away yet.  And then there are the library books I keep checking out on my Kindle.  I think I am trying to make up for the past five years of reading that I've missed!

Happy 2012!!

Happy New Year!!!  

We spent a quiet New Year's Eve at home this year (last year??) eating massive amounts of junk food.  Andy and I had decided that this year we would let the kiddos stay up till the ball dropped if they liked.  Well, Emma and Chloe made it until about 8:30 before they called it a night, their momma wishing she could do the same, but Logan managed to stay up till midnight and toasted in 2012 with his very own champagne glass of orange juice.

He was drunk-tired.  It was amusing.

As for the first day of the year, two months ago I booked a hotel room for a night near a local ski resort.  None of us ski, but this particular resort also offers snow tubing and I've been looking forward to taking the kids since the lazy, hazy days of summer.  

Winter, however, has been avoiding our little area of the country and the resort hasn't even been able to make any snow.  

So I cancelled our reservation and we headed to Chattanooga for the night instead to visit the Tennessee Aquarium.  Since we couldn't play in the snow, I made sure to book a hotel where we could play in the pool.  And before we headed back home the next day, we took the kiddos to their first 3D IMAX movie.

I laughed more than once watching all three of my offspring reaching out towards the screen trying to feel the grass and pet the elephants they saw during the movie.

Because Murphy seems to have it in for me, it started snowing on our way home from Chattanooga last night and the ski resort that we were planning on visiting opened today at noon.  I'm hoping that maybe we can still make it there before the season ends.

2011 in Photographs

I've not done the best job with my online photo albums this year, instead posting photos here and there or, sometimes, not at all.  So today, the last day of the year, I bring you 2011 in photographs.

Click on them to see them larger.

I hope everybody has a fabulous New Year's!  See you on the flip side!!

Five Christmas Moments +1

Okay, I know I said see you in the New Year, but I thought I would share a few photos from our Christmas.

Here's the tree after Santa dropped off the presents.  The ribbon was in much better shape when I first put it on.  Anyhow, the first thing Logan said when he saw it was that there were a lot more than presents under there than they had asked for from Santa.  (They were asked to only ask for three things.)

And speaking of Logan, I had to practically dynamite the kid out of bed Christmas morning.  I would have let him sleep, but Andy had to work and wanted to see the kids see the tree before he left.

Here's what happened about three seconds after they all had opened their first present.  These quickly became "outside" toys.

This was snapped by Aunt Jess.  I asked the kiddos to hold their favorite gift from Santa (that wasn't a light saber).  I have another shot where Chloe's finger isn't up her nose, but this just cracks me up.

When Andy got home he discovered that Santa had left one more present for each of the kids out in the garage!!  This was Emma's.  There is something hilariously wrong about her riding her bike in her princess dress while eating a chocolate chip cookie.

And here's the +1 photo: Chloe and her new puppy Cookie.  Cookie and Chloe have been inseparable for about 36 hours now.

I hope everyone's Christmas was wonderful!

See you in the New Year!!!