If you have seen Mater’s Tall Tales, then the title makes sense.
Anyhow, this was tonight’s conversation:
Me: Time to go upstairs and get ready for bed.
Charlotte: No, I tan’t, I taaaannnn’t!!
Me: Why, are your legs broken?
Charlotte: [looks down at her legs] Yesh! My yegs awe boken. Need a bandaid.
Me: Oh really. It looks like your legs are just fine to me. Let’s go upstairs now.
Charlotte: Too tired. And my yegs awe boken.
I took the kids to Target today (yes in the snow storm!) today. At the end of the trip I let them go over to the toy section. Cooper was standing next to a little boy who was about an inch shorter than him. Cooper starts jabbering a bit to him and I can see the little boy looking confused (this happens often since Cooper looks older than he is). Here was the conversation:
Little Boy: [turns to me] How old is he?
Me: He’s 2.5 years old.
Little Boy: He’s only 2?!?! I’m 6!
Me: Wow, you’re 6!
Little Boy’s Older Brother: That’s the biggest 2 year old I’ve ever seen!
Little Boy: How did he get so big?
Me: He has really tall parents.
Little Boy’s Older Brother: [says to Little Boy] When are you going to hit your growth spurt?
I cannot believe Cooper was bigger than a 6 year old.
It was a tough night last night. Charlotte wondered into our room around 1:30 gasping for air. She wasn’t breathing well and it reminded me very much of Cooper’s episode and trip to the ER. Chris gathered her up and took her to the hospital, and was home just shortly after 3—super fast! They gave her a treatment of steroids and a diagnosis of croup (along with the same diagnosis for all of us…croup in adults is a bad congestion and cold like symptoms, while in children it causes swelling of their airways). They gave her the game Candy Land because she was so cooperative and polite! They told Chris that 10 min in the bathroom with a hot shower running, or 10 min bundled in cold weather should help with breathing. If it doesn’t, then bring her back.
While Chris was gone, Cooper woke up with a fever and was attempting to cough as well, but was mostly just cranky and restless. Between worrying about Charlotte and taking care of Cooper I got hardly any sleep. I went to work late and the kids had a very lazy, very cuddly day with Daddy on the couch.
Okay…taking a detour for a moment…I don’t think I mentioned that I weaned Cooper a couple months ago. It was fairly uneventful, but I had reached a point where I dreaded nursing and there was absolutely no enjoyment from my side anymore. In fact the idea of continuing to nurse and the actual act of doing so became nearly revulsive to me. It was a very strange feeling and not how I wanted to remember nursing.
I began preparing Cooper for the upcoming change and for a couple of weeks before we started cutting nursing out of the bedtime/naptime routine, I told him that the milk would be all gone soon, but that we could still cuddle. I started changing our routine to include more reading time, some singing time (although that ended quickly because he would cover my mouth and say ‘top, mama, top’…tells you what kind of singer I am!), and some extra cuddle time. Then one night he just didn’t ask for it, so I didn’t offer it.
The next week he didn’t ask for 3 nights out of the week. The following week I just didn’t let him nurse when he did ask for it. It was heartbreaking the first couple of nights because he would cry and beg to nurse, but I would tell him he drank all the milk and it was all gone. He just cried in my arms for several minutes before calming down and asking me to lay down in bed with him. After a few nights he went from crying to laughing that there was no milk. Then he stopped asking every night.
Now 2 months later, he still asks for mama milk a few times a week but easily accepts, ‘it’s all gone, you drank mama milk all gone’ and sort of giggles about it. (I actually think he expects my breasts to go away since I don’t have any more milk.) So the whole point of me bringing this up is that now that he is sick, he is asking for mama milk over and over several times a day and he is very sad when I tell him it’s all gone. I know he just wants the comfort, so I tell him we can cuddle instead.
Tonight when he asked for mama milk and I told him it was all gone, the crazy smart kid says ‘Yeah, it came back. Mama milk peeze.’ What the heck am I supposed to say to that??
Cooper keeps telling us he wants an onkle. He says it over and over and we have no idea what he means. Then he goes to the fridge and gets an apple. In Cooper-speak onkle=apple.
I am a bit overdue for blogging some of the recent comings and goings of our lives. We hosted our first Thanksgiving dinner with all of our family. As it turns out several people ended up not coming, so we had WAY too much food. I was a little disappointed because I had this vision of everyone being together for our first holiday back in Denver. I got over it, especially because we still had plenty of family over. (See photos on photoblog…I was terrible at picking up my camera that day.)
The Saturday after Thanksgiving the Derichsweiler grandparents flew out for a week long visit. It was wonderful to have them stay with us, and the kids had a blast. They spoiled the kids like any grandparent and we loved spending time with them. The kids got new pajamas, hung out with their grandma and grandpa, and played in the snow. My father in law got a new Sony DSLR camera so he was able to snap a photo of all of us. Scout just happened to walk into the photo just in time!
Chris and I also went to my work holiday party. I don’t have any really photos other than the snapshot taken while we were dancing. There were a few others, but I didn’t like any of them. We had a really great time, despite the lack of any real music. (The theme was a Country Western theme and there wasn’t a DJ to play any other music.) The food was delicious and it was wonderful to spend time together away from the kids.
