Stitches, Staples and Glue... oh, my.

When carter was between one and two years old, he accidents that required had both stitches and staples. 

John is continuing the tradition with an accident that required glue... 

1) I definitely didn't realize there were so many ways to put skin back together - until these boys came along. 

2) John's cut is in almost the EXACT same place that Thomas has a scar from toddlerhood. I think someone is feeling sad that he doesn't look as much like Dad as his brother does...

Malpractice?

Carter had some tests run today to check up on his solitary right kidney. They did an ultrasound and drew blood. Thomas took Carter to the appointment.  As I was catching up with him on his day, it went something like this:

Me: Carter, how was your day?

Carter: (rambles on and on about the Halloween carnival at school, his friends, his lunch, his trip to the playground, etc.)

Me: And did you go to the doctor today?

Carter: (remembering) Oh. OH! I have to tell you about the end! At the end of the doctor...(pause, and then, incredulous) they SHOT me. The doctor shot me. And I cried.

I don't know much, but I'm pretty sure the doctor isn't supposed to shoot you, unless maybe you're a horse? Regardless, Carter apparently recovered pretty quickly after the "shot" was removed.

And in recent malparenting...

This was K week at Carter's school. Every week, his class studies a letter, and every week, they send home a kid-crafted "book" that we are supposed to fill with pictures that start with the letter of the week. The kids share their books for show-and-tell on Friday, along with other items from home that start with "K". After15 weeks of this, our magazine supply is definitely looking a bit scrappy. And this activity is most definitely easier for some letters than others.

This week, we left the K book to be completed onThursday night, but then we were invited to have dinner with some friends that night. So... I got creative and suggested to Carter that we skip the homework and buy a value pack of Kit Kats for his class so he could point out the Ks on the package at show-and-tell instead.

Needless to say, he was thrilled with the idea. His father... not so much.

Three Year Check Up

Carter had his three year check up at the doctor's office on Friday. He's 37 pounds (75th percentile for his age) and 43 inches tall (no real percentile available for that - it's 50th percentile for a 5 year old). That puts his BMI at the 5th percentile, which is pretty consistent with where he was last year. Everything else looks good, save the gunk in his nose.

Word Puzzles

When Carter wasn't talking, it was a challenge. Now that he's talking, it's also a challange, just a different kind.

Tonight in the car he kept saying something over and over. All I could decipher was: "I h*** n***!"

I thought it was probably either "I have nap" or "I hurt neck". But when I said those two things to him, he just kept repeating "I h*** n***!" "I h*** n***!" over and over, making me think that neither was a correct interpretation. But then he said it again, "I h*** n***!", and pretended to sleep. Okay, I figured, he WAS saying "I have nap". But then immediately afterwards, he said "Ouch! I h*** n***! Need band-aid!" So... what was he really saying? We'll never know.

Another fun thing is that Carter has decided that he doesn't want to go to bed anymore. We're constantly doing up-and-down at bedtime, adding at least an hour onto each night. It's always something different that finally works to get him to stay in bed. And the up-and-down is made so much more complicated by the fact that we can talk.

A few nights ago, Thomas was working late and Carter had been getting up for well over an hour. After doing stay-in-the-room-with-him, giving him books, giving him a doll, telling him what kind of sweet dreams to have, being stern, being really really stern, and giving the silent treatment (most of which work at one time or another), I finally broke down and the following transpired:
Me: Why?? Why?? Why won't you stay in bed??
Carter: very cute and smiley "Because I happy. I happy about my Dada.
Me: You are staying up because you want to see your dad?
Carter: Yeah!
Me: Carter you won't see your dad until the morning. The sooner you go to sleep, the sooner you will see him.
Carter: I need hurry! I need hurry go sleep!
And he did, and I didn't hear from him again that night.

Tonight Carter came out and wanted to know why I was eating in the living room. "What you eating? Why eat in living room? No eat in living room! Eat in kitchen! You watching TV? I watch Sponge Bob, I like Sponge Bob." And so on and so forth about Sponge Bob. Until I finally asked him what, exactly would make him stay in bed. And he was decisive. "Two yellow sticks". I did get him some "sticks" which shortly sent him into hysterics "I need put these away!"

Thanks, verbal development. Two yellow sticks. That really helps.

Careful what you ask for...

Carter is doing well with his language development. He's continuing to pick up new sentences, and his sentences are getting longer. Here's an example.

Previously: "I want _____."
Now: "I want _____ RIGHT NOW."

Isn't communication great?

p.s. I promise Disney pictures soon. Mine aren't that good, so I'm waiting to get some (hopefully) better pictures from Ashley when she gets back from Spain (trying to reign in my jealousy:).

Nursemaid's Elbow

We missed the first half of the Superbowl tonight, as an inadvertent afternoon tug-of-war between Carter and I resulted in an evening trip to urgent care. Nursemaid's Elbow was the diagnosis. It caused him a good deal of pain and largely immobilized his left arm for most of the day. We went to a nice children's urgent care facility about a half an hour away. At some point between being weighted and walking into the exam room, Carter recovered completely. Apparently, it is not uncommon for kids to do something to snap everything back in its proper place all on their own.

The frequency with which Carter recovers moments before we see the physician is becoming comedic. Another thing we're starting to notice is a pattern of twofers. Today, just before the arm injury, he face-planted against the edge of a counter and was bleeding from the mouth. The doctor took a look at that (since there was nothing to do for the arm) and also said that was fine. He actually noted that Carter didn't hit his face hard enough to tear his frenulum. I told him that we'd already been there and done that with one of Carter's first twofers back in March 2007. I no longer panic at bleeding from the mouth.

Right now, Thomas is watching the Superbowl in fast forward, trying to catch up. It wasn't going to be a raucous evening anyway (especially for me, as I have a conference call late tonight), but we missed out on our pigs-in-blankets and Matthew's amazing mac-n-cheese. We'll just have to make up for it another night, sans football, which is just fine with me!

We're so glad Carter is okay, as he was exceptionally pitiful (and guilt inducing) this afternoon. He was fully back to himself by the time the doctor came in!

Speech

Those of you who have kids, or know kids, or read blogs about people who have kids may have noticed the lack of pithy blog entries about the funny things that Carter says. This isn't because Carter isn't funny. We think he's very funny. It's just that he doesn't say much.

Ever since his 15-month check up, Carter has been toward the low end of the verbal spectrum, and we've been waiting for the burst of verbal activity that every doctor since then has told us was just around the corner. Shortly after his 2-year checkup, we decided to get him evaluated. While he isn't that far off of where he should be--and we do think that he just has more interest in gross motor development (the kid can climb a rock wall)--he has recently started to become frustrated (and we have, too) by his inability to express himself in a way that we understand. So, we've found him a speech therapist, and he started with her this week.

His speech therapist, who he calls La-La (perhaps you graduate from speech therapy when you can pronounce your therapist's name properly?), seems terrific. She takes a very holistic approach, so in addition to vocal and mouth exercises, Carter is now getting a nightly full body massage with organic coconut oil (wish I could get someone to prescribe that for me) and we'll likely be starting him on fish oil supplements soon. So far (they've had two sessions), Carter LOVES her, loves the 'games' that they play and is amazingly on-task during their work. Unfortunately, he's less inclined to do his homework with us, but that's to be expected. One of the techniques La-La is using with him is sign language. Now that we know Carter is better at expressing himself physically than verbally, we are really wishing that we'd given baby sign language more of chance (I'm pretty sure we gave up on it after about 2 weeks when he was 8 months old), but, cest la vie...

Carter will be meeting with La-La weekly for the foreseeable future. One thing that is helping make that possible is that we are moving Carter into a daycare center in November. We are very sad to be leaving our terrific nanny, but there are lots of benefits of the new school, most of which I won't go into now, but the relevant one is that La-La already works with some other kids in the school. She will pull him out of class to do his therapy on-site, which means that we don't have to take off work every week for it, which is very helpful! It also means that she'll be able to talk directly with his teachers about how they can help him, and she said she'd probably do a session or two in his class to both model for his teachers the things that they can do to help him, and also to allow Carter to show off what he's learning.

I'll do another post in a day or two with more details about the new school and some pictures!

Back to Blogging

Sorry to have been such a bad blogger the last couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, I was working in the yard and got some kind of skin thing that gradually got worse and worse. Combining the three sources I consulted: the doctor, Ashley and random Internet research, I've decided that I was bitten by a bug that I was allergic to, which had been living on a poison ivy plant. I've been on mood-altering drugs for the last week, and coming off of those drugs for the last 24 hours has been even worse than being on them. Needless to say, I haven't been in much of a blogging mood. But my chemistry seems to be back to normal, and I have a few pics from the last weeks to share. So, we're back in business.

Meanwhile, Thomas left yesterday afternoon for Mexico (luckily missing my real downward spiral of coming off the steroids) . The Ballet is performing Swan Lake in Monterrey tomorrow night. I'll let him fill you in on his trip when he gets back, but he called today and it sounds as if they are having an... adventure (and not the good kind).

Sick Day

Carter's nanny was out sick yesterday, so Thomas and I split the day caring for him. Lucky for us, Ashley was also staying home with a feverish Anna, so we got to hang out with them. In the afternoon, we took a short trip to the zoo and hit the carousel and train. Ashley and I are in agreement that we'd appreciate it if the kids could plan their sick-but-not-too-sick days at the same time in the future!

2 Year Check-up

Thomas took Carter to the pediatrician for his two-year check-up last week. You won't be surprised to hear that, at 38.75", he's still super tall. However, his weight, which always used to be about 50th percentile, is now closer to 90th percentile (a little over 31 pounds). What all this means is that he's somewhat better proportioned - but still a beanpole!

The child-height-predictor at ParentCenter.com predicts his height at age 18 to be 6'8" - same as his Uncle Patrick! Time will tell...

Here's some of the fine print on the calculator:
This prediction is a "best guess" but it's still just that -- a guess. Based on the formula we used there is a 50 percent chance that your boy's full-grown height will be within 0.8 inches (above or below) of this prediction, and a 90 percent chance that it will be within 2.1 inches.
Oh, and it also mentions that it may not work well for children that are exceptionally tall. But it's still fun!

In Staples

We're moving up in the world of head sutures: from stitches to staples... all in one month!

Carter had a little accident this morning that warranted another trip to the ER, and three staples in the back of his head. As usual, he's very resilient and is doing fine. One of the discharge instructions suggested that we keep him calm and have him play quietly for the next 24 hours. HA! These instructions clearly weren't written by anyone that has had an 18 month old!

As a side note, head wounds bleed profusely. I really wish I hadn't decided to wear cashmere this morning...

In Stitches

After Carter's successful first haircut this afternoon (pics of that tomorrow), we made our first family trip to the ER.

Upon leaving the salon, Carter tripped on an umbrella stand (the kind for an outdoor cafe). The stand was empty, so it was essentially just a foot high metal pipe. He caught his nose on the pipe and cut his right nostril. That's as much detail as I'll give in order to be kind to those of you with weaker stomachs. I'll add only that it was immediately obvious that he'd need stitches.

Luckily, we live only a mile and a half from the children's hospital at Emory. At 3 hours, it was the fastest ER visit I've ever experienced. The staff was very friendly. They had bubbles in triage and a DVD player at every bed. That went a long way to making it a bearable experience. The roughest part (other than the actual stitching) was at the end when Carter no longer wanted to be held or touched in any way by anyone, but the medicine they gave him to relax him hadn't worn off, meaning he couldn't stand or walk on his own, so that was... unpleasant. For all of us.

Since Carter's accident happened right after his haircut, I had my camera on hand - thus the pics below.

Sick Boy

Carter had a few feverish days early this week (he seems fully recovered now). The one nice thing about having a sick baby is that he is so much more willing to snuggle on the couch!

Surgery Update

Thomas' sinus surgery went well. He is home recovering now. We expect that he'll pretty much spend the weekend on medication in bed or on the couch. If it weren't for the bleeding and medication, that would pretty much sound like his ideal weekend!

Thank You Kirstin!

Kirstin has been a life saver this week! Carter is feeling better, and he was finally able to go back to school today, but the last two days Kirstin has come over to stay with Carter so that we could get some work done. Carter has been so happy to get to spend the time with her - and we are very grateful that she was able to help!

It's Back

Health seems to elude us. A mere three days after Carter was declared ear infection free, he has come down with a bigger, badder type of ear infection that comes with complimentary pink eye! He's on eye drops, skin cream, antibiotics and an herbal supplement. Poor boy is being poked, prodded and stuffed with medicine a total of 11 times a day (which also makes going to work a bit of a challenge).

Still, his spirits are comparatively high. He had lots of fun with Kirstin today, who came over to help out so that I could get some work done. (Thanks again, Kir!)

Update

Carter is doing much better today. Thankfully, his fever was finally gone this morning, so he was able to go to school. He also had a small rash yesterday (due to the antibiotics, we think) but that seems to have mostly disappeared as well. AND here's the really exciting thing: tonight, he had a big sneeze and nothing came out!

Update

Carter is still feverish today, and a week on antibiotics has only healed the infection in one ear, so the doctor put him on stronger antibiotics today. We hope these will do the trick. I continue to be amazed by how good-natured he is, even when he is feeling bad!

Ailing

Carter is not feeling well. He had a fever this afternoon, and we aren't sure if the antibiotics are working on his ear infection (we are taking him back to the doctor tomorrow afternoon, so we'll keep you posted), but he has still had a grand time with Mama Helen and Mimi. And doesn't he look ready for spring in his khaki pants and polo shirt? You can really see his top two teeth in the picture!

What a Week.

It was a long week, culminating in a bad day. I'm far to tired to do this all justice, so here's the short version:

• I have had a very busy week at work, and thanks to today's events, I'll be working during found time (read: nap time) this weekend.


• Thomas has had the flu (or something like it) combined with a nasty cold for most of the week. He was basically in bed for a full day and a half, but finally felt well enough to leave on his business trip to Phoenix yesterday morning (though he very nearly missed his flight).


• Carter has an ear infection. It was in one ear on Monday and had spread to both ears by today (when the pediatrician gave us antibiotics).


• My mom and Mimi were supposed to come spend the weekend with us, but their flight was cancelled and they couldn't get another one, so they aren't coming.


• There has been ice falling from the sky since early this morning.


• Just as we were about to walk out the door this afternoon, I walked in the room to find blood pouring down Carter's chin. He must have fallen and caught his lip. Luckily, we were on the way to the pediatrician for the aforementioned ear infection, so she was able to tell me that he ripped the thingy that attaches the upper lip to your gums. Apparently it is not uncommon, and it heals just fine. But it bleeds - A LOT. The bleeding had stopped when we were at the pediatrician, but the poor boy bled from the mouth most of the way home on the incredibly overcrowded, hour-long, rush-hour, snow-day subway ride home from the doctor. He didn't really mind the bleeding - he just wanted to chew on something, but that, of course, made the bleeding worse. So I wouldn't let him chew. So he, in turn, told the whole subway car how much he disagreed with that decision (I'm sure I looked like the mother of the year with my bleeding, crying baby).
• The UPS guy got me to sign for a package today that I assumed was for one of our new neighbors, but I now realize that we don't have a neighbor by that name.


• We are out of wine or stiff-drink fixins', and I can't go get more because the baby is sleeping. So I am going to bed.

On a happy note, we now have a working dishwasher!

Lest you be worried, Carter bounced right back as soon as we got home and I got him in the bath. I'm sure that he will be feeling much better tomorrow. Here's a sweet picture of him from the other day.